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Had a fun single player Civ4 game

I've been trying some mild variant gameplay of Civ4 because I refuse to give it up and need some new experiences with the game. One game I had recently perfectly fit the bill, dramatically changing the way I play and increasing the difficulty. It was just a simple 4 FFA, however each side was a team of 3. So I was teamed up with 2 AIs. This made the game significantly more interesting than I expected for a variety of reasons, and I was in serious danger of losing the game a few times!

1) My contribution to the team is a smaller percentage increase in power than if I were on my own. What I mean is if I were fighting individual AIs, every little bit I get ahead puts me ahead of ALL the civilizations. If I conquer an AI, I may be 100% larger than all the other AIs on their own. On a team, if I grab some extra land by quick expanding or conquering, it may only put our team up 12% over another team. And if one of my allies is failing, we might not be at an advantage at all.

2) The enemy AIs compliment each other. If you draw Ghandi and Monty as an enemy team, Ghandi will provide the economy while Monty provides the military. Likewise you can get some crazy mixes, like if Monty, Alex, and Boudica are all teamed up, well watch out in the early part of the game.  scared

3) Similar to point 1, my better econ is sort of averaged down and all the teams stay pretty competitive tech-wise. In fact in the game I played, 1 enemy team actually out-teched me on Prince.  eek

4) You have limited ways to communicate with your AI allies. For example if you're teamed up with Ghandi and you decide to declare war, he'll need time being at war to finally build a military and meanwhile you're fighting an enemy team alone.



I didn't realize this game would be so much fun so I didn't take any screenshots, and this may even be old hat to most of you, but if not I'll lay out the basics of it below. This is a long report with no pictures, so I won't be offended if no one reads this, but it might inspire your own single-player scenarios and give some new life to an old game

Prince difficulty, Team battleground map in the shape of the X, where each team is on one end of the X, water is in between, and a ~3 tile wide landbridge connects all the middle. Domination and conquest are the only victory types; I wanted this to be a bloodbath! Domination is at 70%, so you need to seize 3 of the 4 X-wings. (In hindsight, I should have left spacerace and culture on.) 

In the southwest, I drew Sury and Catherine as my allies, and Charlemagne for myself. Overall I was pretty happy, Sury is a beast, Catherine is competent and has cossacks, and I can do worse than imp and those awesome courthouses. Even protective I was ok with since I knew the map type and intended to thrust myself into the chokepoint to protect my allies.

Enemy teams were Lincoln, Elizabeth, and Willem (Team ECON eek ) in the Northwest. Hamm, Boudica, and Ragnar (Team MILITARY eek ) in the Northeast, and Izzy, Gilgamesh, and Darius (Team LeaveUsAlone) in the Southeast.

I was hoping to grab some bonus land in the expansion phase, since all 4 teams had identical amounts of natural land, however the X-crossing in the middle was almost immediately settled by all 4 teams. The SW, NW, and NE teams quickly hacked down the jungle and connected everything with roads. Izzy, Gilg and Darius did something odd. Even though they culturally controlled their share of land, they left a reasonable swath of jungle and then built a line of forts Maginot-style across them. There were no resources; these were clearly intended to be a defensive blockade. I've never seen the AI do that before. Regardless, that was basically the last any of us ever heard of that team, after they built their chokepoint and defended it to the teeth, they went full bore on the econ and blew everyone else out of the water in complete isolation thanks to our war weariness.

Since I didn't claim the extra land I wanted to get ahead, with all territory claimed it was time to start the fighting. Team Military had an outrageously large combined army at this point, and Team Econ were getting to be a bit scary with wonders and tech so the choice was obvious. I set up a Rock fortress with cheap walls, castle, and tons of Landsknechts, catapults, and protective crossbows on our choke to safeguard against Team Military, and then we slammed into Team Econ and grabbed several cities quickly. Since I had such a large reserve protecting my AI allies, they unfortunately did most of the aggression and lost more than was necessary, but it looked like the game might be in the bag for us. If we hold half the land in the world, with a human on my team, it's easily game over.

