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Realize that the game is not so much about having a plan and following through with it rather than it is about being adaptive to it.
I don't aim for any particular number of anything. I will always try to do what had the best return of investment. And whether that is the addition of CAs, MAs or something else entirely depends on the current situation.
Whether and when I go for 2 or 3 action-cards depends on how desperately I need something or I need someone else prevent from getting it. Early on that's really rare, to be honest. Later in the game, when I have a good amount of CAs, then the times at which I grab more expensive cards goes up. Simply because those cards are still more useful than more of the cheaper stuff.
Another important thing is to always keep track of your events and make sure to not mess up in the political-game. It at first seemed "not really that important" to me. But the more experienced I got, the more I felt how much impact it has. That's also why increasing your MAs is important for more than just being able to defend or playing agressions/wars. There's simply a much better chance you'll have something useful to play when you can hold more political-cards.
That being said: While I beat the hard AI most of the time, there is no guarantee for that in any given game I play against them. Especially not in certain high-end-challenges where that already rather competent AI gets advantages over you.
A game being challenging and engaging is what drives the replay-value through the roof. ;)
And take advantage that Age A and Age III Events won't hurt you
This question in itself reveals a mistake, because it honestly leads to a rather useless answer like, "I get CA/MA when it is worth the total cost." You shouldn't really aim for anything other than end-of-game culture (victory). How to best get there is hard to know.
This depends on your CA and your need. I would say that in my experience, new players do this too often.
I've played some board game AI's that suffer heavily from groupthink. I haven't purchased this game because I wonder if the AI is worth playing against.
And even if you are so good that you beat them with a high likelyness there's still the challenges in which you have to overcome additional obstacles.
The hardest thing for me so far, as I mentioned before, is that I don't think I'm recognizing my mistakes and therefore it is hard to improve.
As for the AI - I feel it is one of the most challenging I've seen without using cheats or exploits - but I'm very much a newbie at the game (30hrs or so of playing time).
Anyway, here's the rough details of new things to consider the above folks haven't talked about:
1) Civil Action (CA) is typically more valuable than Military Actions (MA). Generally speaking its basically always worth it if you can grab Code of Laws for 1 or 2 CA and have the science to get it done quickly is a huge boon. Similarly this is why Hammurabi is considered the better starting leader.
2) Oddly enough, despite what I just said, don't overpay for the pyramids. The Library of Alexandria is typically the best wonder in the game in terms of long term payoff vs. cost. Again, don't overpay for it though. If it costs you 1, grab it. 2, maybe. 3 nope. Pyramids should be the second choice and only at the cost of 1 CA.
3) Being the best in military has a ton of advantages, but the only way to really get there with certainty is to have the right tactics cards. Build towards your tactics. That may mean all horses for heavy cavalry or 3 infantry + genghis kahn for the same benefit.
4) During age A events ALWAYS try to have a spare worker that is unassigned. There are two events that trigger if you have a spare worker: A free infantry or a free temple. As you get better you'll know when you really don't need these. As an example if you've got Homer and St. Peters under construction the last thing you need is another temple. Or if you need horsemen there's no point in getting another infantry, etc. Generally speaking though it's a potential huge boon to get 2-3 free iron AND a free CA from these early events.
5) Have some kind of plan as you reach the end of Age I. You need to be flexible, true, but you should have some kind of goal in mind for your civ. Whether that is mass production of Iron and People or building a ton of Theaters and Libraries (and aiming for that amazing Shakespeare point bonanza) or going full on Military and beating the snot out of your opponnets... well, that's up to you. Be ready to shift gears, but you win or lose the game based on your ability to get more out of every action than your opponent does. So if getting military is cheap for you relative to your opponent, that is what you should do. Force them to spend their actions on items that don't have synergy (or in the case of military pick between doing that and getting crushed by your attacks).
6) It's ok to lose battles or even wars. Generally speaking, try not to lose battles or wars. However, its not the end of the game if you do. If you fall TOO far behind against the AI you can always resign, but a single battle shouldn't make you quit. I've already got the achievement of losing a battle, war, and still winning against expert AI. If you've got a good plan set up a little setback isn't going to cost you the game.
That should help!
I talk to it to share my thought-process behind why I do what.
So while the rules are slightly different from a normal custom-game it is close enough and thus should be of some help.
It'll be here:
https://youtu.be/eyMRbl_OxmY
once the upload is complete in about 2-3 hours after I made this post.
A couple of methods that may help:
1) For beginners: Look for "stumbles."
Your civilization should progress smoothly. By this, I mean that your immediate objectives should be completed in a timely manner before you are forced to select other immediate objectives. Ideally, your rhythm is to pick up a card for one CA, employ it to full extent, then move to the next card and so on. Know what cards a coming and be ready for them. You can't always expect things to go perfectly, of course, but if you get out of rhythm then you should ask why. Some of the worst examples of stumbles are:
- drafting a card but not having the science to employ it
- struggling to find the CA to finish a wonder
- struggling to find the CA to upgrade a building
- holding too many cards at once
- having a CA crisis where you both really need to draft cards and perform other critical actions
There are a lot of CA related stumbles, which is probably why a focus on CA helps improve your game to intermediate level. However, as you understand more what needs to be done and when, and how to draft more efficiently and avoid wasting CA when drafting, then the need for CA is lessened.
