How the hell do you beat the AI to ____ culture?

[Fatum]

I was trying to mess with various 'builds' and so I am trying to get certain cultures to test out...but the AI just god modes in and takes them every single time. On 'fast' the Egyptians and Babylonians are taken first turn by the AI every time.

My last game I actually played through (on Regular speed) the AI was almost 2 eras ahead of me...

I play on metropolis, because I find the lower difficulty the AI just doesn't do anything at all. The only threat is from early game independent city states.

I really like....most of this game but the total dependency on RNG in the early game and cruddy AI system make it nearly unplayable for me. Just feels half finished.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by shakee:

The AIs on Metropolis and higher are setup to win the game. If that is not yours, play on one of the lower two difficulties. And they rough choose a new culture every 50 turns on normal.
And what the heck would that change change? The AI will still choose the culture first because you do not play to win.

I know. Its just as frustrating in this game to lose the culture that you want by one turn as it is in the Civ series to miss out on the wonder you are building by one turn. The devs solved the wonder problem from Civ in this game and should have applied the same mechanism to cultures and for the same reason.

[chaney]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

They should have applied the same system that was used on wonders to the cultures.

I don't know what that means, can you help me?

For Wonders, once you CAN start working on a Wonder you have the right to claim one. Once you do claim it, nobody else can claim the same one.

For Cultures, once you CAN pick one, you have the right to pick one, with no direct cost. Do you want to allow a player to claim a Culture but not yet adopt it? Would the trigger be the same (achieved Fame Stars) or would the right be triggered some other way, or would it always be available but at a cost (Influence)?

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by chaney:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

They should have applied the same system that was used on wonders to the cultures.

I don't know what that means, can you help me?

For Wonders, once you CAN start working on a Wonder you have the right to claim one. Once you do claim it, nobody else can claim the same one.

For Cultures, once you CAN pick one, you have the right to pick one, with no direct cost. Do you want to allow a player to claim a Culture but not yet adopt it? Would the trigger be the same (achieved Fame Stars) or would the right be triggered some other way, or would it always be available but at a cost (Influence)?

For wonders once you can pick one you pay influence to reserve it and no once else can build that wonder. You don't have to build the wonder but it you don't you don't earn the fame.

(Edit - If you choose not to build that wonder you can't reserve another one. It should be the same for reserving a culture).

For cultures my proposal would be similar. Once you can pick a new one you could pay influence to reserve the one that you want. Since you have to change or transcend your culture to continue to advance in any other area, when you elect to advance you become the culture that you paid influence to reserve (choosing that would lock you out of any other culture and would lock you out of transcending) it would be less of a jar at least story wise since by paying that influence your culture is signalling that it is evolving into the new culture. The trigger would be the same as always. When you have accumulated enough stars to advance you can pay influence to reserve the culture you want but delay and earn more stars or save the influence and take the current pot luck when you are ready to advance. More options are better than limited options and frustration and quitting the game or going back to a previous save and replaying many turns to get a better result.

Remember that the game was advertised as being able to tell the story of your culture but when you can't have a particular subplot (or you can't have any of your anticipated subplots) in your story you are no longer writing it. Someone else is dictating how the story you want to tell must be told.

What would have happened if the Indians had won the French and Indian war? We'll never know because the Egyptians became the Mississippians first. OK. Throw out that manuscript and start over.

[Fatum]

Originally posted by Daarkarr0w:

Hey! Yep we are aware that this is something that is requested by the community, not gonna do any promises about it. It has 2 sides to me, it loses a bit the idea of "unique" culture but I understand the frustration of some players not being able to play the culture they wants to play.

I get that, but I also think there should be an option to allow it or not. It's just two different play styles and having the option would make the game more user friendly to some kinds of players.
There's just times where you get a really good spawn for ____ faction but get beaten to it and it just feels bad. Especially on higher difficulties when the AI is moving up in eras at lightning speed and you are stuck trying to get lucky to stumble into your unlocks or find animals to hunt.

