Civ III

[Deraldin]

The AI cheated in the previous Civ games too though.  Why only chastize Civ 3 for it?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Because it's the latest game to have cheating AI? Because it's more blatant cheating? "

[Lord Tingeling]

The worst thing about Civ III wasn't the AI. It has always "cheatz0red teh gaym", so to speak- I didn't mind it in Civ II, nor did I in Civ III.

 

The problem was that the multiplayer, much like a singleplayer match, took *ages*. And in a fit of grotesque stupidity, Firaxis didn't include something so basic as a save function, fer chrissakes.

 

Yeah, sure, playing five hours only to restart after a CTD is *loads* of fun. >_>

[Deraldin]

The worst thing about Civ III wasn't the AI. It has always "cheatz0red teh gaym", so to speak- I didn't mind it in Civ II, nor did I in Civ III.

 

The problem was that the multiplayer, much like a singleplayer match, took *ages*. And in a fit of grotesque stupidity, Firaxis didn't include have a save function, fer chrissakes.

 

Yeah, sure, playing five hours only to restart after a CTD is *loads* of fun. >_>

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

No save function? You mean in multiplayer right?

 

I never had much trouble getting through a match in one sitting although granted I usually played for 6-8 hours straight...

[Lord Tingeling]

No save function? You mean in multiplayer right?

 

Obviously.

 

I never had much trouble getting through a match in one sitting although granted I usually played for 6-8 hours straight...

 

CTDs? Disconnects? There are a lot of things that could interrupt or disrupt a multiplayer game, especially one that takes +6 hours to complete. A game on a large world with many participants can take even longer. This coupled with the lack of a save function is not clever game design.

[Deraldin]

No save function? You mean in multiplayer right?

 

Obviously.

 

I never had much trouble getting through a match in one sitting although granted I usually played for 6-8 hours straight...

 

CTDs? Disconnects? There are a lot of things that could interrupt or disrupt a multiplayer game, especially one that takes +6 hours to complete. A game on a large world with many participants can take even longer. This coupled with the lack of a save function is not clever game design.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I've never played a multiplayer game of Civ 3.

[alanschu]

I don't consider the cheating in Civ 3 to be any worse than the cheating in the other civ games.

 

I remember removing the fog of war and watching Triremes of the other nations in the middle of the Atlantic exploring the world.

 

On hard difficulties you got more easily penalized for unhappy citizens, and they would start with more guys as well too IIRC.

 

That's usually what difficulty levels consist of in 4X games. The only way for them to have appropriate scaling levels of logic would be to, as far as I can see, set up giant neural nets of testers playing the game in smart and dumb ways so that you have a suficient databank of "smart" and "dumb" strategies for the AI to incorporate at various difficulty levels.

 

You could simplify it to simply levels of aggressiveness and whatnot, but if you want them to play on an equal playing field as you, you'll still be able to exploit it. Because if the AI is going hardcore for expansionism and building military units, then you know he's NOT worrying about city improvements or anything, and therefore won't be at much of an advantage.

 

 

What sort of "logical" differences would people realistically like to see in a 4X game for various difficulty levels? Would you like the AI to just not expand on the easy difficulties or something?

[Cantousent]

Civ III was worse than Civs I and II. Maybe it was the extra components, but putting in trade goods and resources and then giving a cultural expansion component really highlighted the problem.

 

Sure, all of the civ games relied on a certain element of luck to win at the higher difficulty levels, but I didn't mind deity level in Civ II nearly so much.

 

Civ III was certainly over-hyped, although I don't begrudge you your fun if it's a favorite of yours.

[alanschu]

I actually never really got to play Civ II as I was a kid and couldn't afford it

I did play the crap out of the demo I had though

 

I did really enjoy the original though, even if I did hate the fact that the sailors in the tririemes for the CPU were miracle rowers.

 

I could have sworn that the AI still received extra units and whatnot on higher difficulty levels in the original Civ however. I certainly don't remember it being tactically smarter, just that when it attacked it somehow had 400 unirts in 20 turns! :D

[Guest Fishboot]

The AIs have never simply "poofed" extra units into existence in any of the games (except in a few high difficulty levels at the outset of the game), it just has much, much more powerful production and commerce per-citizen than you, and as alan said, less unhappiness to manage.

