Effects of 1.21f changes?

[Harovan]

Joan undergoes some sort of transformation in the Modern Age. She stops being peacefull and begins to start wars. Not a good choice for an MPP if you don't want a late war. I suspect the picture of her for the Modern Age influenced her behaviour.

It didn't really bother me. I had chosen Joan as ally not only for her low aggressivity, but mainly because she shared a continent with only Russia. I had a continent alone. So I knew, if there would be a war, it probably would be with Russia, who were puny and backwards and barely got out of the medieval age while I was researching Fission.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Ethelred
Joan undergoes some sort of transformation in the Modern Age. She stops being peacefull and begins to start wars.

I'd noticed that too - but are AI personalities hard-coded? Joan's Aggression slider is on 'Less' in the editor, so what else is there?

IF Civ=France and Era=Modern THEN AttackSomeone = TRUE

I hadn't noticed Ghandi exhibiting this sort of behaviour. Maybe Joan has a ceremonial mustketeer with an eye on a late Golden Age.

[Arrian]

Theseus,

Umm... I don't wait for Chivalry to warmonger, where did you get that idea? My "serious" warmongering is done with horsemen, and I sometimes never actually use my Samurai. I was just saying Samurai are nice units. The extra defense means that they have the advantage over Knights on both offense and defense.

My warmonger strat is built around a chariot -> horseman upgrade, with a dash of warrior -> swordsmen upgrades, a sprinkling of spearmen and then a full-out attack on my neighbor of choice. Then I move on to the next, and the next. I can't always gain control of the whole continent with horsemen - eventually I have to stop and do some building - but that's the ideal.

Last night I got an odd start (geographically speaking) in which I was on a laarge continent with 4 other civs. The geography slowed my attack down, and I had to settle for destroying India and China, while allowing America and Aztecland to live. I only got one leader, and it was early, so I rushed the Pyramids, hoping I'd get another to rush the forbidden. No such luck. I eventually did get another leader, but that was in a brief spat with the Aztecs, and he rushed Bach. So I had to actually build my forbidden. I must say, though, that a 100% corrupt city, with a courthouse. jumped to 3 or 4 shields once I got it into WLTKD. I actually got more out of it for a while, due to a golden age. It's noticeably different than 1.17. Still, my forbidden palace is only nearing completion (8 turns, I think) in 1090AD, when I quit and went to bed. Man, what a difference an extra leader, or lack thereof makes! Ah, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune!

-Arrian

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by Dom Pedro II
Well, I think the Restart Players feature will make the game certainly more enjoyable for me personally. I always found the end of the game rather lonely when more than half of the old faces were cleared off the map. The plus side is now I can keep those old faces around as little one or two-city vassal states that will never threaten me ever. Plus, in the Diplomatic Victory game, you can make all those mini-civs your buddies and use their votes to sway victory in your direction... I mean, how can you lose? If you give them Gunpowder while you're building the Space Ship, who cares really? But THEY will love you for it!

Will the civ remember how they were treated? Will gunpowder be enough to convince them to vote the "right" way? This could make the UN even more valuable to build to prevent a vote. I rarely want to risk a vote unless I'm engaged in a war involving MPPs and I'm allied w/ the majority. I've been burned. Do not want to blow a game I've been playing for weeks.

[Shaka II]

I tried the Japanese last weekend with V1.21 (game adjourned, Emperor, standard size, 8 civs, Pangea average density). First time I have gone past the Ancient era with them. I got off to a pretty slow start, very few luxuries and alot of jungle slowed me down. No decent goodies either.

Is it correct that cultural grouping is always on? I never really understood exactly how it works. Anyway, I defeated the Zulu first and then the Egyptians to gain a sizable territory, but still smaller than the Persians or Indians. Even after conquering 2 civs my luxuries were pitifully few. They haven't modified these have they?

I did get a few leaders, one to build FP and one to build Wall Street.

I did notice that Egyptians were a bit stingy in peace negotiations, given that they only had two cities left. Good thing (for them) they were on a far away island.

