Arathorn's partial report/rant

[Arathorn]

Game not finished. Somewhere around 1400 AD. Probably won't be finished. Absolutely no fun to play.

I founded 3 religions, 2 in my capital. Judaism and Hinduism in my capital. Confucianism in my second city. Popped about 15 huts, almost all with scouts. Got one tech (animal husbandry, very early), a bit of gold, a couple maps, and basically a whole lotta nothing, except for some angry yokels.

My second city matched a lot of peoples', in the west a bit, by the lake and ocean. My third was actually a canal city in the southeast, fourth was past the mountain on the tip of land there (whip central), fifth (approximately) was the barb city by the iron. I built a few others, including one about 4 south of the Chinese sheep, to get my land. I also built a few in the east, but those came a fair bit later, once I had an economy to support them. A few river sites are beneficial.

Four wars (typical of my games, every single one involved me in one way or another -- except for Epic 1, AI-AI wars do not occur in my games -- I saw more in Epic 1 than all other games combined). Greece declared on me fairly early. Razed a reach city, which actually helped my economy. Sure, his warriors were fighting uphill against my archers, but I only outnumbered him 2:1, so I should lose, right? During that war, Caesar also declared on me.

Final results of those wars -- Alex razed one city that I didn't really need and paid me for peace. I took one of Caesar's cities and he paid me for peace. Probably 30 total unit battles -- I lost about 3 at >95% odds, and maybe won one or two at those odds.

Much of the world was either Jewish or Hindic. I had both shrines, of course (with Oracle points feeding many of them). Mao was Jewish, and I was worried about him, so I was Jewish most of the time. Not that it helped. I was last in score and about 5 techs down, so of course he decided he wouldn't trade with me anymore. The "We fear you are becoming too advanced!" bullshit routine, so he started dropping in the tech race and relative score, but it helped out his AI comrades. [sarcasm]Yeah, that's good coding. Make one guy (who doesn't even like the others) sacrifice himself for the good of the team. Makes ME want to play more.[/sarcasm] If the AI were human friends, I wouldn't invite them to play again.

Of course, no one would join my first couple wars. I only had a tech to offer and +11 relations. Why would anyone help me? Either redded out or I couldn't offer enough. I had up to +12 with people in this game. Never got a single thing from it the whole game, except the option to pay 150% of the cost for techs (my 2000 beaker tech for the AI's 1600 beaker tech? Only if I kick in a few hundred gold. WHY? It wasn't that they were researching it.)

Third war was Mao against Mansa Musa (MM). I paid Mao to start that, since my techs couldn't buy anything else and he never had any cash. From watching (shrines give line-of-sight), they both did absolutely nothing. No pillaging, maybe 10 units crossed the border total. Total waste of my time. No one else would agree to a fight. They all love each other.

Final war was me against Caesar. I had more land from the landgrab than some of the other reports I've read (only a few so far), but it wasn't nearly enough. I was running 80-90% science and falling behind quite rapidly. I needed more land. I had grenadiers and almost rifles. Caesar had muskets and knights.

My main force of about 15 went down to his first city, not on a hill. Attacking at 80+% odds gave me almost a 1:1 kill ratio. Then his catapults attacked my remaining stack in the city, decimating it (as well they should), so his 3 knights all got kills (again, legitimately, those cats can be nasty). I had reinforcements on the way, of course. When my combat II, anti-mounted, full-strength grenadier (str: 14.4) died attacking a knight (str. 8), I was fed up. I hadn't really had time to play in the first place. The craptastic PRNG, the piss-poor diplomacy, the ability of all the AIs to research in peace, etc. etc. etc. made this one no fun. Hell, it made most Civ4 in general no fun. I hope I can find a few fun games to replace the memory of this one, because this one sucked.

Note, I was only second-to-last in score and not TOO bad in the demographics. I may still have been able to scrounge a win. But it was not any fun. Nor was there any way to play before the submission deadline.

Arathorn

[Jester]

Woah!

Sorry you had such a bad time on this game. I really hope you get better ones, because it would be a shame to lose you from the Civ 4 world entirely.

I've heard the beefs about diplomacy and whatnot, but what's the problem with the PRNG?

-Jester

[Bezhukov]

Wow, sorry to hear the great (and I mean that absolutely sincerely, your CivIII Sid tale was the first ever report I read on Civfanatics and still my favorite 8) ) Arathorn struggling with CivIV. Perhaps playing so much CivIII has made old habits harder to break?