 

So it isn't this irrational cheating that I see the game accused of - the AI just needs less to match you, and you can certainly gameplan around it. I think part of the reason Civ III is unpopular is because you *have* to go to war, almost constantly, on significant difficulty levels - peaceful builder, even a rapid expansion peaceful builder, doesn't work, because the AIs will go out of their way to bottle you up and you need a very large landmass/quality advantage to overpower AI production. All of my winning Emperor/Deity games were essentially perpetual war until I had aquired a large enough power base to guarantee victory.

 

Now, that doesn't mean I like Civ III - I don't, it's painfully dull, largely because of corruption management.

[alanschu]

Corruption gets pretty intense.

 

Here's hoping Civ 4 r0x0rs the kazbah though. Sounds promising.

[Walsingham]

The AIs have never simply "poofed" extra units into existence in any of the games (except in a few high difficulty levels at the outset of the game), it just has  much, much more powerful production and commerce per-citizen than you, and as alan said, less unhappiness to manage.

 

So it isn't this irrational cheating that I see the game accused of - the AI just needs less to match you, and you can certainly gameplan around it. I think part of the reason Civ III is unpopular is because you *have* to go to war, almost constantly, on significant difficulty levels - peaceful builder, even a rapid expansion peaceful builder, doesn't work, because the AIs will go out of their way to bottle you up and you need a very large landmass/quality advantage to overpower AI production. All of my winning Emperor/Deity games were essentially perpetual war until I had aquired a large enough power base to guarantee victory.

 

Now, that doesn't mean I like Civ III - I don't, it's painfully dull, largely because of corruption management.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

No offence, but I think you are talking through your hat here. I was playing last night. Had the Celts on the ropes. Squared up for a simultaneous assault on three cities (more on this in a moment) , and had blasted the burbs down to the stone age with 17 artillery units in a rather comfy little fortification complex appropriately sited. The cities had less than 6 cits, and no extra city improvements left after the shelling. I was also keeping an eye on them with espionage. In one turn three veteran infantry popped out, and two turns later three more VETERAN infantry appeared. This was on WARLORD setting.