Team Military of course was itching to use it, and after we smashed Team Econ's army, TM declared war on the weak "good guys". At first I was happy because I thought with our better logistics and head start we'd grab more land while losing less troops, but TM's military was so enormous they quickly eliminated Willem, took Lizzy down to 3 cities, and were threatening to become an unstoppable runaway. Since we had initially claimed TE's chokepoint, I closed borders with TM to prevent additional troops from reaching the fighting, but their initial attack force was so large it didn't matter. TE was on the verge of collapse. I had no choice but to make peace with TE and declare on TM.  scared

I used my Rock city in our chokepoint to make some easy gains into TM's territory, stopping before it became indefensible. Sury had done his typical "go completely crazy on the military" by this point and had a larger army than anyone except Boudica, so my goal was to 1v3 the chokepoint while Lincoln and Sury cleaned up the northwest (preferably more Sury than Lincoln!)

One little problem, after I closed borders, Team Military had a backup of troops waiting to reach the front lines, which now had a frontline of me. I suffered horrendous losses and lost several cities, but kept our initial choke. I did buy enough time for Sury and Lincoln to severely trim back TMs gains in the northeast, so I sued for peace as soon as possible. Lincoln remained at war with TM and we (Sury) had claimed most of Team Econ's old lands in a few turns. Lincoln would continue to snipe cities while my team regrouped.

I should note that Lincoln had the Statue of Zeus, so being at war with him gave my entire team something like 5 unhappiness, which was debilitating. TMs war weariness was no joke either. Meanwhile the isolationists in the southwest were happily teching and building wonders. By this point we were in the industrial age, and although my team won liberalism, Darius built both the SoL and the Taj long before we were anywhere near those techs (Sury got liberalism and I have no idea what he even picked, sailing or something.) Emancipation unhappiness was now also showing up thanks to the isolationists, and the other three teams had a long ways to go tech-wise to remedy that.

With Lincoln now the obvious sitting duck and Sury sitting on a massive army, I decided to blitzkrieg him and then hope to get back into a decent economy. It worked, and Team Econ was eliminated very quickly. Almost as soon as that war ended, Team Military declared on us. We had cavs and they were still using cuirassiers so I was hopeful. I had moved my entire army to the frontline city fearing a sneak attack by TM; 40 cavs, 7 machine guns, 7 cannons, and just shy of 50 protective rifles and infantry were starting to show up for us. No one was getting through me, all I had to do was wait for Cathy and Sury to back me up. 

Except that in about 2 or 3 turns I lost that entire army of over 100 highly promoted troops to the ludicrous combined forces of Team Military. Um, I had... 1 ancient era military unit per city in everything except our old Rock chokepoint, which had like 3 rifles. We were in major trouble as dozens of gunpowder units and siege poured into the central crossing! Sury get your stuff up here now!

I whipped and bought and upgraded every single unit and city I could find, just hoping to control the flood of enemies long enough for some incompetent AI allies to bail me out. We were in real danger of losing the game entirely. My cities were dropping quickly, and the only thing that prevented total collapse were Cathy's random cossack and cannon patrols. After about a dozen excruciating turns and a near total collapse of Cathy and my armies, Sury finally got his units to the proper places and slammed into all three enemies with a horde of infanty, cavs, and cannons that was nearly as big as every other military in the game combined. With 50% of the land, and Sury saving our butts, fighters, bombers, paratrooper, and tanks started making unstoppable progress into TMs infantry and cavs. Game over.

Team Isolationists had a reasonable number of fighters and destroyers visible, but they were never inclined to do anything other than tech. I wonder if their AI was somehow messed up by the violence-only victory conditions. It seemed like they were trying to win via spacerace. Even if they had every gotten involved, their military was strong enough to hold a jungle choke, but not enough to finish the major players. It would have made the game even more hectic and fun though.
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Interesting idea and report, Fluffball. Thanks for posting it. thumbsup It sounds like a fun game, and you certainly succeeded at getting a total bloodbath. lol

Having AI "allies" dragging down and diluting the human player's advantage is interesting, but also sounds rather frustrating. The AI teams as opponents could be a lot of fun, though, and I think I need to give this a try. I can just picture Team Crazy Warmonger (Monty, Alex, Genghis) or Team Religious Fanatic (Izzy, Monty again, several other possibles). How does teaming affect religion? I have never really done much with team play in Civ IV. Will have to experiment. smile
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(July 28th, 2017, 15:37)haphazard1 Wrote: Interesting idea and report, Fluffball. Thanks for posting it. thumbsup It sounds like a fun game, and you certainly succeeded at getting a total bloodbath. lol

Having AI "allies" dragging down and diluting the human player's advantage is interesting, but also sounds rather frustrating. The AI teams as opponents could be a lot of fun, though, and I think I need to give this a try. I can just picture Team Crazy Warmonger (Monty, Alex, Genghis) or Team Religious Fanatic (Izzy, Monty again, several other possibles). How does teaming affect religion? I have never really done much with team play in Civ IV. Will have to experiment. smile

Well the teams are locked at friendly no matter what happens with religion, however different AIs on the same team can have different feelings about opponents on the same team. What that means is teams probably aren't going to like each other.

