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Old November 21, 2001, 12:49   #31
eMarkM
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I've used a variation of the vassal strategy in my games, having a lapdog civ you can push around is always desirable. But I've never tried it so early in the game. This sounds great. But, I'm still having some trouble understanding how to execute this strategy in Emp or Deity. If I build nothing but military from my one or two cities (since I'm not building even settlers), I don't see how I can crank out enough units to do this. I can see this on a tiny map with bunched up civs where you can get to them quickly, but a huge map? Takes a long time to get units to them and in the meantime they're expanding like crazy.

You'd have to take one out at a time it seems, but by the time you get to the others, haven't they built up to that point that it would be harder to "vassalize"? That and I found they don't let you pick em off one at a time. I tried this by exploring immedaitely and attacking the Americans right when I found them and soon the whole continent was against me. I found myself up against a 3 civ alliance in a 3 front war. Ugh. Tough to vassalize the Americans to the west when a stack of 15 Zulu units are invading your territory to the east and another stack of Babylonians are approaching your capital from the south.

randomturn or someone else who's employed this strategy, perhaps you can lay out how this actually happened in your won Deity games. At what time did you vassalize your first civ? What kind of units did you do it with? How many cities did they have when you first attacked? What was the map size? Do you vassalize one at a time? How large was the last vassalized civ when you first attacked them? When do you stop cranking out military and start building temples, cities and such? Ok, a lot of questions, but I'd really like to employ this strategy and just want some more information.

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Old November 21, 2001, 14:40   #32
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rt - I prefer militaristic and expansionist. They seem the two best traits useful in this strategy. Religious is my next fave since I like the cheap temples (necessary for rush building) and the 1 turn anarchy.
* Industrious is useful only for better workers - I am rush building everything.
* Scientific is a waste - AI researches tech and I don't make libs
* Commercial is not so hot - I am totally corrupt under despotism anyway, although cheaper marketplaces (for luxuries) is nice.

The most important discriminator after bonuses is the UU. I prefer having an early advantage in military. I also zealously exploit the retreating capabilities of fast units, so I do not take losses when conquering. Impi, Jaguar, and Riders all work great. I have not played Persians.
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Old November 21, 2001, 18:31   #33
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I use a variation on the strategy... its been called alot of things, pope strategy, tech broker, etc... this is how it worked well for me.

huge map, 10-12 civs is ideal, allows for enough room without too much corruption problems with a decent forbidden palace placing.

I normally absorb my nearest neighbor. this is based on who is strategically viable ; since i normally play on world maps, i have a general idea of whats going to pay off in the long run.

I favor the egyptians. industrius and religious - temples right after modern defenders in siezed cities, this fixes absorption and doesnt let the ai fill in the gaps. the more forward cities are developed into military machines while the ones in the rear send forth settlers exclusively (with maybe a culture imp in between). I tend to try to make friends with stronger neighbors and use them to beat down the enemy too. since the AI enjoys wrecking things so much theres often alot of holes in the former empire of my victime ; these are filled immediately.

you can effectively double what can be a pretty small lot of space on the more civ maps. midway through feudal age i switch to republic, use the extra cash from having no sci to do improvements. you WILL lag behind for a while, but once the empire is running and libraries/univs are running everywhere you ought to be a tech leader. at this point go into cruise control until modern warfare, always taking care to garrision your cities with two of the most modern defensive unit. this will detern the enemy from going after your fringes. fortifications in choke points, such as constantinople/mexico city/ spain-north africa (depends on the map im playing, this is mostly in reference to thaddeusalexanders trippy but fun map) keeps you in control. dominate your region, sell whatever you find there for exorbitant amounts, and always keep the military big stick in the pocket.

it is my opinion that this will be THE higher end gaming technique.
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Old November 21, 2001, 20:03   #34
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Hey, I didn't see this thread until now... But 50 minutes before randomturn posted this I posted in this thread:
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...0&pagenumber=4

I argued that being able to use the AI to seed cities for you is a gameplay bug of the kind that are so common in Civ3... The drive to expand is set so much higher than anything else he just never stops to defend himself.