Well as I was rebuilding/upgrading my forces and catching up on building in a peaceful Industrial era, the neighboring Persians attacked, parking 190 units in 1 turn around my border cities (100 veteran infantry, 60 vet rifleman, 30 cavalry, and maybe an immortal and a couple longbowmen). Wow! I had to concede at that point. I went back a turn and made an MPP with them for 30 gold (small price for survival). Next time I will know better than to let myself get caught like that.

I have seen big AI military stacks before, but this is about twice what I have previously seen.

So, the game is viable again as Persia is nicely situated between India and me, so that if war breaks out (and it will), it won't be on my front, and I can only hope that Persia will lose most of those infantry. Hoping that when India is about done, I might be in a position to take on Persia directly.

Those Samarai are pretty nice, and the later Golden Age works well, I just had to play catch up most of this game.

I still like the Zulu and Iroquois better, although I will give the Japanese a few more tries after this game.

[Arrian]

Shaka,

Sounds like a tough start, compounded by Emperor difficulty. Give it another shot with a better start. Also bear in mind that my love of the Japanese is based on games at Monarch level. It may be that Emperor really does favor a powerful ancient UU.

Cultural grouping is an option at startup now. I play with it on.

-Arrian

[Vetinari]

The biggest strategic change for me has been the improved blitz ability. Not since tanks can blitz all the time, but since armies of mounteds can blitz. China is really awesome now. An army of Riders gets 3 attacks, IN THE EARLY MEDIEVAL ERA!!! An army of three riders easily takes a city defended by two spearmen or a pikeman and a spearman in one turn. My rider armies was even valuable in the late industrial era when used together with art +inf. Just shell the defenders down to 1 hp with artillery, and kill all the defenders with the same army. This also makes it worthwhile to have a city constantly producing armies with the military academy.

[Txurce]

Shaka, if the AI is building armies that have to be taken seriously... and springing them on you all at once... then we'll have to devote a few shields to defense, hmm? That'll slow the human research rate down! (By the way, my understanding is that cultural groupings is always on in v. 1.21.)

Vetinari, what do you mean by "blitz"? That a fast unit or army can attack more than once in one turn? How did this change?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Txurce
Vetinari, what do you mean by "blitz"? That a fast unit or army can attack more than once in one turn? How did this change?

Until v1.17f, if a unit couldn't move forward after a successful attack (because of a second defender on the same tile), this was counted as an additional movement point. Therefore, e.g. a knight army was almost never able to attack twice in a turn. IIRC, korn469 pointed this out to Soren Johnson, who declared that it was not a feature but a bug. In v1.21f fast units work as intended, and the blitz ability is really worthwile.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Txurce
(By the way, my understanding is that cultural groupings is always on in v. 1.21.)

No. The setting was moved out of the preferences where it didn't belong and put in the new game setup. Its with the victory conditions along with the choice of keeping or not keeping the random number seed in saved games. Now there are eight items instead of six in that box.

[planetfall]

This option just removes the city.
aeson - sorry no settlers if above 2 pop

arrian - not a way to create workers

dominae - city size does not matter, just conquered metros can be abandoned

fitz - no preceived dip hit, but they are already either annoyed or furious by the time I am abandoning their cities.

What I use for:
1-- moving a city over 1 tile
2-- seeing what is inside a freshly conquered city. No more inherited draft weariness. I went thru one era with inherited draft weariness with 1.17, just to see if it ever ended. Nope. Now rather than raze, I accept city. Check list of improvements and decide if really want to keep a few turns. If too much draft weariness, abandon and resettle. Now here is an interesting question: if rather than razing, I accept new cities and then abandon does this mean A) less of a reputation hit, and B) less decreasing AI ww because I am bad and raze all their cities? Huh?
3-- opening a planned geography hole which the AI can't avoid settling and moving into. Welcome to a neat maze, said the spider to the fly.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by Txurce
Shaka, if the AI is building armies that have to be taken seriously... and springing them on you all at once... then we'll have to devote a few shields to defense, hmm? That'll slow the human research rate down! (By the way, my understanding is that cultural groupings is always on in v. 1.21.)

I certainly agree, but I was busy fighting a war on another front, so I was getting pretty thin and I had not advanced as much as Persians, who had the benefit of 1,000 years of peace, etc.

