The AI Flat out cheats.

[Kaak]

Take a look at the save I attached...Watch the replay. I had the chinese cornered from the start, I take a city, and they build another the same turn. The captured city is assimilated, but I take it and the other city back the immediately afterwards. Then what happens??? Another city pops up at the bottom of the continent from NO WHERE!!! No settler, no nothing. Then, the very next turn, I have an Archer and a spearman coming at me. You know what happens next? ANOTHER CITY APPEARS!!!

This game is Normal map, Monarch, and random for the rest.

If anyone would like to see more saves, let me know

1625 BC- look here first.

1650 BC

1675 BC

1700 BC

1725 BC

Another interesting note is that after all this, they had a great deal more gold than they did before I took their cities.

[tishco]

i dont have civ3 yet as i'm in ingland but want to get opions before i get it next week (or dont) so what is it the AI does?

[Zoetstofzoetje]

Yes, it's called an early *something* which makes the AI-player get another free new city somewhere else on the continent, as well as 100 gold pieces.

[Kaak]

but two cities? and then what about the units? There should be some way to disable that. Dead is Dead.

[kmj]

So this is some kind of cheat added to make the higher levels harder? I don't think I like it at all.

[SkinJob]

This remembers me of NHL 00/01 by EA, where on higher difficulties the AI didn't got better, but they weakend your players and made the ai players faster, pass better and shoot more accurate, while your speed, pass acc. and shoot acc. went down.

Sometimes AI just stands for Artificial Idiot, and indeed needs cheating to beat a human counterpart.

[Roswell]

It's not just at higher levels. I've seen this happen at chieftain, warlord, and regeant. In my past game (regeant), I killed the germans and the romans, and their cities appeared immediately following the capture of their last city.

It might be like the auto-restart was for early AI death in Civ2. Any speculation on the cut-off date? If it is a date?

[Grim Legacy]

Yeah the same thing happened in Civ2. They just get a second chance.

I guess the cut-off date is between 500BC and 1AD.

[Deathray]

No, the AI does not flat out cheat. If you kill a civilization early on they can be restarted. The same applies to you if you are killed early on. This feature was in Civilization 2 & Alpha Centaurii, and no-one complained then. In my opinion its a very good feature as it means that when I select 16 civilizations then for most of the game I will be playing against 16 civilizations, not 16 take away a few who got knocked out at the start.

[Orlando]

Maybe the following happened:

1. Unit finds goodie hut.

2. Unit enters goodie hut and gets a settler.

3. Settler builds a city.

Though it sounds like the unit should not have existed to find a hut.

[Soren Johnson]

If you eliminate a civ early in Civ3, they get restarted. Just like in Civ I and Civ II and SMAC.

[Roswell]

That's what I figured... a little too easy in the very beginning to beat the hell out of your neighbors otherwise.

Or be beaten at the higher levels I suppose. :P

[gamadict]

Of course, in Civ2, you could turn this off...

[ColdWizard]

after what date/turn # do the ai not get restarted? i wiped out the aztecs in 630bc on chieftain

[Pyrodrew]

Civs could always get restarted at ANY date. However, restarting & 1500 A.D. with 1 settler while you're trying to relearn the alphabet greatly slims that civs odds of winning. I also think this is a GREAT feature. Although as far as options that was my 1 expectation for Civ3... that it would have more options than Civ2 did... but right now it has less.