Regarding ways to manipulate the AI to be tougher, I usually play with a large land mass on a small map with many trade goods. Due to being on the same continent, the AI will be hostile towards my civ. Consequently I spend much of the game at alert or war status.

I see lots of the same patterns that everybody complains about, and I saw the same patterns in CIV, CIV2, and CCTP. The only big difference is in CIV 1&2 there was no stacking of units so you were a bit more at a disadvantage. The CTP engine seems to not stack as big as a human player does. But still I'm having a dickens of a time killing 7 civs on medium difficulty.

I also agree that it has bugs but that, however unfortunately that may be, is the defacto standard for sofware companies now. I think we have a bit to do with that. We get so excited when we hear about a new title that is coming out and we hound the developers to let us know whats going on and when its going to get released. They feel pressured by their public to rush and release it to our grubby little hands.

quote: Don't people know that a computer can never out think a human being?

Thats not the point!
If they know that their AI will suck then they should have not started developing the game!

quote: Originally posted by Atahualpa on 11-29-2000 03:57 PM Thats not the point! If they know that their AI will suck then they should have not started developing the game!

I think you're going a bit far there. I'm not even going to bother explaining why, because I think it's obvious.

The one major flaw I see with the ai in ctp2 is it seems to think the best defensive is a lot of defensive units. What better way to knock out an invasion force than with a mobile offensive force of your own? A good civ game that has military as a central part should have an ai that uses an offense as the best defense. At the very least an ai should be able to defend itself (so far I've yet to see this in ctp2). And of course an added bonus would be the ability to take more than 1 or 2 poorly defended cities (although I don't expect this in civ3 or in the next 3 to 4 years. possibly never with multiplayer taking center stage).

Until now I have played 2 games in impossible and they were both an easy win....(I did not even bother to complete those games)

CTP2 IS EASY IN IMPOSSIBLE LEVEL...!!!

BUT...the AI in CTP2 is much, much better than in CIV2! The reason why the game is so easy is that in CTP2 the AI cheats much lesser and because it's much easier for the human player to develop:

1. In CIV2 I remember that from size 2 my cities revolted unless I built temple. In CTP2 I had size 6 cities with no happiness problems!!!

2. The capitol distance unhappiness is not a problem even in giga maps!

3. the first 6 workers work on 9 tiles! That makes the development of a city much easier than in CIV2

4. I think that if the AI is far ahead in CTP2 then it is more difficult for him to discover new advances...this prevents the AI to become very,very strong early in the game

5. the AI in CTP2 could be much more aggressive...

MY CONCLUSION...is that the game is not balanced very well and that it could become a real challenge for everyone with some minor changes...e.g (impossible level) you could start with happiness 73 and not 75, the AI could start with 3 settlers and more gold and should be able to find new advances easier.....

you see I am not talking about complicated things to make AI better...unfortunately I tried to change this settings and then I had this "corrupted saves" problem

so now I am waiting for a mod or the patch to start playing the game again.............

In civII this wasn't much of a problem, since as soon as you were number one, they would all gang up on you, sharing research as much as they could. I have not seen any such behaviour in CTP2. In fact, in one game on impossible I kept happy relations with four civs, while killing the fifth, then reduced them one after one... The remaining civs apparently never caught on that I was a warmongering bastard. It felt like fighting a world led by Chamberlains...

At impossible I trailed behind quite a bit but played nice and minded my manners. When I get nationalism I start spying to build up my tech. Again, once I get bombers and tanks I build up and airforce and ground force and systematically take one city after the other. No counter attacks, very little seen for defensive tactics. Once, they did create a counter strike of about 6 fighters but this was easily squashed and my scourge continued.

If any of my neighbors had pressed home an attack at my core cities I would have been crushed. As another poster said the rest of the civs just sat back and watched as I rubbed them out one by one. By creating two bomber/fighter (8 bomber/4 fighters per group) groups and about 18 tanks I slowly become the world ruler.

1. The weaker A is relative to B, the less likely A is to do anything B asks. (Unless A is completely irrelevant - i.e. down to two cities, or has just been brutalized and crushed into submission by B, etc.)

2. This is doubly true is B is the civ currently in first place.

3. This is doubly true again! if B is human.

4. If the A-B gulf gets too big, and B is too powerful, A *or* B will attack no matter what. (This ensures that tiny powers will band together to try 'one last gasp' to thwart a hegemon, but also that a large powerful AI civ will gobble up its weak neighbors.)

