Squirt water out of his trunk really hard?
Agreed. I last night. I usually play on noble level since it is said to be the most even between the AI and the player. I haven’t played for months before that, and I managed to win. I didn’t see any AI cheating in the game, though my neighbor, Peter from Russia did attack me twice. The first time he really had my army outclassed. (though he seemed to focus on one city…he really must have wanted it). He was fielding riflemen and cavalry while I still had knights and had only begun to produce musketmen. I held him off by bribing Spain to help me out in the war until I could sue for peace. when I was within a few turns of launching the spaceship (Peter was close also, but he lacked one of the techs to finish the ships) he attacked again with a massive army and forced me to move units around to defend the city he was seiging (it was close to my only source of oil). After a time though I noticed that his stacks were smaller and smaller. So its not like the AI was cranking out a lot units by cheating. As a matter of fact Peter wasted well over 100 units trying to crack this city while I noticed that many of his southern cities were lightly defended. I took a few small styacks of modern armor and gunships and razed about 4 of them before the spaceship reached Alpha centauri.
If anything the AI didn’t cheat but it sure is lacking in tactics. Peter could have caused me a lot of problems, maybe even beaten me if he attacked more targets than the one city. If he had bothered to destroy my oil well and camp units on the oil he could have crippled my army. As it was he wasted his units by throwing them on to my well defended city allowing me to simultaneously launch the ship, crank down my science rate so I was literally rolling in cash and upgrade all of my many cavalry to gunships and panzers to modern armor. If there were 20 more turns in the game I could have destroyed russia forever.
I don’t recall seeing any blatant cheating in civ 4. At least not like civ II. I once saw a catapult bribe my cavalry in that version. A catapult! (I won’t even go into the time the carthaginians sent about 50 diplomats to steal technology. Who the hell has fifty diplomats?)
Actually, the computer can cheat, but it doesn’t always. The biggest cheat has to do with Ai acting in concert even when they are not supposed to.
I still play Civ 2, & enjoy it.
Certain leaders do tend to build units vs. buildings and/or wonders (Monty, for ex.).
Monty is usually on everyone’s kill on sight list if he’s near you at the start of a game. In the game I finished he was on the southernmost part of the continent but buffered from me by Justinian. He and Justinian fought several wars throughout the game, usually with Monty winning a few cities or resources by the time peace was declared. but since he doesn’t build up his cities and cranks out units he was woefully behind in tech and infrastructure by the age of gunpowder. By the modern age Justinian made Monty his bitch, I guess in retaliation for all of the wars he had to fight against him. Justy razed a lot of aztec cities, and Monty vassalized himself to my enemy, Peter. When Peter started his last ill-fated war against me, Monty declared war too, but couldn’t get to me because he couldn’t get through Justinians territory. (Justinian didn’t like me either, but he never attacked and traded with me regularly.)
I like the fact that Mony’s one attempt at a naval invasion on me was over in one turn. His frigates and galleons were outmatched by my battleships and carriers.
Just ask the dwarfs of Boatmurdered.
It’s an unfortunate part of 4X games. I’m sure we could make a list of things that don’t really make sense. One example I have is that in MOO2, with me at a large technological advantage. I’d build Doom Stars equipped with at least one Stellar Converter (basically insta-death for any other ship) and a time machine (two turns in one.) I’d also up-armor and shield the heck out of these things. Then the game would attack with whatever the maximum fleet size is and they’d all slowly get wiped out over like 50 combat turns by my single defending Doom Star. Freaking combat took like an hour to resolve but if I told the computer to autoresolve I’d always lose.
Vas ist dos?
I’m still playing vanilla C4, is vassalage in one of the expansions?
My own story, titled “It’s not always the computer that cheats”.
Was playing through the Greek mod again last night, as the Romans. I got up to the Alps and around them to Spain and France in good time, with only minimal skirmishes with the Phoenicians. When I started to head north again, though, the AI started spamming me with huge stacks of barbarian Swordsmen and Axemen. I sent up a screen of Praetorians and Horse Archers to keep them off my Settlers, only to have the AI spawn a monster stack, prox 20 strong, behind my screen.
I had two new cities that I had to give up, and fell back with my Archers to the nearest town with a defensive bonus. I had no way to get my Praetorians back fast enough, and the Horse Archers with them were even farther away. Luckily, I had a stack of 4 Horse Archers on Corsica, and look, there’s 2 Galleys to pick them up!
