AI cheats and strategies to counter them

[Willem]

Originally posted by Aeson
Pop rushing is when you get out your whip in despotism or communism, and trade population points for increased production. Each population point is worth up to 39 sheilds. This makes it very powerful in building up ancient era armies quickly. And it's a production method that corruption doesn't affect at all.

Sorry, but according to the editor you're wrong, it's only 20 shields.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by WFHermans
I am certain it is a stupid question, but what is "pop rushing" units? And it is something the AI can't or doesn't use?

Right-click on any town and it will give you the option to rush-build, or hit the rush button in the city screen. If you are in despotism or communism, the price will be population fleeing the whip. It will tell you first, so you can decide.

I only use the whip near the beginning of the game to build temples, and only sacrifice one pop per town. Normally.

[Aeson]

Well then the editor is wrong The first population point is worth up to 39 shields, then it switches to 20. You can use "step" rushing for larger builds, bypassing the production decrease. For example, to rush a Knight (70 shields), first rush a Longbowman (40 shields). Then switch to a Knight and rush the rest. Trying to rush a unit or improvement that has just been started (no current shields) doubles the population cost. This isn't a big deal as usually it takes a few turns for a city to grow again anyways, and at least a few shields will be ready before it is time to rush again.

[pchang]

It's powerful alright

I too have ammased about 200 units through pop rushing. But, I never do it on anything larger than a standard map. This is because it just gets too tedious. In fact, I pretty much limit my pop rushing games to small or tiny maps. (On tiny maps, I've conquered the world with about 60 units). In fact, to combat the worker tedium, I join them to my pop rushing cities to spped up the rate at which I'm cranking out units. Also, during the last part of the game when I know I'm going to win, I just automated workers. I don't care any more that they aren't being optimally used.

PS You cannot do step rushing. Once you rush, you are forced to build whatever was rushed.

[Aeson]

Step rushing works in all my games, the only thing that you can't switch to after rushing are wonders and the palace. It only works up to 39 shields for each population point, not 40. 40 shields will cost 2 population points. For improvements of multiples of 40 shields, just wait a turn inbetween each portion of the rush. At least 1 shield will be added each turn in any city, so that brings it within the 39 shield range.

[WFHermans]

Thanks so much all you generals for explaining this to poor sergeant me....I always got stuck with those faraway cities that had 1 shield production and were 6 large, forever in revolution.
Once I gave away a 6 population city in the middle of my empire to some almost destroyed Persian civ and it dwindled to a one population civ in a few turns. Now I finally understand why.

I also bring this subject up to show a rare event that I first considered another cool AI cheat (and I love them, don't you mes with them Firaxis) but proved to be a bug because it crashed the game (get rid of that, Firaxis!).

Here's what happened. After chasing the Persians all over the map (I play the game not to get "Victory Points" but as a role playing game, the Persians attacked me without provocation so I spent the rest of the Ancient period exterminating them) I finally took their last city, but the Persians were still in the Diplomacy Screen. The next thousand or so years they even made some money by trading maps. It is not clear WHY they were still around, and what units they still had.

Anyway after those 1,000 or so years someone else declared war on the Persians, or the other way round. The Persians were destroyed. Then after loading a saved game, it showed some message about "Cities not correct", AND EVERY CITY ON THE MAP HAD DISAPPEARED! The units were still standing there, costing huge amounts of gold with no support. What had happened....an invasion of UFOs that destroyed each and every city? A plague wiping out all cities? I considered it great fun....but at the end of the turn the game crashed.

So that's why I had to reload, give the Persians a city. After this city was conquered normally and the Persian civ was destroyed in a normal way I had no problems.

So my question, is it possible fo a civilization to live on when it doesn't have a city left? After all they also start the game with no city....

