Vel's Strategy Thread - Part Three

[Arrian]

Quurgoth,

Yeah, I'm aware of how the AI calculates relative military strength and thus whether or not to attack. I also think it's silly to equate 10 warriors to 10 Tanks, but hey, that's the way it works. Anyway, tonight I definitely plan to crank out some more units in the ancient era. However, if I'm gonna build 'em, I'm gonna build top-o-the-line veterans and go bonk some heads. It seems like a waste of time and effort otherwise. This may also mean a change in my tech choices early on. I normally beeline for literature, but depending on the civ I'm playing, Ironworking or Horseback Riding may be worth the wait.

Anyway you cut it, I think the patch greatly increases the likelyhood of ancient war (though I often fought them anyway). What surprised me was just how early the AI will come at you. I was shocked the first time it happened. They didn't even demand anything (which the AI will also do with increased frequency now). All of a sudden, I was being attacked by warriors and archers. It really caught me off guard, which is the point, of course...

-Arrian

[Quurgoth]

Defensive expansion

I think the non-military expansion is still possible and worthwhile, even if you do have to keep up with the unit count... especially if workers still count toward total unit numbers.

Question: were you attacked by militaristic civs?

To be honest, I usually set my AI opponents manually, and I leave off any of the highly aggressive civs. I don't like early era war much, and the military civs can cripple whoever is closest.

[Arrian]

Hmm, I was attacked by the Germans (militaristic, yes), Zulu (yep), and a couple of others I can't recall, to be honest, though I'm fairly certain there were some non-militarists in there. I always allow the computer to pick my opponents. Frankly (at least pre-patch), I'd rather be next to a bunch of militarists, because they tend to do a bad job of running their empires and also tend not to shoot for the Great Library, whereas I do - and often get it when there are militarists around me.

As for just punching out workers and warriors to keep the unit count up there... well, I suppose one could do that, but I think a better use of one's resources would be to build some vet. archers or horsemen/swordsmen and attack. It all depends. If you start in a veritable paradise and just wanna be left alone long enough to get your empire up and running, sure, build those warriors and hope the AI mistakes them for a real army. Sometimes, though, it makes sense to attack, and the changes make in AI aggression in the patch tip the scales toward fighting early.

-Arrian

[pchang]

Post Patch

War Mongers like myself have had very little to change post patch. Yes, AIs are more demanding when it comes to trading and more belligerent when it comes to fighting, but overall the aggfressive early war strategy still works. You just have to be a bit more careful when attempting to vassalize the AI that you don't cripple him beyond usefulness. One alternative to taking too many cities is to start pillaging his improvements instead. This will get him to the peace table with less cities lost.

[Jack_www]

I have been having some torruble expaning early in the game on Monarch level games. I have no problems beatting the game at regent level. I was see if anyone has any tips. I have read what vel had to say about early expansion, but I was just wondering if anyone else has things they do that work really well for them. I would really appericate any feedback.

[Skanky Burns]

Yeah, thats been my experience too. For the past 10 or so games, ive just been playing with the only goal to improve my REX. That was a success, but unfortunately i was soon at war and pathetically under-armed. Time for my next test game

Heres something strange though.
I was testing the Aztecs, and found that their JWs are fairly decent. A very BAD starting position for Aztecs however is starting next to the Zulus... A defence 2 move 2 unit is an Aztecs worst nightmare - it completely removes the retreat ability!!
Anyway, i did eventually destroy them, and the Chinese (who had swordsmen by the time i got past the Zulus ). Once my island was secure, i started mass-producing ships and settlers. I had about 7 cities.

Well, i expanded from my main island, taking over most of the available free space. When i had around 16 cities i switched to Republic.

Now for the weird thing: Once i switched to Republic, i was running at a deficit. Most of my cities had 2 defenders, and my main island had an attacker per city too. 61 gold maintenance. So i removed all the attack units, and only had 1 defender per city. Still losing money. I put science down, 40%, 20%, 10%, 0%. Still losing money. No luxury spending either!! Was before marketplaces, but that sort of thing has never happened to me before!!

[pchang]

corruption

You were probably losing too much commerce to corruption. Try building the FP somewhere off your main Island. If you cannot do this, you will have to switch to monarchy. Do not disband military units unless it is a last resort. If you are weak, the AI will attack you en masse.

[Arrian]

Long live the Babs

Shaky,

You and I seem to have been experiencing similar problems. Keep up with the AI in the early land grab, or defend yourself properly... which to choose? Well, last night I decided it's gotta be the latter of the two.

