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I loved CTP1 and I played it countless of hours. Then CTP2 came available and I bought it but only played one game, the AI was such a big disappointment.
Now I've read about all the mods how they have imroved the AI and decided to give CTP2 another go. I first tried Medmod with '"very hard" and yes, a lot things are much better there than in vanilla version. Wasn't too hard to beat it though but I had some great time.
Then I installed Cradle mod and tried it as "very hard". I see a lot of improvements done with AI. For example, AI is now making a good use of their PW's and they are keeping up with science quite well. Also, they are busy sending troops to pillage my land and sea improvements. It's a lot of fun to play with.
Unit upgrading is a great concept and it also makes AI more competitive as it gets those upgrades for free. AI is quite active at sea as well and is forcing me to build a lot of ships to guard my TI's and trade routes.
Crade readme told that AI is now making some big stacks of units and should be aggressive to attack, especially human. I've encountered this problem however:
AI IS building huge stacks of units but it isn't using them! For example, at my game there was a continent of Native Americans. I went there with 6 coracles (guarded with triremes) and dropped size 6 stack next to it's city. Two tiles away there was a AI stack of 10 and I was worried that it would take care of my 6 stack..
However, it did nothing! It remained there fortified and watched me carrying more troops until I got a full stack. I got a good stack eventually and tried to capture one of it's cities. The city was guarded with 12 stack at desert terrain and didn't have a chance.
I concluded that the only chance is catapults. I was already researching it so I started to accumulate gold and make huge amounts of the first artillery units available (don't rem the name).
Then I started carry them one by one with my ships accumulating a full 12 unit catapult stack. This took a long time and my point here is that AI did NOTHING at all to interfere with my devious plan. It should have seen the danger of my troops getting accumulated near it's city and should have gone offensive to prevent me getting all those catapults there.
I finally took over one of the cities and them moved to the city where this AI 10 stack sat next to. I bombarded the city and finally the defenders were weak enough I could take it. After capturing it I excepted that this 10 stack would try to recapture but.. no. Next turn I moved in my 12 catapults and bombarded that stack killing 4 of them. Then it started to flee away but got killed next turn.
Conlusion: CTP2 is now better and challenging than ever with the aid of the mods, that's for sure. I love to organice my armies with this excellent army management tool and don't suffer from the tedium of managing all the units one by one like in Civ3. Also love the simplicity of the public work system.. and no, I don't want to handle the army of 100-200 workers every turn!
Also I like the concept of roads in CTP series. Their only purpose it to make travelling faster, just like in real life. I never liked to be forced to road/railroad every square like in Civ3 to get more commerce/trade and production (with railroads). Makes the map look awful. Also I really hate chopping down all forest and especially jungles at Civ3. It's wrong environment wise and also makes the terrain look really dull with only grassland/plains/hills/mountains in the end (if u want optimize everything like I do..)
So this big question remains: is it possible to make AI use his stacks more aggressively? Making it recognice that human player is making invasion and call all of it's troops to counter the problem? Is it possible to do with slicks or is the source-code project the answer?
Btw, with my medmod game AI declared war and had his 12 stack closing my city next to it. My city wasn't well guarded but it never attacked it?! Just wandered there aimlessly. I also watched AI-AI war there they were quite inefficient conquering each other cities. Just bombarded it once in a while and moving units seemingly aimlessly.
Now I've read about all the mods how they have imroved the AI and decided to give CTP2 another go. I first tried Medmod with '"very hard" and yes, a lot things are much better there than in vanilla version. Wasn't too hard to beat it though but I had some great time.
Then I installed Cradle mod and tried it as "very hard". I see a lot of improvements done with AI. For example, AI is now making a good use of their PW's and they are keeping up with science quite well. Also, they are busy sending troops to pillage my land and sea improvements. It's a lot of fun to play with.
Unit upgrading is a great concept and it also makes AI more competitive as it gets those upgrades for free. AI is quite active at sea as well and is forcing me to build a lot of ships to guard my TI's and trade routes.
Crade readme told that AI is now making some big stacks of units and should be aggressive to attack, especially human. I've encountered this problem however:
AI IS building huge stacks of units but it isn't using them! For example, at my game there was a continent of Native Americans. I went there with 6 coracles (guarded with triremes) and dropped size 6 stack next to it's city. Two tiles away there was a AI stack of 10 and I was worried that it would take care of my 6 stack..
However, it did nothing! It remained there fortified and watched me carrying more troops until I got a full stack. I got a good stack eventually and tried to capture one of it's cities. The city was guarded with 12 stack at desert terrain and didn't have a chance.
I concluded that the only chance is catapults. I was already researching it so I started to accumulate gold and make huge amounts of the first artillery units available (don't rem the name).
Then I started carry them one by one with my ships accumulating a full 12 unit catapult stack. This took a long time and my point here is that AI did NOTHING at all to interfere with my devious plan. It should have seen the danger of my troops getting accumulated near it's city and should have gone offensive to prevent me getting all those catapults there.
I finally took over one of the cities and them moved to the city where this AI 10 stack sat next to. I bombarded the city and finally the defenders were weak enough I could take it. After capturing it I excepted that this 10 stack would try to recapture but.. no. Next turn I moved in my 12 catapults and bombarded that stack killing 4 of them. Then it started to flee away but got killed next turn.
Conlusion: CTP2 is now better and challenging than ever with the aid of the mods, that's for sure. I love to organice my armies with this excellent army management tool and don't suffer from the tedium of managing all the units one by one like in Civ3. Also love the simplicity of the public work system.. and no, I don't want to handle the army of 100-200 workers every turn!
Also I like the concept of roads in CTP series. Their only purpose it to make travelling faster, just like in real life. I never liked to be forced to road/railroad every square like in Civ3 to get more commerce/trade and production (with railroads). Makes the map look awful. Also I really hate chopping down all forest and especially jungles at Civ3. It's wrong environment wise and also makes the terrain look really dull with only grassland/plains/hills/mountains in the end (if u want optimize everything like I do..) So this big question remains: is it possible to make AI use his stacks more aggressively? Making it recognice that human player is making invasion and call all of it's troops to counter the problem? Is it possible to do with slicks or is the source-code project the answer?
Btw, with my medmod game AI declared war and had his 12 stack closing my city next to it. My city wasn't well guarded but it never attacked it?! Just wandered there aimlessly. I also watched AI-AI war there they were quite inefficient conquering each other cities. Just bombarded it once in a while and moving units seemingly aimlessly.
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