RoN's Single Player Experience: Promising!

[yin26]

I take it you had losing the capital as a condition for losing? Perhaps we should disable that setting and see the change?

I also setup a bait city, garrisoned only with villies, and the AI did indeed fall for it and lose a number of troops *for a time* ... it then retreated and refocussed on a city of far more importance. Freaky.

[UnOrthOdOx]

I had all the defaults, don't know how much I can change in the Demo, but Ill try it out.

[albiedamned]

I played a game last night on Tough, 1 vs 1 with me as the Inca and the AI as the Bantu (that was random actually - I didn't pick Bantu). Map style was Mediterranean - a ring of land surrounding an inland sea with an island in the middle - since I wanted to explore the naval aspect of the game. Trust me when I say I'm not that good at RoN yet, but the game was a slaughter. I sent a villager fairly early to build a city on the island, and I built a Dock and got a few light ships (barks) out early on auto explore to map out the sea and find his territory. When I realized he only had one dock, I build a couple heavy ships and positioned them outside the dock to be able to immediately attack any ships he built. Meantime I had the barks on patrol to look for any new docks, but he never built any more.

In the meantime on the mainland (the outside ring), he attempted one rush on me in classical age with some light infantry and heavy cavalry. I had no land military but I had a fort and attrition and the combination slaughtered his invaders.

Once I got to Gunpowder, he still had no navy so I built some bomb ketch ships (the bombardment ships). First target was the docks, but after that I just bombarded everything within range. And on this map style, with the relatively thin ring of land around the edge, just about everything was in range! The game turned into a slaughter because he had absolutely no way to stop my naval bombardment.

While the bombardment went on, I built up an army.
I had destroyed most of his buildings and reduced his cities before I even moved my army in. However I figured he must have built up an army somewhere, and I knew my land army would run into it eventually while heading for his capital. And he did have a sizable army - about 20 mixed infantry units, around 10 mixed cavalry, and a few bombards. Unfortunately for him he was two ages behind and I had light tanks, riflemen, and anti-tank rifles. So it was no contest. The game ended before I even got to Information Age, and total game time was only 39 minutes despite using Nomad mode and thus having a slow start.

Anyway, I watched the replay because I wanted to see what he was doing with his resources (since he never built a navy). I saw him build his initial rush army, the one my fort crushed. Then he started building another army, but he was stashing them on the far side of his capital. They just stood there for almost the entire game as he continued to add to the force. They only actually deployed when I approached his capital, and by then it was way too late. I'm not sure what strategy the AI was employing there. Hiding his force from me might have been a good idea if his force had a chance to defeat me, since I would have been overconfident and not expecting it. But by not building a navy and thus letting me bombard him, he got so far behind that his force was antiquated by the time it went into battle.

I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from this given what Yin and others have posted about the seemingly intelligent military planning by the AI. Maybe it's not good at naval strategy?

[yin26]

Yes, I think that's right for the most part (though I've been on land maps mostly). But on one of the water maps, I got my navy pounded, though he never used his navy to attack anything on land...

[UnOrthOdOx]

Interesting.

I think the map may be a poor one for the Bantu to begin with? They tend to have an advantage at REXing with their free extra city. It is nice to see the AI rush with the Bantu, though, a good strategy for them I have found. Did they pound on your fort, though, when they attacked? I have found it best to bypass static defenses on a rush/raid and focus on the enemies economy. Perhaps this is another little problem in the AI. How much more would it have hurt if they, say, had taken a market, wood cutter, mine, and/or a few farms after running right by that fort? The Bantu can do that pretty quickly with the combo of fast foot soldiers that do extra damage to buildings..

[albiedamned]

The AI Bantu did manage to build six cities, so he did take advantage of his expansion ability. With this map style, you can't really build your cities "2 wide" on the outside ring, so your nation just becomes a straight line of cities until you hit a corner of the map, then your line turns. When I realized how thin the outside ring was, I placed my fort in front of the furthest city in my line, and positioned it such that it could cover almost the entire width of the outside ring of land. Thus there was almost no way for his invaders to get past the fort, other than going completely around the map in the other direction (which was much further, but which would have crushed me since the other end of my line was my undefended capital!). His guys did actually attack my fort, but it didn't matter. Even if he had tried to run past it and get to the city behind, I don't think he would have made it. I garrisoned a couple civilians in the fort when I saw him coming, and the firepower of the fort took him out.

