My first experience with monarch

King of Rasslin · July 4, 2002, 02:49

With only a high score of 2900 from playing regent, I set out to defeat an AI with a slight edge above me. I knew I could defeat them with the Chinese. Right. Until this game, I never knew how people could get 6+ leaders in a single game.

But now I know that the AI NEVER wants peace! I never imagined that they would be so warlike! I tried an early war with 1 of the AI to slow him down. It succeeded, but I made enemies with the rest of them. Now, every turn is a war. Fighting 2 or even 3 of them at the same time is normal. I could do it in the middle ages, but it is so difficult to face them in the ancient era outnumbered 3 to 1.

I am behind in the tech race. It isn't even A.D. but feudalism (and pikemen!) are already here. I am fighting 2 other civs, and I have no navy at all. It seems to be a stalemate, but at least I have more elite units than I can imagine. I don't know if I should use my elite horsemen to go for leaders or try to survive until I get riders.

To the people that regularly play monarch or above: does the AI ever pay for its atrocities? The Germans have broken 4 peace treaties, but the other civs don't seem to care. In fact, I have been betrayed more times than I have betrayed. Alliances are short lived, except the ones against me. I only have 2 luxuries, and I am scared to move my workers out so I can trade them.

Ok, how do you kill those guys? It is so disgusting how powerful they are in numbers. I am currently the #1 civ on my continent with a strong military, although much of it is reserved for defence and military police. Should I try to prolong the war to gain a leader for the FP or make peace and take advantage of my vast territory and recover?

beno · July 4, 2002, 05:27

attack unrelentingly. Rush the FP, reach monarchy and get ready for a couple of thousand years worth of war.

beno · July 4, 2002, 05:28

not that I've played on monarch yet :

:

King of Rasslin · July 4, 2002, 10:05

Hehe, I think winning monarch will be very difficult. I would like to see the other civs fight each other as much as I fight them.

I did notice that the AI treats cities with less respect, maybe that is why I am attacked a lot. They don't see it as a big deal. I mean, I got 3 cities from a peace negotiation! It really is important to keep up some border cities for defence...

Anyway, I am playing Double your Pleasure mod for fun now. It will be cool to play that mod in multiplayer with my friends. 8)

unscratchedfoot · July 4, 2002, 10:59

Sounds like you're getting your butt wooped. The few times I've actually played civ, I noticed you can win easily by keeping on good terms with the ai's until one of them threatens you. Tell them to bugger off and when they inevitably declare war on you, you just round up all the ai's who like you to go and waste the bully while you watch the fun. You'll have to pay a bit of coin to make your buddies fight, but it's usually not too much. Its better if a strong ai with a lot of protection pacts declares war on you so you can set up 2 alliances of multiple countries to scrap it out with each other. High body counts result.

By the way if you want to play with your friends (like real people I mean) how do you set up your computers to do it?

SKILORD · July 4, 2002, 11:46

I played monarch once with greece, i managed to keep out of war untuil i was crushed in the middle ages (gave into alot of demands)

King of Rasslin · July 5, 2002, 05:07

I had both Germany and the Aztecs as neighbors. I should have gotten ready for war a lot earlier. Because I was behind in the tech race, I had nothing to barter with to make an alliance. I managed to hold them off until the Iroquios joined in.

I find monarch to be more fun because you are constantly in danger of losing. Unfortunately, too much of the danger is caused by the AI cheating, rather than its strategies.

Metaliturtle · July 7, 2002, 01:23

I just hate when I must resort to never-ending flatulence just to keep myself in a state of mind that can handle situations like those, but I don't think it's cheating that on higher difficulty the AI gets an advantage

King of Rasslin · July 7, 2002, 12:39

The AI gets cheaper buildings and starts out with free units. I would rather have the AI become stronger by becoming smarter, not by getting free stuff.

Metaliturtle · July 7, 2002, 13:05

unfortunately, they have yet to develop a computer that thinks...

King of Rasslin · July 7, 2002, 14:06

But they can do pathfinding. The AI should have to make decisions based on what it knows about its surrondings, not because it has access to the whole world map! And it shouldn't become so powerful by having free units. It should know what to build and when. That's what is unfair.