Like Arrian says, I got off to a bad start, but I will try a few more games. Also, (as Arrian suggests) it may be that the ancient UU civs have benefits at higher levels. Never played Deity though.

Thanks Ethelred for clearing up the cultural grouping setting.

[Theseus]

Arrian,

Sorry, I somehow got it into my head that you were building a large reserve of WCs, and then upgrading directly to Samurai... I didn't understand the avoidance of Horseback Riding, I guess. I now mostly concur with your strategy.

BUT, being as bloodthirsty as I am, how about this:

1. I would still build more Warriors, for exploration at first.

2. Then, when your Horsemen have first extorted funds, I would upgrade those to Swordsmen... first as stronger defense (don't bother with Spearmen yet), and second for the next oscillation where the relative strength of a 3 attack is required. Extortion again.

3. When you upgrade to Samurai, leave your cities very strongly protected with vet defenders, and vet / elite Swordsmen.

Lastly, I find it UNFORGIVABLE not to wage wars of aggression with the Samurai!!!!!!!!!!!! Relative strength for forward projection is too great to ignore! I know you want to build at this point... fine, go ahead. But don;t leave these guys just sitting around... it leads to boredom, drug use, abuse of the local women, bar fights, etc. Neigboring AI civs laughing at you, calling them pretty-boy sissies... it's embarassing. Please give'em a chance to demonstrate their warrior spirit.

[Theseus]

What I find interesting about Shaka's confrontation with Persia is the two, MAJOR changes in the AI's attack strategy.

Soren hinted at this a lot in the last chat and in some other threads.

First, obviously concentration of force. Actually, let me take that back: more like massing of force. I would be interested, Shaka, as to the approach of the attack, i.e., big stacks? encirclement? points of concentration? Any differentiation between the move capabilities of fast-movers versus ground-pounders?

Second, notice the preponderance of vet infantry... clearly, this is in the industrial age but prior to Tanks, so the AI picks Infantry, which had previously been weighted toward defense, as the primary offensive unit.

Smart, very smart. Hell, I haven't even done that yet.

I do wonder why the Riflemen hadn't been upgraded... not enough money, I guess.

[Txurce]

Theseus, it would be terrific if the AI were indeed using the infantry as an offensive force. Shaka never actually got attacked by them, however, and I wonder if the 1.21 AI has shaken off the coding that seems to prevent any defensive unit from attacking, no matter how much stronger its offensive rating is compared to rthe enemy? In my games, it seems that the standard defensive unit - from spearmen through mech infantry - only attack red-injured units, no matter how much stronger. A coding change in this alone would make a huge difference.

[player1]

Originally posted by Txurce
Theseus, it would be terrific if the AI were indeed using the infantry as an offensive force. Shaka never actually got attacked by them, however, and I wonder if the 1.21 AI has shaken off the coding that seems to prevent any defensive unit from attacking, no matter how much stronger its offensive rating is compared to rthe enemy? In my games, it seems that the standard defensive unit - from spearmen through mech infantry - only attack red-injured units, no matter how much stronger. A coding change in this alone would make a huge difference.

I was attacked by infantry.
And it lost badly.

[chiefpaco]

I can definitely confirm the far greater massing of force. I've never seen such great stacks of infantry & riflemen. They were so intimidating! However, 3 stacks of 30 or more passed my border cities defended by 5 riflemen & instead attack a 1-riflemen-defended city 12 squares deep into my territory (taking 15 turns to cross my lands). Then, they defended it with 1 damaged rifleman & started on a quest for another 1-rifleman defended city 6 squares away (my capital). I was able to easily retake my city & demand peace. I sort of wished they would have attacked border cities & not trekked so far. Infantry are so slow.

Another problem. I see all these units with both "offensive/defensive" flags (rifleman & infantry), but very very few of units with just the offensive flag (cavalry). That stack would have been far more dangerous with cavalry.

[Theseus]

Yeah, my guess is the military AI still needs tweaking on what to attack and what to avoid. Us humans see a big stack, or a strongly defended city, and plan accordingly. The AI just avoids it.

But still, I can tell there's an improvement in the use and massing of units.

[Harovan]

In the game I had described above, my ally France attacked Russia with HUGE stacks of infantries (overall about 60 I think), with about 20% old units mixed in. I was faster with my tanks though, leaving my ally the honour to fight the counterattacking longbowmen, while I was capturing the cities.

