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Solver
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Apolyton Duke Of Something
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Latvia, Riga
Sep 2000
time: 07:32
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Generally, I consider CtP2 to be the best civ-game. Still, time to time, I find myself drawn back to playing an odd game of Civ 3. I want to post here a few things that I think are superior in Civ 3, both for my own referrence and possibly to provoke some discussion. Also, maybe outline the bad parts of Civ 3.
Diplomacy. Let's face it, Civ 3 has more flexible diplomacy, with the ability to make basically any proposal you would ever want to. The bargaining table rules. The part that sucks is, that the AI often gets some unreasonable deals. It will offer you all of its income for some tech, for instance, very often.
Combat system. OK, this is where CtP wins hands down. CtP offers a compliciated and stategical battle system, while Civ 3 has it a bit too random, and with far less depth involved. If you're attacking one Pikeman with 10 Knights, then several Knights attack simultaneously and kill the Pikeman easily... that's in CtP2. In Civ 3, it can take you 4 Knights to take one Pikeman out, which is ridicilous.
AI. OK, this is the big one. And this is the reason why I still play Civ 3 time to time. The Civ 3 AI not only provides a challenge, it seems to play intelligently at times. CtP2 AI can provide a challenge sometimes, but it does incredibly stupid things, and cheats obviously.
Civ 3 AI attacks in a way that no other AI does. I have had it send wave after wave of troops over the border, with naval bombardment support. On island maps, it will approach your land with a huge navy, bomb your improvements and land a sizeable force. It will do whatever it can to establish a stronghold on your land rather than wander around randomly. In a war, that AI has a decent concept of what its objectives are.
Sometimes that AI has moments of brilliance. For instance, I've seen it build Fortresses and populate them with defensive units on chokepoints! I have seen a sudden appearance of troops behind my main lines, taking a weakly defended city. And I have seen the AI work efficiently to cut off my supply of some strategic resource.
Civ 3 AI will also colonize as much land as it can, and will try to improve its cities at all times. Note that it doesn't get free Workers or anything, it terraforms fairly. And that terraforming is decent enough - at least the AI will never go for a super-science city that is starving, or something like that.
Diplomatically, while the AI might sometimes ask for ridicilous deals, or give up stuff too easily, it will also often make interesting offers, and actually have you think about tempting ones.
And, you should note how the Civ 3 AI moves it troops. Sure, it might sometimes make weird changes of direction, but generally, it has a front line, and it has its troops moving towards one of your cities - or sometimes several cities.
Now, the CtP2 AI. It's very poor at war. It doesn't have the concept of conquering some land. It can only go after your cities, one at a time, and it will usually not strike two targets - and it will certainly never make a massive assault from two directions - which Civ 3 AI sometimes does. CtP2 AI, when attacked, will assemble some stacks to retake whatever cities it does lose, but it will often not actually attack the cities. It would let its stacks get bombarded by artillery. And, again, I get the feeling that attacks are pretty random. In Civ 3, if my city gets attacked, I know the AI civ is serious, and there's more coming, while in CtP2, I sometimes get attacked once, and then see no hostility for 40 turns.
Another problem with CtP2 AI that I seem to run into is that it doesn't value peace. I usually find myself conquering most of some civ, leaving them small, and signing a ceasefire. No, the idiots will attack me with their small stack a few turns later... and if we end the war, they'll start it again soon... generally forcing me to destroy them.
Next thing. While the CtP2 AI can do a decent job in protecting its cities, at least as far as packing them with units goes, it's sometimes ridicilous. Sometimes most cities in an empire are unprotected. I have had my one Musketman cripple a whole civ, simply marching through their land, and burning most of their cities, undefended. By the time the Musketman was finally killed by some patrol stack, the civ was already crippled and out of competiton. It only had 4 cities out of a dozen remaining, and I sent two 12-stacks to dispose of them.
Also, when will the AI defend its conquests? If it takes your city, it will always move its units out, leaving you free to recapture the city next turn. Bah. OK, so noone forces me to exploit this and recapture the city, but it would also be extremely stupid not to do so.
