CTP too easy....

[mosquitodriver]

quote:

Ummmm, I spend my entire game telling them not to pirate, they pirate. Please STOP TRESPASSING, damn AI says "Ok" but his stupid Archer / Settler group still sits there.


i tend to believe that you have to "prove your power" to the AI in order to start listening to you. the lack of feedback when you're rejected leaves experience as your only tool to figure out how to do well in diplomacy...
check the diplomacies.txt to see the negative and positive regard bonuses according to your actions


Mark, my god man what are you saying??? Do you not realize that this is a serious problem? The trespass and pirate part of the diplomacy and game is a mess.

"can you stop trespassing sir?"
"sure i agree" says the bad or good guy
twenty turns later his crap is still in my land, seems harmless anyway but still annoying. I think when you agree to withdraw your units zap out of that countries border area and if you cross that border for any number of turns you break the agreement and your free game for slaughtering by the offended nation and his allies. lets face it, there is a reason why we dont want OPP (other peoples pikemen) on our land and their must be a better reason (useful reason) to use diplomacy to avoid war, so somebody fix it, its a bug, a glich a problem why dont people admit it for gods sake??????? grrrrrrrrr yeah yeah i know its a game, so that also means it should be easy to fix.....

how much did activision pay you mark??

about the pirate thing, your gosh darn right its messed up, and if you dont see it then your getting payed by either activision or hillary clinton. my bloody friend, my ally, my trade partner PIRATES MY ROUTES even after time and time again i ask him to stop. yet he still sits there with the chit eating grin on his face saying he loves me and completely trusts me. Yeah i guess he would considering he can just take my money and break his agreements and i sit there dumbfounded not wanting to beat him up for it. I mean come on guys, this kinda crap is just funny.

there are many other INCONSISTANCIES IN THIS GAME, i hope hope hope that activision or some resourceful chap can fix some of these bugs in the game.

by the way is anyone else having problems using multiplayer? it wont let me enter the lobby , i could play it in ctp1 but not ctp2. another bug?

[mosquitodriver]

quote:
i tend to believe that you have to "prove your power" to the AI in order to start listening to you. the lack of feedback when you're rejected leaves experience as your only tool to figure out how to do well in diplomacy...


for those who want a hint at how to use diplomacy in this game, thought its a joke. check this out.

If you have a guy that trusts you and respects or loves you. all you have to do to get pacts or alliences with him is threaten to declare war if he rejects. is that a bug or what. for example

israel loves me and trusts me, we never fight and we get along and swap a few things now and then. So i ask israel to join in a trade pact, he rejects me. So i threaten to declare war, he then accepts and he still loves me and get this HE TOTALLY TRUSTS ME hehehehehe

israel and i are trade partners but he has a nasty habbit of pirating my routes. so i ask him to stop it right now and he accepts. next turn he is back at it, pirating my stuff. so i ask him to join in an allience. he rejects me, so i threaten to declare war and he accepts, i only need to look at his smiling face and gleaming trust to know thats exactly how the guys at activision look like right now after they get all our money for this CRAP.

ok ok, its just a game i know, but i just hope people see this GAME needs some fixing or its just a joke. This game is sooooooo fricken easy too, the impossible level means its impossible to lose, you cannot lose in this game its just so easy they hand you the victory on a platter once owned by al gore, the countries most notorious loser.

hey there are some great good things in this game though, like borders, combat system as a whole is improved (watch out for airplanes and catapults though) trade system is great dispite some diplomacy shortfalls, im starting to like the city concept of not having to place workers but i tell you as i have told everyone before, dont use mayors they are all conspiritors for hillary clinton and al gore, they will ruin your empire.

anyways, i hope someone comes out with a useful patch

mark atleast your forum is awesome though maybe your views on this game are a bit slighted. i think you will see the light soon enough though. keep playing
[This message has been edited by mosquitodriver (edited December 11, 2000).]

[MarkG]

quote: Originally posted by mosquitodriver on 12-11-2000 08:52 AM how much did activision pay you mark??

yippie, i have finally heard this phrase for ctp2 too!
looking forward for civ3...

quote: If you have a guy that trusts you and respects or loves you. all you have to do to get pacts or alliences with him is threaten to declare war if he rejects. is that a bug or what.

if the "guy" is much weaker than you it makes perfectly sense...

quote: israel and i are trade partners but he has a nasty habbit of pirating my routes. so i ask him to stop it right now and he accepts. next turn he is back at it, pirating my stuff.

meanwhile, there is no historical case where a nation broke a diplomatic agreement...

[MrFun]

Gore is not a loser - the problem is that the Republicans seem to support mafia and bullying style politics.

Bush would have lost the election if not for bribes, ballot fraud supported by his brother, Jeb and not to mention the fact that Republican protesters tried to intimidate ballot counters.

[Shar]

For those who are finding the game too easy, why not try playing for the fantasy of it instead of always using the proven methods of winning. For example, see if you can win the entire game as Russia with a Communism government. Or how about re-starting a new game until you have a challenging starting position, such as a settler in the middle of a desert or tundra area. Refuse to use nukes.