Since humans were frequently in the lead early, all the computers would ally, and share research. If you counterattacked any single AI, they would all declare war because of the interlocking alliances. And for some reason the AI was smart enough to avoid multi-front wars if possible, so it kept inter-AI fighting to a minimum, unless at peace with the human.

This shouldn't be too tough to incorporate in the CTP2 AI.

But a word of caution. It will solve some of the CtP problems, such as the computers never being willing to gang up, and it might lead to the emergence of larger empires as AI's go for the jugular and wipe each other out.

But it will mean that the AIs will be tougher to control as the game goes on. CTP1 players complained about the AI not making or honoring treaties with them, even when the player was so far ahead that dispatching a pesky civ was like swatting a fly. Honestly, how many times in Civ2 could you get enemy civs to do anything in the late stages of the game without the UN wonder and the Statue of Liberty?

Let me give you a little story that happened last week:

I played a MP game with 3 other guys against 4 AI. 1 AI (AI1) went to war with me and another human player by turn 30 (started in Rennaisance, huge map, with lots of islands). The other player had to retreat to another island (lost about 6 cities). It took me about 20 turns to launch a successful counter offensive into the AI's empire. I took 3 of his cities and then came up against some major resistence. I was at peace with another AI (AI2), but that AI had attacked our 3rd human player and was quickly wiping him out. Our 4th player was playing isolationist and just grew his cities on his small island and defended it. The game was about 6 hours old at this point when we found the other 2 AI. These AI had the highest scientific and military ranking.

Needless to say, the AI can be very difficult. I am sure that I could have taken all 4 AI out, with the help of the other 4 guys, but it would have taken a while.

Maybe if you are really good, you should find others to play online with. That may give you the challenge you desire. Oh, I almost forgot: If you think that I and my friends suck at this game, let me let you in on a little secret: We QA'd this thing. The AI can be very hard to defeat. Just because you wiped out the AI a few times, don't think every game will be like that. You can also set the AI to a certain empire type in the game text files. I like Evil Genius or Idealistic Isolationist myself.

I just heard this i don't even have the game so i can't check it out.if someone sends me the strategy.txt file I'd look over it see what i can do (if you're too engrossed in the game to bother, I don't have it for 7 more days.

After Civ2, I have tried SMAC. It seemed nice, and had some aspects of the game I really missed in Civ2 (and CTP), but it was so easy... Damned SMAC AI. When I said theat on one of the forums, there was a reply : "you probably are an experienced Civ player". In SMAC, I have done Librarian in a week, Trascend in 10 days. After some 2 weeks it got boring, I could handle him at any level.

Artillery unit is unbalanced and available too early - I got them like 15 or so turns after Cannon - used them guarded by MGs to totally wipe out all my nearby opponents. If not for the city size limit probably could have won the game from there but it got boring.

Also noticed that Infantrymen do a damage of 3? It's a 2 point jump from 1. For the cost of that unit it's really overpowered vs ancient units.

I think there is a lot of scope for modifications in a mod-pack.

I'm not sure if I ever want to play a Normal map again, even with max players ... the later stages of the game are mind-numbing boring when you have to move 40 or so different units every turn ... and manage production for 55 odd cities.

The Mayors pretty much suck - they only "Build" not "Manage" ie they do not tweak your specialist count nor do they know how to use entertainers to keep your individual cities happy. As a result, once you get over 30 cities micro is a PITA.

We'll see about whether I'm staying or not - I had this huge urge to mod the thing (CtP2) to my satisfaction when I was playing through it the first time. If so, I'd probably work with WesW on this.

But the 55 city micro really got to me Plus there were only remnants of 3 civilisations which were a) almost dead or b) dying to take care of, so I didn't really see the point of playing further. The date? 1924AD (I think).

Well, to do a proper job on modding I'd have to do some heavy spreadsheeting but I'm having crunch time at work right now, and unless someone solves the 55 city micro problem, I might get bored of the game too quick to actually sit down and do this

Re: too easy

Errr, I dunno, I haven't played CtP1/2 for a while, I'd expect to have forgotten a couple of things (actually I've forgotten almost everything) and I'd expect to lose the first time.