As an example, If Stalin and Izzy are on one team, and both are Christian, Stalin may be pleased with Mao on another team who is Islamic, while Izzy is annoyed towards him and declares war, dragging both teams into war. Basically expect a lot of conflict. Sometimes you'll see open borders signed with one friendly opponent, only to have it canceled 10 turns later by two members that dislike each other.  lol

The AI teammates are not as frustrating as you might expect. You have complete control of your own team's foreign diplomacy. You can completely direct their research and partially direct their attack targets via the diplomacy screens. They will automatically offer you any resources they have multiples of, will gift you anything you ask of them (their only source of iron in this case, because I needed crossbows and maces and in return I gave Sury my elephants), and will cede cities to you if they haven't controlled them too long. This is useful for wars where you don't want to culturally compete with your allies. I would cede cities to Sury so I'm not swamped by his culture, and I would ask for his cities so he doesn't get swamped by mine.

Generally they are quite helpful, and working with them is an interesting minigame.

From other AI games I've screwed around with, be careful if you choose teams. A Monty Alex Ghengis team will absolutely obliterate most other AI teams in short order. It might be a fun challenge ( scared ) if it appears organically, but trying to force that game will generally result in a whacky or bad game in my experience.

Edit: I also wouldn't necessarily consider the AI allies to be dragging you down, just rather that your contribution is only a part of the team. It's like if you had a 100-civ team, no matter how awesome you do you're going to barely affect the overall power of the team. It's not that they drag you down, it's that the game is just... bigger.
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Maybe it would be fairer to say the AI team mates dilute the player's effect, rather than dragging you down. As you noted your influence is only a fraction of your team, and a smaller share with a bigger team. So this would be a bigger issue with say 4-civ teams than it would be with 2-civ teams.

Good point about teams that are all of a "type" of civ. Maybe balanced teams would be strongest, with one warmonger for fighting, an economic civ to drive research, and maybe a wonder-building leader to grab a couple key boosts? Or would the warmonger civ end up drargging the others into too many conflicts and ruining their economies?

Curious to see this is action now, definitely have to give it a try. smile Just need to find time between OSG-30, Imperium 43, and the Long War SG.
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Very interesting game mode. Thanks for the report. Wish I could see that Maginot Line!
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It eventually got the jungle chopped down, got built over, connected with roads, and lost a couple tiles to culture, but here it is at the end of the game. The one remaining fort on my side was interestingly enough a major air base for Cathy when we were fighting for our lives.

[Image: OGuFJfN.jpg]
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Interesting; thanks!
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I played with AI allies it can be fun indeed. Do you know that you can command them to attack certain cities? I dont remember if they put more efforts into military though.
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(September 2nd, 2017, 15:01)OT4E Wrote: I played with AI allies it can be fun indeed. Do you know that you can command them to attack certain cities? I dont remember if they put more efforts into military though.

Ya the results are pretty non-spectacular when you tell them to attack a city. My best guess is that they don't alter the behavior of any of their current units, but instead make a new stack to go attack like 30 turns later. Which makes sense because you wouldn't want them to abandon city defenses in order to attack the called target.

But your allies' non-responsiveness is what makes this mode so much fun to play. If you attack another team, expect to be fighting 1v3 or whatever for quite some time!
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This inspired me to play in similar setup. Long time ago I have played couple of games with AI in teams of 2, but the results were less spectacular. With 3 players per team, economic aspects kind of averages out, number of military units goes up and I (as a human player with working brain) end up as a kind of emergency/special force for rescuing endangered front lines. Especially when at some point my team was at war with 3 other teams, bringing total number of active stack of dooms up to 9 oO. Game becomes more like a military survival (since your economy doesn't matter that much). Fun setup.

However I do not recommend decreasing difficulty level compared to the normal setting on which you are playing.
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