 

~~~~

 

With the above behaviour in mind and realising the AI was using fixed rates for production, based presumably on the 'class of the city' rather than its actual condition at the time of production (Capitals are always able to crank out units in a couple of turns, no matter what else is happening) I have the following recommendations:

 

1. The AI is able to launch small seaborne raids. You will not be able to stop this, since as I say he is working on a fixed scale for production. Nor is he bothered by the fog of war.

 

Solution: Leave one city on your coast undefended. But position units nearby. He will always head for the least defended city. When he does, you can kill him.

 

2. The enemy capital has fixed scales of production that allow it to churn out a basic unit every couple of turns, no matter what. It is also always defended by three or four units, no matter what else is happening.

 

Solution: Never ever seize the enemy's capital until last. Position a couple of defensive units nearby and when they become available add artillery. Break road links and pound units leaving the capital for the front, or cause them to attack your position.

 

3. The enemy can produce units without restraint on production, but DOES have to obey unit cost restrictions.

 

Solution 1: When conquering his cities enslave the popn, and then drive them ahead of your army. He will seize them and fill up his unit quota with dross.

 

Solution 2: When provoking a war, ensure you seize his strategic unit-building assets (like Iron) in the first move. He will immediately magic units into being (more proof that he does this, fishboot) that do not use the resource in question. DO NOT KILL THESE, but make peace asap. He will now have a roster full of dross.

 

This means he will regard his military as inferior to yours and be more pliable.

 

4. The AI does most of his cheating when not directly observed. If you use a logistic strategy to bomb his improvements, for example, leaving him alone for a couple of turns will result in instant magic goblin workers coming in the night and reapiring the damage.

 

Solution: if you do attack something, leave mountain based troops observing the area.

 

5. As previously stated, AI cities have an automatic number of defenders. Do not attempt to whittle away his defenses as if he were human. You have to win in the first round, because it is always the first round. For this reason you should always fight in at least eight units armies. Never ever succum to the urge to attack quickly before he digs in, or anything remotely sensible in real terms. Always wait for overwhelming strength, even if it means delays.

 

6. Finally, if you ever meet any of the design team who foisted this obnoxious approach on us, punch them. Repeatedly.

[Guest Fishboot]

No offence, but I think you are talking through your hat here. I was playing last night. Had the Celts on the ropes. Squared up for a simultaneous assault on three cities (more on this in a moment) , and had blasted the burbs down to the stone age with 17 artillery units in a rather comfy little fortification complex appropriately sited. The cities had less than 6 cits, and no extra city improvements left after the shelling. I was also keeping an eye on them with espionage. In one turn three veteran infantry popped out, and two turns later three more VETERAN infantry appeared. This was on WARLORD setting.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I have played quite a bit of Civ and read a lot of Civ messageboards, and no one has ever put forth a strategy to deal with or even note "magically created" units - and those fora are nuts and bolts enough to talk about that kind of thing [ Civfanatics ]. And I want to stress that the game has never made me think that AI units can be poofed into existence or that capitals have "cheated" rates of unit production. And in fact I've seen community savegames that have things like a guy that surrounded the last enemy city with units so he could flood the map with cities to drive up his score, and that last city produced units no faster than you'd expect.

 

I think the AI could have upgraded elite obsolete units - if he had some old phalanxes that went elite in the bronze age from fighting off barbarians, he could flip all of those into vet infantry in a single turn, and that's not that unlikely - the AI can keep extremely obsolete units around as garrisons. If he has Sun Tzu's Wonder somewhere (I admit unlikely on Warlord) then you could shell the cities forever and they'd never lose their barracks. One of your "anti-cheating" responses, the pre-emptive disruption of enemy special resources is obvously a great way to screw opponent upgrades. There is also conscription, which could make (I think) regular units with a barracks, which you could easily accidentally promote while attacking the city.

 

There are obviously small problems with the above (the vet units should have been injured from the shelling, IIRC the game correctly), but I just wanted to rattle off a few of the fair methods of creating units on the spot.

 

Second, all of your numbered bits (minus the spontaneous production talk) are effective - the AI is particularly bad at choosing what cities to beat down (if it was too smart it would just beeline for your Forgotten Palace city and collapse your economy for 100+ turns) and even worse when crossing water, and unless the AI is 2+ generations ahead of you in military technology or has a ridiculous power base advantage you'll be able to handle their "invasion" stacks. But I mean, if you really engage in analysis of any 4X game you'll run into serious AI problems in short order. I don't understand this particular vitriol over cheating.

 

Edit - Wait, the Celts? I can't speak to the Civ III expansions, never got 'em.

[Walsingham]

Well, I'll double check out of of respect for your experience, but I'm telling you I know what I saw. And yes, the Celts are in Play the World. They have a 3.2.2 swordsman as their special unit.

 

Given you experience, as I say, I am prepared to be wrong about magic production. However, the rates of production are just ridiculous, bearing in mind this was on a deliberately low setting. There is precious little excuse for this laziness now that so much work is being done on AI. I won't be buying Civ IV as a consequence.