[mosquitodriver]

Shar you bring up an incredibly interesting point. You know what i have been trying to do that. Infact i would try to play in difficult situations like being in swamps or desert, or starting as indonesia or playing tyranny the whole game etc etc. I find that based on the position you play in, you play rather historically anyways. for example, when i played the swamp king and i grew slowly, i found myself focusing on armies because i saw others passing me by on the tech and economic tree. So i had to fight to stay alive. Sure i could have resorted to diplomatic means and remain weak and small but thats hard to do when other countries constantly move troops through your land.

then i played a game where i was indonesia, thinking it might set me back being i have little land to work with. I gotta tell you quite the opposite. I stayed on par with everyone and then steam rolled right past them all in tech and economy. I was peaceful mostly and powerful, they didnt dare touch me and the rest is history

im still playing the all tyranny game, but its turning into another weak mans gambit, i have to fight to stay competitive, diplomacy isnt cutting it.

its true the weaker guy will always get the cold shoulder and maybe a cold sword, diplomacy doesnt matter in the game or realisticly. so in this game you can either stay weak and pray the others wont whipe you out or fight to maintain respect.

anyways yall probably knew all that i just thought i would share some of my thoughts on the issue

all they have to do is fix some of those nagging bugs i talked about ealier and this game would be awesome, i mean it mark :^)

[mosquitodriver]

quote:

israel and i are trade partners but he has a nasty habbit of pirating my routes. so i ask him to stop it right now and he accepts. next turn he is back at it, pirating my stuff.


meanwhile, there is no historical case where a nation broke a diplomatic agreement...

Mark what in the blazes are you talking about??? who cares if isreal broke an agreement. my point is that israel is pirating my trade route when we are partners in the first place. plus i forgot to mention he respects me and totally trusts me, plus he pirates the turn after he said he would stop. whether he is weaker than me or stronger, that is grounds for war i say. so i declare war on you mark, get down on your knees boy!

oh sorry, got little carried away there, ok back to the game.

[Celestial_Dawn]

quote: havent you tried giving build orders to multiple cities at once?

Yes Mark, I'm not quite a moron The point though is that you can't arrange your cities in a particular order, so group select often selects cities that are supposed to be concentrating on science or economy. You still have to manually select and unselect quite a bit.

And also, keep in mind that because of the combined arms nature of the game, different cities, all at the front line need to be producing different units.

Try microing 55 cities:P It gets old And I'm not talking about the build queue, I'm talking about min / maxing specialist management.

quote: I go set my cities for Growth after I've already built the Granary and Food Silo. What does the dumb Mayor do? He goes and builds Artillery.

quote: yes, cause there is nothing else to build which can improve growth...

Err, that's my original point - they don't manage specialists

quote: btw, the build lists are editable...

Yes, but it's SPECIALISTS I am interested in. This is why the managers are USELESS

quote: i tend to believe that you have to "prove your power" to the AI in order to start listening to you. the lack of feedback when you're rejected leaves experience as your only tool to figure out how to do well in diplomacy...

Mark, errrrrr, your logic here is really weird. I want PEACE. Therefore I don't "prove my power". I am the No 1 military and economy in the world, big time, and I'm crushing belligerent nations (you know, the ones that didn't agree to Peace the first time round) like a bug.

The other nations still don't want a Peace Treaty. Instead, they pirate. They go blow up my Fishing Nets. I am very annoyed.

STOP PIRATING, I tell them. "Ok". Next turn, they continue pirating. I get really fed up and blow up their cities too. They ask for a Cease-Fire. I say Ok. Then I ask them, let's have Peace. "NO". Then they pirate again.

So I'm going, WTF? Sorry dude, you're going down. And about 15 turns later, the sorry remnants of what was once an empire beg me for a Cease Fire. Guess what I tell them? "NO".

Diplomacy is messed up, Markos. My production dwarfs the rest of the world, you shouldn't be screwing with me, but you only want a Cease Fire, don't want Peace, and continue to pirate my trade routes and destroy my PW even when I keep telling you to desist.

Somebody screwed up somewhere, unless diplomacy is a product of difficulty level. I played on Impossible, and it might be that all the AIs are belligerent. But if that's the case, then it shouldn't be. AIs should be given production, science boosts - but even on Impossible, one should have a chance at the other types of victory, other than conquest. And no, I didn't turn Bloodlust on. I know what I'm talking about.

quote: but I'm finding that a huge group of ranged units protected by front line units with high defense (Hoplite, Pikeman) are better than some ranged units and more offense units (Samurai).

quote: that is correct, and i think it's a "feature" not a "bug"

In that case, then the cost for ranged units need to be revised upwards. There is unit cost imbalance.

