isn't there a time when you...

Demerzel · August 7, 2002, 12:58

just want to stick your middle finger up at the monitor and tell Civ3 where to go f*ck itself?

For me, it's when I've built up a superior army than my opponent ( who has managed to stick cities all over my continent, normally in the small gaps between my borders - stupid annoying REX AI ). I attack him and the first round goes well, I get in a few kills and capture a fair few workers. Then it all goes wrong, his units start pounding mine and unless the enemy is half dead or a regular unit, my veteran/elite units just keep losing with little damage to the opposition.

Now a turn or so later, his units are managing to hit my few weak points with amazing accuracy ( good ol' cheating AI ), and taking out my best units with ease while my units just fail to beat the opposition unless I throw overwhelming force at him.

ffs, the combat system drives me up the wall at times. i really wish they'd stuck with civ2's system. how much of a bias does the AI get at monarch level or above? I'm having a hard enough time keeping up otherwise with all the build/tech bonuses the AI gets as it is...

I love the game ( I've played Civ since 1993 ) but sometimes I really want to get out a hammer and smash the stupid CD to bits

alexman · August 7, 2002, 13:17

Isn't it great? It makes it all that sweeter when you actually win.

BTW, the AI doesn't get combat bonuses vesrus the human at any level.

Inverse Icarus · August 7, 2002, 13:57

I haven't finished a game in a while, because I'd always end up vastly superior to all my enemies near the end of the Industrial Era.

I'd be slightly ahead / slightly behind fore most of the game, but by the time the modern era comes, it's basically "i know im going to win, i dont want to move 150 tanks this turn again".

::sigh::

Spock · August 7, 2002, 16:48

Quote:

Originally posted by UberKruX
I dont want to move 150 tanks this turn again".

Just 150?? You must have been going easy on them, eh?

Coracle · August 7, 2002, 19:20

Quote:

Originally posted by Demerzel
just want to stick your middle finger up at the monitor and tell Civ3 where to go f*ck itself? . . . I really want to get out a hammer and smash the stupid CD to bits

Yea. I've been saying as much for many months. I never felt that way about Civ 2 which was so much more FUN.

narmox · August 7, 2002, 20:24

aw, someone can't handle a counter-attack.. Poor little baby...

Demerzel · August 7, 2002, 21:36

I can handle a counter-attack narmox, I can't handle when it seems to be taking the piss.

things that annoy me a tad:

when i throw 6 units at a city and all they do is die, doing no damage, and make the opposition vets/elite then a turn or so later, the enemy regular unit kills my superior veteran defender & boom goes city.

the AI all aim for my weakest unit, several squares away, bypassing others closer or similarly knows which is the weakest city.

an elite warrior in woods kills off all 3 of my veteran swordsmen losing a point in damage to the three.

a regular roman legionnare, in grassland, survives my elite cavalry attack with no damage.

when i race to get a wonder ( in this case Great Library to keep up with the tech-blessed AI ) and the bloody AI gets there a few turns before me. so i try reloading 40 or so turns before, change strategy by stripping out the temple in order to get there 10 turns earlier. result? a few turns before the thing is built 15 turns faster than before.... the AI builds it first. argh!

then the AI always demands ridiculous deals with no leeway or just plain refuses to deal with me for no reason. sure I'm going to give you my dyes + 19 gpt for some furs. f*cking idiotic AI.

time to give Civ3 another month or so break I think. I'm sick of playing for an hour or so just to get to a point where I'm forced to pit my superior army against a neighbour just to lose because it's still the middle ages and I have no huge tank rush & get pissed off if I play longer.

i'll just have to give it a break and then peruse the strategy forum for a while to see how to more successfully counteract the AI bonuses on the high skill levels methinks.

ACooper · August 7, 2002, 22:24

wwwwwwwaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!

MarkG · August 7, 2002, 22:30

play on a lower level....

