Anti-Strategy - making the game harder

[Sten Sture]

Thanks, Mark. Point taken. I think the toughest games I have had are the ones where I delay my start, don't bribe, don't use tribute/gifts, don't use the howie-powie, and limit my number of cities; I haven't tried the X map idea that you posted a while back, but that is a good idea, too. Getting the AI to improve much is probably too tall an order.

Of course, Clash will be an alternative! (any chance you can modify the engine and graphics and make a version for the Palm Pilot?)

[tobyr]

What about GIVING the AI tribes extra capabilities? For example, you could give them extra settlers to start with, or give them additional advances at certain times in the game, and extra gold.

The macro language in ToT is excellent for this purpose, presumably you could do about as well with standard CIV2 events, or you could even use the CHEAT menu to give extra capabilities to your opponents.

If you want the AI to give you a good fight, just provide the means to do it -- early acqusition of RR, warfare ships, rifles, more settlers to make more units, etc...

- toby


------------------
toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[Scouse Gits]

Just a wild off the wall idea ...

How about just standing still and doing nothing at all for the first 500 or 1000 years? Then you have to play some serious catch up...

------------------
____________
Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

[DaveV]

Waaay back in the early 80s, I used to play a game called Empire on a Vax at work. It was kind of a proto-civ. There was a command you could use to do nothing for some number of turns, and the writeup suggested that you wait 50-100 turns at the start of the game to give the AI player a head start (although they didn't presume to use the term "AI").

[Steve Clark]

Boy, I take some time off and find myself about 100 messages behind in this forum. Now I got to spend all my lunch time catching up

In my time off, I thought more about this issue and like the idea that Carch and Sten said about the versions. I think that playing MGE in MP or OCC or whatever, would by its nature be more of a challenge.

[Scouse Gits]

DaveV - You have refreshed my memory!!
What a great game Empire was!
I played on a DEC20 - it really was a forerunner for Civ. Could it be here that Sid got his inspiration? or does this smack of heresy?

------------------
____________
Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

[Mark_Everson]

Sten:

Good point on the howitzers! I forgot that because my games never get that far Cavalry are my howitzers... but the same idea applies. I guess I could cut back on doing clever things with engineers also. Using engineers in a decent way makes an attack on any city the AI controls an inevitable success with relatively little loss through flash building of roads and railroads and fortresses.

The X map is a lot of fun. You know, the most I ever did it on was a small map. However, there is room to give the bad guys a lot more cities with a medium or large map. Perhaps that's the way to really get a Game. As for Clash... A PalmPilot would be pushing it!

Tobyr:

The problem when you give the AI extra capabilities, is they just piss them away . So at least I am very skeptical about mods like you are suggesting. They can clearly improve things, but I don't think they'll give really good players a decent game anyway. It all comes back to the fact that the AI basically has no clue how the game is played. Because it is so Ham-handed in its use of virtually all in its resources, it can fritter away almost any advantage IMO. I mean in the X map challenge, the AI starts (Each AI) with 10x as many cities, and a Vastly more favorable strategic position than the player. And it's still Fairly easy to win once you've played a bunch of times.

[geofelt]

One of the tougher challenges is to win at bloodlust on a large map. If you added the restriction that you could not capture an AI city until you had researched a future tech, then you would have a hard time winning before 2020.

[SandMonkey]

What about -

- delaying researching monarchy, republic, democracy as long as possible.

- (i think someone already said this) refusing to build the wonders you deem "most important"

- maybe fighting only defensive wars.

Things like that will harass even the best players, but i bet they would win anyways.

[don Don]

How about research as normal, but just don't allow switch until late, say 1000 or 500 BC for Monarchy, and Republic 1500 years later. No Fundy, Dem, or Commie allowed. No switching back and forth or dropping to anarchy while Rep to foil the Senate.

[Aurelius]

Truth is, when I need a challenge in AC games, I just play diety on a large map. Some of those games are really tough as I can't easily engage the AI's in military affairs. And all types of trade can be a tricky matter.

Seriously, do you folks win all your diety games? What percentage?

In fact, I'm going to try another OCC large map...got some new strat/tacts to try.

Aurelius-- Hindsight in the year 2020 will suffice.

[Crustacian]

Dave:
Yeah for Empire!! It was a great game at the time.

On playing the Ai which I have not done much this last year...
Limiting the number of cities you have is a way too.
As well as sending your engineers over to transform ground the ai never improves. I used to do that to the cities I traded with to improve my trade routes.

------------------
The journey itself is the thing~Odysseus