CtP2 AI won't expand. Or will do so too much. Sometimes I see those stupid isolationists. Stuck on an island, colonize it all with 8 cities, do nothing for rest of the game, till I come and destroy them. Sometimes the AI stops expanding while there's still much place to colonize - and it generally has too few cities.
It cheats, IMO, too visibly. Sometimes by 15 turns in the game, it has a size 5 city surrounded with Farms. It's obvious sometimes that the AI has established its first cities through cheating... not that it helps it much, but the fact annoys me often.
Oh, and one more thing that both the Civ 3 and CtP2 AI fail at. They have no concept of victory. They just play the game, not apparently headed for any victory condition. Well, an exception is Civ3 late game, when the AI will really try to build the spaceship. But, if the AIs see you're going to win, it's not like they're trying to prevent you from doing so, if your relations are friendly.
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Maquiladora
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quote:
Next thing. While the CtP2 AI can do a decent job in protecting its cities, at least as far as packing them with units goes, it's sometimes ridicilous. Sometimes most cities in an empire are unprotected. I have had my one Musketman cripple a whole civ, simply marching through their land, and burning most of their cities, undefended. By the time the Musketman was finally killed by some patrol stack, the civ was already crippled and out of competiton. It only had 4 cities out of a dozen remaining, and I sent two 12-stacks to dispose of them. |
While i see your point i dont agree the AI should defend cities *too* well. I think it should garrison cities to suit martial law, maybe 2 CHEAP units is all it needs, and have roving stacks of 4 or 8 fast moving units sentineled on internal roads, like Knights/Samurai + Mounted Archers, but the AI needs to be on the lookout for attacks, so maybe it could put long vision cheap units on sentinel on its borders or dotted around too. You cant ask it to defend all its cities with 12 modern units let alone 6 or it would just crumble under the production cost or would have no units outside to explore, so if it could have some situational awareness, like packing a city next to a enenmy with a 12 stack is ok, but only one city. Ideally always having 2 upto-date 12 stacks ready to defend/attack/retake elsewhere.
If its city is in immediate danger it should rush to pack those cities with bombaring units and more importantly predominatly strong modern defensive units, say 8 pikemen 4 catapult as an example.
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CtP2 AI won't expand. Or will do so too much. Sometimes I see those stupid isolationists. Stuck on an island, colonize it all with 8 cities, do nothing for rest of the game, till I come and destroy them. Sometimes the AI stops expanding while there's still much place to colonize - and it generally has too few cities. |
As ive played MP ive learned this is probably the most important skill to learn, placing cities in the right places and soon. Im always changing my opinion of whats best and have learnt huge amounts from many different people and generally settled on going for production on plains/river early then spread to half forest/grassland later, ALWAYS making sure my city can expand 2 borders without overlapping, overlapping is a killer before size 19 in later game.
Just my thoughts on that but if the AI could start by placing its cities right and building the right tile imps in the right cities, ie. no mines in total grassland/forest cities, it would be a terrific difference in the stage when the human starts to outgrow the AI because the AI overlapped like an idiot.
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Gilgamensch
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France
Jun 2002
time: 06:32
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Oh, where to start.............
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Originally posted by Solver
Generally, I consider CtP2 to be the best civ-game. Still, time to time, I find myself drawn back to playing an odd game of Civ 3.
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Yes sometimes the same for me.
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Diplomacy. Let's face it, Civ 3 has more flexible diplomacy, with the ability to make basically any proposal you would ever want to. The bargaining table rules. The part that sucks is, that the AI often gets some unreasonable deals. It will offer you all of its income for some tech, for instance, very often.
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Diplomacy in CIV3 is as bas as everywhere, BUT it does value treaties, that is a plus on CIV3 side. (OK, retreat only works after the 3rd try in a row  ) And with the unreasonable deals agreed. And also it is more flexible.
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Combat system. OK, this is where CtP wins hands down. CtP offers a compliciated and stategical battle system, while Civ 3 has it a bit too random, and with far less depth involved. If you're attacking one Pikeman with 10 Knights, then several Knights attack simultaneously and kill the Pikeman easily... that's in CtP2. In Civ 3, it can take you 4 Knights to take one Pikeman out, which is ridicilous.