If you find yourself stumbling, this is usually a sign of a major error. You probably were too ambitious. Look back about 3 turns and figure out what you shouldn't have done.
2) Analyze with a snapshot.
Take a look at your game at some point - say turn 10. What is it that you need, right now, to win? Maybe you need science to discover cannons. Maybe you need one more population to put in your army. Maybe you need an Efficient Upgrade to leap to Coal. Why don't you have that?
The reason you don't have what you need is because you have something that you don't need. (Unless you have just fallen way behind in everything, in which case you need to pick an earlier turn for your snapshot) Work your way all the way back to when you decided to get what you don't need, and ask yourself, what made you think you needed this? What are the signs that you should actually have gone with another choice? These signs can be subtle - what others have drafted, places in turn order, aggressions that have been played, cards remaining in the age, tactics cards you have or another player has, etc.
Now, sometimes what you think you needed was just not available. You were stuck with Philosophy and then discovered there was just no science to be had. Or maybe you could not draw a tactics card for the life of you. That can be rough, and it could cost you a close match. However, don't give up your analysis so quickly. Look at what you could do to substitute for what you need. Maybe a yellow card would have given you just the edge to get a tech. Maybe you could have gone with a low tech strategy. Maybe a low production strategy. Maybe you should have torn down one of your precious buildings and completed your army. Question your tried-and-true rules of thumb. You never considered destroying your own alchemy, but maybe doing it will win you the game. Maybe it was time for you to draft Drama. Whatever it was, you need to be able to figure out how you will recognize that kind of problem in time, because you can't play by hindsight.
Reading through all your comments has been really helpful as well as reading that analysis of games someone posted.
I've covered (learned/read) most of the basic stuff and I've kind of pinpoint my losses vs the AI to my ability to really snowball from Age 2 to 3 - I'm usually pack leader until then.
I've identified two basic mistakes: I seem to collect more science cards than I should vs. picking more yellow cards that could boost something AND somehow I seem to have an overflow of CA's (both are connect).
I'll definitely take a peek at that video.
Thank you so much for your time an patience in posting these tips and ideas.
Yellow cards are probably the best cards to pick in most situation as they are pretty much always useful and much better to pick yellow cards who grant you stuff now than picking up technology cards you not going to use. You can get far ahead of the other players with yellow cards.
How many civic actions you should spend on a card depend on how valuable it is going to be for you. Often resources are going to be the bottleneck, not civic actions so picking something you really need is far better use of civic actions than picking something you dont really need.
Waiting for something to become cheaper is risky because someone else may pick the card before it is your turn again.
Leaders are probably the most powerful cards and they have major impact on the game. Many of the leaders have high demand of certain cards such as Leonardo want alot of science so for him getting printing press and alchemy are high priorities as how much you get out of Leonardo is based on how much science you are able to produce.
Well in my last game one of the ai managed to reach well over 300 culture with very good play.
@See you Space Comboy - making a good AI for this game is much simpler than doing the same for Civ or EU. But I agree... it is amazing and it play well (at least from my PoV). I do agree that the AI for most strategy games could be improve - even if not at launch at least once they can see how good players play and replicate that in their game.
Yeah you are right of course, but then again their companies are MUCH bigger and they have had much more time. What you suggested for example, to adjust it based on how players play is soimething they were never interested to do. Also, the AI in EU is quite a bit better than in Civs games.
There is another small game called Battle Brothers, in which I am also hugely impressed by their absolutely brilliant AI.
I agree that it is easier to make a good AI for a game with limited options as opposed of virtually unlimited options but that's no excuse for the massive blunders the Civ-AI does.
For a game like Civ or Pandora you follow a completely different approach other than analyzing the validity of each possibility and what it will affect in the future. You split it in sub-tasks like unit-management, tech-selection, worker-assignment, production-selection, tile-improvement-selection etc.
A lot of the gameplay in games like Civ and Pandora is optimization and it can be determined by math which option is the best.
What building to make next? What improvement to build on which tile? Where to move a unit? Wheter an attack will be successfull or is pointless and shouldn't even be attempted.
The most difficult parts were balancing military, economy and science against each other. These are usually things that players develop a feeling for rather than a mathematical algorithm. And transcribing a feeling into a mathematical algorithm isn't exactly easy.
I think that besides of occassional bugs like playing a build-military-card and then not building military or leaving a political-action unspent, this is also the greatest weakness of the AI in TTA.
I'd love to have access to it's source code to see how it actually works and tinker around with it in order to improve it according to expert-players feedback. :o