I had the same diplo difficulties in my game (only Mao was a true friend, and he offered little help much of the time), but got a faster start by skipping all the shrine stuff (got one later). Those early resources are precious, especially when every tile produces one less hammer/food than the AI...

[Drasca]

Gah. I understand. They are horrible horrible folk. Even when you pay them to declare war, they aren't effective warmongers.

I think there should be a secondary category for asking to declare war. "Pillage raids" vs "City captures" attempts, each weighed differently in diplomacy. If the AI feels it doesn't have enough military to do a siege, it might be convinced to do a pillage run, if it feels like it is to its advantage to siege (having more military), then a city siege/war of attrition tech bribe to go to war could be done.


I hate certain AI's for allies for your reasons. They never do anything militarily. This is one reason I buddy up with Ghengis, Isabella, and certain others over builder AI's. Their AI's just make for better allies. The rest shall be conquered.

Bad diplomatic AI's make this game unfun.

Btw: I had an incomplete too. I played partially but didn't want to play anymore.

[Sirian]

I'm sorry that you didn't have a good time. I was sure that you would, when I encouraged you to try it, but I guess I was wrong.

I'll admit up front that the diplomacy is not all I wish it could have been. I did not get everything I asked for. I believe there is room for improvement.

Having said that, though, I also certainly don't believe it is as bad as you believe it to be. Complaining about having to incur a trade deficit to make a trade? Honestly, in my mind that's no different that complaints about the AI getting production boosts in their cities or research discounts. The human is so far and away a superior trading entity that the AIs require some handicaps to compete. I'm not grasping why you wouldn't think twice about the one type of handicap but heap scorn on the other. Is it solely because you are used to (and have accepted) the one, but the other is new? Or do you see a qualitiative difference (which I clearly do not) between them?

I did not run in to a lick of problems with "We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced". I'm pretty sure I have posted the report with the greatest amount of tech trading in it. So what's the difference between my game and yours? I'm not sure I know, since I don't know enough details from your game to do more than project. We can try that, though.

In my game, I traded with multiple civs early and made sure not to go to any one well too often. I know that it is akin to fishing, in that you can overfish the waters. It's akin to farming in that the fields have to be rotated to keep them fertile. You are simply not going to cultivate a single tech trading partner and combine with them to outtech everybody else, unless you do it via permanent alliance (which isn't on by default, and wasn't on in this or any other RB Civ4 event to date.) I'm not sure you if overfished the waters of a given AI or not, but it sounds like you might have.

In my game, I don't think I traded at all with Victoria. If I did, it was only once, and early. Vicky was the pacesetter in my game, having Pyramids, Great Library, and other key wonders, the most fertile lands, her own religion and shrine, etc etc. I traded with everybody else in somewhat even measure. I made trades with Saladin and Mansa, even though it ticked off all my friends. As I noted in my report, you can offset "Traded With Worst Enemy" penalties via "Fair And Forthright Trade" bonus. I almost think it is too easy, even now, but I'm the outlier on tech trading opinion, the guy who posted the 15-fer in Civ3 Epic Four and who would put the screws on even tighter. Soren's got the screws on tight enough to improve the game, though, since despite all the trading I did, the game remained competitive. The biggest gain is that the AIs no longer constantly trade everything around, and of course the lid has to be kept on the player not to be able to do so either! To the degree that your complaint centers on the idea that there's not enough trading available -- well, I see it differently. To the degree that you think this has rendered the game unfun, I also see it differently, but I can understand your complaint there. I just believe that it is worthwhile to keep tech trading limited for both AI and human, and have the AI able to compete so much better on Prince, Monarch, Emperor. Letting wily humans pull half the tech tree or more out of their ear is what causes Civ3 to require massive distortions like Deity for the AI to compete at all -- and even then there are limits, since the Sid AI is broken, crushing itself under the maintenance cost of its own massive armies, yet dancing to the tune of the player at the diplomatic table for pennies and a song.

I was trading with Julius almost all the way to the Internet. I had him on Friendly relations, and Friendlies are willing to trade more, when others hit the wall. I got relations boosts from agreeing to join the AIs in wars. Not sure why your AIs never fought, since Alex and Mao were hungry for action in most games, and Caesar was active in a lot of games, too. I agree that the AIs can get locked in to being too peaceful, but that has improved some in the patches. (Should there never be a game when the world is peaceful? That you have to be the instigator?) Once the spark is lit, though, it often continues to burn on its own inertia. (That's no different than in Civ3, btw, where I remember playing many games where peace reigned for the AI in to and through the industrial age. ... Didn't you ever have a game like that?) You can see from most reports that AIs in this game were not broken across the board, since the same AIs that were peaceful in your game were starting up their own action in almost everybody else's games.

