War is Impossible

[Saathiya]

This problem existed prior to the expansion. And it's still a problem (though not quite as bad).

The militaristic civs always apparently have practically every military bonus, which seems to rule out other bonuses... except they expand as if they haven't specialized in anything but growth. They have beginner units with no upgrades that kill advanced veteran units like they're made of butter. Meanwhile, the player's advanced veteran units have to be a 10:1 legion against the NPC opponent or they win nothing.

This sucks. It totally kills the fun of the game, since war ends up sooner or later unavoidable with somebody. Would it kill these developers to have the rules of the game apply to the AI? Or do they really need a free pass on everything?

"Gnostici, no prob! Lower the difficulty!" Actually, is a prob. Because then everything else in the game is too easy. War has its difficulty poorly scaled so that it doesn't match well with anything else in the game. But only if you're playing against the AI.

If the rules of the game don't apply to your opponents, then it's not a game.

Honestly, this is feedback. I'll load until I win because apparently that's how we're meant to play this one. And I expect to get rudeness in return for this feedback, because it's Steam. But for crying out loud, can somebody actually play test before releasing?

edit: Not to mention that opponent units still complete heal every turn. Really? That fix wasn't in scope for an entire expansion?

[Cryten]

Sounds like your playing above your difficulty. The ai is really dopey when it comes to combat and synergising its build. The player can pull ahead with a combination of rapid expansion, trade routes and grabbing virtues early to have military ahead of the other factions. Spam academies once your economy stablises and you can go toe to toe with the whole map at once.

Some notes, every ai will expand, not really rapidly but fast enough that you should know if your behind if you have 2-3 less cities then the ai. Unless your playing on apollo, the ai gets some very high end bonuses then and you have to pull through in the late mid. It is the highest difficulty for a reason.

The AI tends to spam over quality as well so if your playing on the harder difficlties its advisable to secure a choke point and let the ai throw its forces at your highest tier units. If your losing even 2 to 1 then your probably over investing in soldier and other unwieldly units that arnt so good at holding thier own. The best thing about the current expansion is its really easy to keep the ai pleased once your syndergies kick through and you have good health, science, energy and military strength.

[admiral awesome]

It is funny that you talk about incompetence in another post.

[Saathiya]

I know that if you pull through the point where wars start, it changes and the player ends up overpowered. I know how to play.

The problem is that right about the time wars start, the AI is always OP. It's not a matter of unit upgrades (affinities), veteran levels, unit combos, nothing. Right about the time you go from two affinity unit upgrades to three, the AI being OP becomes the player being OP.

This isn't a matter of... well, anything really. I've done some experimentation between single and multi player, at home and at a friend's. The AI military is overbuffed, simple as that.

Assume the following:

A. Lots of energy reserves
B. Good cultural balance
C. Lots of political capital
D. WAY ahead on science
E. More cities than any AI
F. Healthy
G. More veterancy than AI
H. More affinity upgrades than AI (but less than three)

Then...

1. Use espionage to siphon energy from the opponent ahead of the war
2. Pillage every trade route and improvement (of theirs of course) along the way
3. Arrange your troops to surround the opponent units with melee, and range behind those

The opponent will...

i. Take out your units (one at a time per enemy unit) in single turns
ii. Complete heal every turn
iii. Can not be killed in one turn

Therefore, at that stage of the game, war is impossible.

Re: fudge -- somebody with something condescending, rude, unhelpful and arrogant to say on Steam? NO WAY! I've got 107 hours in this game. I've got 580 hours in Civ V, and I've never lost in Civ V (except in the Civil War scenario... that thing is tough, and back when it had Sid difficulty, and I ramped it up to that). I must be a total noob. You know, the explanation for every complaint and all feedback anybody has about any game on Steam at any time under any conditions.

Sometimes, I don't even think the trash talkers are human. I think they're chat bots. I'm not sure they could pass a Turing test.

[Jigen]

play multiplayer

[Michael]

Right, so why is it that in my own games my units can more than hold their own against comparable AI units, but yours can't?

The ai in my games do not completely heal every turn and they can be killed in a single turn.

Either you are not being entirely honest about the circumstances here, or there is something else at play. Are you using any mods?

[Saathiya]

Originally posted by Jigen:

play multiplayer

That's the answer, really!

@Michael I have no idea. Part of my answer in the other thread I posted in tonight said that I've never seen more than "white peace" ... no longer true. I've gone just to the point where I had three affinity upgrades several times, and then started over. This makes me think I'm doing something wrong, but I've tried everything.

It's always the Slavics, ARC, or the Pacific. Rarely ARC, almost always the Slavics. I'm not sure what's up with the Pacific. Sometimes they seem aggressive, sometimes not. I think I've only ended up at war with ARC due to a treaty (happened a few times tonight).

The Slavic complete healing... I just saw it again toward the endgame. I've just got strong enough units to overcome it now. But note some of the specifics become a blur, as I've been trying to pinpoint what I'M doing to make them so strong. And I'm sure it's not me.

Let's see if this follows the usual progression. Anybody who provides any kind of negative feedback for a game...

