Broken AI scaling

[TMaynard7]

There is absolutely no scaling in this game. On the easiest difficulty the AI is completely incompetent, barely has a military, can't keep pace in science, and ultimately no challenge at all. One difficulty setting higher and they mass produce at rates that are impossible, always ahead on technology (even at 80% funding or higher, heavy investment into science buildings/wonders), and generally are just extremely difficult to keep pace with. I highly expect it has to do with them not building anything other than units (except for apparently every single wonder) and freely trading technology with each other. Even with the great library, 80% science funding, and almost every technology from the ancient era given by goody huts, I constantly find myself 5 technologies behind two or three other civs. This game is either way too hard or incredibly easy. I play on the largest maps and max ai, is there a better amount of AI's to play against that makes it scale for something between a constant nightmare and a walk in the park?

[[NN]Natmeris]

It actually scales pretty well as long as you understand the game and how the game expects you to play. At Chieftain, the AI receive penalties. At Warlord its less of a penalty, and at Regent its a level playing field with no bonuses or penalties. Only at Monarch and above will the AI receive discounts and free units (settlers/military units). Its entirely possible to be a whole era ahead of the AI even on Emperor with limited or no tech trading.

The tricks to stay ahead are as you say, trading techs, but also maximizing gold output. The more AI, the more they are able to trade with each other. You can limit their trading with map type or stay ahead by teching the techs that the AI prioritize less but value highly. There are some techs like Literature, Currency, and Republic that the AI value highly but research last. If you research these, you can then trade them for 1 or multiple techs. You can also get techs they havent traded to others yet esp if they dont know them (because of map), to get other techs and gold. Once you get at the same tech level, you then can get ahead this way. Sometimes I trade through ancient, then stop all trading at 2nd era because I'm teching way faster than all of the AIs put together. There's also a way to slow down the AI teching and that's by keeping them at war with each other and/or you.

How to tech faster? Maximize gold output. You can do this by using Republic, but the best way is by building cities and growing them to high populations. The more cities, the more output of gold and science. Dont be done expanding by end of ancient era. You want to keep expanding past 20 cities if possible. Even if the cities are corrupt, you can utilize high food tiles into specialists to get uncorrupted gold and science.

[TMaynard7]

Originally posted by NNNatmeris:

It actually scales pretty well as long as you understand the game and how the game expects you to play. At Chieftain, the AI receive penalties. At Warlord its less of a penalty, and at Regent its a level playing field with no bonuses or penalties. Only at Monarch and above will the AI receive discounts and free units (settlers/military units). Its entirely possible to be a whole era ahead of the AI even on Emperor with limited or no tech trading.

The tricks to stay ahead are as you say, trading techs, but also maximizing gold output. The more AI, the more they are able to trade with each other. You can limit their trading with map type or stay ahead by teching the techs that the AI prioritize less but value highly. There are some techs like Literature, Currency, and Republic that the AI value highly but research last. If you research these, you can then trade them for 1 or multiple techs. You can also get techs they havent traded to others yet esp if they dont know them (because of map), to get other techs and gold. Once you get at the same tech level, you then can get ahead this way. Sometimes I trade through ancient, then stop all trading at 2nd era because I'm teching way faster than all of the AIs put together. There's also a way to slow down the AI teching and that's by keeping them at war with each other and/or you.

How to tech faster? Maximize gold output. You can do this by using Republic, but the best way is by building cities and growing them to high populations. The more cities, the more output of gold and science. Dont be done expanding by end of ancient era. You want to keep expanding past 20 cities if possible. Even if the cities are corrupt, you can utilize high food tiles into specialists to get uncorrupted gold and science.

No, I understand on chieftain the ai has to do double production as the player, warlord is an extra 20% compared to player, ect., as well as how the republic makes the libraries and marketplaces more efficient which gives you a lot more gold to work with (unless youre over the unit cap). Ill give you an example though, in my last game, I have more territory than anyone, every city has a university, every city (minus capitol) has a courthouse, I'm not using entertainers (too inefficient), B lined it to philosophy (80% research), someone else got it before me. Not a big deal I thought. got to medieval era and won multiple wars, forced the ai to give me tech. Definitely the strongest power on my continent. Thought I was doing well, researching engineering, and Copernicus's observatory gets finished by an unknown civilization. By the time I'm halfway through the medieval era, I get contact from the other continent and they're in the industrial era. Before I even met them, having an extremely strong economy and more cities ( all at a min of 6 pop) than anyone else, they just steamrolled me in tech well before I met them. Don't get me wrong, I know there are players who can easily beat the game on sid so you're absolutely correct in saying there has to be some aspect of the game I'm either not understanding or doing correctly, but the issue is that it doesn't seem obvious to me. Thats what I mean by the scaling. Where the game doesn't allow you to keep your same game strategy at a lower level, with slight tweaks to how you have to execute it. Your strategy at chieftain will in no way work at warlord, and your warlord strat won't work at regent, ect., I figured out the nuances between the governments, figured out early aggressive wars, figured out entertainers are basically the worst in terms of efficiency (you can usually even turn them to scientists or tax collectors with the same result if the slider is too costly), realized not every city needs every building (especially early on), but the ai is still way ahead of me. I'm just not sure what else I could be doing at this point especially since my strat now is way way more defined than what I would be doing at lower difficulties. You just have to understand so much more just to move up one difficulty level.

