Epic 24 - Micromerica

[Swiss Pauli]

Great game, Olodune, and an excellent report

[Swiss Pauli]

I'm starting to agree with Blake's assessment that the Civ 4 BTS AI is too passive. Looks like nobody at all had any wars from Hammurabi or Sitting Bull, and timmy even had no wars at all until the future age.

In my game, SB went after Saladin, and after an inconclusive Renaissance war, he went nuclear on the then-backward Arab. Sal had placed most of his cities at a convenient 4-tile distance apart for a tactical nuke campaign. Once they get up a head of military steam, they can become pretty enthusiastic warmongers, but they do seem to struggle to make that first campaign, with certain exceptions (Alex, Ragnar). Hammurabi is very passive for an AGG AI, though.

(Realising I'd be next for SB, I put the game 'on-the-shelf' as I doubted I could be bothered with a huge nuclear war, and a hard-drive failure zapped the saves, so that was that.)

[Olodune]

I'm starting to agree with Blake's assessment that the Civ 4 BTS AI is too passive. Looks like nobody at all had any wars from Hammurabi or Sitting Bull, and timmy even had no wars at all until the future age.

I think the "peaceful home continent" syndrome was largely due to the mix of AI leaders. In my game it was fairly easy to get all three to "Pleased" by staying in NSR + a few favourable tech trades. Choosing a different religion than Saladin should lead to more warfare (as it did in your game). Nearly all games had significantly more warring on the second continent. Also, I suspect we would see more AI declarations against the player if the difficulty was set to Emperor+. I guess I'm still on the fence (even after all this time) about whether the AI is too passive on average.

Edit: In fact none of Sitting Bull/Saladin/Hammurabi will declare at "pleased".

[T-hawk]

Good point. During the playtest, I looked up that Hammi and Bull wouldn't declare at pleased, but I thought Saladin would so must have misread him. Also, Saladin and Hammi founded opposite religions, which I figured would lead to war from one or the other, which happened in most cases but not every time.

Yes, I think you're right that it does depend on the AIs. How many times have I complained about Montezuma ruining an otherwise great scenario? I probably should have looked for a map with more volatile neighbors, or at least one with 4 neighbors. But this one had everything else I wanted - loads of expansion room, multiple neighbors (compare both of those to England's cramped start), religious conflicts, and slightly barren territory to raise the difficulty a smidge. And everyone except Timmy did find a Blood Enemy eventually.

More generally, maybe never-declare-at-Pleased is the real AI hole. There's a balance to be struck between believable and relatable nation leaders, versus the AIs being active agents competing to win the game. I don't know how to balance that, though, especially to such diverse groups of players looking for different things out of a game.

[Olodune]

More generally, maybe never-declare-at-Pleased is the real AI hole. There's a balance to be struck between believable and relatable nation leaders, versus the AIs being active agents competing to win the game.

I agree with this. The strategic difference between "a very small chance for a DoW" and "complete militaristic immunity" is very large. Perhaps a global diplomatic penalty for declaring against an ally would help when combined with fewer Civs that don't declare at "Pleased". Backstabbers beware!