Reason I won I think was because of the power of artillery protected by MGs -> this implies game imbalance (even on Impossible), not my godly CtP playing skills.

Off-topic, but I'd love to get a PBEM going someday ... if only to see how good I am vs other real life players. But PBEM I think might take too long ... maybe if we kept the group small? Want to organise one?

Hope you guys have got your complimentary copy already - Dave Fischer (or was it White or Stewart? argh) wrote to me but I wrote back telling him I had resigned and while I wouldn't mind a copy, I didn't expect one. The copy I have is borrowed.

Re: scientific and diplomatic victory

Hmmmm, I've always been a kill-everything-in-sight guy. They're not alive, you don't have to worry about them. Plus it works. But I'll give the other options some thought next time round.

Re: Mayors changing specialists

Yes, the Mayors do change specialists but they change the wrong ones. Case in point - I go set my cities for Growth after I've already built the Granary and Food Silo. What does the dumb Mayor do? He goes and builds Artillery, puts 2 farmers when he could have maxed the farmers while maintaining happiness. I had cities rioting every turn under the guise of this "Growth" mayor.

The "Science" mayor wasn't much better either. He never made a single scientist specialist. All he knew to do was build a Publishing House, after which it was Artillery again. Groan. Yeah, and they were all rioting too, doesn't he understand what "entertainers" are?

So I might as well micro the cities myself - the mayors are a joke

I wonder if playing small map, 8 civs changes the game dynamic too much. In which case it might not be the appropriate test platform for balancing ...

Re: diplomacy

Ummmm, I spend my entire game telling them not to pirate, they pirate. Please STOP TRESPASSING, damn AI says "Ok" but his stupid Archer / Settler group still sits there. I tell them to trade stuff with me, I'm giving them GUNPOWDER for Concrete - and they say "No." Hey, sounds very familiar (CtP1) right?

Plus, almost all of them refuse peace treaties with me (hehe, and you wonder why I just prefer to kill the ungrateful SOBs). By the time I reach Nationalism and Spies, I'm already ahead of them in tech ... so nothing to trade for ... (and this is Impossible ugh - my gut feeling is we need to make the Diplomats come earlier like I originally modded for CtP1).

Dunno, there are a lot of places that can improved on as far as modding is concerned. Unit balance too ... fighters also seem a little powerful ... also notice how overpowered Archers are? The new combat mechanism in CtP2 actually seems to give ranged units first strike capability even in the front ranks. Maybe I'm imagining it, but I'm finding that a huge group of ranged units protected by front line units with high defense (Hoplite, Pikeman) are better than some ranged units and more offense units (Samurai). My 8 Archer, 4 Hoplite group kicks a lot more ass than my 5 Archer, 7 Samurai group ... If it is true that ranged units now have first strike capability, then their costs need to be seriously revised upwards. Right now, it's just a gut feeling from my observations, but my gut feelings are usually pretty accurate. Given time, will bear more investigation.

Hmmmmm, and the "remember combat result" feature of CtP is going to make testing combat a real PITA. Have to reload Scen Editor everytime to try another random result sigh ... or has this been removed? I don't know.

Personally I find that CtP1 modded gives a much better challenge than CtP2. Of course, CtP2 modded will be superior ... but buying CtP2 means that you paid Activision for what CtP1 should have been in the first place, and which is not as good as CtP1 modded, with the exception of borders (great thing!).

I know, wrong place to post all this, should be in Modding forum, but I'm short of time right now. Maybe later I'll drop by in the other forum and cut-paste relevant parts.

Can't say for now what I'll be doing with this game (if at all). First, let me get RL work out of the way, and then we'll see.

quote: Originally posted by Celestial_Dawn on 12-11-2000 01:16 AM and unless someone solves the 55 city micro problem, I might get bored of the game too quick to actually sit down and do this

quote: Off-topic, but I'd love to get a PBEM going someday ...

quote: Hope you guys have got your complimentary copy already - Dave Fischer (or was it White or Stewart? argh) wrote to me but I wrote back telling him I had resigned and while I wouldn't mind a copy, I didn't expect one. The copy I have is borrowed.

quote: I go set my cities for Growth after I've already built the Granary and Food Silo. What does the dumb Mayor do? He goes and builds Artillery,

btw, the build lists are editable...