1. Is insulted
2. Is called a liar
3. Gets directed to a tutorial

So, is the tutorial next? You know, once in a while it could just be that sometimes software has a problem. I know, I know. Not if it's on Steam, right? Impossible! Nothing ever has a bug. Never... or so Steam forums lead people to think.

Like I said in the first post, it's just feedback. I'm not asking for help. I don't want to argue. I didn't come here to be insulted. It's just feedback. That thing you do when you find a problem with something and think it might be fixed. At least, it's that thing people can do anywhere in all of existence except on Steam.

[columbusbluerebel]

What level of AI are you fighting against? Max? Gemini? Its hard to recreate the scenario without certain bits of info.

[Saathiya]

Originally posted by columbusbluerebel:

What level of AI are you fighting against? Max? Gemini? Its hard to recreate the scenario without certain bits of info.

This is Gemini. I typically go to a Terran Fungal planet, and play as PAC. I vary the other starting options though. And I'll be playing other planet types once I complete a game on that type (now that I'm not restarting it).

I could play on a higher setting than Gemini. Everything else about it is easy, but I'm still learning the tech tree and various synergy between tech, culture, and affinity (there's a lot to experiment with!)

That's why this combat issue has been so confusing to me. With everything else set at a difficulty where it's easy, why would this one thing stand out so strongly?

[admiral awesome]

You are not able to beat the ai on gemini and therefore create a post to complain about the game being "impossible"...

First of all, it is no problem when someone is playing at a lower difficulty. It is rather the way how you "describe" your "problem".

You ARE simply lying when you talk about ai "basic units" shredding your advanced elite veteran units of doom at a ratio of 1:10. Thats bs at it's best. Units can use reinforcement as promotion and the ai will use this often, you should know that.

On gemini, the ai doesnt even get a bonus in combat. Even when each single unit would loose an 1v1...what the heck are you thinking and/or trying? Conquering everything with two units? You talk about 170:20 war score should win you a war. This is basically like two or three killed lategame units. Switch 170 for about 3000 and the ai will give you one city.
The negotiations are changed to the worse since RT and not working at the moment. No one denies that. Also the ai has become ridiculously easy.

Sure, everyone else is the bad guy or straight wrong who has an argument against or an advise for you. Well, you can't be wrong when you add ironical comments can you!? There are two meanings of noob, don't mix them up.

If you want a game where the same rule applies to everyone you should play chess. The ai is pretty simple to develop compared to a game like civ.

After all, you really shouldn't throw in words like turing-test or your ironical explanations. It...backfires on you.
This seems to be a troll thread. #close

[Saathiya]

I'm going to go look for a better place to post about this. Nobody needs to deal with someone like this fudge guy. Classic Steam toxicity there.

Go look at my achievements for this game. It's not like you have to guess whether a player is proficient. But I guess when you have a hobby of crapping on people, you get used to avoiding basic cognition.

After you see my achievements, fudge, if you ever see me post anywhere whatsoever and feel like replying... dont.

[admiral awesome]

The joke is on you

[Saathiya]

hurrhurrhurr

When you're done being the savior of the Internet, please go away.

[Michael]

You might want to climb down off that cross and make a bug report over on their official forums if you really want to be helpful. Feedback on game balance isn't that useful if your game isn't working correctly.

But hey, as long as we're doing feedback you might want to take a hard look at your own attitude before you start complaining about toxicity in others.

[Saathiya]

Yeah, I might want to post over there. But then you two will probably be watching for it, so I'll wait for you two trolls to get bored poking me with a sharp stick and forget first.

Let this thread die now. I've had two people tear into me, and really, this is why this forum is mostly dead. You two have the social skills of troglodytes, so if you think you have room to complain about my attitude, kiss my ass.

I won't post here or anywhere on Steam again. Seriously. I don't know why this travesty of a "community" exists. You can't say anything here without your head being taken off. I guess people with personalities like rusty hooks need somewhere to "socialize" too.

Originally posted by fudge:

It is funny that you talk about incompetence in another post.

Originally posted by Cryten:

Sounds like your playing above your difficulty.

Originally posted by Michael:

Either you are not being entirely honest

Originally posted by fudge:

You are not able to beat the ai on gemini and therefore create a post to complain about the game being "impossible"...

(without ever having checked my profile to see if I've beaten the game on Gemini)

Originally posted by fudge:

The joke is on you

etc. I could get more quotes out of this thread. You are so toxic that posting on Steam forums actually leads to treating people worse elsewhere. Congrats! You make others worse human beings.

Little secret: Every game on Steam has a community full of snots who think their ♥♥♥♥ don't stink, just like you, which associates negative experiences with games. That makes people remember the games as negative. This is part of the reason gamers are starting to hate big publishers. People are part of the equation, and you make that part into poison.

If developers had half a clue how these "communities" really are, they'd never allow their products to be associated with them. And I hope and pray that's where this leads because Steam forums are the most grotesquely failed experiment in the history of the Internet.

Then you want to lecture me about my attitude? Look in a mirror.

[Michael]

I was implying that there might be a key piece of information that you had not volunteered that might explain why your game is not behaving normally. But hey, you just go ahead and double down on the crazy. Immortal space Russians are the least of your problems.