I've got a good game going now, though I should mention that the first hut I popped was a settler, so that clearly helped. Still, Babylon isn't in that great of a spot (no river, no specials, just a bunch of shielded grassland). I built only 7 cities in the "land grab" phase (normal map). This was partly due to the geography, which boxed me in, but also afforded easy defense. So I set about building wonders and cranking out some spearmen and horsemen. Result: Colossus + Great Library = tech parity + golden age (still despotic, unfortunately). This lead to the usual suspects: Sistine/Sun Tzu/Copernicus/Newton, etc. I should also mention that I swallowed my pride and paid a little bit of tribute once or twice.

I essentially fell into the "oscillating war" phenomenon. The Zulus demanded things from me, while they were fighting the Persians. I had built up LOTS of horsemen in preparation for upgrading to knights (importing iron from guess who... Shaka), and Xerxes was happy for my help. So I got into a tussel with my main man Shaka, losing several of my horsemen to impis
Having hurt them badly and gaining iron and two lux. items in the process, I took a break, but they picked another fight and I and several other vulture nations finished them off. Then Persia. This one I started. They had to go, as they had a city that cut my empire in two. Plus...they were there. Then came the title bout: The Japanese. They were freakin' HUGE. They had crippled China while I was building wonders and such, and had gotten truly frightening. I think I got a glimpse of the AI's new tendancy to gang up on the Top Dog, however, as EVERYONE IN THE WORLD joined in on my side for... the secrets of medicine. The Samurai hurt my Cavalry bit, but my armies are at the gates of Kyoto now. I saved it (at just past 4 this morning *yawn*) in 1660, and I had just used a leader (3rd I've gotten) to rush Hoover.

Anyway, I think those of us that play "peaceful builder" can still have a peaceful early game, albeit a heavily armed peace. I got sucked into war (zulus) before I felt I was ready, but it was probably a good thing. I tend to wait until I have overwhelming force... and sometimes that takes too darn long.

One side note: if you play with the "friends moves" shut off, BEWARE SNEAK INVASIONS. My war w/Japan began with me noticing 15 samurai sitting next to one of my cities and politely demanding they get the hell out. Thank goodness for railroads (and Cav).

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Brother Og! Long time no see, man! And how the heck are ya?!

TOTAL agreement about the Greeks, btw! The Hoplite is rather akin to a "reverse swordsman," and can be used to devastating effect very early on in the game.

Consider:
You discover that one of your rival civs already has access to iron/horses, even if they don't have the tech for it yet (remember, you're the scientific Greeks, one tech from Iron working). So....you can't very well deny him access, but....you can build a Hoplite and plop your greek butt down on the resource tile (severing the road if one exists)....if your rival threatens you, go ahead and DoW....iron is either going to be in hill country or in the mountains, which means your sturdy 3 defense Hoplite will have a decided advantage if attacked...even if attacked by a swordsman!

And, once you have stripped your rival of the ability to build anything better than bowmen, you can leisurely make your own crew of sword/horse and come in to relieve him of his empire....

Aztec/Zulu Grudge Match: One thing tho....as SOON as you see Zulu borders, wreck 'em! Remember that they don't have the ability to make Impis from 4000BC, which gives you an (admittedly somewhat small) window of opportunity for first strike. Even if you were planning on hitting someone else first, if you see Zulu colors, change your plans! (also....from a cost/benefit compare, you're still exactly evenly matched....sure, theirs are better, but they also take twice as long to build!).


I *really* like the idea of adding civ-specific expansion notes to the articles (which I'll be getting back to TODAY!)....excellent call there! Okay....heading out to do some writing!

-=Vel=-

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by Black Sunrise
The polish calvary was indeed assisting modern armor.
They had less armor, and their calvary was actually mounted riflemen, ie a rifle unit that used forses to move from point a to point b, then dismounted and fought, but they nonetheless used both.
Or I could point out that in '39 large quantities of german artillery and especially anti-tank weapontry was still being pulled by horses.
Just something to think about.

Check out http://www.militarygameronline.com/tanks/ and click on the Polish flag to see the tanks and tankettes Poland had at her disposal during the German invasion.

[DFHNY]

Quirks/problems w/ gameplay

Dear Vel and others as good as Vel, et al:

My friend who plays Civ3 and is much better than I am asked that I post the following questions/problems to see if you face the same one or have any suggestions:

Hi. Let me say that I'm a bit upset about several things, and several hours/days of playtime somewhat ruined by features I just can't understand why you have in the game, so if I sound angry, forgive me. .... Anyway, on to the questions.

Ok, in no particular order:

1. Can't Upgrade to Cossaks. How come you can't upgrade a knight into a cossack when playing the russians?? Other units are upgradeable, or become upgrades - i.e. panzers became modern armor. If a unit is your special unit, meaning it takes the place of whatever everyone else has, then it's what you are, it's what is natural to you and your people, and when you develop to the point that you
can make/train them to be that, then the earlier person/thing would naturally just become the new one at upgrade, the same for anything else.