[chaney]

That seems like it would work. Now the current cost in jumping early is that you lose the opportunity at some stars, being able to pay influence instead seems reasonable. Would the game, against the AI, change much? If the AI get the right to reserve first, wouldn't they likely just reserve the same ones they now take? At least that would come at an influence cost so when you get the leftovers there is some catch-up mechanic if that is desired. I wouldn't think inflating the cost of later choices (within an era) would be good though.

[mk11]

Wouldn't this make things worse? The AI usually gets 7 stars first but then hangs back from advancing to get more stars. This way you would lose the opportunity to pick first.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by mk11:

Wouldn't this make things worse? The AI usually gets 7 stars first but then hangs back from advancing to get more stars. This way you would lose the opportunity to pick first.

Then don't make it available to the AI. The AI isn't the one writing their own story.

[Daarkarr0w]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

For cultures my proposal would be similar. Once you can pick a new one you could pay influence to reserve the one that you want

Noted, but I think that could generate an important exploit of just reserving the "best ones". I am assuming only the player can reserve it, because if the AI can reserve it as well we will have the same "problem". This is the same for the Wonders, in this case apart from using the influence for reserve it I think is important that you need to build it before being able to get a new one, otherwise a player could just reserve all of them and then build it like in Contemporary Era.
On a role-playing perspective I understand it.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Daarkarr0w:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

For cultures my proposal would be similar. Once you can pick a new one you could pay influence to reserve the one that you want

Noted, but I think that could generate an important exploit of just reserving the "best ones". I am assuming only the player can reserve it, because if the AI can reserve it as well we will have the same "problem". This is the same for the Wonders, in this case apart from using the influence for reserve it I think is important that you need to build it before being able to get a new one, otherwise a player could just reserve all of them and then build it like in Contemporary Era.
On a role-playing perspective I understand it.

If you reserve a culture you have to use it when you advance (you also give up the option to transcend) and just like the wonders you can't reserve another one until you complete the first one you reserved. If you don't advance your culture your research eventually stops so you must advance if you want to win. It would smooth out some of the bumps that occur when you change cultures and it should work even in multiplayer.

Your team has reduced the effectiveness of some of the cultures that were to much of "the best" (Egypt has been changed 3 or 4 times since release). Why not slightly increase the effectiveness of the cultures that people are avoiding and make all the choices potentially good ones?

[Daarkarr0w]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Originally posted by Daarkarr0w:

Noted, but I think that could generate an important exploit of just reserving the "best ones". I am assuming only the player can reserve it, because if the AI can reserve it as well we will have the same "problem". This is the same for the Wonders, in this case apart from using the influence for reserve it I think is important that you need to build it before being able to get a new one, otherwise a player could just reserve all of them and then build it like in Contemporary Era.
On a role-playing perspective I understand it.

If you reserve a culture you have to use it when you advance (you also give up the option to transcend) and just like the wonders you can't reserve another one until you complete the first one you reserved. If you don't advance your culture your research eventually stops so you must advance if you want to win. It would smooth out some of the bumps that occur when you change cultures and it should work even in multiplayer.

Your team has reduced the effectiveness of some of the cultures that were to much of "the best" (Egypt has been changed 3 or 4 times since release). Why not slightly increase the effectiveness of the cultures that people are avoiding and make all the choices potentially good ones?

Sure you have to use it, but I don't think is a good idea. Right now, you can decide hey I can chose X culture, do I want to stay a bit more to get extra fame / finish X things or should I move to the next culture to have the culture I wanted. With the proposal change you just don't have this uncertainty (which, personally I like it).
On the other side of I am already too late, I understand the frustration (specially on Ancient one if you play Blitz) we are thinking on a couple of things on that, but I can not enter into details or dates for that as there is no confirmation that will happen.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Daarkarr0w:

Sure you have to use it, but I don't think is a good idea. Right now, you can decide hey I can chose X culture, do I want to stay a bit more to get extra fame / finish X things or should I move to the next culture to have the culture I wanted. With the proposal change you just don't have this uncertainty (which, personally I like it).
On the other side of I am already too late, I understand the frustration (specially on Ancient one if you play Blitz) we are thinking on a couple of things on that, but I can not enter into details or dates for that as there is no confirmation that will happen.