[Solver]

An important AI observation - if you attack it, it might still send some troops in your land. In otehr RTS games, if you attack the AI, every single unit it has will be positioned at place of that battle.

[Sky Dog]

My goodness. I think the AI just gave me a hard-on. As usual, it attacked a crucial city with an army of seige units and mixed support units. It also sent two supply wagons and stationed them in the rear. I hit the supply wagons first, and the combination of attrition and a tower beat him back. The SOB comes back at me again a few minuts later, only this time, I don't see any supply wagons, and I'm wondering why he isn't taking attrition damage. It turns out the @#$(%* AI had a general with the army, and was using the cloaking feature to keep the supply wagons hidden while the units in front of them fought. I LOVE this game!

[Terminus]

I have to agree that this is the most sophisticated AI I have ever encountered. A 'GREAT WORK!' goes out to all the coders who worked on it.

I'm at the "I can sometimes win in Moderate" phase of my RON education and the difference between Easy (what I used to learn the game mechanics) and the upper level difficulties came as a shock to me as well. Can’t wait to try out the Tough setting seeing as that is the ‘true’ AI according to Brian.

[dearmad]

Sky Dog: Holy f'ing wooowoo!

In my latest game the damned AI wittled down any army I left unattended with spies and crap. So i'd go back from some other battle and find my line decimated. Also have faced enemy generals cloaking their damned armies and appearing out of thin air where I don't want them! Also it used the decoy armies as well to freak me out and force moves I shouldn't have made until I detected they were decoys.

I gotta say enemy spies are about the most pissy thing in the game- I now shout for joy whenever a commando can take one or two out. In fact I've neglected regular army ops at times just to hunt one down. Hm... I guess that little AI ploy is working well too.

Haven't seem him dig in defensively yet though. So there is hope... I think.

[SirOsis]

I really like the decoy feature of the general. I never really tried it out until this last game. I was able to send the decoys to a position in front of my position. While the enemy was engaged with them I brought my real army to bear on their flank. Talk about cleaning up.

This last game is also one I decided to go on the offensive early. Generally I sit back and build up the cities. I went for Berlin just after getting to age 2 with 2 catapults and 6 pikemen, 6 archers. Fortunately he hadn't any towers yet so I wasn't dealing with attrition. The supply wagon only is avail after age 3. Pounded the city and took it over. Was very nice to get all those farms, library, university, etc. I was able to hold it by bringing in reinforcements and sitting in a defensive position. From then on my army just kept getting bigger and I was able to stay ahead in tech so the other players were always outgunned. I also would garrison my troops after a battle to heal up.

Eventually won with a wonder victory. Gotta love Versaille.

[Tatran]

Reading the stories above,I noticed a few things.
First there's not a lot diplomacy going on and
second most games are not taking that long.
The games I've played (Demo) took hours.
(Speed : slowest,so I can control most part of
the game)

My two last games were simply great.
Yesterday won,today lost both by sudden death.
(world domination)
Both games were Big Huge map,8 civs,Great Lakes.
Level : Tough

In yesterdays game around the Enlightment age I
started a war with one of my neighbours.(which
became my ally later in the game).The war went on
to the Modern age and I captured 2 or 3 cities of him.
And then the Wonder timer started.The Egyptians had
build enough wonders and they were on the other side of the map.So I had a problem.I choose to stop the war
against Alaric (germans,I was british) and focus on
nukes and bombers.By that time 3 of the 8 civs were
gone,mostly conquered by very large and dangerous
allied force (both Bantu).I nuked one wonder off the map and the bantus captured one of Egypt cities with
a wonder.By that time I saw the Bantus already had
53% of the map.So I choose to ally with the Germans,
because Egypt was lost.(Later split up between the Germans and the Bantu).Both teams didn't have enough wonder points and a long war (hours) was the only solution.(I and one of the Bantu had already
researched the missile shield).While I took some cities
of the Bantu,my ally lost some cities to the other Bantu.
(They survived around 15 nukes).After some hours of
war I saw my ally was losing more and more territory.
So it was all or nothing,I build a large force of bombers
to destroy the big wonders and to the win game by
world domination.And I (we) did.