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Yes, CTP is far better than CIV for this. 
/sarcasm on
I always loved it, when the milita destroyed my tank
/sarcasm off
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AI. OK, this is the big one. And this is the reason why I still play Civ 3 time to time. The Civ 3 AI not only provides a challenge, it seems to play intelligently at times. CtP2 AI can provide a challenge sometimes, but it does incredibly stupid things, and cheats obviously.
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CIV3 a challenge? It knows where to find all strategic resources in advance, it get's there and takes them at once. This you call a challenge????? This is plain simple cheating........
For CTP2 and cheating: I would say far less than CIV3....
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Civ 3 AI attacks in a way that no other AI does. I have had it send wave after wave of troops over the border, with naval bombardment support..........(shorted for better overview)......
behind my main lines, taking a weakly defended city. And I have seen the AI work efficiently to cut off my supply of some strategic resource.
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Yes, sometimes it has 'splendid' ideas, but I think mainly again of cheating. How otherwise it would know, that exactly this city is weakly defended............
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Civ 3 AI will also colonize as much land as it can, and will try to improve its cities at all times. Note that it doesn't get free Workers or anything, it terraforms fairly. And that terraforming is decent enough - at least the AI will never go for a super-science city that is starving, or something like that.
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See note above. For the terraforming, it is doing a fairly good job. But the AI has far less choices in CIV3 than in CTP2 (terraforming).
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Diplomatically, while the AI might sometimes ask for ridicilous deals, or give up stuff too easily, it will also often make interesting offers, and actually have you think about tempting ones.
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Unless I had some really spare luxuries, I never really bothered so much trading, conquering is most of the time easier.......
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And, you should note how the Civ 3 AI moves it troops. Sure, it might sometimes make weird changes of direction, but generally, it has a front line, and it has its troops moving towards one of your cities - or sometimes several cities.
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see above, I think only because of cheating.
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Now, the CtP2 AI. It's very poor at war. It doesn't have the concept of conquering some land. It can only go after your cities, one at a time, and it will usually not strike two targets - and it will certainly never make a massive assault from two directions - which Civ 3 AI sometimes does. CtP2 AI, when attacked, will assemble some stacks to retake whatever cities it does lose, but it will often not actually attack the cities. It would let its stacks get bombarded by artillery. And, again, I get the feeling that attacks are pretty random. In Civ 3, if my city gets attacked, I know the AI civ is serious, and there's more coming, while in CtP2, I sometimes get attacked once, and then see no hostility for 40 turns.
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Yes, to a certain point agreed, but several mods have already improved it. At least in CTP2 you can change the behaviour
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Another problem with CtP2 AI that I seem to run into is that it doesn't value peace. I usually find myself conquering most of some civ, leaving them small, and signing a ceasefire. No, the idiots will attack me with their small stack a few turns later... and if we end the war, they'll start it again soon... generally forcing me to destroy them.
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But at least it doesn't surrender so easily as the CIV3. I think that is a point which we can't really argue about, as this depends on personal preference.
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Next thing. While the CtP2 AI can do a decent job in protecting its cities, at least as far as packing them with units goes, it's sometimes ridicilous. Sometimes most cities in an empire are unprotected. I have had my one Musketman cripple a whole civ, simply marching through their land, and burning most of their cities, undefended. By the time the Musketman was finally killed by some patrol stack, the civ was already crippled and out of competiton. It only had 4 cities out of a dozen remaining, and I sent two 12-stacks to dispose of them.
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Same I could say about CIV3. You were in the right place at the right time, so what.......There were already games, where you where surprised how good (even rubbish cities) were defended. Again improved with certain mods (like unitupdater).
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Also, when will the AI defend its conquests? If it takes your city, it will always move its units out, leaving you free to recapture the city next turn. Bah. OK, so noone forces me to exploit this and recapture the city, but it would also be extremely stupid not to do so.
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see above, right place ..........