Metaliturtle · July 7, 2002, 18:09

play on chieftain if you don't want difficulty, otherwise, stop whining or wait for MP

King of Rasslin · July 8, 2002, 06:17

But I do want difficulty! I don't want chieftain because then I would get an unfair advantage. The AI is supposed to get smarter on higher difficulties and I haven't seen a difference.

Metaliturtle · July 8, 2002, 08:40

All AIs are basically the same, the Chieftain AI does things more or less the same as the Diety AI, the difference is they are given extra stuff at the start to provide a challenge. If you want a new AI, my suggestion is you hack into the hard coding of your game and change it. Expect to be at this for a while though, just to eliminate the extra techs took one of my buddies about 8 hours of nonstop hacking, and then the game kept crashing.

King of Rasslin · July 8, 2002, 16:43

I'm not hacking this game. I'm wondering why so little effort was put into the AI. Handing out free bonuses to the AI doesn't make the game much more interesting.

Metaliturtle · July 9, 2002, 00:28

That's more or less how most games are though, The main bonus it has is that you are limited in production levels by the AI, basically, The AI is at 100% production on Regent, so are you, Regent is the level where you are basically competing against the AI only, no advantages either way. If you get easier, your production is like 120% of what the AI is, easier than that it's around 140% get harder and you are 80% and 60%. There's also the matter of happiness, in Chieftain, unhindered, the 6th citizen is unhappy, Warlord, 5th, all the way to on diety it's the 2nd citizen in a city. This is the other major computer advantage, because where you're getting unhappiness on your third citizen, they've got production still, albeit as soon as they reach 4 they get unhappiness.

To even the score I'd suggest Egypt, or the Industrious Science nation, but Egypt would be easier. This way your workers will be at the same as most of the other civs units.

As far as extra computer units go, I've found it usually to be either a warrior or spearman, but that's about it. It still saves them 20 turns of production though, so in that respect it may be unfair, but if you get 2nd and 3rd cities built quickly, you should alleviate that problem.

King of Rasslin · July 10, 2002, 18:15

The early units are used to fight barbarians and scout. They are more powerful than you think.

johncmcleod · July 12, 2002, 13:37

I feel your pain Rasslin-it is really stupid. All games are like that though, and I've gotten used to it. I just hope that in civ4 there will be a difference between all of the AIs. I hate it so much. And if you think it's bad in civ3, it's worse if you play sports games. It's like that in every one. On higher difficulty levels, instead of the computer using better strategies, they just have better players. Like in World Cup 2002, on professionsal and world class difficulty levels your fast forwards get outrun by defenders. And even worse, the computer might cheat. Not to get off the subject but for example in wc98 my brother was playing on a really high difficulty level. The comp goalie made an impossible looking. My bro looked at the replay frame by frame and at one frame the goalie jumped halfway across the goal. In one frame! Anyway, I suggest just playing on regent and go to the Apolyton U thread on the strategy forum. Sorry for being off topic.

Oh forgot to add. I have seen save game editors where you can edit unit placement, city productions, what imrpovements they have, the end date, and your tech advances but is there one where you can edit the treasury, political agreements, and whether there is peace or war between civs? Because if there is, you could make the comps fight each other. I wouldn't think of that as cheating, cause the AI cheats too, even more. I'd think of it as balancing the game.

Another thing you can do w/the save game editor is start the game out on chieftain for like the first couple turns, then edit the difficulty level. That way they might not start out w the free units. The save game editor where you can do that is from the Civ3 Multi Tool

King of Rasslin · July 13, 2002, 22:39

As long as people want better graphics then we will see great graphics. And we certainly won't see good AI because people want graphics and don't care how dumb the computer is.

When you really think about it, even a crude graphic game like Chess still doesn't have a perfect AI. If Chess can't have perfect AI, there is no way Civ 3 can. Playing on regent and limiting yourself (no upgrades, no autosave, etc) might be a good idea. And thanks for the warning about those soccer games, sports games are notorious for being that way.