Super Civs controlled by AI

[Jone883]

I played now about 20 Games, mostly on prince difficulty, because it says, that the game is balanced and the AI doesnt get any advantages.

But what happens every game is, that 1 AI Player becomes much more powerful than any other, wipes all out, and in the end is attacking me.

I have 2 Problems with this "strategy" :

1. All games are the same, in the end, there is noone to trade with except the mega-aggro-AI.

2. I tried this myself, played superaggressiv and wiped everything out, that was in range, but i couldnt manage this size of my civ.
But when the AI does, it has high happiness, high income, high techs, and everything is runnig well for them.

In my last game, Russia controlled ~30 cities, had a more happy population and even more social politics than me (king-difficulty).

To me it seems, that the AI is definitely cheating in some way.


But if Im doinig something wrong, please tell me.

[Ickabod]

In my current game, America and Rome went to war with each other. In the end Rome gave up all of their cities to America without a lot of fighting, seems like the AI offers up dumb deals to itself too. So America was able to double in size but I didn't see them as having a happiness issue, but maybe they did and I just didn't see it. In the end I marched in on Rome and took them out of the game.

Point is, I think a lot of the times the AI civs get into war with each other and when a peace treaty is offered up one of them becomes mega sized. A couple treaties and you could see a superpower, and the little civs just get taken out over time.

[Jone883]

I saw this "capitulations" too, but my problem with this is, that the AI doesnt have any problems with superlarge civilizations.

[wayninja]

The AI is definitely cheating. There is no doubt about it.

Doesn't seem to need to worry about happiness or upkeep at all.

And yes, I agree it's unfortunately that the endgame usually always comes down to 2 superpowers.

[Welk]

I am a bit curious how things would go if you exclude all the leaders from the game that tend to overdo it. I have not yet seen Ghandi conquer the world.

Oda Nabunaga is a piranha on steroids. This guy is never in peace for longer than 5 rounds for the whole game. I bet he is at war with himself until he meets other Civs.
When I win a game he typically has 5 times the number of cities I control.

[MrMT]

In the two full games I have played, one on prince, and one on king, I have not experienced a problem creating and maintaining large sprawling empires. (On the contrary, I would like in my next game to try a small empire approach, and see if that works.)

It's easy. Grab luxuries (or trade, or ally with maritime states that have em); grab the social policies and wonders that reduce unhappiness, and build happy buildings. It's not that tricky.

Even better, if you get a good happiness thing going, you get a lot of golden ages (and in between, you can deploy great people, or use a golden age wonder/social policy) and boom, your machine is at full throttle.

This has worked for me in a domination victory, and in a science victory. (Did not try a diplomatic victory, but I suspect I could easily enough liberate a couple of civs, buy off a few city states and bob's your uncle).

The only disadvantage I can see is that you can't realistically win a cultural victory beyond a certain size.

[FeddyPoap]

It seems like its more likely to occur when you have less players. Play on a large continent map with about 7 civs, and three of them will be wiped out before you even research astronomy to build caravels. If you have more civs, there are more powers to keep each other in check. But then you get 4 civs on your continent, and they all want to declare war on you because you have borders near each other.

[Headchopperz]

The only disadvantage I can see is that you can't realistically win a cultural victory beyond a certain size.

Not true, with all social benefiting wonders (and a heck other ones), and the policies that makes it come faster, i was getting a new policy every 6 turns, and my empire was around 60% of the world, (on huge).

[Jone883]

When its not Oda, its Catherine, or Augustus, or Bismark, etc...

I won every victory type so far, larger civs, smaller civs (Bollywood ftw!) but, as i said 2 time before, my problem is, that I can see, how umbeliveble happy and rich and developed a 30+ city warmonger civ is, compared to me trying to do the same, and I dont see any possibility to reach this.

[VaeliusNoctu]

It is true that the AI civilizations is poor. Always the same as written in the first post. An IMBA Civ remains and the game loses its appeal. Where is the ambience is if there is only me and one of 50 cities opponent? Unfortunately, the game is: I hope I live on a different continent. I hide in my continent, I have conquered, and getting the victory. (I always play King). There is no nation competition, there is only a slaughter. This is boring.