Ugh, AI.

[justgivemeaname]

/rant

Arite, I have actually a very long list of gripes concerning Civ3, but I'm too lazy to write them all out as most of them have been posted here already...

But, I'm currently playing a game and all the AI cheating thus far hasn't really bothered me. I don't really care that a single AI just settled the entire Eurasian continent before I had time to press "build" on my first settler. I don't care that the AI is freely trading tech's to each other (especially those pesky civ's that have absolutely nothing of value that the giving Civ would want - I already sucked them dry of everything worthy and traded it to the giving Civ the previous turn heh). I don't even care that the AIs lone spearman in a size 2 city w/o walls took ZERO damage to my 3 Elite Knights at full HP who just attacked it.

What is _really_ pissing me off right now is the fact that I"m at war with Japan (who happens to be 2 countries away - in other words, between my territory and Japan's territory lies India). Now, despite neither Japan or I having a right of passage agreement with India, India has _no_ problems letting hordes of Japanese Samurai use its territory to launch a full scale attack on me. Meanwhile, if I attack a Japanese unit that is 1 tile away from my territory (in Indian territory) and happen to win (God forbid that should happen) my unit ends up in Indian territory. Sure enough, I hit end turn and what happens? India lodges a bitter complaint and whines about how I'm violating their territory, threatening war, the acquisition of the blood of my first born, yada yada yada.

What gives? What about those 45 Japanese military units inside India's territory? If the AI has to cheat to put up a challenge, fine, but I wish Firaxis would make it cheat in _less_ annoying ways. This, for some reason that is beyond me at the moment, is pissing me off the point where I'm going to toss my current game by starting a massive war with everyone then starting over.

I was thinking about using the scenario edtior to make a map that would limit the AIs ability to piss me off, but since the scenario editor (or lackthereof) is about as useful as trying to use logic with the AI, I'm going to have to settle for starting a new random game and avoiding wars with anyone not directly next to me. Although, that might be a little hard. I think I'll just rush to Manhattan and nuke everybody instead.

/rant off.

[morb]

i guess you haven't heard.... nukes don't do jack.

what I think is ironic in the extreme, is Firaxis' aim with Civ3 was to give the player more veriaty of playing strategies and winning situations and to fix what they considered brocken with Civ2. Instead, from my own experience and from what I've read here so far, they made just about everything that was wrong even worse. Kinda like when CalTrans repaves the parts of the roads which were perfectly fine and leave the potholed brokendown roads to rot even more. Instead of fixing things with the "tweaks" they've made, they only made the game frustrating enough to still continue playing (but this time to see how you would get screwed over next) but to start MORE wars and to make victory by conquest the only real and satisfying conclusion.

I think I'm going to return my copy if I still can, and go back to playing SMAC or Civ2. Both are so much more rewarding and enjoyable in ways I didn't realize until I played Civ3.

Maybe if they fix things in subsequent patches....

[Lord Maxwell]

morb - Civ 3 will not be very frustrating once the ins and outs of it are known. SMAC was pretty damn hard and confusing at first as well. (So hard and confusing that half the civ 2 community only ever played a single game and then spent two years ranting about it being a broken game...)

Corruption isn't much of a problem if you know the game rules. Happiness is even easier than in civ 2/smac. Diplomacy is a bit more versatile than in smac, but I agree some things are still missing.

[morb]

Originally posted by Lord Maxwell
morb - Civ 3 will not be very frustrating once the ins and outs of it are known. SMAC was pretty damn hard and confusing at first as well. (So hard and confusing that half the civ 2 community only ever played a single game and then spent two years ranting about it being a broken game...)

Corruption isn't much of a problem if you know the game rules. Happiness is even easier than in civ 2/smac. Diplomacy is a bit more versatile than in smac, but I agree some things are still missing.

huh? corruption not a problem? what do you know that most of us here don't? you wouldn't say that producing 1 shield in your cities on the perifery of your empire with the rest going to waste is absurd?

let me know what how you get around all these problems....

[Fidel]

Originally posted by morb
I think I'm going to return my copy if I still can, and go back to playing SMAC or Civ2. Both are so much more rewarding and enjoyable in ways I didn't realize until I played Civ3.

yeah, you can actually win in civ2?

[Timeline]

"joseph 1944: LaRusso if you can remember past yesterday I never post a responce to one of your statement. I read most of your post with amusement however.
You are so anti-america that having a conversation with you would be poinless. You may or maynot feel you are an enemy of the United States, I don't care either way. However if I still worked for the Goverment I would turn over your e-mail address to my bosses and what ever happen, happens."

Did Joseph really say that to you?

[Fidel]

Originally posted by Timeline
"joseph 1944: LaRusso if you can remember past yesterday I never post a responce to one of your statement. I read most of your post with amusement however.
You are so anti-america that having a conversation with you would be poinless. You may or maynot feel you are an enemy of the United States, I don't care either way. However if I still worked for the Goverment I would turn over your e-mail address to my bosses and what ever happen, happens."

Did Joseph really say that to you?

i swear to god

[Lord Maxwell]

Originally posted by morb


huh? corruption not a problem? what do you know that most of us here don't? you wouldn't say that producing 1 shield in your cities on the perifery of your empire with the rest going to waste is absurd?

let me know what how you get around all these problems....

Ok, here we go again. Try to build your empire like an 8. With your capital in the middle of the upper "o". Once you get atleast a couple of shields in a city close to the middle of the lower "o" build your Forbidden City there. Make sure that you put the FC where you want your _long term production center_ to be. You can't move it. You can move your capital though, so get prepared for a move of that later on if you change shapes through conquest.

All cities need courthouses. And all outskirt cities must be in continuous We Love The King Day. WLTK cuts down on corruption real good. You get happy faces from luxuries and entertainment. So you need a marketplace to get more use out of the luxuries after the first two. You want to trade aggressively for a full set of luxuries. If you get all 8 luxuries and have marketplaces they create a total of 8+2+4+6=20 happy faces. Without marketplaces that would be a mere 8 happy faces. If you get too few luxuries you can go for entertainment/entertainers to push those last few happy faces.

Remember, size 6+. Atleast half happy faces, no unhappy faces.

Luxuries/marketplace makes unhappy citizens a thing of the past.

If you get too many content faces try to add temple/colosseum/cathedral. They make more content faces. But as citizens first turn content by anything that turns unhappy content, and then turned happy by something that turns content happy you don't want to waste happy faces by turning unhappy to content with them.

[Stuie]

Excellent summary on battling corruption, Lord Maxwell. I'll have to copy it for future use vs. whining.

I wish people would stop whining about corruption and learn how to play the game.