quote: puts 2 farmers when he could have maxed the farmers while maintaining happiness. I had cities rioting every turn under the guise of this "Growth" mayor.

quote: Ummmm, I spend my entire game telling them not to pirate, they pirate. Please STOP TRESPASSING, damn AI says "Ok" but his stupid Archer / Settler group still sits there.

check the diplomacies.txt to see the negative and positive regard bonuses according to your actions

quote: my gut feeling is we need to make the Diplomats come earlier like I originally modded for CtP1).

quote: but I'm finding that a huge group of ranged units protected by front line units with high defense (Hoplite, Pikeman) are better than some ranged units and more offense units (Samurai).

quote: but buying CtP2 means that you paid Activision for what CtP1 should have been in the first place, and which is not as good as CtP1 modded, with the exception of borders (great thing!).

CtP1 + Mods < CtP2

Ummmm, I spend my entire game telling them not to pirate, they pirate. Please STOP TRESPASSING, damn AI says "Ok" but his stupid Archer / Settler group still sits there.

i tend to believe that you have to "prove your power" to the AI in order to start listening to you. the lack of feedback when you're rejected leaves experience as your only tool to figure out how to do well in diplomacy...
check the diplomacies.txt to see the negative and positive regard bonuses according to your actions

Mark, my god man what are you saying??? Do you not realize that this is a serious problem? The trespass and pirate part of the diplomacy and game is a mess.

"can you stop trespassing sir?"
"sure i agree" says the bad or good guy
twenty turns later his crap is still in my land, seems harmless anyway but still annoying. I think when you agree to withdraw your units zap out of that countries border area and if you cross that border for any number of turns you break the agreement and your free game for slaughtering by the offended nation and his allies. lets face it, there is a reason why we dont want OPP (other peoples pikemen) on our land and their must be a better reason (useful reason) to use diplomacy to avoid war, so somebody fix it, its a bug, a glich a problem why dont people admit it for gods sake??????? grrrrrrrrr yeah yeah i know its a game, so that also means it should be easy to fix.....

how much did activision pay you mark??

about the pirate thing, your gosh darn right its messed up, and if you dont see it then your getting payed by either activision or hillary clinton. my bloody friend, my ally, my trade partner PIRATES MY ROUTES even after time and time again i ask him to stop. yet he still sits there with the chit eating grin on his face saying he loves me and completely trusts me. Yeah i guess he would considering he can just take my money and break his agreements and i sit there dumbfounded not wanting to beat him up for it. I mean come on guys, this kinda crap is just funny.

there are many other INCONSISTANCIES IN THIS GAME, i hope hope hope that activision or some resourceful chap can fix some of these bugs in the game.

by the way is anyone else having problems using multiplayer? it wont let me enter the lobby , i could play it in ctp1 but not ctp2. another bug?

for those who want a hint at how to use diplomacy in this game, thought its a joke. check this out.

If you have a guy that trusts you and respects or loves you. all you have to do to get pacts or alliences with him is threaten to declare war if he rejects. is that a bug or what. for example

israel loves me and trusts me, we never fight and we get along and swap a few things now and then. So i ask israel to join in a trade pact, he rejects me. So i threaten to declare war, he then accepts and he still loves me and get this HE TOTALLY TRUSTS ME hehehehehe

israel and i are trade partners but he has a nasty habbit of pirating my routes. so i ask him to stop it right now and he accepts. next turn he is back at it, pirating my stuff. so i ask him to join in an allience. he rejects me, so i threaten to declare war and he accepts, i only need to look at his smiling face and gleaming trust to know thats exactly how the guys at activision look like right now after they get all our money for this CRAP.

ok ok, its just a game i know, but i just hope people see this GAME needs some fixing or its just a joke. This game is sooooooo fricken easy too, the impossible level means its impossible to lose, you cannot lose in this game its just so easy they hand you the victory on a platter once owned by al gore, the countries most notorious loser.

hey there are some great good things in this game though, like borders, combat system as a whole is improved (watch out for airplanes and catapults though) trade system is great dispite some diplomacy shortfalls, im starting to like the city concept of not having to place workers but i tell you as i have told everyone before, dont use mayors they are all conspiritors for hillary clinton and al gore, they will ruin your empire.