So while I scrammed Praetorians and Archers from all over to my stronghold (roughly where Lyon is, today), I sent up these 4 Horse Archers and had them camp out at a river where the barbie stack had to come. Those 4 Horse Archers (each with one or two stars) killed all the barbie Swordsmen (9, I think) and prox 6 more Axemen, before the last one finally went down.
So it ain’t just the AI that cheats. 
How is that cheating? Horse archers murder swords and axemen.
The computer combat model is why I stopped playing Civ3; I couldn’t keep enough troops in my cities to defend them if the game decided to attack. I’d play the game because I enjoy the building and exploration aspect, but if I started to get seriously attacked, I’d just start over. Then I just stopped playing; sounds like they haven’t really changed anything, so that should save me some money.
I bought CiV4 and an expansion pack bundle at Best Buy. I played probably less than 10 games total. I hate it.
Neither of the first two expansions did much for me. Although I do seem to recall one of them eliminated a wizard wheeze a human could play on an AI opponent. When negotiation a peace treaty, demanding more than they would give, then clearing the table and starting again allowed you to demand as much again and they would give in immediately :dubious:
They do? Not in my experience. Horse archers are a 6 strength, swords are a 6, axes are a 5. Granted, my units were mildly buffed, and defending across a river, but still. There’s no way those 4 units should have stayed alive through 15 or so attacks.
I almost grabbed BTS off the rack the other day - what’d you think about the corporations? Did they add anything to game play, or just distract?
BTS is a great expansion. The corporations I rarely use during gameplay. They can be helpful in certain situations (for example, a couple increase the amount of food produced in a city), but for the most part they’re a way to annoy your neighbors by increasing their costs.
Corporations blow. The way Firaxis implemented them makes no sense whatsoever and any resemblance to the real animal is purely coincidental.
There are a great many additions and options gained by having the BtS expansion that make it worthwhile. I’d consider it vital to a full-fledged Civ experience on PC.
Oh, and it makes my coffee for me, too.
So I loaded the game up the next day after making the original post, and played the game through to its completion. I just finished the game now. Some people were asking about the settings, so I’ll list them here.
I played as Montezuma, epic speed, Fractal map, 10 opponents, Monarch Difficulty, Renaissance advance start, spaceship and time victory conditions disabled.
The city the Khmer had captured was at the choke point on the continent between our two civs. It was on a hill, but the khmer used a few artillery to knock out the culture defense bonus. There were hills all over the area between the chokepoint city and my 2 nearest cities.
When I loaded the game after losing that city, I switched to nationalism and started cranking out drafted units. I finished my first two bombers the turn after I lost the city, so I rebased them close enough to strike the stacks they were sending out on to the hills between the captured city and my 2 close cities. For the next several turns I killed increasing numbers of cavalry every turn, as my army slowly grew and they didn’t have enough movement to attack my wounded guys. I crippled three stacks of 20 or more units (enough units that 8 bombers couldn’t even damage the entire stack, and had to leave lots of units undamaged) and finally advanced on the city, where I sieged it with increasing numbers of infantry for at least 12 turns, pounding away with bombers every turn (they hadn’t researched flight, and the only defense they had against bombers was machine gunners, which were usually crippled or killed pretty early because the bombers would choose any healthy ones to hit first). I killed cavalry after cavalry after cavalry, at least 10 every turn, until I finally took the city back early in my 12th turn. When I captured the city, I did a recon mission with my bomber and found THREE MORE stacks of cavalry in enemy territory, all with more units inside than what could fit on the unit list. I asked for peace, and the Khmer leader agreed.
The rest of the game involved some pretty cool ocean invasions and nuke exchanges, but no real threats to my eventual victory. The Khmer stayed in line for the rest of the game and didn’t challenge that city. I poured culture bonuses, as many as possible including the cultural bonus corporations, into the chokepoint city to get an extra buffer square from his territory, enough to prevent cavalry from being able to attack the same turn they declare war. I had a total of 20 bombers and 4 fighters ready to roll within range of the squares that were able to attack that city, and I pumped dozens of various garrison units in there over the course of the game. The Khmer leader decided not to test his luck again, and I eventually won a diplomatic victory.
Well done on your victory! 
I hope you don’t mind if I point out that your settings are a) tough 
and b) would tend to lead to a build-up*.
*Renaissance and Epic combined means there will be medieaval units straightaway, but it will be hard to do the research to get better ones.