General Thoughts

[Atlas]

explorers? yeah by the time they come along i would rather just use a mounted unit, because like the warriors, they are useful for other things. The scout v. warrior exploring is a good debate, and a nice example of how (at least at this point, maybe by Epic 20 a consenus will be reached on this point) there is not a clear & correct path for exploration, i prefer scouts (especially in high shield starts/and some pangea type maps), but they are a gamble, if that sucker gets killed by the first animal it runs across, you wasted some of your first turns!

[LKendter]

1) Copper directly north of Khan's capital, East of Player
--Several games, mine included had the player first settle Orleans here. This forced Khan to move westward to the Dyes and banana position southeast of Paris, almost, but not quite at the Iron south of Paris and southwest of Khan. Settling westward towards there then becomes Khan's next priority, especially when the player is absent from the southern frontier.

I wonder if this is part of the reason I never had problems with Khan. I had researched Bronze Working before settler #2 was ready. The second I saw the copper I knew my target. Destiny is strange in some ways, as the only reason I want to BW so early was due to finding Khan and wanting the units to keep him at bay.

[Smegged]

Moving the settler 2 NE was a good idea. The vast majority of the fastest finishers did the move.

I definately agree that this move made a huge difference on the whole. HOWEVER, I don't believe that based on the initial information given to the player that it was so obviously the best move. I actually think that had the map been somewhat reversed, and the AI all to the west, that it would have been the worst move. I think that settling closer to the copper and the AI was what made the biggest long-term difference. If the situation had have been reversed and the tile that people moved to was two squares north-west then I think the people who settled the initial location would have been in better spots.

Other points that I feel were intesting things to come out of my game in particular (and the Cuban Isolationists game) is that the AI does not calculate pillaging damage correctly. In fact the AI does not place ANY value on protecting it's lands from being pillaged (besides the default resource protection). I must have pillaged 50+ tiles, starved down 3-4 cities and lost 4 units in the process (killing a similar number). That is hundreds of worker turns and a crippling move (particularly if it had have been done earlier - maybe while awaiting catapults).

The final point that I would like to make is how tiny decisions can have game-lasting consequences. Had I moved my archer into position, I'd have saved the city I ended up losing, which essentially crippled my chances for an early finish. A tiny decision, that I even thought briefly about (I saw the archer there, thought about it, and let it go, figuring that my archers would hold). A brain spasm had the effect of delaying the end of my game until 2051! Tiny decisions are EVERYTHING in Civ. I love it .

[Sirian]

Other points that I feel were intesting things to come out of my game in particular (and the Cuban Isolationists game) is that the AI does not calculate pillaging damage correctly. In fact the AI does not place ANY value on protecting it's lands from being pillaged (besides the default resource protection).

Would you rather they be easily baited out in to the open, trapped and slaughtered?

City protection really is more important than some general land improvements.

Everything comes at a cost. YOU can look and make decisions, but the AI can't "see" the board in the same way, so it cannot afford to take as many risks, or they will only become exploitable weaknesses.


- Sirian

[Drasca]

Would you rather they be easily baited out in to the open, trapped and slaughtered?

I was wondering which one would pipe up and say that.

I'll add that I see possibilities in baiting the AI in simultaneous turn multiplayer due to AI attacking small stacks but does not consider Human reinforcements on that tile in the same turn. Not consistent to bait the AI this way, but is possible, which makes for an interesting gamble. I think I'll try it come january.

[Smegged]

Well my particular problem was that the AI who was number 1 in military units, and had a good 15 units sitting in its capital did not come to attack my 3-4 stacks of 2 infantry unless they came within one square of the capital. If they had have devoted even a third of these units to harrassing my pillagers then they would not have lost hundreds of worker-turns to my pillaging.

But this is beside the point. What I consider the real bug is that the AI doesn't place any significance on the amount of land pillaged when it comes to negotiations. The AI takes into account whether you have taken any of its cities, your military power vs their military power, the amount of units that both sides has lost and how threatened their cities are when it negotiates surrender. I think it should also look at how much of its land vs how much of your land has been pillaged in this war in its peace calculations.

-Smegged