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CtP2 AI won't expand. Or will do so too much. Sometimes I see those stupid isolationists. Stuck on an island, colonize it all with 8 cities, do nothing for rest of the game, till I come and destroy them. Sometimes the AI stops expanding while there's still much place to colonize - and it generally has too few cities.
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Changed in mods. So not always true. And don't forget CTP2 has city limits.
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It cheats, IMO, too visibly. Sometimes by 15 turns in the game, it has a size 5 city surrounded with Farms. It's obvious sometimes that the AI has established its first cities through cheating... not that it helps it much, but the fact annoys me often.
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But not as bad as CIV3......................(although I agree, don't like cheating)
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Oh, and one more thing that both the Civ 3 and CtP2 AI fail at. They have no concept of victory. They just play the game, not apparently headed for any victory condition. Well, an exception is Civ3 late game, when the AI will really try to build the spaceship. But, if the AIs see you're going to win, it's not like they're trying to prevent you from doing so, if your relations are friendly. |
Both of them lack the AI. I think that is the problem. Neither game has a AI, which like the human, can define a path for victory. One problem I can see there:
Place a 'scientific' civ next to a aggressive AI and it will loose. The human can change, but not the AI. This is another problem. Also every person plays a different way (builder/conquerer/mix/.....), so to find an AI, which can handle both, is hard. But I think that the military path of the AI in CTP2 is generally better than CIV3.
Reason: CIV3 (as you mentioned) no stack-combat, too much 'luck'-factor, too much cheating.
Just for the moment my two cents........
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Maquiladora
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Sorry i went off on abit of a tangent about tactics rather than comparing to civ3...
If the AI knows where your weakest city is, and the human knows that the AI knows, its a huge advantage to the human, thats not progress, and even worse - it cant be changed in civ3.
We all want the best AI, and with that it should be unpredictable, and we need to accept the AI will make mistakes and attack on the mountinous side of your empire with cavalry, then have no where to stand.
I dont like the idea of the AI getting huge food bonuses in CTP2 as it stands now, but it cant place its cities right for later on in the game, so some balance had to be made at the time.
First task should be to get the AI to place cities right, even before getting it to stack and move armies properly, IMHO.
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Maquiladora
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quote:
Some of the mods have improved the combat AI - but it is still not generating frightening attacks |
I would say it does produce frightening attacks but it does it in a way that it cant lose. In the various mods it will have a huge tech lead from all the science and commerce bonuses it gets, and will attack with 12 stacks (with frenzy AI) and they can be made to go straight for the jugular and destroy many cities in a few turns and even be made to garrison well. Of course the AI needs to make more complex and crafty attacks but it can make frightening attacks already, just not combined thoughtful attacks on an even playing field.
Its also easier for the civ3 AI to produce "complex" attacks because it doesnt have the added worry of forming a good stack of units first. All the civ3 AI needs is just build and throw the units around that way, either from sea or land, maybe with a few defensive units thrown in.
But going back, is isnt fair that the AI should have such easy tech gifts in the first place. It was necessary in the mods because the AI's city placement and tile improving cant guarantee a competitve AI all through the game, so it needed help. How does the civ3 AI handle tile imps? Its easier for the civ3 AI because it only needs to improve the one tile thats being worked and the city placement doesnt need to be PERFECT, but the CTP2 AI needs to place its cities to get good tiles all round and to understand to improve ALL the tiles around ONE city first, then move on to improving another city.
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child of Thor
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Dales work in the WAW mod produced a decent Enemy AI attack capability, it was short in the all round game plan i think(city management etc?), but the way the AI handled stacks and what they consisted of seemed a huge improvement.
I'm sure Dale,Martin,Peter,Jbytheway and others have many ideas we can use to get the right balance and feel for the AI.
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Gilgamensch
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France
Jun 2002
time: 06:32
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Reminds me of something somebody already mentioned:
The AI doesn't need to be tought to defend cities, but rather points/borders.
What is the need to place in every town 12 units, if you could secure your country with only one 12 stack on the border on a mountain in a fort?
Best example for stupid AI behaviour for this: CIV 1(&2&3&XXXX)
Place a good defensive unit on top of a mountain and it keep attacking like hell.............
