Civ IV annoyance

[Sarkus]

I've been a big fan of the Civ series since the beginning, and I like Civ 4 for the most part. I have the Warlords expansion, but have not yet picked up BTS. In preparation of perhaps doing that, I decided to play a few games and it has brought up an issue I've had with Civ 4 since the beginning: the aggressive Civs are too aggressive. Pretty much any game I have an aggressive Civ on my border I can expect a declaration of war, no matter what I do. Big army? Still get attacked. Agree to all their demands? Still get attacked. More powerful then they are? Still get attacked. Play pacifist and never attack anyone? Still get attacked.

I don't suppose BTS changes this in any way, does it? It's not that I'm opposed to aggressive Civs, I just wish there was some logic to their actions. Instead I get the impression that the AI has been programmed to attack the human player.

[espressojim]

I've been a big fan of the Civ series since the beginning, and I like Civ 4 for the most part. I have the Warlords expansion, but have not yet picked up BTS. In preparation of perhaps doing that, I decided to play a few games and it has brought up an issue I've had with Civ 4 since the beginning: the aggressive Civs are too aggressive. Pretty much any game I have an aggressive Civ on my border I can expect a declaration of war, no matter what I do. Big army? Still get attacked. Agree to all their demands? Still get attacked. More powerful then they are? Still get attacked. Play pacifist and never attack anyone? Still get attacked.

I don't suppose BTS changes this in any way, does it? It's not that I'm opposed to aggressive Civs, I just wish there was some logic to their actions. Instead I get the impression that the AI has been programmed to attack the human player.

If you can, convince the aggressive AI's to attack someone else. They cost less to get to attack someone else, and it keeps them off your back. An aggressive AI is going to attack someone, why not let it be someone who annoys you. Switching to their religion or civics really helps to make 'friends', as does trading tech to them. If they invite you to war, you can even go with them, which will really make them happy.

[Jason McCullough]

Fighting them first or mucking around with the AI personalities is all I know of. For what it's worth, in BTS, I haven't been attacked by anyone except the really aggressive AIs when I don't share a religion with them, really piss them off, or have a big power balance in their favor. A decent army and sucking up to one neighbor while I beat on the other usually works.

[Adam B]

Also, I've never been able to keep the Romans from declaring war once they start up Praetorian production.

Though really, that's almost always the correct strategy with the Romans. God those guys are nasty. I was able to hold them off with lots of veteran (shock) Axemen in my latest game, but it was rough. Especially when he got clever and started harassing me with Horse Archers, which handle Axemen neatly. Grr.

[Kael]

FYI: I've gone through the AI quite a bit at a code level and I haven't seen any indication that aggresive AI's players prefer to attack human players. Their criteria is mostly based on the relative power score between you and them.

[Chris Nahr]

Yes, and that usually leaves human players at the bottom of the list because AI players really love to build tons of units...

[Adam B]

One of the biggest hurdles in my development as a Civ player was to understand that I really do need to make more than one archer per city. Especially since I learned on Civ I and II, where IIRC you really could just do that and it totally worked.

[Alan Au]

The BtS AI supposedly tones down the AI aggression levels a bit, or at least reduces their tendency to build huge armies. The main problem with the AI is that it gets a discount on upkeep and upgrade costs.

So, uhh, yeah, bribe them into going to war with their other neighbor.

- Alan

[malkav11]

One of the biggest hurdles in my development as a Civ player was to understand that I really do need to make more than one archer per city. Especially since I learned on Civ I and II, where IIRC you really could just do that and it totally worked.

Yep. Because of the way defensive combat worked, and especially in I where every combat was all or nothing.

These days I tend to do two. That's still probably not adequate.

[Sarkus]

I just finished (won) a game where I choose all my opponents and intentionally didn't choose any expansive or aggressive personalities. Guess what? Still attacked out of nowhere by Saladin. Though, to be honest, that was my fault for delaying the modernization of my military. It was large, but I was mostly macemen upgrading to infantry at the time. My navy was also too small.