With my proposed change you still have that uncertainty just not with the next era but with the following one and it would cost you influence to reserve that culture which can cost you a civic choice if you find yourself lacking influence. That would be the trade off.

A certain amount of uncertainty is fine (especially if there is a 2nd best culture still available that you can jump to instead) but to be honest If I have started a game and the area I've discovered is mostly coastal and I decide "this will be a good game to go all seafaring cultures" and when I go to advance someone has all ready taken Phoenicia I just quit that game without saving and usually don't even start over. I just switch to a different game and feel like I wasted my time again.

Details, dates and confirmation doesn't matter to me. I've gotten to the point that I only fire up the game when a new update comes out to check and see if things have improved for my experience.

[biubiubiu]

anyone want to play 2gether?

[PopsiclePrime]

I totally understand where you are coming from. I play games to escape reality and enjoy the experience, like people who put puzzles together because it is fun, or like people who climb mountains because they find it challenging and the personal reward is worth more to them than a trophy; like them it is the experience that matters most to me. Any game that has to be played one way, with one play style isn't worth playing. Until people start buying my games for me I will continue asking the developers to change or fix things to make the game more enjoyable to the casual player and I will continue to play them in a manner that I enjoy, not in the manner that they enjoy.

There are many things I don't like about this game but it has a great foundation from which I have building on via modding. While there are aspects of it that are beyond my abilities to mod, the vast majority of things I want to change I can, or I can compensate for bad things by changing other things in the content.

Above the third difficulty the AI gets many advantages that will put the casual player behind, which means that they will always beat you to the next era, where they can choose both a culture and a wonder before you get there. The developers should be ashamed of themselves that they can not develop an AI that is smart enough to beat you on a level playing field. They always say it is to expensive to build an AI that is smart, rather than one that gets buffs and perks so that it can build units faster and cheaper than you, so it can ignore unhappiness/stability, so it can advance to the next age and develop technology faster than you, etc. That is a cheap excuse. For example: given that this particular developer has made several turn based games with cities that have to be sieged you think that they could have come up with a set of "Siege" code that can read the area around the target city, know its population and defense factors, and then build an appropriate siege force with say 3 melee infantry to be used as tanks, 3 ranged siege weapons that can attack the city over the top of the melee units that are tanking for them, and some pikemen or archers that can dispatch any enemy units that come to destroy the siege weapons. As much money as they have made from their previous games they could have been re-investing some that into better and better code that by now should know how to properly siege an enemy city, and how to best defend one of their own cities since it is virtually the exact opposite of what the siege force is doing. Heck, the militia that are "defending" cities are only melee. Why aren't they a mixture of ranged units who can safely attack the aggressors from behind the walls so that they don't take damage, some melee to deal with any aggressors who make it inside the walls, and some cavalry to deal with the aggressor's ranged and siege units? Exactly, There is no good reason for this lack of intelligence on the part of the AI.

Yes you will find people who meta the game and have a scripted set of things they always do so that they can be proud that they "beat the game". Don't let those people convince you that you are playing the game wrong. They are the same people that after having found the optimal path to victory will whine because there isn't enough content; even though they have never played 50% or more of that content. Then when new content is released they will meta that to see if it can improve their scripted game play, they will "beat" the game again and then complain that there isn't enough content. These people do not play different cultures, they do not choose different civics, they do not choose different religious tenets, they do not care if they are progressing through a game so fast that they don't have time to build more than one, or even just one emblematic building or unit, they don't care that a Knight can beat a tank, or that during a battle the AI can perfectly move and situate their units to cause maximum damage each round, they don't care if they ever build a heavy machine gun or helicopter gunship, they don't even care if they have never been able to chose a particular wonder, they only care about "beating the game" as quickly as possible. In most of the game play that these people post on YouTube they are playing against one, maybe two competitors, they aren't playing against 4, 5, or 6 competitors because they wouldn't be able to follow their script and still win.

