So very cold (of the map generator)

[Solver]

Yeah... the last time I had an army of over 400 units, 250 were offensives, I think.

[Solver]

BTW, if anyone reads it, what would Aeson do if at the time other civs had Cavalry (and he was still defending by spears) someone decided to conquer him? I mean, the AI can just decide to betray you, it won't care much.

[W4r_Machine]

When MP comes out, I want to be teamed up with Aeson!

[Aeson]

Solver -

There are a lot of ways to try and keep the AI from posing a threat to your homeland(s). First is to not try to cut deals too closely. Let the AI have a bit of extra, never bleed them dry, and keep them happy if at all possible. In this game I was able to keep MPP's with my closest neighbors when at my most vulnerable (getting the Zulu lands developed). Anyone attacking me would have had to go through my allies, or make a seaborn assault, which the AI is notoriously bad at.

I also stayed within reasonable tech distance, so when the AI had Cavalry I could have built Musketmen and Knights if I had to, and had plenty of gold to rush them with. Also Military Tradition was one of the last techs in the Middle Ages that the AI got, there were only 5-10 turns before I could have gotten Riflemen if I absolutely had to.

If I had gotten on the wong end of the alliances, things could have turned ugly really quick still. In this type of game diplomacy is king.

------------

As for MP, I probably wouldn't be that good of a teamate. I had the lowest rating of anyone in AoE while I was playing... Then they changed the abandoned game rules once I quit and quickly everyone with half a mind to do so could beat my rating.

I just don't care much for PvP type games. I like figuring out patterns (read: AI) and dislike making sense of chaos (read: Humans).

[trickey]

Hey Aeson, good job. I learned alot just be readin the thread. If you have time, could you post summary's of some of your other games.

anyway, good job

[JohnM2433]

Originally posted by Aeson
I just don't care much for PvP type games. I like figuring out patterns (read: AI) and dislike making sense of chaos (read: Humans).

In the future, humans may seem predictable to AI rather than the other way around.

Personally, while I really like Civ III as it is, I prefer multiplayer precisely because human players are so "chaotic". After a while, you learn all of the AI's tricks, and beating it becomes easy. As you've demonstrated. Humans are harder to beat because they're actually smart, as opposed to just acting in ways that superficially seem smart, but are actually pretty simplistic. Multiplayer is a challenge.

By this point, it should be clear that if you really want to make the game hard, you should try to make the AI smarter. For this, see the thread "The key to AI greatness", which suggests a good place to start.

Perhaps someone would like to try taking on the challenge of creating an AI that could actually beat Aeson. (Not that this could necessarily be done. ) Here I'm talking not about changing a civ's characteristics (e.g. industrious, religious) or special unit, just the way they make decisions. Anyone out there up to building a Civ III "Deep Blue"?

[Solver]

Thanks for explanations, Aeson! You a former AoE player? Well, at least you would probably beat *me*.

[Iskandar Reza]

Originally posted by Theseus
Interesting map... what were the settings?

Sort of bizarre that by the time you have Panzers the entire map is still unknown.

Huge archipelago

80% water

Everything else standard.

[W4r_Machine]

Originally posted by Aeson

------------

As for MP, I probably wouldn't be that good of a teamate. I had the lowest rating of anyone in AoE while I was playing... Then they changed the abandoned game rules once I quit and quickly everyone with half a mind to do so could beat my rating.

I just don't care much for PvP type games. I like figuring out patterns (read: AI) and dislike making sense of chaos (read: Humans).

::aheh::BS::ahem::You'll learn to love MP once you start destroying other players. Humans do have tendencies, how often they act on it is a whole different story.

Yep, I agree with trickey, some of us want to learn some more.

[Aeson]

I never said I wouldn't be any good at MP, just that I wouldn't be a good teammate and don't like MP/PvP type games regardless of the outcome.

MP certainly is more challenging, but difficulty has little to do with why I play computer games.

[King of Rasslin]

What version was this? You really cannot get away with 100% tax for tech trading anymore.

[Solver]

I think Aeson played it with 1.17f patch... and this remains the most difficult civ 3 challenge - mind you, not an Editor created.

[sabrewolf]

(bump)

i have an idea.

why doesn't the community make a very very difficult scenario (isolated, no resources, raging barbarians, agressive oponents, etc.) on a high level and let geniouses like aeson try to solve it? it could be something like the game of the month.

of course it should be solveable, otherwise there's no sence in it

would you civ3-gods rise to such a challenge?

[alva]

IIRC, there is a game (4000bc) on one of these pages, and a pretty though one!!pffffffff!!

I tried it, made one (rather ) big strategic error, and that was it, game over!!!!
off-course, i'm much better player nowadays yeah right

still one of the best threads I've seen so far

[Aeson]

What was the question leading to your sig quote alva848? Whatever the question was, gotta hand it to Mike, that's hillarious!

Sabre,

The thing about this type of game is it wouldn't really work on smaller maps, at least not with any regularity. The AI's really falter at managing huge empires, and huge maps give the player enough warning time to prepare for comming AI attacks as well.

Because of that, a game like this takes quite a few hours to play through, win or lose. I think I put close to 75 hours into this one. That long of a game is something that I've only been able to find time for 3 or 4 times in the 10 months I've been playing. A challenge of this nature wouldn't get much participation in all likelyhood, as there just isn't time for most people.

And anyways, with MP coming out shortly, most people will probably look to it to provide challenges.