I also don't see what the problem is when out of thirty fights, you get four 95% odds battles go the minority way (three against you, one against the AI). You do understand, surely, that 95% is not 100%. It's supposed to happen one in twenty. You had three in thirty. That's double the normal rate, but if you had half the normal rate, would you even notice? Or would you take it for granted? That the AI also had one or two in there is expected also. ... Yes, it's still the Civ3 PRNG in there. Yes, the combat changes in 152 magnify the role of the PRNG for high-Strength wounded units, and no I'm not happy about that either, but that element is still in flux.

Going back to the diplomatic attitude thing again... The AIs don't make demands of one another, and that's not totally equitable. However, it is an opportunity for the player to gain relations boosts the AI cannot get with one another, so it's not strictly a penalty. It's an extra dimension for the human player. What would you do instead? Not have the AI make any demands? The Civ3 AI made ALL KINDS of demands, and would roll a die to see if they would declare war if you refused. Those demands were invariably DEMANDS FOR FREE TECH, but if the player never has techs that the AI doesn't know, they would instead demand a pittance: pennies and a map. It was a no-brainer thing to comply, and that wasn't how it was supposed to be. (Soren never imagined that his Civ3 trading mechanics would let players shut off research and trade for all their tech on the cheap!) Now there are real demands with real consequences, and you don't like it? Your friends, instead of demanding (and threatening) will simply "make requests" and the only cost for refusal is a minor diplomatic hit. Those same demands will lead to wars, as in Civ3, on many occasions, if relations are not good. It's definitely way better than Civ3's version of these mechanics.


I respect your opinions. If it wasn't fun for you, it wasn't fun. "I probably could have eked out a win," you say, "but why bother." Well, that's up to you. I did eke out a win, and I had a good time doing it. I'm glad that most other players seem to have had a better time with it.

I hope Adventure Four works out more to your liking. I wish the diplomacy could be better than it is, but I think it's pretty good -- and indisputably more advanced and more well balanced than Civ3's feckless diplomatic AI.


- Sirian

[Bezhukov]

It pays double dividends to be prepared to comply with the requests of your allies, not only do you avoid the hit, you gain a bonus to relations. This takes some preparation and planning, both in choosing your alliances and havng enough troops on hand should war arise, but that's what makes things fun.

[Arathorn]

[QUOTE=Sirian]I'm sorry that you didn't have a good time. I was sure that you would, when I encouraged you to try it, but I guess I was wrong.[quote]

Well, I certainly don't blame you. I think you had every reason to encourage me to try it.

[quote]I did not run in to a lick of problems with "We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced". I'm pretty sure I have posted the report with the greatest amount of tech trading in it. So what's the difference between my game and yours? I'm not sure I know, since I don't know enough details from your game to do more than project. We can try that, though. ... I'm not sure you if overfished the waters of a given AI or not, but it sounds like you might have.[/quote]

Well, the game obviously thought I did. [plaintive]I'm not sure why, though. [/plaintive] I traded with Alex (except during the war, even after the war, we were quickly trading partners again), Saladin, and Mansa Musa, as well as Mao. I would have traded with Caesar and/or Vicky, too, but I didn't have the option. Caesar wouldn't trade with me after he declared on me. And I never had anything to offer Vicky. I didn't keep exact records of my trades, but I doubt I got more than 5-8 techs total from Mao. Since I run into the "Too Advanced" thing a lot, though, it's obvious there's SOMEthing in my playstyle that causes it.

[quote]I got relations boosts from agreeing to join the AIs in wars. Not sure why your AIs never fought, since Alex and Mao were hungry for action in most games, and Caesar was active in a lot of games, too.[/quote]

I don't either. Again, it's a trend more specific to my games than to, say, Kylearan's, so it's probably something in my playstyle. But I'll be darned if I can put a finger on WHAT it is. If I knew that, I could change it and have at least SOME powderkeg games.

[quote]I agree that the AIs can get locked in to being too peaceful, but that has improved some in the patches. (Should there never be a game when the world is peaceful? That you have to be the instigator?) Once the spark is lit, though, it often continues to burn on its own inertia.[/quote]

There should be some games where the world is peaceful, sure. *Sigh* But why do those always have to be the games I play? And the world's not entirely peaceful -- the AI will declare on me fairly happily. But I've still seen more AI-decided wars against other AI in my Epic 1 game than all my other games combined.