[[NN]Natmeris]

Originally posted by TMaynard7:

Originally posted by NNNatmeris:

It actually scales pretty well as long as you understand the game and how the game expects you to play. At Chieftain, the AI receive penalties. At Warlord its less of a penalty, and at Regent its a level playing field with no bonuses or penalties. Only at Monarch and above will the AI receive discounts and free units (settlers/military units). Its entirely possible to be a whole era ahead of the AI even on Emperor with limited or no tech trading.

The tricks to stay ahead are as you say, trading techs, but also maximizing gold output. The more AI, the more they are able to trade with each other. You can limit their trading with map type or stay ahead by teching the techs that the AI prioritize less but value highly. There are some techs like Literature, Currency, and Republic that the AI value highly but research last. If you research these, you can then trade them for 1 or multiple techs. You can also get techs they havent traded to others yet esp if they dont know them (because of map), to get other techs and gold. Once you get at the same tech level, you then can get ahead this way. Sometimes I trade through ancient, then stop all trading at 2nd era because I'm teching way faster than all of the AIs put together. There's also a way to slow down the AI teching and that's by keeping them at war with each other and/or you.

How to tech faster? Maximize gold output. You can do this by using Republic, but the best way is by building cities and growing them to high populations. The more cities, the more output of gold and science. Dont be done expanding by end of ancient era. You want to keep expanding past 20 cities if possible. Even if the cities are corrupt, you can utilize high food tiles into specialists to get uncorrupted gold and science.

No, I understand on chieftain the ai has to do double production as the player, warlord is an extra 20% compared to player, ect., as well as how the republic makes the libraries and marketplaces more efficient which gives you a lot more gold to work with (unless youre over the unit cap). Ill give you an example though, in my last game, I have more territory than anyone, every city has a university, every city (minus capitol) has a courthouse, I'm not using entertainers (too inefficient), B lined it to philosophy (80% research), someone else got it before me. Not a big deal I thought. got to medieval era and won multiple wars, forced the ai to give me tech. Definitely the strongest power on my continent. Thought I was doing well, researching engineering, and Copernicus's observatory gets finished by an unknown civilization. By the time I'm halfway through the medieval era, I get contact from the other continent and they're in the industrial era. Before I even met them, having an extremely strong economy and more cities ( all at a min of 6 pop) than anyone else, they just steamrolled me in tech well before I met them. Don't get me wrong, I know there are players who can easily beat the game on sid so you're absolutely correct in saying there has to be some aspect of the game I'm either not understanding or doing correctly, but the issue is that it doesn't seem obvious to me. Thats what I mean by the scaling. Where the game doesn't allow you to keep your same game strategy at a lower level, with slight tweaks to how you have to execute it. Your strategy at chieftain will in no way work at warlord, and your warlord strat won't work at regent, ect., I figured out the nuances between the governments, figured out early aggressive wars, figured out entertainers are basically the worst in terms of efficiency (you can usually even turn them to scientists or tax collectors with the same result if the slider is too costly), realized not every city needs every building (especially early on), but the ai is still way ahead of me. I'm just not sure what else I could be doing at this point especially since my strat now is way way more defined than what I would be doing at lower difficulties. You just have to understand so much more just to move up one difficulty level.

I can empathize some. From 2005-2014 I was pretty much stuck at Warlord. But after joining the MP scene I immediately was able to jump to Regent in just a few weeks. How I did this was I realized I had certain ideas of where to place irrigation/mines and other stuff that had no actual gameplay basis. I now consider myself quite stupid back then. I dont mean to show any disrespect towards you however. But seeing how I understand the game now and I'm no great player, I find emperor rather easy, but I dont really play any higher than that because the discounts for the AI get insane to overcome so I just dont bother.

