Awesome Aips Official Thread

[pchang65]

As far as difficulty goes, I believe that Coldsteel and I have developed very aggressive strategies where we create stacks of ranged and melee units as early as possible and go rampaging around. Grabbing lots of slaves really boosts early development and we can plan when and where to attack and defend much better than the AI.

Trashing AI terrain improvements, pirating their trade routes, taking slaves, and conquering their new and weakly defended cities really hurts the AI and allows us to catch up quickly (especially if we're lucky enough to capture a technology as well as a city).

The choice of strategy has a great effect on the perceived difficulty of any situation. It appears that the aggressive strategy outlined above stresses all the advantages of a human intelligence over the AIs weaknesses.

[pchang65]

I tried it again and found myself alone on a medium sized continent (room for about 15 cities without serious overlap). Thus, I decided to isolate myself and just develop peacefully. I did not explore and waited for the AIs to find me (BTW, this is a really bad idea if you want to win). I concentrated on building up my pop. and creating as much internal trade as possible to boost my science output. In addition, as soon as my cities reached size 6 I made at least 1 citizen a scientist (I also built marketplaces first).

The only thing that saved me was that just as I was developing Alchemy, I found a goody hut with AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION!!!. I was reseatching GUNPOWDER just 1 turn later, and it turned out that Cannons was on the list right after I finished Gunpowder. This incredible stroke of luck had me building Musketeers at about 1000AD and Cannons at about 1100AD.

2 AIs showed up around 1300AD with ships of the line, musketeers, and cannons, and one started attacking. If I hadn't been so lucky with the goody huts, I would have had to hold them off with pikemen and archers (not a pretty picture). The 2nd AI traded maps with me and I saw that the AIs had much larger empires than me. However, my cities, while fewer in number, were larger. I had PW set to 30 and 40 for most of the game and had built more fisheries and advanced farms. The AI still had plenty of simple farms and nets, but very few fisheries and advanced farms.

Getting Agricultural Revolution so early allowed me to have mills in most of my cities by the time the AI showed up. Right after I beat of the initial AI attack, I got Optics and started building Galileo's. I had saved all the phalanxes, and warriors I had built and disbanded them all to get a big jump on Galileo's. I got it just when the AI's second wave of ships showed up. By turning my capital into a huge science city, I was able to get ships of the line soon thereafter. Even though the AI showed up with Ships of the line at first, this second wave was about 1/2 long ships and fire triremes. It appeared that the AI had diverted his exploration ships here too.

The AI did not seem to stack ships as much as land units and stacks of 2 to 3 ships of the line were able to sink his entire fleet (I have never had to build navies this large before: a total of 8 ships of the line).

Now it was my turn to launch an invasion and in went 2 stacks of cannons and 1 stack of musketeers. Imagine my surprise when I see a machinegunner die during my bombardment of the AIs 1st city. In addition, the AI is putting in reinforcements as fast as I can bombard him. It takes awhile, but I manuever the 2nd stack of cannons so it blocks off his reinforcements. Even still, when I finally assualt his city with 4 musketeers and 4 cannons, I lose all but 2 cannons. However, I pick up electricity. Machinegunners means the AI has railroads, but so far, I only see roads. This is good because it means the AI won't be able to reinforce quite so fast. Anyway, at this point, I realized I had no choice but to try to get to Fascism as fast as possible. I really needed a high attack strength unit (16 is high enough and it is a short time away), and I really needed to drop the support costs of my armies. Since fascists are special units, they are always at full strength. This allows me to drop unit readiness without hurting the chances of my assaults too much.

To make a long story short, I continue to pour musketeers and cannons into the AI meat grinder and manage to take another city (but no tech) while I get electrification and facism. Finally, I start building facists. Unfortunately at this time, a 2nd AI decides to go to war with me. I have to fight naval battles with ships of the line while trying to ferry facists to the 1st AI (this is much harder than I have ever had to fight before). I am also delayed because I have to divert facists to fight off the troops the 2nd AI manages to land (the 2nd AI never made a ship of the line stack greater than 2).

With a sufficient number of fascists, I drop my unit readiness to 3/4 and my production rate accelerates. I can feel victory within my grasp. The 1st AIs cities begin to fall after only 1 concerted attack (bombardments from 2 cannon stacks and an assault with 4 or 5 facists and 4 musketeers). I capture the London Exchange and Railroads in short order. Now I have cash, and my armies move more quickly. I can rush buy more musketeer defenders at the point of attack. Then, I capture explosives and switch production to machine gunners and fascists. I would like artillery, but cannons still seem to be doing the job.

Finally, the 1st AI is reduced to a niggling city or two which I can't seem to find and have no time to search for. It turns out the 2nd AI was sharing the same continent as the 1st. I encounter mass ground troops from the 2nd AI on the road system between him and what used to be the 1st AI. The AI is pillaging the roads as he is forced to retreat. Amazing! I ahve never seen this before.

Anyway, I am now about equal in tech to the AIs and will probably capture Edison's from the 2nd AI soon. Victory seems inevitable, but this is by far the closest game I have ever played against AIs only.

It appears that the key is to set up a scenario where the AI has enough time to develop unmolested. At Deity, the AI will develop a large enough tech and production lead that victory becomes a close thing.

[WesW]

This game sounds typical of my games since we developed the AAips.
My changes I have the AI's developing much better, while Nord's diplomacy changes have the AI's exchanging tech readily. You can't just isolate yourself like you could previously. In this respect, the game is more like Civ, (and history).

You must have had some strong AI civs, if they were stacking ships, and landing invasion forces.

Man, if we could just get the AI to stack ships into a few two-or-three ship stacks, now that it is building more ships, rather than letting them go around by themselves.

Play a game where *you* don't stack *your* ships, and fight the AI's one-on-one, and see how you do.

[coldsteel]

pchang: was this on gigantic map? I would agree building a boat and making embassies to get the ai techs is a better idea than isolation -- you have to know where everyone is asap so you know where to send the cannon stacks when they start london's.

I had a game where the ai built the wormhole sensor, they got that far before they were finally quashed. At least I got to see the wormhole once.

cold

[pchang65]

To Coldsteel:

This was on the map size which is 1 smaller than gigantic. My PC is an old Pentium 100 which I have jury rigged into behaving like a Pentium 233MMX (Only the motherboard, power supply, and HD are original). The poor things dies under the load of a gigantic map. I was playing with only 3 AIs.

[WesW]

Well, since Nordicus isn't here right now, I guess I will be the one to make the honorary 50th post.
Do you find it rather odd that the second page starts with the 50th post, rather than the 51st? I guess it's like the debate about whether the third millenium starts on 2000, or 2001.
Btw, while I am slightly off-topic here, did anyone appreciate the significance of the fact that cities all over the world, with all kinds of different religions and traditional calenders, celebrated the millenium together? It's pretty amazing when you think about it.