[Harovan]

WFHermans: This has been discussed a lot elsewhere. After destroying the last Persian city, there must have been somewhere a Persian vessel with a settler. Once the Persians still have a settler, they remain in the game. This vessel seems never to move (I once had a Russian galley 2 tiles from my city for the whole game) and thus can nowhere settle. If the human player sinks that ship, the game is screwed. It's a proven bug in the game. There has been an opinion around, that the AI can sink the ship without crashing the game, but your post proves, that this is probably wrong. The solution - give them a city, sink the ship and take the city back - seems to be the only way out.

[SanPellegrino]

WFHermans, exactly the same thing happened to me, Japanese were dead finally, than "Failure to laod city blah blah", the savegame was broken. But then patch came out and it fixed it! Cities were back and I finished that game. Do you use a pre-patched version?

[kring]

Originally posted by Aeson
I think this pretty much proves that the AI values a city based on unseen resources. Just open the save file, negotiate peace with the English. You should be able to get the cities Nothing and Mpondo, but Saltpeter and Aluminum are untradable. They both have unseen resources, there are no other resources on the map.

What do you mean by untradeable? If they have not discovered the tech for that resource, they will not be able to see it themselves. If they only have one of that item, they will not trade it.

[kring]

Originally posted by WFHermans
I am certain it is a stupid question, but what is "pop rushing" units? And it is something the AI can't or doesn't use?

On the pop rush, it affects the attitude of the remaining pop for a long time. After all, would you want to stay where this is done?

[bsklepzig]

Originally posted by kring


What do you mean by untradeable? If they have not discovered the tech for that resource, they will not be able to see it themselves. If they only have one of that item, they will not trade it.

If you download the save file, you'll see that the cities themselves are called Aluminum and Saltpeter. He named them that to make it obvious that the city had a hidden resource that the AI "shouldn't know" was there because they didn't have the tech. Since they are willing to trade the other cities that genuinely have no resources, but not the cities that have no resources YET, it proves that the AI "sees" resources before the tech is discovered.

It's to prove an "AI cheat" RE: "unseeable" resources; it's not about trading the actual resources.

Ben

[Aeson]

By untradeable, I just meant that the AI wouldn't give that city up in exchange for a renewal of a peace treaty. I should have said "undemandable", but that just sounds weird

[Arrian]

poprushing

Aeson,

I understand takin' it slow... that's how I approach my Marla Map game (which I haven't touched in a week).

Let me ask you this: once you're done beating on the AI (or are you never done w/that?), how in the WORLD are you going to keep all those oppressed cities happy ("Come see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help, I'm being repressed!")? The ones you've been poprushing horsemen and impi out of, I mean. The happiness penalty is cumulative, right? 20 turns of unhappiness per rush?

I think the most poprushing I've ever done was 3 or 4x in one town (temple, library, units, I think). And that town was pissed at me for a long time.

Do you intend to ever switch out of despotism, or no? Once you lose the martial law benifit of garrisons, won't half your cities go into disorder?

-Arrian

[Aeson]

Yes, the unhappiness would last throughout the rest of the game in most of my pop rushing cities! I built 5 temporary cities that I pop rushed with, the rest were all conquests or demanded from the AI. Those cities needed to be moved anyways, so I'll just end up disbanding them later. No happiness problems after that. I've already disbanded and rebuilt about 2/3rds of the cities, as my army is large enough now to finish the conquest.

I plan on making the switch to republic as soon as the conquest is finished. I would wait until democracy, but the AI has a tendancy to declare war just out of spite, and its too hard to avoid war weariness when the AI won't make peace for 20+ turns.

I got a leader just before I finished Chivalry, and used it to build Leo's. That allowed me to upgrade close to 160 of my Horsemen to Knights, really helped a lot.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Aeson
Yes, the unhappiness would last throughout the rest of the game in most of my pop rushing cities! I built 5 temporary cities that I pop rushed with, the rest were all conquests or demanded from the AI. Those cities needed to be moved anyways, so I'll just end up disbanding them later. No happiness problems after that. I've already disbanded and rebuilt about 2/3rds of the cities, as

Ah. That brings back memories of ol' Papa Joe Stalin.