And I tried to light the spark in this game. With the limited diplo available to me (Friendly means nothing to the AI -- declare war or even stop trading with were essentially always red for all the AIs in my game), I started one war. No repercussions after a very short war. They were still friends. (And, BTW, I agree with others that siccing A on B should be more than a -1 to relations with B -- it's not even close to the same scale as trading with an enemy.)

[quote](That's no different than in Civ3, btw, where I remember playing many games where peace reigned for the AI in to and through the industrial age. ... Didn't you ever have a game like that?)[/quote]

Off-topic, but...no, not that I recall. Even when I wasn't directly involved in wars (which didn't happen too often), the AIs would fight each other. That could easily be a sample-size issue, though, as I tended to fight early and often in Civ3.

[quote]You can see from most reports that AIs in this game were not broken across the board, since the same AIs that were peaceful in your game were starting up their own action in almost everybody else's games.[/quote]

Which gets back to my selfish complaint that I don't get it. What the heck am I doing so differently that causes such complacent AIs in my games? It's not fun because I've seen the same thing in my last several solo games -- no river, no AI-AI action, "Too Advanced", etc. I've tried varying my playstyle some, but there's obviously something else I'm not doing. Or am doing. I wish I knew what it was.

[quote]I also don't see what the problem is when out of thirty fights, you get four 95% odds battles go the minority way (three against you, one against the AI). You do understand, surely, that 95% is not 100%.[/quote]

If it were 30 fights at >95% odds, I would agree with your whole paragraph. But it was ~30 TOTAL fights, probably 20 of which were in the 40-85% chance win for me. I won and lost some of those. I don't think I won any against odds in this game (but I could EASILY be mis-remembering that detail), but I certainly have in the past. It was probably 5 or so >95% odd fights...and I lost 3 of them. For all the hype about Civ4 and combat, I find it problematic in many ways. The PRNG was just a specific rant for this game, though, taking an already unpleasant experience and amplifying it.

[quote]I'm glad that most other players seem to have had a better time with it.[/quote]

Me, too. I hope people get LOTS of fun out of Civ4.

And my comment about possibly winning was meant to assuage concerns that it was losing that was causing the lack-of-fun. Now, I dislike losing as much as (OK, more than) your average player, but that's not why I didn't like Adventure 2. That was what I was trying to say.

[quote]I hope Adventure Four works out more to your liking.[/quote]

Me, too. Heck, at this point, I'm hoping for any particular game of Civ4 to be really fun to play again.

Arathorn

[Arathorn]

The human is so far and away a superior trading entity that the AIs require some handicaps to compete. I'm not grasping why you wouldn't think twice about the one type of handicap but heap scorn on the other. Is it solely because you are used to (and have accepted) the one, but the other is new? Or do you see a qualitiative difference (which I clearly do not) between them?

The human is so far and away a superior tactical fighting entity that the AIs require some handicap to compete. Why not give all AI units a 50% strength bonus? Claim it helps them be more competitive. It follows the same logic train. And doing so would make all levels more challenging. The hype about a more challenging AI would be even more true. But a better AI would still not exist.

Besides, paying a premium happens and almost always has. I'm just not sure why it's a 2:1 premium. It's also yet another way in which the program is designed to have the AIs unite against the human. One cost for the AIs, another for the human. Almost none of the rules apply to both factions equally. That's the primary source of my frustration.

I did not run in to a lick of problems with "We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced". I'm pretty sure I have posted the report with the greatest amount of tech trading in it. So what's the difference between my game and yours? I'm not sure I know, since I don't know enough details from your game to do more than project. We can try that, though. ... I'm not sure you if overfished the waters of a given AI or not, but it sounds like you might have.

In the larger picture, though (beyond my game), the whole "Too Advanced" thing is a really bad design decision, IMO. It discourages friendships. Putting a cap on how many trades you can do with one partner is bad. It's bad for the AI to stop trading (lowers its chances of winning). It's bad for the human, who expects making trades to bring a friendship closer, not to ruin it. It's symptomatic of the whole mindset of trying to close loopholes instead of making a great game.

Single-player games generally get a LOT of mileage out of diplomacy. Adding a counterintuitive, self-destructive (but good for the AI "team") mechanism to the mix is poor. (That is, the specific AI which stops trading with the human has a lowered chance of winning, but ALL the other AIs have their chances increased, thereby helping the AI "team" win.) There are countless ways to get similar effects without the finality of "Too Advanced". A forced number of turns between tech trades with any specific partner (applied equally to ALL factions, not just the human), potentially even increasing with time (though decreasing would make more sense, logically, and encourages closer relations from a gameplay perspective, too), would be one way. The inability to trade a tech the turn it is acquired could be expanded to more turns, too, without requiring such counterintuitive and poor play from an AI partner/opponent.

