Here are some things that I have been messing around with in my v2.42 (so as not to screw-up MGE, if I'm ever home long enough to play.)

Adjusting competitors. There are some civs that seem tougher than others depending on your style of play. For me, aggressive expansionist civs blow up my trade caravans and have small cities, so I don't get as much bonus money; and they have more units so are less likely to give tribute, and harass me early so I have to defend better. So I have adjusted the civ characteristics to make the opponents more Mongol and less Babylonian.

AI reseach priorities. I usually go for MC and JSB which the AI almost ignores, so I increased the research priority of these crucial techs.

Military unit adjustments. Howies are too effective when used by a human, I reduced their movement to 1 and dropped the ignore walls flag. Dips and Spys movement reduced by 1, and increase in cost. Settlers/Eng ignore ZOC to keep me from boxing in the AI expansion.

Terrain adjustments. We have all investigated an AI city and seen them prioritze food over trade, it will work fish over whales and a grassland square over mined wine. In order to get the AI to work the high trade squares I have added to the food production of big trade specials like gold, spice, gems etc.

I've done a bunch of other stuff too, but that is a start. What kind of recommendations do you guys have to make the AI more difficult?

I love the rules.txt file and have several versions that I use depending on the type of game I want to play. In the one I use most often, I've made modifications along the lines you describe for the same reason as you (in order to make the AI more challenging).

I change the tech priorities a lot, increasing the value of the ones I perceive to be critical (i.e. Bronze Working, Monarchy, Conscription, Explosives, Computers, Monotheism, Invention, etc.) and decreasing the ones rated too highly (i.e. Map Making, Rocketry, Nuclear Fission, Genetic Engineering, Combined Arms, Chivalry, etc.).

I also change the number of shields required to build various city improvements and wonders, including changing Leo's to 600 shields rather than a measly 400.

If milking the AI is part of your strategy, I bet the MGE is more challenging without tweaking.

I keep the sound on during my single player games. If you're going to add those bonuses to chariots and elephants and BigHorseys, enhance the sound too. That elepant charge still puts the fear of god in me comin' out of the dark lands--even when I have a phalanx in the mountain fortress.

My contribution to this discussion is to encourage the AI to use bribe money. Or to make bribery a bit more costly to the human dips/spies.

Hey Sten,

Howitzers would be much weaker if they had 10 attack with their 2 movement and ignoring city walls. Also, you could reduce their defense to 1--probably not though. I'd build tanks and not howies if we did too much to change them. Perhaps city walls should be a bit compromised from a historic sense in the late game.

Engineers are a big thing to change. Being able to build a railroad within the turn is huge. Same goes for fortresses. Is there a way to delay the fortress leaving the units exposed to attack? Maybe spies should be allowed to sabatage occupied fortresses

Of course, I know nothing about making scenarios or mods so my suggestions are based in wild speculation.

Another thing, make AI build a transport with substantial units in big numbers. They make so many stupid ships without ground troops. Make them use ships in conjuction with helicopters like they do with paratroopers. Damn! AI is senseless.

I have noticed that it stops attacking rifleman in the mountains when it has a few casualties with it's outdated weaponry

Your MC JS strategy is mine as well. I love those two wonders. So it makes sense to make it more shield cumbersome.

(Oh, thanks for the four whales. three wins of course, but not sterling results: 1922, 1906, 1890. Atleast I'm progressing! What surprises me is how different each game develops. And my memory for hut locations is seivish--I stay out of sewers and caves.)

BTW, sounds like you got time to play this weekend. I thought someone in your position in the City would have to keep an eye on the money stuff. Anyway, let us know what happened in your games.

Would significantly reducing the build cost of early wonders make it more of less likely that a human would build them before the AIs. I was just thinking (while I was watching the money with my right eye) that very low cost early wonders might allow the AI to beat you to several of them. I think I'll change some of those first level wonders to 50 shields and see what happens.

The changes that you have proposed in the rules.txt can to some extent be exploited by you. Since you already take advatange of high trade giving yourself more food would work to an advantage to you allowing you to grow your cities faster. Also by making Miches and Bachs more attractive you make other key wonders such as Adam Smiths etc less attractive allowing you to seize all of them while the AI desperatly tries to reach monotheism. Clearly since you know these changes they could benefit you more than the AI. Yes it would make the AI harder to beat, but you would know how to evade tactics you are trying to force the AI to use.

Thats my two cents.

For the ics'er as well..... basically you double your science as the cities grow faster and your getting all the free gold and science to boot.....

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They call me Mr. Fierce

I tried the same approach a couple years ago, and I thought what I had learned might help somebody out. First of all, I don't mean to be a wet blanket, but its Extremely difficult to get a good game out of the AI, even if you give it Lots of advantages, and Severely hobble yourself. So here's what I think I learned...

It is Much more balancing to hurt yourself than to try and help the AI. The AI is very rigid in its responses, and changing anything runs a fair risk of damaging it. The only thing I found I could do that would reasonably help the AI, was boosting the attractiveness of various technologies (Monarchy, and the techs leading to it were especially valuable).

There are lots of things you can do to Hurt yourself. Clearly if you add enough of these, you can finally make the game competitive. The problem is as you layer more and more of these each one makes the game a little less fun. I was never able to find a balance, where the game was difficult, And still fun. However, I'll list some of the things I did below, since they were mostly effective. Note that some of these are mutually exclusive, I tried different things at different times.

no trading tech
no stealing tech
upon conquering an enemy city, pick the most worthless tech
no extortion of other civs
no bribing cities or units
no diplomacy whatsoever with other civs
no great library (best in conjunction with various tech limitations)
double cost of all wonders (hurts you more than the ai, or you can just double the cost of your favorite ones)
no intentional we love x (sometimes you can't avoid it in an occasional city)
disband your second settler by 3900 b.c. (lets you build a few roads with him first)

There were some more things I did, but I think these where the big ones.

The macro language in ToT is excellent for this purpose, presumably you could do about as well with standard CIV2 events, or you could even use the CHEAT menu to give extra capabilities to your opponents.

If you want the AI to give you a good fight, just provide the means to do it -- early acqusition of RR, warfare ships, rifles, more settlers to make more units, etc...

- toby

How about just standing still and doing nothing at all for the first 500 or 1000 years? Then you have to play some serious catch up...

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Scouse Git[1]

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Scouse Git[1]

Good point on the howitzers! I forgot that because my games never get that far Cavalry are my howitzers... but the same idea applies. I guess I could cut back on doing clever things with engineers also. Using engineers in a decent way makes an attack on any city the AI controls an inevitable success with relatively little loss through flash building of roads and railroads and fortresses.

The X map is a lot of fun. You know, the most I ever did it on was a small map. However, there is room to give the bad guys a lot more cities with a medium or large map. Perhaps that's the way to really get a Game. As for Clash... A PalmPilot would be pushing it!

Tobyr:

- delaying researching monarchy, republic, democracy as long as possible.

- (i think someone already said this) refusing to build the wonders you deem "most important"

- maybe fighting only defensive wars.

Seriously, do you folks win all your diety games? What percentage?

In fact, I'm going to try another OCC large map...got some new strat/tacts to try.

On playing the Ai which I have not done much this last year...
Limiting the number of cities you have is a way too.
As well as sending your engineers over to transform ground the ai never improves. I used to do that to the cities I traded with to improve my trade routes.

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The journey itself is the thing~Odysseus