2. AI Cheats, And How. When you play the game, it should be played by all parties, all the civs you are fighting, as though they really are a civ, and have the abilities of another civ, nothing more and nothing less. But for some reason you have made the AI running the other civs able to, for lack of a better word, cheat. Let me give you several examples. I have 12 cities. They have no ability to know what I am doing in, or what units are around, one of my older, home-area cities. I decide to move the garrison unit out.
Immediately there is an enemy unit right near by to go in and take the now undefended city, because somehow the AI knows what I'm doing there. There is no possible way it could know what's going on there - and I of course have no way of knowing what the other civ's are doing in their cities beyond the borders - but somehow it does in fact know. I've tested this by
saving a game, moving a unit out, and watching an enemy unit magically appear to take the city. I've then gone back and not moved my unit out, but done everything else exactly the same, and that unit never appears. I've even seen the AI move a unit in two totally different ways, depending on what I did with a unit in a city he was more than 9 squares away from,
with no way of knowing what I did. It cheats. Along these same lines, you have made the AI able to cheat at production. Let's say he lands a bunch of units right next to my city. My turn comes and I change production from
whatever I was building into a military unit, say a spearman. And the changeover is complete, meaning I'd already produced way more shields than necessary for a spearman so it will come right away. I still have to wait until the next turn for it to appear - at the end of my turn he attacks me, wins the city, and my spearman never materializes. HOWEVER, if the reverse
happens, I land near him, and during his turn he changes production, the SPEARMAN APPEARS right then and there! And he was not able to draft or any of that, I thought of that. Why does the AI have the power to insta-build like that, during the turn itself, without having to wait until the next turn for the unit to actually appear there. The AI cheats. Another example is building Wonders. I was building a wonder for 50 turns. When I
got to two turns left before completion, the AI built it in another city. So, I went back to a saved game and changed around my production in the city and now it would be ready three turns before it was before. But Bam! the AI had the rival civ re-do it's own production to still beat me! It
could not know I'd done what I'd done, but somehow, magically, it did. I even tried waiting until I was only about 10 turns away, then changing production mid-stream to get more shields, and clearing a forest. The AI changed it's production yet again to still beat me. It cheats. I'd really like to understand why the game designers wouldn't want the game to be fair all the way
around. ALL civs, human played or AI played, should be bound by the same rules, the same abilities, dont' you think? The difficulty level comes by making the AI play BETTER, not by making it cheat. (At least, that's how it should be no?)

3. Non-Random Combat System. Why is the combat system not random? What I mean by this is that the game has a set decision for how a fight will work out, and it never deviates, no matter what you do. Let me describe: I have three swordsmen around one city, each in a different square. All three are jungle squares though - not that it matters, I'm attacking, not defending. Two are veterans and one is elite. I attack with the elite and win, losing going down to yellow bar with one hp missing from the top. I then attack with a veteran. After getting the defender down to just one red hp left, the swordsman dies. I decide to redo the fight. (In civ2, each time a fight started, it was a new fight. really. outcomes and duration and all
that were randomly generated each and every time you attacked, not just once for all time, every time that piece attacked the other piece, if you know what I mean.) Anyway, I load up the saved game and attack again, this time starting with the veteran. Lo and behold, he wins the fight that the elite had won before, and he wins it in EXACTLY the same way. The fight
goes exactly the same way, my unit and the defender losing the exact same hp's at the exact same points in the battle as the elite had done it, and the veteran ends up with a yellow bar missing one hp point, just like the
elite did. So, I've now won the first battle both with the veteran, and the elite, and the computer did it IDENTICALLY. So, I attack with the veteran this second time around, and BAM! it loses in exactly the same way the veteran lost the first time! He beats the defender down to one red hp,
then loses all the rest and dies! The game had made one calculation and now it sets it for every time they fight, even if the game is reloaded and the fight never happened yet! How is that possible? Why isn't every single fight it's own randomly generated fight? And goodie huts work the same
way, you can reload and go over the hut again and again and it will ALWAYS give you the same exact thing. But if you skip it and move to an adjacent square, then hit the goodie hut the next turn, it's different. (Of course, if you hit it again and again that second time, it's always the same again.
Meaning it's always bronze working the first time, and always maps the second way, if you wait a turn to hit it.) Why? Combat especially shouldn't be predetermined like this.

