(July 12th, 2024, 15:16)haphazard1 Wrote: Well, another very entertaining game this week. I was way off on my predictions as usual, but got some of the broad flow of the game correct at least. Alternate histories for this one are going to be interesting.
A question: anyone know what was going on with Asoka's cities at the end? I have seen the AI do some weird stuff with its population, like assigning a zillion specialists and starving, but this was very odd.
I think this was my favorite game of the season so far! Though not so much so as if nobody had died.
Every game this season has had me thinking that I was really interested in seeing what the AHs would reveal about it. I'd probably run them all if I could! Maybe I'm just too addicted to the AHs. But I do think that this set could prove particularly entertaining to do; I get the feeling that this is a fairly open game with a lot of possible results.
As for Asoka's cities, I've seen similar patterns before when AIs go for all the Industrial techs that allow them to produce rampant unhealthiness, and ignore the ones that grant food/health. They can really starve those good sometimes and undercut themselves, although in this case Asoka was far enough behind that I don't think it really mattered. I specifically remember one run where Hannibal lost a potential top two spot because over half of his cities were unhealthy at Size 1 and his production couldn't keep up when he got into a war.
ETA: Next week's Random.org pick: Gandhi to win a T321 spaceship victory. Roosevelt in second with Ragnar dying first, 20 wars. Fairly reasonable, all things considered.
Thanks, Eauxps. Yeah, the AIs often handle the industrial revolution very poorly. I had not been watching where Asoka was on the tech tree, so I had not considered that.
There was a LOT of stupidity by various AIs during the game, in all the usual areas: city placement, tech choices, bad war decisions, etc. But that is part of what makes these games fun to watch. I do find myself wondering how I ever lose to these idiots in SP games, though.
pindicator, I am pretty sure that is a form of selection bias. We remember the times when picks go against us. But I have to agree that is sure does FEEL like it at times.
Something was SERIOUSLY messed up with Jaoa. His core cities didn't build ANYTHING for much of the early game.
It wasn't just one city it was all of them, his power line was flat and he did nothing, and also if you scroll through the replay you can pretty clearly see it. That's why sullla got that question about editing that part of the map.
It was certainly odd, but I don't even know what kind of WorldBuilder file or map edits would make the AI do that. In my modding experience, Civ4 is pretty robust when it comes to the AI playing the game at a basic level.
i am pretty confident that stalin's fraudulence of late is due mostly to the removal of the deity starting techs.... pretty much nobody is more "never research mysticism"-brained than mr 0 religious tech preferences. i think the year this change was made coincides with when his play started dropping off a cliff as well generally i'm not so sure i'm a fan of that change; it seems like lately too many games have been decided by who rolls an attack against the guy who bungled the opening, which feels somewhat gamey and unsatisfying to me. but maybe i'm just a diehard stalin partisan since the first game of his championship run was the first game i watched live
that said.... ignoring mysticism doesn't explain THIS game, and i'm not sure anything can is it me, or is this behavior where the AI makes 2 settlers and just leaves them in a border city forever a new thing? or has it always been happening and we are only now starting to notice and discuss it more?
(July 20th, 2024, 12:15)ljubljana Wrote: game 6 spoilers:
is this behavior where the AI makes 2 settlers and just leaves them in a border city forever a new thing? or has it always been happening and we are only now starting to notice and discuss it more?
I was wondering about that myself. Stalin had available land those settlers could have gone to grab, some of it with good resources like the gold spot. One possible answer is that he did not feel his economy could support more cities at that point. He was paying for a sizable army, and had just captured a couple of French cities -- maybe his economy was over-stretched?
As a Team Stalin supporter, it was frustrating. Stalin managed to take two French cities in his poorly-chosen war and then peace out; if he had just used those two settlers and taken the two barb cities, he would have been in a very strong position with a ton of land. Instead Victoria got the barb cities and ended up taking most of the southern tundra for almost a whole second empire's worth of land. Sure it was not very good land, but deity AIs get enough cost discounts to make it worth having and there were multiple resources down there including happiness.
Why Stalin attacked Napoleon in the first place is a mystery to me. He doesn't usualy care that much about religion, they did not have much border pressure, peace weight was not a big factor. Why not someone else? Or just use his military on the barb cities? I have to agree with Sulla that the alternate histories will be VERY interesting to see.
But I do think that this set could prove particularly entertaining to do; I get the feeling that this is a fairly open game with a lot of possible results.
generally i'm not so sure i'm a fan of that change; it seems like lately too many games have been decided by who rolls an attack against the guy who bungled the opening, which feels somewhat gamey and unsatisfying to me. but maybe i'm just a diehard stalin partisan since the first game of his championship run was the first game i watched live 