MarkG · August 7, 2002, 22:34

and please leave the cursing out of this forum
if you're frustrated and want to cursem open the window and yell to your neighbours.

dnassman · August 7, 2002, 23:47

Only do that when I lose a superior unit to a weak one. Like spearman would beat Cavarly and above. Or even simple things like Elite Immortal beaten but regular spearman. Huh???? Sometimes wonder if Elite really means nothing more than just extra hit points.

Catt · August 8, 2002, 00:00

Quote:

Originally posted by dnassman
Only do that when I lose a superior unit to a weak one. Like spearman would beat Cavarly and above. Or even simple things like Elite Immortal beaten but regular spearman. Huh???? Sometimes wonder if Elite really means nothing more than just extra hit points.

Stop wondering. It doesn't mean anything more than an extra hitpoint.

Catt

miike · August 8, 2002, 04:39

Actually there is a point here. I will sometimes get my head handed to me. When fighting the computer early on. Unless the one AI opponent is all by himself and I do not have to worry about him trading with other civs.
But I figured out that around the time when I discover democracy and change to it. My tech goes through the roof and the Ai's research slows down. Also, the computer seems less inclined to trade later on in the tech race. Add that to the fact, that I am no longer expanding and just concentrating on building up, I discover tech faster and faster. I always wait until I get tanks before I attack. Until then it is MPP, all the way. Also, the larger the city the larger the bonus to defense the units get. I read that somewhere in the manual. It is a pretty big bonus. Also, it helps to have a massive army. I try for 60-100 tanks and then attack multiple cities at once. I do not worry about culture flipping to much, because my goal is to wipe out the whole civ before they flip. If I can't, then use railroad and one unit for defense, and take them right back after they flip. And never ask for peace. Pretty much the whole strategy is to wait until the end of the game, when you have the obvious tech advantage and can roll over the AI. Interestingly the AI never stops expanding. They will always settle those worthless islands with no resources or luxuries. All the way across the world, with horrible corruption.

Robert Plomp · August 8, 2002, 04:50

You're just not a good civ-player.
I play at emperor level, and I don't experience any of your problems.

And yeah, it's a pitty, but soldiers do get killed in the field.

Zanthis · August 8, 2002, 22:26

It seems to me that sometimes combat gets "stuck" on a losing streak. One unit will lose several rounds of combat in succesion when statisticaly it shouldn't have happened that way. I doubled the hit points for all units (and rate of fire for bombard units) and this seems to have ironed out the quirks. I still occasionaly win or lose battles against the odds, but that is to be expected in a random system. I play on monarch difficulty BTW.

Sleestax · August 8, 2002, 22:39

What I find annoying is war weariness when I am clearly winning.

In my current game (Monarch), my civ's govt is set to Democracy. I was attacked by my neighbor, then I sent out my armies and destroyed 4 of his cities in one round (which I always Raze since captured cities are worthless in this game).

The next two rounds I am moving my troops towards the enemy's next set of cities (4 years to travel a few hundred kilometers?) and suddenly all my cities riot due to war weariness.

So now my tech is set to 0 and I have to keep my luxuries at 70% just so I can continue fighting and take those last 5 cities.

There are some really annoying things about the Civ combat system. Most of us learn to compensate, but that doesn't make the combat system "good".

zorbop · August 8, 2002, 23:17

i also have those problems.
especially the wonder one demerzel talked about. the build the wonder first so you load 25 turns earlier and get it so it should finish first- they get it still.

what bothers me the most is how they start a war over some trivial thing, and you want to play defensivly. even if you don't lose too many units defending, and they lose almost all there army, they still won't agree to a treaty unless I pay tribute.
so i have to take over one of there cities to get them to not make me pay... but before they respond to my diplomates and actually talk to me, they get someone to alley with them. then since im at war for so long all the civs hate me because i have been at war so long!! GARR!
at this point i get pissed off because 10 vet riders can't kill an impi and 2 regular horseman beat my 2 vet pikeman.in response to this i try to limit there supply, specifically there supply of electricity... without saving..
so i go play ssbm for a few hours, come back, and the same thing happens.

ok, i've done my ranting for the week.

vondrack · August 9, 2002, 03:17

Reading through the rants, I realize that although I do feel like that sometimes (losing several vet swordsmen attacking a single spearman and than having the very last swordsman of mine finished off by a regular warrior...