(Before CIV players are bashing me, that is typical for 'any' computer game....AFAIR)
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Peter Triggs
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Gone Fishin, Canada
Jan 2000
time: 05:32
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quote:
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It might cheat in the fact that those units attack your weakest city first...
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This is the kind of cheatings that I don't want to see in a CtP2 mod, this is an awful one and what I call a spoiler.
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IIRC, in vanilla CTP2 the AI is actually programmed to go after your weakest cities first. The difference between it and Civ3 is that the CTP2 AI will only go after the cities that it knows about and then only if it doesn't have a better target.
In Civ3, it's said that the AI knows the whole map. So if it's programmed to prioritize attacks on weakly defended cities, this must be really annoying.
In Call to Conquest, I added a 'raid' goal so that the AI would occasionally send out a raiding party into your interior. This was meant to keep you on your toes but not to be a primary AI goal.
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centrifuge
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quote:
Originally posted by child of Thor
Dales work in the WAW mod produced a decent Enemy AI attack capability, it was short in the all round game plan i think(city management etc?), but the way the AI handled stacks and what they consisted of seemed a huge improvement.
I'm sure Dale,Martin,Peter,Jbytheway and others have many ideas we can use to get the right balance and feel for the AI. |
Yep WaW's AI was excellent at attacking, but the defense of the cities was horrific. In newer versions this may have been changed... but what my game plan turned into was: try to stay alive long enough to sneak a few tanks behind the front lines and take some of their undefended cities...
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hexagonian
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Gnawing on your mind...
Jun 1999
time: 23:32
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Solver hits the nail on the head with his analysis of the differences...
Some observations regarding what I have seen in my Cradle Modwork.
The basic CTP2 AI cheats are not all that drastic - in fact, in the vanilla game, I felt that they were less drastic than in civ3. Nevertheless, they have been greatly bumped up in the Mods.
Cradle gives the AI free unit upgrades as opposed to the human player having to pay upgrade costs. (Actually, if I recall correctly, doesn't the AI in the higher levels of civ3 get free upgrades???) This is not such a big deal to me because there is a lot of gold that can be generated in the game. The end result is that a player has to make more choices in what to do with his surpluses, since that gold serves for no other purpose other than RBing in the vanilla game.
I do think that the most current version of Cradle has been able to get the AI to build more cities (one of my major gripes with earlier versions of the game), but this has been done by alterations in strategies.txt and is not a cheat. Simply a matter of adjusting the priorities for settler construction and loosening the restrictions on where the AI will build cities. In my last game, I went into cheat mode to see how many cities each civ had and they were all near the cap for their respective government (at that time, 15 per).
The most powerful cheat in my Mod, IMO, is the PW/Gold SLIC file. This file adds a bonus to the AI based on population in gold and in PW funds. The end result is that the bonus snowballs in its benefit. As the population grows (and it does because PW will speed up growth), more PW is added - and more population means more gold, more production, and even more science. Add this to the normal cheats and yes, the end result is that I feel the (Modded) CTP2 AI does get a lot more bonuses than civ3.
Nevertheless, this cheat is an add-on and can be disabled, and I would not be opposed to removing it. In fact, I would love to eliminate it, but for the following...
The main reason I have it in Cradle is because of the lack of focus on AI attacks. This cheat helps the AI maintain an advantage in unit strength and army size to offset its deficiency in conquest focus. In earlier versions of Cradle, the PW/Gold SLIC helped offset the fact that the AI did not expand as well as it could, but I've found that in versions 1.34-1.35, with the new emphasis on settler expansion, the AI gets a much larger lead because it now peacefully builds more cities.
I definitely agree with Solver that this area of conquest is one of the weakest areas in CTP2. At least in civ3, the AI seems to have a definite focus when it is attacking, and civ3 AI/AI and human/AI alliances do work much better. I do fear the AI in civ3 more than the AI in CTP2 because it is more coordinated.