However, it was interesting to me that Saladin went after me despite being seperated by an ocean and having two civs with land borders.

[Thrag]

I finally had a game where I did everything right. I didn't start any wars I couldn't win before my economy shut down. I secured my entire continent. I chained together free techs and golden ages and what not so that by the 20th century I was way way ahead on the scoreboard. I even managed to blitz the fairly powerful English with modern units and secure the aluminum I needed since there was none on my home continent. I was a few turns from launching my ship (it was the 1950's at this point) thinking with my massive lead on even the largest enemy civilization not only would I win, but I should be getting my best ever score. Then the god damn Persians win a cultural victory. Even after I set the Mongols to go take them down a peg (unfortunately they got distracted by joining my war against England). I was so disappointed I had to fire up the old "Great Battles of Alexander" to take my vengeance on Darius.

[eliandi]

I've been a big fan of the Civ series since the beginning, and I like Civ 4 for the most part. I have the Warlords expansion, but have not yet picked up BTS. In preparation of perhaps doing that, I decided to play a few games and it has brought up an issue I've had with Civ 4 since the beginning: the aggressive Civs are too aggressive. Pretty much any game I have an aggressive Civ on my border I can expect a declaration of war, no matter what I do. Big army? Still get attacked. Agree to all their demands? Still get attacked. More powerful then they are? Still get attacked. Play pacifist and never attack anyone? Still get attacked.
.

Are there any mods that change this, or can I? It also annoys me, and I'm not inclined to buy BTS to fix the ai for me.

[Alan Au]

I was a few turns from launching my ship (it was the 1950's at this point) thinking with my massive lead on even the largest enemy civilization not only would I win, but I should be getting my best ever score. Then the god damn Persians win a cultural victory.It's good to get in the habit of regularly checking the score graphs (F9), and you can check the victory status screen (F8) if it looks like you're being outpaced in any one area.

- Alan

[Thrag]

It's good to get in the habit of regularly checking the score graphs (F9), and you can check the victory status screen (F8) if it looks like you're being outpaced in any one area.

Lesson learned.

[AndrewM]

It's also good to pay attention to the little messages about cities attaining Legendary Culture. Don't worry about it if a civilization gets one, as the capital can reach it without any concerted effort. Once you see a civ get a second one, keep a close eye on them, as they are probably going for a culture victory. I'm not sure of any way to stop somebody from getting a culture victory, short of winning faster, or launching a massive invasion. I find it an obnoxious enough victory condition that I turn it off sometimes.

[Mike Hussey]

Actually it's better to keep your eye on the victory screen for culture attempts. Waiting for the second city to pop may be too late as the third ,ay not be far behind. It's often easy to tell if they are a neighbour due to the culture pressure on your own borders, also the civ will start falling behind in the tech race as they cut their research rate in favour of the culture slider. If you do decide on a military espnse.prioritise their culture cities and raze them.

[Alan Dunkin]

Where was the less-barbarians setting again? In one of the .INI's? For a long time I never really had an issue as I kept building the Great Wall ahead of everyone else, but I've had a recent run of games where I never get it and jesus the Barbarian armies are getting really annoying.

--- Alan

[Chris Nahr]

Barbarian settings are in the usual menu for custom game settings, just before starting a game.

[Chris Nahr]

Are there any mods that change this, or can I? It also annoys me, and I'm not inclined to buy BTS to fix the ai for me.

Did you see this thread (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=1203676&postcount=35)? One of my mods introduces support costs for most military units, that keeps the militaristic leaders in check.

[Chris Nahr]

However, it was interesting to me that Saladin went after me despite being seperated by an ocean and having two civs with land borders.

Saladin is a religious leader. Did you have a different state religion? He will hate you to no end if you do. Isabella and Justinian are the same type.