). I even use the electric power cutoff trick, although not often.

But, if you think it over after you vent your steam off... where would the challenge be, if there were no streaks of bad luck? I personally find the AI very good (on Regent), but ultimately unable to win in the long run. There is simply no brain behind the AI... After many games, winning on Regent has become pretty easy for me (just started my first game on Monarch) - and it is mostly "troubles" like these multiple bad dice rolls that still make the game challenging and fun... After all, the game gives me better thrills, if I am winning by a very small edge or even losing a bit... just mechanically moving hundreds of MAs around is pretty boring, isn't it?

Robert Plomp · August 9, 2002, 03:59

Quote:

What I find annoying is war weariness when I am clearly winning.

that's not annoying, that's what civilians do.
Ooooh, those poor afgan people get killed by millions!
STOP THAT!

you know what I mean.

Barchan · August 9, 2002, 04:02

Quote:

Originally posted by UberKruX
I'd be slightly ahead / slightly behind fore most of the game, but by the time the modern era comes, it's basically "i know im going to win, i dont want to move 150 tanks this turn again".
::sigh::

Yeah, but that's pretty much the case in almost any TBS game once you've pulled away from the competition. I can remember playing Empire on the old Commodore 64. By the end of the game, you'd spend like 90% of your time moving what seemed like millions of units to converge on the AI's last remaining city. Eventually, you'd just have ships sleeping at sea and tanks parked willy-nilly everywhere just to not have to deal with them anymore. Oh, and cities would be all be producing battleships just so you wouldn't have to deal with new Infantry units every turn. But the problem was pretty much the same with CivI and II, too.

This is why I was initially sort of excited to see the Domination victory option, but I lost much of my enthusiasm when I saw it dealt with the ownership of real estate and not the relative differences in power. I think Domination should be based on "I can crush you like a bug whenever I please" as opposed to "See how vast my ranch is? I win!!!" The power graph is already built into the game, couldn't a victory condition be built around getting a dominant share (say, 75%) of the entire power graph?

Demerzel · August 9, 2002, 12:13

yeah I admit that challenge is important but I just wanted to express how annoying the game can be at times. argh, does not even remotely express it.

and yes I would not categorise myself as the best Civ player out there but I'd play Civ2 on the highest level and would either win or come a close second. So I expected to do reasonably well at Emperor level on Civ3. Some of the AI cheating I suppose is a necessary evil but it's frustating nonetheless.

As I said before, I'll just have to go back to first principles and rethink my approach. Testing the military attack approach, I even played a new game yesterday and wiped out the Russians, and gained 5 techs, but afterwards was still approximately 6 techs behind the leading AI - which refused to trade any with me.

Will just have to be even more militaristic I guess. I was always such a peaceful builder in the past, guess lots of warring is the way to go on higher levels in Civ3.

I'll just have to have my elite units, that after 6 successful battles fail to produce a great leader, shot

Arrian · August 9, 2002, 12:32

CivIII combat is streaky - lots of luck involved, good and bad. I've had bad runs and have ended up screaming at the monitor. I've had the "Elite Cavalry dies to speamen w/o damage" happen to me. I once lost a Tank to a reg. musketman. Still, keep grinding it out and you will persevere. The AI does not get combat bonuses. It does know where your units/cities are at all times. That can be used to your advantage should you choose to manipulate it.

I am much more careful about combat in CivIII than I was in CivII. If I can wait a turn for the AI units to move from forest to plains, I probably will, and then kill them. If I can bombard, I will, even if it's a galley I want to kill with a destroyer.

