Vel's Strategy Thread - Part Three

[pchang]

AI code

I'm pretty sure the AI code cares about who ORIGINATES the trade request and that is why you are seeing this behavior.

[DaBear]

Re: AI code

Originally posted by pchang
I'm pretty sure the AI code cares about who ORIGINATES the trade request and that is why you are seeing this behavior.

I agree. That's why I was saying that the minimum threshold for his offer is lower than accepting an offer by you. I've seen it before where a civ that is grausions towards you offers you a tech at a great price and you turn it down (I needed the money) go back to them immediately and the price is back up!

[Arrian]

Ok, here's a question:

Do you think that playing a strategy that is "against the grain"of your civ is a good or bad idea, or neither?

Say you're the Japanese. Playing peaceful builder style with them seems strange, right? Well, that militaristic trait and samurai can really come in handy when a warmonger AI attacks your peaceful civ. In essence, you're well-rounded.

Say you're the Babylonians. You play warmonger style. But cheap temples and libraries in conquered cities come in handy, don't they? Playing the Babs, you can slip, fall, and end up with great culture. That matters when you go a-conquering.

Then again, one could argue that it's best to concentrate on your civ's strengths. If you never use those cheap barracks and super samurai as the Japanese, you're missing out. Whaddya think?

-Arrian

[pchang]

Cultural Strength Rules

Cultural strengths are much more beneficial than millitary strengths. This is because cultural strengths carry over into all parts of the game while military strengths apply only to fighting (with the exception of leader generation, but leader generation is still so rare, that it is only a minor benefit). When you are culturally powerful, if you do go conquering, you don't have to worry about conquered cities reverting. If you lose a city or two, the odds are good that they will revert back to you anyway.

[pchang]

samurai not that good

Samurai are just knights that don't need horses. They are not that good. In fact, all the UUs that are like regular units but don't require resources are not very good (War Elephants). UUs which have superior stats over their regular counterparts are much better.

In fact, Samurai are really stupid because the Japanese start with the wheel. If anyone can find and secure horses, it will be the Japanese.

[Arrian]

pchang,

I agree about the power of culture. It's huge. To answer the question I posed in my first post, I'd say that playing the Babs with a warmonger style will work much better than playing the Zulu as a peaceful builder. Fact is, culture and science rule the game. Of course, war is very important. I'm playing a game as the Germans now to see how they work. I have yet to fight... I actually went turtle and built up a nice little empire (I nabbed the GL, Sun Tzu - golden age, Sistine, Copernicus, Adam Smith's and I am 11 turns from Newton). I fully intend, however, to remove the Japanese from my southern border (probably once I get Cavalry). I wanna see "militaristic" in action.

The Samurai are solid. I agree that there are others that are better (Immortals, Mounted Warriors), but the extra defense point comes in handy. You will kill a lot of knights. Here's the thing: mounted units cannot retreat from other mounted units. Thus, they have to fight it out.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Your last point was the one I was going to make, and it is an excellent call, IMO.

The real weakness of the Samurai lies not in the fact that it's a bad unit, it's not...but given that the Japanese are the ONLY faction...er...civ (damn, I just KEEP doing that!) in the game who start with the Wheel, and the ability to see where the horses are, it is a "push" of a UU. That is to say, it nets them no real advantage nor disadvantage....it's just sorta....there. An alternate graphic.

That's okay though, because for the sake of balance, that's as it should be. After all, the ability to know from turn one where the horses are is an important ability indeed! If they had a UU that was every bit the equal of, say the Mounted Warrior or the Jaguar, they'd just *totally* dominate the game, denying all neighboring civs access to horses and then running roughshod over them with mounted troopages...OUCH!

-=Vel=-

[pchang]

chinese are much better

Well the real reason I don't like the Japanese is because they usually start next to the Chinese and their 3 movement riders which CAN RUN AWAY from samurai.

[Arrian]

Riders

Ahh, ok, you have me there. I forgot about that. In the one game I played as the Japanese, the Chinese and I were good buddies. I killed a bunch of French knights, though.

Speaking of the Chinese, I remember someone pointing out that their "agression" setting in the editor is really low, even though they're "militaristic." That might explain why I can't remember EVER fighting them.

-Arrian

[pchang]

Can't we all just get along

Japanese and Chinese good buddies??? That must have been an alternate universe. Anyway, the Ghengis Khan in me doesn't wait for the AI to declare war on me. During the course of a game, I will probably declare war on every other faction, er civ (did you like that Vel?), at LEAST once.

[vmxa1]

I found that the Chinese were not very aggressive against me in a recent game. By the time they got into war with me the riders were of no use. I was Japan and only built a few Samuari and upgraded them later. I only used one very late to trigger a GA. The retreat is so valuable you must build calv instead of samuari. One good thing about not having one of the early UU's is you can avoid its use until you want to. It is hard to pass up using Immortals and Hoplite types as no other decent unit is available at that time.