Not sure if you seen these but Suede on Youtube has made a lot of civ3 gameplays/tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1A9i20JFBs&list=PLMBmduXFQPGntuRHE8tgq1p7wRj56mThk this playlist might not be for you, however, you can look at a number of civ3 gameplays of his and just watch how he plays and gets ahead of the AI. He plays at any difficulty lvl, even Sid, but most of his gameplays are between Monarch-Deity.
Here's one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZDmlnJSVdE

[TMaynard7]

Originally posted by NNNatmeris:

Originally posted by TMaynard7:

No, I understand on chieftain the ai has to do double production as the player, warlord is an extra 20% compared to player, ect., as well as how the republic makes the libraries and marketplaces more efficient which gives you a lot more gold to work with (unless youre over the unit cap). Ill give you an example though, in my last game, I have more territory than anyone, every city has a university, every city (minus capitol) has a courthouse, I'm not using entertainers (too inefficient), B lined it to philosophy (80% research), someone else got it before me. Not a big deal I thought. got to medieval era and won multiple wars, forced the ai to give me tech. Definitely the strongest power on my continent. Thought I was doing well, researching engineering, and Copernicus's observatory gets finished by an unknown civilization. By the time I'm halfway through the medieval era, I get contact from the other continent and they're in the industrial era. Before I even met them, having an extremely strong economy and more cities ( all at a min of 6 pop) than anyone else, they just steamrolled me in tech well before I met them. Don't get me wrong, I know there are players who can easily beat the game on sid so you're absolutely correct in saying there has to be some aspect of the game I'm either not understanding or doing correctly, but the issue is that it doesn't seem obvious to me. Thats what I mean by the scaling. Where the game doesn't allow you to keep your same game strategy at a lower level, with slight tweaks to how you have to execute it. Your strategy at chieftain will in no way work at warlord, and your warlord strat won't work at regent, ect., I figured out the nuances between the governments, figured out early aggressive wars, figured out entertainers are basically the worst in terms of efficiency (you can usually even turn them to scientists or tax collectors with the same result if the slider is too costly), realized not every city needs every building (especially early on), but the ai is still way ahead of me. I'm just not sure what else I could be doing at this point especially since my strat now is way way more defined than what I would be doing at lower difficulties. You just have to understand so much more just to move up one difficulty level.

I can empathize some. From 2005-2014 I was pretty much stuck at Warlord. But after joining the MP scene I immediately was able to jump to Regent in just a few weeks. How I did this was I realized I had certain ideas of where to place irrigation/mines and other stuff that had no actual gameplay basis. I now consider myself quite stupid back then. I dont mean to show any disrespect towards you however. But seeing how I understand the game now and I'm no great player, I find emperor rather easy, but I dont really play any higher than that because the discounts for the AI get insane to overcome so I just dont bother.

Not sure if you seen these but Suede on Youtube has made a lot of civ3 gameplays/tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1A9i20JFBs&list=PLMBmduXFQPGntuRHE8tgq1p7wRj56mThk this playlist might not be for you, however, you can look at a number of civ3 gameplays of his and just watch how he plays and gets ahead of the AI. He plays at any difficulty lvl, even Sid, but most of his gameplays are between Monarch-Deity.
Here's one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZDmlnJSVdE

No offense taken, I used to do the same thing where I'd basically put irrigations everywhere and mines only on mountains or hills. That said, this last game I payed I dominated on one of the harder difficulties to the point where I thought I might have put the game on an easier difficulty (even double checked). Thanks for the video suggestions, I actually checked them out a little earlier to see if there was something I was missing. Problem is, I still don't functionally understand what I did differently between dominating in one game and watching the AI be miles ahead of me in another. I just wish it was a little more clear. I guess just being on the harder difficulties is helping though. Lots of trial and error. What my biggest fear is that I'm making an error during the expansion phase or something like that and the error doesn't present itself as a weakness until later in the game.

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

What specific difficulty are you playing? On regent things are equal, above that the AI starts getting bonuses. Even a 30% or so discount (i think that's emperor but i could be wrong), it could be the difference from producing 1 tank per turn on every main city instead of 2, and that's before mobilization.

If you are on continents, the continent with more AI will develop faster. The AI also trades with itself for better prices. It's very hard to overcome unless you become a superpower yourself and even then it might not be enough. There is a very noticeable research speed on pangea, for example, that is not there on archipelago until later stages.

My lasy game I failed to keep up with the tech race vs an ottoman ai despite we owning similar amount of land. I was on democracy and he was on fascism. Even then the ottomans are scientific and the map had many other scientific civs. This eventually lead them to a big lead and sealed our collective doom as the ottomans grew to be unstoppable.

One thing the AI is good at is growing their cities (they irrigate a lot). So they'll have maxed out cities and then many specialists either on gold on research. All this whilst trading with each other for different techs.

if I had to do it again I would probably have gone with an economic build ( I went scientific) and just buy the techs. Past monarch and even more so on emperor winning the research race seems impossible without just owning most of the world. Also don't compete with scientific civs if you aren't one yourself.