[MarkG]

quote: Originally posted by Celestial_Dawn on 12-11-2000 08:57 PM The point though is that you can't arrange your cities in a particular order, so group select often selects cities that are supposed to be concentrating on science or economy

you mean beyond sorting by gold, food, production, etc?

btw, i tend to build everything everywhere instead of having specialised cities(therefore i probably dont have the kind of problems you have )...

quote: keep in mind that because of the combined arms nature of the game, different cities, all at the front line need to be producing different units.

hmmm i dont have specific cities building specific units. if i see that i need, lets say, catapults, i insert(e.g. top of the queue) catapult in the build queue of 2-3 cities.

quote: And I'm not talking about the build queue, I'm talking about min / maxing specialist management.

yes, that IS a problem. there is a definite need for a "specialists manager"(smac had one, but only for entairniers i think)

[MarkG]

CD, something last

quote: Somebody screwed up somewhere, unless diplomacy is a product of difficulty level. I played on Impossible, and it might be that all the AIs are belligerent. But if that's the case, then it shouldn't be. AIs should be given production, science boosts - but even on Impossible, one should have a chance at the other types of victory, other than conquest.

i have the hanch that they made the ai a bit too "rejective" in order to make the game more difficult...

as for the only-conquest comment, i say again that a diplomatic victory is do-able if you follow certain tactics....

[Coflek]

Well,

i am no CD, and I don't know internal game mechanics, my previous experience is many CIV, CIVII, SMAC, CTP games, and wins on deity levels so as suggested by some, I started my first game on the imnpossible level, gigantic map, with 8 civs... should be hard. 1400AD already, and I am fourth at the moment, and by the looks of it I would be suprised if I don't win this one... and if I do it now... what challenge there is left???

ok, i am playing with the original settings, getting too much money, AI didn't make a decent attack... the best they managed so far is two units in a stack + some 8-9 single units (that became slaves).

I don't use a decent tactic even... just typical for me...expand as much as it goes a t the begining (11 cities) pw 50%... build farms , mines... go after best government - monarchy - republic (at the moment)... I just attacked nearby English (they attacked me first, ages ago-but never mounted a proper attack)

English used to be the strongest ones, of course now when I took four of their cities they are third at the moment... the attack was 12 units stack , infantryman, cannons, and calvary...

Ant that's it, we will see I might loose by the end, but it doesn't look vbery likely. i haven't built any world wonders by now... but it doesn't seem that i am missing much so far because of it... I spent many turns just by building PW, and not touching anything else (I had my build queues already made).

Doesn't seem too challenging to me... for the impossible level, 8 civs, and barbarians set on the toughes as well (actually the barbarians are the biggest threat early on in the game... and it seems that this was the only real danger so far... and by the looks of it for the whole game.

I hope to successfully kill the English off, and the rest should be history. As CD said, there are definitley game imbalances (units), tech tree could be better, and by the looks of it to me CTP I + mods > CTPII.

Ok this might be too early, but this game definitley needs a proper mod.

Just to mention i managed to lose two cities so far, one to barbarians, and one to English (i had two archers in the city - and the English attacked me with one infantryman since I didn't pay attention that particular turn) I got them both back as soon as a brought a couple of units in the stack and attacked. (two-three turns) - and i had another major loss (when i tried an army - and lost- of 8 units-knights and mounted archers against an English city.. which i got now with the stack of earlier mentioned twelve units).

that's the story so far...

answer to the question, is CTPII too easy - yes.

Hope - mods

Is the game enjoyable - it certainly is, and I'll try my next one with the prolonged AI time, and a few other tweaks suggested on the forums that make game harder. We'll see how I gat on than, but first have to finish this one off.

[Dominous Nemo]

I think they make it simple because nobody wants to play a game that they are destined to loose.

[Celestial_Dawn]

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 12-12-2000 04:35 AM btw, i tend to build everything everywhere instead of having specialised cities(therefore i probably dont have the kind of problems you have )...

Me too, I build everything. The build queues don't bother me. But I do have scientist cities where I dump a huge amount of population into scientist specialists. Other cities I plain want to grow, so it's farmer. Front line cities forego growth for heavy duty production (finish that Battleship in 2 turns instead of 4). It's not only more efficient to specialise, but your army hordes are non-stop and you accumulate stacks heck of a lot faster.

Every advanced Civ player ought to be doing this:P

quote: hmmm i dont have specific cities building specific units. if i see that i need, lets say, catapults, i insert(e.g. top of the queue) catapult in the build queue of 2-3 cities.

But that makes your stack build-up so much slower. Say you have 3 cities at the front line. They'll make cannon-fodder units, especially slow-moving ones like Infantry. Then 4 cities behind that will make the "core" of your army, let it be Artillery. Your stacks build up faster this way, than telling every city to build Catapults / stuff. Specialisation is the key.

Hehe, maybe we should play a PBEM - DIE MARKOS DIE!!!

[Coflek]

quote: Originally posted by Dominous Nemo on 12-12-2000 06:42 PM I think they make it simple because nobody wants to play a game that they are destined to loose.

Well but impossible level should be what it says... I would gladly settle for playing on the level below... to have a chance of winning...

We'll wait for Med Mod II...