[Enoch]

I'll back Fishboot up-- the AI does not 'magically' produce units in Civ3 (the expansions don't change this either). They do get a production bonus at higher levels (e.g., a 20% discount on all costs of production & research at emperor level), but smart play like controlling your workers manually can easily mitigate this advantage.

 

The area where it feels like the AI is cheating most to me is in the technology race. The rate of AI cooperation (tech-trading) is way too high. On any difficulty above Warlord (unless you have a large lead in population/commerce), your best option is to set your research at 0 or 10% and trade for your techs. And checking every turn to see if any of your rivals have discovered Magnetism yet isn't a whole lot of fun.

 

Other than that, the aggressiveness of the AI in the land-grab portion of the game took quite a bit of getting used to. The strategic resource system (a good idea in itself, if a bit inflexible) made owning a large land base far too valuable, and they tried to fix this with the huge corruption increases as your empire grew. I can see the logic, but it was far from an optimal system.

[alanschu]

I usually play on Prince or Warlord, and have been able to wear down armies...

 

 

At least I'm pretty sure I did, it's been a while since I played.

[~Di]

Don't forget the AI "cheat" whereby the player's territory will run out of resources, frequently several resources at one time, but the computer territories, oddly enough, never seem to run out of resources. Until the player conquers them, that is. Then those valuable resources dry up like a old crone's skin cells!

 

I also dispised the fact that after conquering territories, a city would without warning suddenly go back to the originating culture taking with it every last unit I happened to have in that city. However, I never once saw that happen with any city the computer civilizations took over. Doesn't mean it never happened for anyone, but it certainly didn't happen with my game, although every territorial conquest I made was guaranteed to have several cities "revert", costing me dozens, if not hundreds, of high-priced units in the bargain. That truly sucked.

 

Look, I beat Civ 3 once... I don't recall what difficulty level... but the point is that the game was so frustrating and strategically uncontrollable that I never had the desire to play it again even though I had played Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri no less than 50 times each.

 

Civ 3 was a real disappointment.

[metadigital]

...

Look, I beat Civ 3 once... I don't recall what difficulty level... but the point is that the game was so frustrating and strategically uncontrollable that I never had the desire to play it again even though I had played Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri no less than 50 times each. 

 

Civ 3 was a real disappointment.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I concur. The bottom line is: whatever the additions to Civ3, it didn't work. It wasn't more fun to play, it was less enjoyable.

 

Leaving aside that they used the same engine, which was tottering at capacity in Civ2, the new ideas amounted to the Homer Simpson-designed car of the future.

[Walsingham]

Civ 3 was a lot of fun for me ...until I worked out I was getting screwed. The improved terrain, the culture conversions, the strategic resources, the variety of units. These could have been awesome. But the laziness in coding the Ai just ruins it for me.

 

I have only played on high difficulty setings once, to see if I could. It was tedious and excruciating. I have had more fun doing business accounts, and at least there I was getting paid. There was no room for flair or imagination. You just had to be retentive about never forgetting to do anything, and following some simple rules.

 

I think what we really need in these games is a bit of a rethink about why we play them,and what we would find enjoyable. We do it to test ourselves, certainly. But we'd also like a bit of enjoying our power when we have it, and enjoying our own ingenuity when we compose novel strategies and tactics. This means things like AIs making teh odd mistake, unevenly defending, launching distraction operations, launching all out offensives, and so on. It means a range of tools, but not having to be a bloody accountant in order to get them.

 

I dunno. I'll still play the game, but on warlord setting. But like I say I'm not buying the next one. Not after what I've read here, and seen myself. In particular, one of my freinds pointed out that the AI in the original Panzer General released in 1995 is smarter than the ones in Civ.

[Calax]

my friends usually play the entire game on the most difficult setting and are able to win every time... It's quite funny because they often are at war with 50% of the comps at a time.

[metadigital]

I can win, I know the strategem and tactics to use, but the total enjoyment of the game (with its new improvements to terrain, more units, more technologies, etc, etc, etcetra, etcetr

[alanschu]

I know that Civ 3, in addition to games like SMAC, make the number 1 nation a target, and they receive penalties when dealing with the AI.

[Calax]

I love it when they order you to give them gunpowder when you are working on mass transit...

[Deraldin]

I love it when they order you to give them gunpowder when you are working on mass transit...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I find it quite fun to have them ask for gunpowder when you have Cruise Missles. "

[alanschu]

Give them their first shipment on an ICBM.

[Cantousent]

It's not a matter of being first. The computer offers ridiculous trades. It's ridiculous trying to get a decent trade, and many times impossible, even if you are not in first place. Getting resources from the computer is laughable. Even making excellent offers gets the player nowhere.

 

You're forced to fight for everything, even if you wanted to play a more or less peaceful nation. At higher difficulties you will be forced to fight often.