Todays game I got beaten by a smarther AI.
By the Enlightment age I was already at number 1
position spot (the AI becomes more demanding) and
I stayed at number 1.By the time all wonders were
build there was no majority of wonder points.So
the biggest civ made two attempts to attack a forward
city between two lakes,I lost some buildings,but my
air force drove them out.And then the same civ started
a war with one of his neighbours (yes Egyptians with
a lot of wonders).Before I knew it they captured one of
those Egyptian wonder cities and bye bye victory.
(they had already researched the world domination
victory as the first of the 4 future techs).

The strangest part of those games is that the AI
didn't launch one single nucleair warhead.

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Tatran
Reading the stories above,I noticed a few things.
First there's not a lot diplomacy going on and
second most games are not taking that long.
The games I've played (Demo) took hours.
(Speed : slowest,so I can control most part of
the game)

My two last games were simply great.
Yesterday won,today lost both by sudden death.
(world domination)
Both games were Big Huge map,8 civs,Great Lakes.
Level : Tough

In yesterdays game around the Enlightment age I
started a war with one of my neighbours.(which
became my ally later in the game).The war went on
to the Modern age and I captured 2 or 3 cities of him.
And then the Wonder timer started.The Egyptians had
build enough wonders and they were on the other side of the map.So I had a problem.I choose to stop the war
against Alaric (germans,I was british) and focus on
nukes and bombers.By that time 3 of the 8 civs were
gone,mostly conquered by very large and dangerous
allied force (both Bantu).I nuked one wonder off the map and the bantus captured one of Egypt cities with
a wonder.By that time I saw the Bantus already had
53% of the map.So I choose to ally with the Germans,
because Egypt was lost.(Later split up between the Germans and the Bantu).Both teams didn't have enough wonder points and a long war (hours) was the only solution.(I and one of the Bantu had already
researched the missile shield).While I took some cities
of the Bantu,my ally lost some cities to the other Bantu.
(They survived around 15 nukes).After some hours of
war I saw my ally was losing more and more territory.
So it was all or nothing,I build a large force of bombers
to destroy the big wonders and to the win game by
world domination.And I (we) did.

Todays game I got beaten by a smarther AI.
By the Enlightment age I was already at number 1
position spot (the AI becomes more demanding) and
I stayed at number 1.By the time all wonders were
build there was no majority of wonder points.So
the biggest civ made two attempts to attack a forward
city between two lakes,I lost some buildings,but my
air force drove them out.And then the same civ started
a war with one of his neighbours (yes Egyptians with
a lot of wonders).Before I knew it they captured one of
those Egyptian wonder cities and bye bye victory.
(they had already researched the world domination
victory as the first of the 4 future techs).

The strangest part of those games is that the AI
didn't launch one single nucleair warhead.

I didnt have a nuclear launch,either, in Demo, but have in Retail version been attacked by nukes..

I found AI a bit tougher in Retail than demo plus I rarely play wonder Victory, rather wiping out Ai, and thats kinda a challenge. I havent yet tried any diplomacy but may soon!


Peace

Grandpa Troll

[albiedamned]

My games have been shorter because I've been playing with no more than 3 opponents (4 total). However being a TBS person I would like to try an 8 player diplomacy game as you describe. I think I'll try that tonight. I'll probably pick one of the map types with continents too.

And by the way, I play on very slow, so my 39 minute game-time game took several hours!

[Tatran]

I've seen nukes flying around in the demo,especially
on the lower levels than tough.Can't remember the
AI use them at the tough level.

Playing a smaller map with 3 or 4 opponents it's a
tricky one.I did once.The AI allied very quick.So you
are alone or you have to ally with civ number 4.Both
situations means a lot of trouble.So no diplomacy
in this particular games for me (everyone on his own).

Maybe someone can explain the wonder calculation
in teams to me.Situation last night:
I had 17 wonder points and my ally had 12 wonder points and as a team we only had a score of 9
wonder points.All civs and all wonders were still in the
game.My ally lost a 4 point wonder,but captured a
2 point wonder.Both cities were assimilated by the
time I allied with the other AI to secure victory.

I've a complaint to make about people reviewing games.
They always talk about how it looks and sounds and
no one goes deeper into the game.I read a lot of
reviews of RoN,but this demo convinced me that
this game is simply a masterpiece made by the
master himself.Just like 4 years ago with the demo
of Alpha Centauri I got hooked.Thanks to Big Huge
Games for making this demo.

Hopefully the game is in the stores today.