4. Hurt Pieces Suffer. Also in line with the above cheating concept, it seems to me from my anecdotal experience that the game gives a real bonus to it's own pieces when you are even marginally hurt. I have, for example, an elite longbowman, attacking a regular spearman in a city. My longbowman is
almost in perfect health, he's green with just the very top hp missing. He loses the fight. Badly. And this happens all the time. It's as though if you aren't at total 100% strength, you lose your power. And, of course, the AI defensive units seem to be much stronger than my defensive units. He comes in and destroys my spearman (defense 2) with his attacking warriors (attack of 1) and horsemen (attack of 2), which both are fighting
at a disadvantage. But when I come in with swordsmen or longbowmen or knights, I lose against the very same spearmen. Badly. That smacks of cheating again.

Anyway, that's about it for now. I have a feeling I started getting angry during that and it gave a tone that probably isn't helpful. For that I apologize. I'm just so frustrated from spending so many days and hours playing only to be victimized by what appear to be really strange choices made by the game designers when they created the AI and the game.

[Aeson]

I haven't checked, but can Russian Knights be upgraded to Calvary? If so it's not such a big problem. But if Russian Knights can't be upgraded at all, because of the UU, then that penalizes them for actually having the UU in many cases.

As far as cheating by the AI, the production cheating is even at regent level, and at lower levels actualy "cheats" for the player. The knowlege of the unseen map is a little 'iffy in my opinion. On one hand, it gives the AI a bit of an advantage in some situations. On the other hand, it allows for manipulation of AI forces by the player. I think once you figure out the AI's tendancies, this can be a powerful exploit in destroying the AI. just move your garrison units out of the city on the other side of the world, and you've negated the whole of the AI's offensive capability for several turns. Once the AI gets close to your undefended city, move the garrison units back in, and they'll most likely pick another target, wasting even more turns.

I just wish they would implement one more difficulty level, name it Yougottacheat. Give the AI double the production bonus they get at deity, and/or a combat bonus. This would be a true challenge for even those who use every trick in the book against the AI, while not hurting those who choose to play at lower difficulty levels with more valid strategies. As it stands now, Deity on some map settings is just laughable (once you figure out the AI's tendancies), and on most its winnable much of the time.

[Velociryx]

Hey there! Lemme see if I can do these questions justice:

1) Cossacks: Appear at the end of the upgrade branch for that type of unit. Since Cossacks are a variant of Cavalry, and each civ's uu replaces an existing unit (cossacks take the place of cav), knights have nothing to upgrade to. Something I'm workin' on fixing in the mod I'm proposing....

2) Yep....the AI is both all-knowing and capable of faster builds than you. You're not imagining it as far as I've seen....no fix for it that I'm aware of, either.....just one of the advantages given to the AI (at all levels, as far as I can tell)

3) Random Number seed. The results are pre-determined before the fight even begins....essentially you're just watching the show when the units slug it out....their grunting and clanging have nothing to do with the results of the combat. However, skipping the turn and attacking on the following round will yield different results (new random number).

4) I have seen some evidence of this, but am not able to quanitfy to what degree you may or may not "lose power" but I too have noted that if I'm attacking or defending with a damaged unit (even an elite) his performance is invariably "off" what I would normally expect from that unit at full health.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

An invitation:

I've been laying the groundwork for a Mod over in the general section, and invite everyone who comes here to post their ideas and discuss strategy in general to have a look at the thread. The hope is that we can create a mod for the game that will foster an even greater array of truly strategic choices.....at least, that's what I'm working for....

Key things being introduced:

* A dramatic increase in the strength of barbarians

* A fleshed out tech-tree (keep in mind that we only have eleven open tech slots to play with, so there's a very real limit on what we can do here) - Especially in the Ancient Age, my goal is to make each and every tech advance valuable (giving some tangible benefit), and to increase the number of strategic beelines open to players in the early era.

* A slight modification to unit strengths (including artillery).

* A new class of units (pop-point dependent) (Mercenaries)

* Some (at least three) new government types (so far we have Theocracy, Constitutional Monarchy, and a few others, with no official name at this time and not much fleshing out yet). I'd also like to see at least one "Modern/Futuristic" type of government.

*Earlier scouts and sea-worthy ships, increasing the value of the age of sail

And....a whole lotta other stuff....

Join me?

-=Vel=-

[Ozymandous]

Hi Vel,

Question or two.

1. Do you plan to, or even can you add units to an existing tech? I haven't looked at the editor except one breif time, but it would be *very* nice to add a unit or maybe building to some of the tech's that seem to be filler. This is especially prevelant when researching "Corperation", "Refining" and "Steel". You can't tell me that some important technologies or units didn't evolve from those innovations yet we get nothing from them in the game except the ability to research more? What's up with that.

2. Have you looked in the thread started by Jeff Morris? In that thread someone documented how they made warriors, swordsmen and ironclad's obsolete/upgradeable by using the editor as well.

Just some thoughts. Good luck.