So I can second the information, yes the AI attacks with infantries.

[Aeson]

I finally installed 1.21f and there are a couple changes that I noticed immediately (not mentioned in the readme). 1 is that Scouts can no longer stay in AI territory indefinitely, usually a demand comes in ~10 turns. With a ROP this can be circumvented still of course.

The other, already talked about, is the AI's willingness to part with cities in peace negotiations. I couldn't get cities at all for renegotiating peace, and had a very hard time getting any cities at all even after war. I think there has been a change in how the AI views the ratio of power, and breaking a peace treaty causes them to value future peace treaties even less.

Both of these are very good changes.

[Cort Haus]

Not only do they leave the cities they take barely defended, but (before Battlefield Medicine) the Infantry Stacks can be split up with Artillery barrages - the damaged ones turn round to limp home.

[Harovan]

As far as I can see, the willingness of the AI to part with cities on peace negotiations after war has not changed. In my test games as well as in the CF tournament game I got cities at ease. China once even parted with 2 of their remaining 3 cities, just to survive with their capital for 20 turns. With the AI being not willing to tolerate scouts indefinitely you are right, I noticed the same in the tournament game. But it's more than 10 turns, I think about 20. If you send your scout immediately back, their attitude towards you gets worse. I got England furious this way without a single war, extortion or otherwise break of treaty.

[Aeson]

There may be a valuation on a peace treaty that's affecting how many cities I can get. The first time I made peace with the Germans I got 2 cities, and immediately broke the peace treaty. After that I wasn't able to get any cities at all for peace after war.

[macaday]

A few people have mentioned holding onto a city to abandon it later (rather than razing) in order to heal your units, or to wait for your settler to move up, etc... If you're not going to keep the city but just want to hold it for a few turns, I suppose it would be a good idea to sell off some of the remaining improvements before your abandon the town.

--mac

[Herr David]

Now that you mention the 50+ infantry stacks... that explains a lot to me. I'm playing a game in the modern era and I just nuked the French into oblivion... Joan had this island all to herself, railroad built all over it, and form looking at the mil adv screen I could see she actually had over 150 Infantry units!!! And this with only a dozen cities... I think moving these units around made the AI turns so slow, the turn before I nuked Joan, it took the AI over three minutes to calculate her turn, and this on a Duron 800MHz with 256MB RAM. Now that my nukes have reduced her army to just 50 damaged Infantry units and I'm invading her territory, her turns take maybe ten seconds. Go figure. I've never seen those huge stacks before 1.21...

(There should be a routine that tells the AI when to park his units in one place and not move them around for no reason...)

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Has anyone been able to extort a city on peace renegotiation on 1.21f? I failed so far even with the weakest civs and extorting grassland cities (no resources). Methinks Soren has tweaked his AI in that matter. Oh well, it was imbalancing anyway...

i got some lesser cities occassionally

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by player1


I was attacked by infantry.
And it lost badly.

but boy, do they pillage!

[Spaced Cowboy]

So am I still to understand that the AIs stategy in the late game is flawed. They still do not know how to build and use artillery, or attack strongpoints to crush the defense.

R:PM

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by RPMisCOOL
So am I still to understand that the AIs stategy in the late game is flawed. They still do not know how to build and use artillery, or attack strongpoints to crush the defense.

Of Course, it is Flawed! But according to reports of many who have played other games, it beats their AI hands down.

Of course, on occasion, OUR strategies are flawed!

[Strollen]

It is true the AI still is pretty clueless about artillery and builds very few and never uses them in a mass attack. Also I think they could use Cav a bit more.

Never the less the 20+ stacks of Infantry marching through your terrority provide a plenty of excitement. It is reasonably remarkable to watch and AI opponent spend a couple of turns gathering assembling his forces (may have been one turn, except for I never trade him coal despite the Zulus being willing to pay a bunch for it so he didn't have railroads). Than suddenly several large armies converge on a single city and other forces pillage. It took me a long time to whittle down his army with a mass artillery attack and to use my handful of tank (no Oil to build more).

All in all a pretty logical war I needed his oil and he need my coal.