I strongly recommend that you look through the available mods and choose ones that help you enjoy the game in a way that fits your play style. Or even give modding a try for yourself. Honestly the hardest part about modding this game is getting the modding tools up and running, and keeping them up-to-date. The actually modding is trivial after that.

I have used the 14 Star mod that was recommended earlier in the thread and it does help to slow down the AI in their efforts to get to the next age, but it won't stop them, you still need to be concerned about getting those stars knocked out for yourself so that you can advance; it does slow them down enough that you can better enjoy all of what the culture you have chosen for this era has to offer.

[Forcedge]

Originally posted by ourorboros:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

What would be the point of playing a game based on cultural shifts if you can't shift to the one you want?

kinda like asking what the point of playing a competitive game is if you cant just always win.

the AI are essentially other players, if they get their stars before you they get to choose before you. it doesn't diminish the ability to shift cultures, you just maybe dont get the one you wanted but honestly this only really seems a problem with the ancient era as the AI usually holds on aslong as possible before choosing cultures in the other eras.

even then i wouldn't call it a problem.

The problem with your argument is that getting stars isn't skill based gameplay. Some science curiosities offer 3 science, some only offer 1. If all the science curiosities found by the AI are worth 3 and all the ones you find are worth 1, then it doesn't matter how you split up your scouts, how you control them, or how you play the game. You will simply lose because you got unlucky.

Cultures need a complete rework. All of the standard OP cultures that everyone rushes in the beginning of the game need to be removed and nerfed, and the useless cultures need to be buffed. The snowballing needs to be removed. Either that, or find a way to involve obtaining those cultures with skill, not luck.

Also they need to add normal AI to the game. Like, actual normal AI. As in, no buffs, no cheats, and no exploits. So that means the AI doesn't get to have a free 50% stability on all cities, a -25% influence cost to claiming wonders, etc...

The player doesn't get any bonuses or buffs, so why are we forced to play against AI that get bonuses and buffs when we purposely choose metropolis difficulty which is supposed to be a "normal" difficulty?

Sorry for the nerf, but it seems 5 months later and nothing has really been fixed or improved. Cheating AI is kind of ruining the game, and rather than giving the AI cheats they should be improving the AI problem solving skills and decision making so they don't have to cheat to be competitive.

[shakee]

Originally posted by Forcedge:

Originally posted by ourorboros:

kinda like asking what the point of playing a competitive game is if you cant just always win.

the AI are essentially other players, if they get their stars before you they get to choose before you. it doesn't diminish the ability to shift cultures, you just maybe dont get the one you wanted but honestly this only really seems a problem with the ancient era as the AI usually holds on aslong as possible before choosing cultures in the other eras.

even then i wouldn't call it a problem.

The problem with your argument is that getting stars isn't skill based gameplay. Some science curiosities offer 3 science, some only offer 1. If all the science curiosities found by the AI are worth 3 and all the ones you find are worth 1, then it doesn't matter how you split up your scouts, how you control them, or how you play the game. You will simply lose because you got unlucky.

Cultures need a complete rework. All of the standard OP cultures that everyone rushes in the beginning of the game need to be removed and nerfed, and the useless cultures need to be buffed. The snowballing needs to be removed. Either that, or find a way to involve obtaining those cultures with skill, not luck.

Also they need to add normal AI to the game. Like, actual normal AI. As in, no buffs, no cheats, and no exploits. So that means the AI doesn't get to have a free 50% stability on all cities, a -25% influence cost to claiming wonders, etc...

The player doesn't get any bonuses or buffs, so why are we forced to play against AI that get bonuses and buffs when we purposely choose metropolis difficulty which is supposed to be a "normal" difficulty?

Sorry for the nerf, but it seems 5 months later and nothing has really been fixed or improved. Cheating AI is kind of ruining the game, and rather than giving the AI cheats they should be improving the AI problem solving skills and decision making so they don't have to cheat to be competitive.

You can use user generated personas with no strengths as opponents.
improving an AI to a player level in decisionmaking is not easy at all. There is no 4x game that does it.