anyways, i hope someone comes out with a useful patch

then i played a game where i was indonesia, thinking it might set me back being i have little land to work with. I gotta tell you quite the opposite. I stayed on par with everyone and then steam rolled right past them all in tech and economy. I was peaceful mostly and powerful, they didnt dare touch me and the rest is history

im still playing the all tyranny game, but its turning into another weak mans gambit, i have to fight to stay competitive, diplomacy isnt cutting it.

its true the weaker guy will always get the cold shoulder and maybe a cold sword, diplomacy doesnt matter in the game or realisticly. so in this game you can either stay weak and pray the others wont whipe you out or fight to maintain respect.

anyways yall probably knew all that i just thought i would share some of my thoughts on the issue

israel and i are trade partners but he has a nasty habbit of pirating my routes. so i ask him to stop it right now and he accepts. next turn he is back at it, pirating my stuff.

meanwhile, there is no historical case where a nation broke a diplomatic agreement...

Mark what in the blazes are you talking about??? who cares if isreal broke an agreement. my point is that israel is pirating my trade route when we are partners in the first place. plus i forgot to mention he respects me and totally trusts me, plus he pirates the turn after he said he would stop. whether he is weaker than me or stronger, that is grounds for war i say. so i declare war on you mark, get down on your knees boy!

oh sorry, got little carried away there, ok back to the game.

quote: havent you tried giving build orders to multiple cities at once?

Yes Mark, I'm not quite a moron The point though is that you can't arrange your cities in a particular order, so group select often selects cities that are supposed to be concentrating on science or economy. You still have to manually select and unselect quite a bit.

And also, keep in mind that because of the combined arms nature of the game, different cities, all at the front line need to be producing different units.

Try microing 55 cities:P It gets old And I'm not talking about the build queue, I'm talking about min / maxing specialist management.

quote: I go set my cities for Growth after I've already built the Granary and Food Silo. What does the dumb Mayor do? He goes and builds Artillery.

quote: yes, cause there is nothing else to build which can improve growth...

Err, that's my original point - they don't manage specialists

quote: btw, the build lists are editable...

Yes, but it's SPECIALISTS I am interested in. This is why the managers are USELESS

quote: i tend to believe that you have to "prove your power" to the AI in order to start listening to you. the lack of feedback when you're rejected leaves experience as your only tool to figure out how to do well in diplomacy...

Mark, errrrrr, your logic here is really weird. I want PEACE. Therefore I don't "prove my power". I am the No 1 military and economy in the world, big time, and I'm crushing belligerent nations (you know, the ones that didn't agree to Peace the first time round) like a bug.

The other nations still don't want a Peace Treaty. Instead, they pirate. They go blow up my Fishing Nets. I am very annoyed.

STOP PIRATING, I tell them. "Ok". Next turn, they continue pirating. I get really fed up and blow up their cities too. They ask for a Cease-Fire. I say Ok. Then I ask them, let's have Peace. "NO". Then they pirate again.

So I'm going, WTF? Sorry dude, you're going down. And about 15 turns later, the sorry remnants of what was once an empire beg me for a Cease Fire. Guess what I tell them? "NO".

Diplomacy is messed up, Markos. My production dwarfs the rest of the world, you shouldn't be screwing with me, but you only want a Cease Fire, don't want Peace, and continue to pirate my trade routes and destroy my PW even when I keep telling you to desist.

Somebody screwed up somewhere, unless diplomacy is a product of difficulty level. I played on Impossible, and it might be that all the AIs are belligerent. But if that's the case, then it shouldn't be. AIs should be given production, science boosts - but even on Impossible, one should have a chance at the other types of victory, other than conquest. And no, I didn't turn Bloodlust on. I know what I'm talking about.

quote: but I'm finding that a huge group of ranged units protected by front line units with high defense (Hoplite, Pikeman) are better than some ranged units and more offense units (Samurai).

quote: that is correct, and i think it's a "feature" not a "bug"

quote: Originally posted by Celestial_Dawn on 12-11-2000 08:57 PM The point though is that you can't arrange your cities in a particular order, so group select often selects cities that are supposed to be concentrating on science or economy

btw, i tend to build everything everywhere instead of having specialised cities(therefore i probably dont have the kind of problems you have )...

quote: keep in mind that because of the combined arms nature of the game, different cities, all at the front line need to be producing different units.

quote: And I'm not talking about the build queue, I'm talking about min / maxing specialist management.