The biggest gain is that the AIs no longer constantly trade everything around, and of course the lid has to be kept on the player not to be able to do so either!

If the AI ever disliked each other enough to trigger the "We don't like you enough", that would help (though that should, IMO, be a sliding cost scale. We don't like you, but for 4X the cost, we'll sell.). The not trading wonder techs while being built or monopoly techs is OK. Those are semi-valid first order approximations and reasonably understandable. At least, there's some logical rationale behind it and it applies equally to all participants. Slowing trading can be accomplished many ways, though, and I think that "screwing the human" is the poorest way of accomplishing that, but it's what I see implemented.

I just believe that it is worthwhile to keep tech trading limited for both AI and human, and have the AI able to compete so much better on Prince, Monarch, Emperor.

There are two statements there. I can definitely see your point on the first (limiting tech trading for both). I'm not saying I agree or disagree, but I certainly can understand and appreciate your perspective on that one.

The second, though, is a slippery slope. If you want the AI to compete better at various levels, just give it all kinds of hidden bonuses, like cheaper upgrades for units (oh, wait, that's already done -- again, very different rulesets for the various "players"). Give the AI combat bonuses. Just turn off tech trading all-together. Anything can be justified if the goal is "have the AI compete so much better". Force every game to be AW against the human only. That'd make the AIs much more competitive. But I think you would agree it would make for a much worse game overall. I tend to think that compensating for human ingenuity by using different rulesets is a bad way to go. And that's the path Civ4 has gone in.

Going back to the diplomatic attitude thing again... The AIs don't make demands of one another, and that's not totally equitable. However, it is an opportunity for the player to gain relations boosts the AI cannot get with one another, so it's not strictly a penalty. It's an extra dimension for the human player. What would you do instead? Not have the AI make any demands?

Make it equitable. Have the AIs make demands of each other (with accompanying diplomatic effects, to get them out of the +1 to +6 land they seem to always live -- now they can have the chance to gain that +1, too -- for the low-low price of a 1500-beaker tech ) using the same logic. Or don't make demands of the human. Any action that is specifically targeted at the human player should be eliminated.

The Civ3 AI made ALL KINDS of demands, and would roll a die to see if they would declare war if you refused.

Civ4 != Civ3 and comparing them does a disservice to both. Being the anti-anything is NOT a good way to define something.

Now there are real demands with real consequences, and you don't like it?

I don't like them because they're not equitable. There's no demand/request counter to get a -1 diplo hit and GET something in return. There are no demands between AIs. Demands/requests are fine, in concept, but only if they're fair. The current system is not fair, in my opinion.

I wish the diplomacy could be better than it is, but I think it's pretty good

One can always wish for better. I, too, wish it was better.

-- and indisputably more advanced and more well balanced than Civ3's feckless diplomatic AI.

I dispute that. In some ways, Civ4's is much better, yes. The relations and effects and unwillingness to declare on a good friend in many instances and additional options are all definite improvements. The one huge advantage the Civ3 diplomatic AI had is that it was fair and impartial. If two people were at war, it would join whoever asked first, for the right price. Now, the price was too low and that's not smart. But, the Civ3 diplomatic AI didn't have one set of routines for dealing with the human and another for dealing with another AI (at least, not nearly to the extent Civ4's does). That's a huge advantage for the Civ3 model.

Arathorn

[Bezhukov]

"Which gets back to my selfish complaint that I don't get it. What the heck am I doing so differently that causes such complacent AIs in my games?"

You may not want to hear this, Arathorn, and this may be a sample size issue, but I think you're falling behind on your openings (that workboat you never built on the Civfanatic game comes to mind). If you're working your diplomatic magic a couple hundred years later than others, the extra AI units burning a hole in their pockets could change their behavior...

[Majromax]

I don't like them because they're not equitable. There's no demand/request counter to get a -1 diplo hit and GET something in return. There are no demands between AIs. Demands/requests are fine, in concept, but only if they're fair. The current system is not fair, in my opinion.

I might be misunderstanding you, but there certainly is a demand/request system in for the human player. I've demanded things of AIs before, and occasionally they've caved in. The -1 hit for a tribute demand is "You made an arrogant demand!"

Generally speaking, the AIs will only cave in if they know they'll lose a war against you.