I stay away from 1 move units as much as possible. I hate swordsmen, because they cannot retreat if they encounter a mean RNG roll. Horsemen can. That, plus the upgrade path, makes my decision on what to build easy.

I too have benifitted from wacky RNG rolls. I once killed a fortified rifleman (2 hp's left) with a regular swordsman, without any damage. I killed a spearman on a mountain with a horseman w/o damage. I don't make a practice of using inferior units, but sometimes old leftovers can actually be useful.

-Arrian

Catt · August 9, 2002, 14:04

[AI Voice]

It sure would be nice if you humans were a bit more careful about throwing around the word "cheating" when describing my behavior.

On the lose a wonder by one turn complaint:

My first comment, were I a less good-natured compilation of algorithms, would have to do with the human propensity for "reloading 40 or so turns before, change strategy by stripping out the temple in order to get there 10 turns earlier" and/or "load 25 turns earlier and get it so it should finish first- they get it still." I don't have the option of deciding when to replay certain game points.

But seriously, I get the little "Annoying Human is building the Great Library" pop-ups just as you humans do. I often change my production strategy according to game circumstances. When I see someone else start a wonder I covet, I may indeed start that wonder right away (whereas I might not otherwise); I may even switch a current build I have going to take advantage of the accumulated shields; I have even been known to occasionally add a worker to a city in order to get an extra tile worked in those tight wonder races.

And for all this I am relentlessly accused of cheating . . .

[/AI Voice]

King of Rasslin · August 9, 2002, 16:38

Zachriel · August 9, 2002, 16:56

Quote:

Originally posted by Arrian

I once killed a fortified rifleman (2 hp's left) with a regular swordsman, without any damage. I killed a spearman on a mountain with a horseman w/o damage. I don't make a practice of using inferior units, but sometimes old leftovers can actually be useful.

-Arrian

Here is an example of using an "obsolete unit" in combat. In this case, a stack of elite sword attacking bombard damaged enemy units, in pursuit of a Great Leader.

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm9/ad1600-Sword.htm

Theseus · August 9, 2002, 18:40

Heck, I used a Longbowman to take out a 1 hp MI.

Old units can be very useful; let me tell you about how I use old Swordsmen in Armies...

Demerzel · August 10, 2002, 12:19

in my new game, I've successfully taken over my continent from first the egyptians ( nice GL for the GLi too

) then the greeks.

even with democracy my tech research is still sadly behind the opposition but built up plenty of marketplaces and then libraries, etc.. after using the GLi. / 0-10% science rate + trading to get some money in.

Now I'm even winning most wonder races too, apart from the sistene chapel which the damn AI beat me to by 1 turn ( retro argh here ).

Still not going to get tanks first sadly I suspect even with the 2 free tech turns of theory of evolution. Time to deal with the leading AI, of the babylonians, who outnumber me badly by lobbing lots of troops onto a mountain top somewhere. Pity the oil & coal that I lack entirely from my massive continent can be found in abundance on theirs but not anywhere easily securable by my troops.

Anyway, guess my last couple of games prior to this one were just unlucky. I'll take the game off the naughty list for now and back onto probation

Panag · August 10, 2002, 19:17

Quote:

Originally posted by UberKruX
I haven't finished a game in a while, because I'd always end up vastly superior to all my enemies near the end of the Industrial Era.

I'd be slightly ahead / slightly behind fore most of the game, but by the time the modern era comes, it's basically "i know im going to win, i dont want to move 150 tanks this turn again".

::sigh::

hi ,

they should have an option like in C&C firestorm , and many other games , where with the click of the mouse you can select a large group , and order them to go there or destroy that , .....

they should also have an option that "locks" a unit , it should auto. fight any unit , when it has finished with the enemy unit , it should move to the next , ....

stuff like that , .....

have a nice day