The Frenzy SLIC does help the CTP2 AI to send stacks within your territory and attack cities, but it also prevents the AI from maintaining garrisons in those cities that it does capture. The end result is that you expend a great deal of resources to take back those cities (generally you have to rebuild buildings in those cities, as well as replace destroyed units) - and having to deal with multiple AI stacks within your borders is a huge challenge - try coupling your defensive needs with your desire to expand via conquest. Sometimes, the AI will cut through several of your cities too, but it doesn't have a coordinated feel to it.
Nevertheless, the Frenzy code is not a cheat and I tend to play Cradle with the following restriction - I cannot disband captured cities - which ends up making it harder to completely remove a civ from a game. The end result is more along the lines of history too.
My main gripe with the civ3 diplomatic model is that it generally forces the player to slavishly trade for techs, negating the need to develop your own tech. This is the main reason why the civ3 AI is able to stay competitive, because it is such a tech whore.
To some degree, the difficulty in maintaining diplomatic and alliance ties in Cradle is realistic for the timeframe that is in Cradle and it does make it harder for the player to mount an effective offensive because you cannot ever leave yourself weak in any area of your empire. It does not bother me that diplomacy in the CTP2 model is usually harder and less predictable - generally the fact that you do not know if a friendly civ will suddenly turn on you mirrors human nature.
OK, so what am I aiming at with all of this...
I want an alternative to Frenzy. Some sort of alteration that will give the AI more focus on conquest in an efficient manner.
Generally, I would like the AI to maintain an aggressive stance toward the human player as the default status - most importantly, I would like the AI to place a priority on holding onto those cities it does capture. This would allow for the need for artificial bonuses to be greatly reduced. I am against making tech trading easier, but I wouldn't mind seeing more trustworthiness in AI/AI and human/AI diplomacy, at least along the lines of maintaining peace and it should be costly to maintain a peaceful state between civs if there is a great difference between the two in the rankings.
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Gilgamensch
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France
Jun 2002
time: 06:32
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Actually hex, after reading your comment:
One thing I would like to see implemented: If the AI was first to discover and build certain key-techs (Knights/Infantrie/....) that it would alter to a more attack style, as it also happened in reallity. Whoever was first with a modern way to attack, normally did so.
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Solver
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Apolyton Duke Of Something
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Latvia, Riga
Sep 2000
time: 07:32
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Great post Hex  . And I must agree that, indeed, any kind of PW cheating for the AI is pretty annoying, as it gets obvious, but it's the only way for the AI to stay competetive.
Frenzy is very good code. I have had decent stacks in my land with it - although I've also seen some AI units getting stuck between its own 12 stacks, heh. However, Hex and myself consider coordination to be of importance. I think that those of us who have played both Civ 3 and CtP2, will agree that Civ 3 AI attacks feel much more coordinated or focused.
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My main gripe with the civ3 diplomatic model is that it generally forces the player to slavishly trade for techs, negating the need to develop your own tech. This is the main reason why the civ3 AI is able to stay competitive, because it is such a tech whore.
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It's not a diplomatic model fault, but rather one of the major gameplay faults in Civ 3 - maybe even the worst one. On any level above Regent, you can't keep up with the AI research wise, no matter how hard you try. This is because of both the bonuses that AI gets, the cheap AI-to-AI trade, and its rather efficient management. So, the only way for you is to go 90% or 100% taxes, only researching the techs you know AI doesn't. This is as far as gameplay goes.
And now, diplomacy faults step in. If you have, say, Monotheism, a tech AI will rarely research, you can easily talk to all other civs in that turn, and get like 4 other techs and several hundred gold in return. This makes it very inefficient for you to do your own research, even if you can research at about the same speed that the AI can.
After midgame, human is usually in a position when he can finally start research of his own, and do it at a speed considerably better than the AI. And here you go on the next problem - you can sell those techs for everything that the AI has. Since it no longer has any other techs, it will offer you money - lots of it. A decent lump sum, and a nice gold-per-turn deal. The result: you get so much money from these tech trades that you can go 90-100% science, while the AI is spending almost all of its income each turn to pay you. This is why in the Industrial Age and later, the human ends up having several thousand gold, rapidly rushing infrastructure where needed, while the AI civs have under 100 gold.
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17-11-2003 04:30
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