Facism is Killing My AI opponent!

[dojoboy]

In a current monarch level game, the Hittites were every bit my rival. However, following our most recent war (bastard surprise atacked) Mursilis has kept his country under fascist doctrine. This is causing him to pop-rush his empire into oblivion. Now, most of his cities are between 4 - 9 pop which will not withstand my forces once the order is given to roll. On top of that, I'm several important techs ahead of him. This is similar to how the AI would stay in communism in earlier versions of Civ3 and abuse the pop-build option.

Is anyone else seeing this self-destructive behavior?

[Harovan]

It has been around for a long time. Under vanilla Civ3 and PtW it was Communism what destroyed once thriving AI civs. Now under Conquests it are both Communism and Fascism.

There must be some trigger in the code, that when the AI has an option the first time, it will always use it, make it sense or not. Therefor in the begin of the industrial age multiple MPPs are signed and a single torch one of the AI civs or the human player lits somewhere on the map will trigger a huge world war. The human, being smart, will get out of this mess at the first opportunity, even it costs some money or techs. The AIs on the other hand will fight much longer due to the pacts. It will use multiple draft if cities are under siege - another option the new age provides. Since war weariness kicks in soon (we all know how lousy the AI fights and how much units it loses), the AI civs will switch to their shiny newly acquired governments, Communism and Fascism (the human will avoid this by all means) and - surprise, surprise - there's a new option available, pop rushing. Well, it's not exactly new, more like long forgotten. Anyway, drafting and pop rushing creates a crapload of unhappiness, which will be countered by entertainers, because the AI doesn't use the luxury slider and the wars have cut down the luxury deals. Entertainers don't produce food, so the city starves.

This scenario happens in most games and who is smart enough to exploit it, can take the lead in nearly every game, pulling an UN or space race victory at will, or even coquering the weakened AI civs. To avoid this, the AI should be instructed to avoid pop rushing and drafting like the plague and do it only if it is absolutely necessary.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Yeesh. It does sound like a spiral of disaster for the AI....

/me has an

If I gave a KAI Fascism or Communism and declared war, would they eventually switch to one of these and castrate themselves?

[steven8r]

Essentially MWIA, Yes, they would.

In my recent C3C games, if I can get into the Modern Era, I will generally get ahead of the AI's in research because they're all in Fascism. I haven't seen a really huge AI's core cities dwindle too much (if they are secure). Another story entirely for their border cities. And if a civ is already weak, it just starts spiralling downward even faster.

Sure, their Workers can rebuild improvements and clean up damage/pollution quicker, but that rarely counters the pop drop and income/research hit.

Also, (and please correct me if I'm wrong here) the manual states that there is a 'xenophobic' result of Fascism. Here's the part where I may need some 'splainin'. I think that what this means is that 'foreign' citizens 'disappear' from cities under Fascism, thus reducing the population even more--especially in recently conquered cities.

Perhaps this has already been explained in detail in another thread, but, does anyone have any 'hard data' (read: 'numbers') on this xenophobic effect? Do the foreign citizens disappear, or do they become 'native' or what, and in what numbers?

Thanks,

Steven

and P.S. stay/get out of Fascism ASAP. Now, if the AI's would just do this..... :wish:

[MattPilot]

steven - go to the editor, open the Help file, go to governments, click on the "flags" section. Its expained there. even the forced resettlement your talking about (losing Population when changing gov'ts)

Btw, i solved 'my' problem with communism & fascism by not allowing commies & the fascist to rush at all.

[Jaybe]

Btw, i solved 'my' problem with communism & fascism by not allowing commies & the fascist to rush at all.

VERY Interestinngg!

[MattPilot]

are you being sarcastic?

anyhow - the reason for this is to give both governments a disadvantage. Commies got an advantage on the corruption issue (assuming big empires) - also, when assuming a big empire, you can also assume lots of production. So i figure they shouldn't be able to rush because they can make any of that up with lots of production cities.

fascists got an advantage on the worker front + the ability to support lots of units. Paid labor would just make this government stronger than it is. Forced labor also seems strong, so to give them a slight disadvantage i changed that to 'none' too. One way to look at it is to say, would a fascist work himself to death over something? hardly - he makes the 'inferior' race work themselves to death for them - to bad they all got killed when the fascist government took over. so no rushing for him

Just my ideas on balancing the game

[Jaybe]

are you being sarcastic?

I'll put it this way: It sounded so interesting that I made up a mod with those changes. I hope it works for me, ...

... along with ALL generic units being available to everyone, e.g., Swordmen available to the Romans, Spears to the Greeks, etc.
I gotta see what the AI does with it. (If I could have my UU be special units, and avoid a despotic golden age ....) -- enough OT rambling.

[planetfall]

so what does facism play like with no rushing?

== PF

[Willem]

Originally posted by steven8r


Also, (and please correct me if I'm wrong here) the manual states that there is a 'xenophobic' result of Fascism. Here's the part where I may need some 'splainin'. I think that what this means is that 'foreign' citizens 'disappear' from cities under Fascism, thus reducing the population even more--especially in recently conquered cities.

No it means that cities won't generate culture unless there's a certain percentage of non-foreigners. I forget what the ratio is now, I think 50%.

[MattPilot]

how does it play like?

Well, of course its a minor annoyance that you can't rush, but to be honest, i rarely rushed before that anyway, cause i didn't want to give up population points. To me, its a good way of putting some checks on the strength of the governments.

Though it does have a very good positive effect. The AI is much stronger after a war, since it retains its population, thus allowing it to produce faster again.

[player1]

I wonder what could happen if instead of disallowing pop-rusing it had greater effect, like 30 shields per pop instead of 20?

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

I must say, I'm rather impressed how well the AI Civs sometimes do in Fascism....to me, that seems to be the Gov that fits the AI best for Industrial+ wartimes.

Of course, this assumes a successful, higher-level AI Civ with its usual empire of 10-15 huge cities; Fascism simply allows them to support insane amounts of Military (even keeping thier Archers doesn't hurt anymore), and still have enough money to do some research. And for any reason, the AI doesn't seem to pop-rush in its core cities.
In my last (Demigod level) game, the Iros had about 30% of the world pop in 12 cities, and honestly, I didn't dare to attack them, since their Military was HUGE; they were even strong against me, with 60% of the pop, just having elimiated the Celts, former top dog...

The strange thing is, since Fascism is around, I usually switch from Monarchy to Democracy for Industrial war - the cash-rushing ability simply is a winning horse here.

[MattPilot]

gotta disagree on the 'pop rushing of core cities'.

The AI reduced its capital to 1 pop after my forces were within the city radius. It also had a larger military than me, at the time, but i effectively cut its empire in half so he couldn't resupply. I suppose the pop-rushing was an attempt to build one more rifleman to save the city. oh well - didn't work

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Sure, but once you are in the city radius, I wouldn't consider this a 'core' city anylonger...the nut is cracked.


Depends on the available defender anyway, guess not even the AI whips a MI (how many pop is it?12?)

[SuperPower]

Well actually I discovered the Feudalism also weakens my opponents, which I find abnormal.