[grahamiam]

I just finished (won) a game where I choose all my opponents and intentionally didn't choose any expansive or aggressive personalities. Guess what? Still attacked out of nowhere by Saladin. Though, to be honest, that was my fault for delaying the modernization of my military. It was large, but I was mostly macemen upgrading to infantry at the time. My navy was also too small.

However, it was interesting to me that Saladin went after me despite being seperated by an ocean and having two civs with land borders.

There's a reference pdf on civfanatics for BTS thats fairly comprehensive. If you look thru the document, you'll find a couple of pages that lists the various tendicies of each AI as well as thier probability of declaring war on you (peace probability %). This may be more helpful than just picking non-Aggressive civs in your game. If you want a peaceful, builders game on a standard map, I'd recommend picking the AI's that are listed with an aggression level of "low", though you should still be prepared for wars.

I'll just say that it's very important to maintain relations with the AI in Civ4 (any version) as well as to recognize when relations are beyond repair or not worth repairing. Plus, I think you already identified your biggest problem (antiquated Army/Navy).

link to reference doc thread -> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=236346

[Miramon]

I just noticed something else odd about Civ 4. Too minor to qualify as an actual annoyance, but still rather strange.

In the set-up screens in which you specify various game features, if I hit Return too rapidly to pass on to the "name of culture" screen, the leader name is set to the shipped cultural default, instead of, say, to "Miramon", the last name used. However, if I pause for half a second on the previous screen before advancing, "Miramon" is displayed as expected as the default leader name.

Multithreaded static UI! How odd. It's as if on exiting the previous screen, a thread is started to read some value from the .ini file or wherever it is, rather than delay by a fraction of a second the display of the next set-up screen. Seems like a rather large amount of code is used to implement a misfeature.

This is a bit odd in itself, but it's even more strange when you consider that the .ini file has already been read, in order to determine the default values for previous game set-up screens. It's also odd when you consider that reading and parsing that entire file -- 1K of text or so -- should take a much smaller fraction of a second than the half second or so that it is necessary to pause before the default leader name displays properly.

[Pod]

This happened in the last game I played. I was massive. I was peaceful. I was winning. So the little, tiny nations on my border kept having a pop. I would let out a diplomatic sigh and just steam roller over them, no problem. Then the next ones would have a go.

Why? I could easily have crushed them! They should have mauled each other and gained territory that way, but I couldn't persuade any of them to do so, even though they all disliked each other, it seemed!

[Kael]

This happened in the last game I played. I was massive. I was peaceful. I was winning. So the little, tiny nations on my border kept having a pop. I would let out a diplomatic sigh and just steam roller over them, no problem. Then the next ones would have a go.

Why? I could easily have crushed them! They should have mauled each other and gained territory that way, but I couldn't persuade any of them to do so, even though they all disliked each other, it seemed!

Territory is important, but since Warlords the AI also realizes that is needs strategic resources to survive in the late game. If so it declares war and tries to take cities that will give it access to aluminum, oil, etc. If smaller countries won't give it those things it may go after you for them. Yes its a dangerous prospect, but not taking the chance may be equally dooming.

[Chris Nahr]

In the set-up screens in which you specify various game features, if I hit Return too rapidly to pass on to the "name of culture" screen, the leader name is set to the shipped cultural default, instead of, say, to "Miramon", the last name used. However, if I pause for half a second on the previous screen before advancing, "Miramon" is displayed as expected as the default leader name.

The Civ4 UI is full of such poorly synchronized threads. In the game itself, I often get the pop-up to choose an Apostolic Palace resolution, then the pop-up for some unrelated event, and then the box to vote for the resolution I picked earlier!

I also found I have to wait half a second or so before fortifying a unit that has just become active, or else the input is ignored and the unit remains active.

There is an .ini file setting called "SyncInput" that supposedly "smoothes the interface" though I don't know if it helps with these things.

Speaking of fortifying units, is there still no way to keep upgraded units fortified if you did an Alt upgrade and they had been fortified before? Cycling through all cities to re-fortify them is so annoying...