[mattcj]

The Chinese attacked me in my current game and even took a city from me, the bastards! But then my war elephants, teamed with the samurai, opened a can of whoop-ass on 'em. The biggest loss there was take-out for dinner.

[eMarkM]

I started my first Deity games yesterday. I have a whole new appreciation for Expansionist trait now on this exalted level. I started a few games as non-expansionist civs and sent my warriors out to explore. In each case I would uncover the nearby goody hut to have barbarians come out of it. Everytime. Goody huts don't give you many goodies on Deity so I'd invariably have my one city besieged by barbs. And these ain't the wimpy barbs, either. First warrior dead, starting worker killed, city plundered. Impossible set back on Deity. Restart.

So I figured I'd have to either ignore huts or try Expansionist civ. I went w/ Relig/Expan Iroquois. My first goodie hut was a settler! Very nice and I was actually able to keep up w/ AI for a moment. So real expansionist advantage isn't seen until Emp/Deity where otherwise barb infested huts might actually have something good in them. Expansionist I think is pretty weak on lower levels, but what a difference on early game Deity.

Later had a warrior discover a 2 ivory site, only to see the English racing me there w/ own warrior/settler escort. I started a war w/ her, killed the warrior, got 2 workers from settler capture and was able claim the site later. The early settler and this aggression are the only thing that's kept me in the game.

If I can even say I'm "in the game". AI has an obscene tech lead on me. I started my first "vassalization" war too late I think. Didn't get under way until almost AD. English are vassal target, they have no iron and are easily pushed around by my Mounted Warriors. I got all their tech and I'm still far behind. Once I got the tech it revealed they had even more behind that since you can't see the more advanced tech until you discover their predecesors. Really can't tell how far behind I really am, it's not even 1000ad and the AI is midway through middle ages. But the English will be my victim again once the 20 turns are up.

Persia is my other neighbor and they are fearsome, no chance to vassalize them. Luckily they've been very polite as they drain my coffers each time I buy tech from them. I finally bought gunpowder, was unfortunate to have nearly all the desert in my territory, but Persia ends up w/ the one saltpeter on the little corner of the desert they have. Ouch. The Persian cities I've seen all have mustketmen and I'm still struggling to upgrade to pikemen. This is where the game stands now and a mighty struggle lies ahead for Hiawatha.

e

[Spearthrower]

Thanks to everyones contributions I managed to beat Deity 8 player standard only a week or so after starting this game.. and this is the 1st time I've played any CIV games.

I got a good starting position and immediately found the Japanese to the North, 2 seconds later I found the Russians to the North East. Within 2 or 3 more turns I found I was completely surrounded with Germans to the East, Chinese to the south, Greeks to the south west and Romans to the west....... if I hadnt read this thread I would have given up. Instead, by systematically warring on each of the tribes 1 at a time except the Romans I quickly found myself not only in a dominant position but in control of most of the continent. By the Middle Ages I had 20K in cash and was about 4 or 5 techs in front... I didnt have many Wonders though but I wasnt really missing them.

Only India came close to me as it was seperated by the Greeks... but the strange thing about this map was that all the civs started on this huge continent on the right hand side of the map. Eventually through trading with India I got to see the whole map.... all the rest was water except a couple of tiny islands which the Indians had populated.

Thoroughly enjoyable, using my diplomatic connections to provoke the other nations into war... funny thing is most of the fighting took place in my lands due to me being smack bang in the middle!

Anyway, thank you all...... and keep posting!

Edit: I should have pointed out, I was playing with Egypt and ended up in control of all luxuries apart from Ivory so I was the main pusher to all the civs

[Sauron07]

Pop Rushing Poll - Or Sauron's off on another tangent

I've been following a few other threads here in the last few days and wanted to survey the opinions of some of the more theoretical minds playing the game about pop-rushing, so I naturally came to this thread.

[kiss-ass mode off]

What I want to know is if players feel pop-rushing is currently unbalanced in the ealry game. By unbalanced, I mean does pop-rushing provide such an advantage(especially on higher difficulty levels) at the beginning of the game that it has become just an accepted part of nearly all successful strategies. When or if it gets to that point, there is no strategy involved in deciding whether or not to utilize this tactic - ie the benefits always outweight the costs so its really not a strategic decision anymore which IMO makes the game less enjoyable.

If you havent already figured it out, my perspective is that pop-rushing is slightly unbalanced right now, and would be even more so if mp were to ever come out. Even if I'm playing a peaceful building strategy, it is very hard to resist not rushing granaries and temples and sometimes even libraries and marketplaces before I switch to monarchy or republic.

So I want to find out what others think about this subject and if there is any feeling among the community that pop-rushing should be tweaked or at least be able to alter in the editor(Im assuming you cant change the effects of pop-rushing but having not really used the editor that much please correct me if I am wrong).

I would also be interested in finding out if any of the top finishers in the apolyton tourney avoided using pop. rushing or if any diety players have been successful without utilizing it.

Please post any thoughts or pm me if you feel the need(ie to utilize excessive profanity in your flame).