Just another twist on ICS, is it not?
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Old November 21, 2001, 21:12   #35
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CyberGnu, I think having every civ be so aggressively expansionist is indeed a game flaw. But I think having some or even most of the AI civs be so expansionist is the way to go. Soren has jsut taken the most powerful human strategy from Civ2 and turned it against us. I'd just like to see a little more variety between the AI civs' early game.

Out4Blood - I originally rated expansionist the worst civ type, but with the absolutely crucial nature of the early game I am rethinking. Must try.

eMarkM - glad to help. On tiny-small maps, you should fight pretty much as soon as you encounter another civ as long as you can take over at least one city. They only have 2-3 at this point anyway so they should immediately sue for peace. On large-huge maps, you need to have your military poised to take over 2-3 cities at once or within a few turns of one another. If you get in a jam and can only take 1 or 2 before you must stop and retrench, defend those cities as best you can and try to get peace. Then backstab and take more cities as soon as you're able. Probably this second strike has weakened the civ enough that it will now be your vassal. It's okay if it continues to expand - you can continue to sneak attack and the civ will be weak enough that it will have to accept your completely outrageous peace demands. If you feel a little embarrassed continually double-crossing and demanding extortionist peace terms from the AI, try to remember that it's just a game.

If you keep getting the "The foreign civ has refused to acknowledge our envoy" message it's because you haven't sufficiently debilitated the enemy and you need to take more cities. This will happen more on huge maps. Everything about the game takes longer on huge maps, including adding vassals. Whereas on a small map with average luck and good military tactics, you can have 2-3 vassals by 1000BC, on a large map that might take as long as 1000AD -- you still have a big advantage over the remaining civs but it does take longer to get there.

You can make a huge map a little easier by choosing a civ with an early fast unique unit: aztecs, zulu, and egyptian all come early, with chinese and japanese a little later. Most of those civs are military, which also helps.

Obviously, regardless of map size, you just want to fight one enemy at a time. Before and while you are making war on one, keep trading with the others: techs, luxuries, strat resources, maps, whatever. The ganging up is very rare, especially when you keep trading. I have never had a civ declare war on me when they were getting resouces from me; maybe they don't want to interrupt the flow?

The earlier you get your first vassal, the more cities you will have that can pump out units, That is the ideal, and that is why -- ideally -- you don't need to make many settlers yourself. The bigger the map the more you'll need. You will need barracks, and lots of units. If your cities are near good food sources, you can keep rushing units and sacrificing population -- you're going to get to size 6 before you can make many aqueducts anyway. Cheers.
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Old November 21, 2001, 23:14   #36
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I have found a potential snag here. It's not huge, but it is worth thinking about...

If you sue for peace, your peace agreement has a 20 turn duration before it can be "peacefully" canceled, just like most other trades. If you backstab your would-be vassal quickly, it makes other civs less likely to accept anything in trade that happens over time.

I got backed into a corner this way where no AI would accept gold per turn, luxuries, resources, or anything else from me. Since they weren't getting anything from me per turn, they weren't shy about declaring war on me. Life was bad.

The best solution would be to do enough damage with your initial military strike that you can get all you want from your vassal in one peace agreement. Then refresh it every 20 turns as randomturn suggested in his original post. I think you can get away with a few backstabs early on, but if you do too much war,peace+tech,war,peace+tech,war,... then you might have some difficulty later on.
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Old November 22, 2001, 13:43   #37
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Randomturn, I don't mind if the AI's are aggressive, I agree that they should.

There are two problems though

1) They can't switch from 'agressive expansion' mode to anything else. Especially 'the barbarians are at the gates, time to build spearmen instead of settlers' mode.

2) On Deity the computer can spawn a settler every three turns or so... From a newly built city. To combat the computer, the human player MUST be aggressive in ancient times, or he will be swamped. Personally, I don't enjoy a game where the gameplay is forced on me... If I would like to play a 'perfectionist' game, I think I should be able to with at least a remote chance of success.

Finally, I agree with your first statement that there should be differences in behaviour among the AI's. Remember Master of Magic? Every AI was characterized by two traits, such as 'militaristic', 'paranoid', 'scientific', 'perfectionist' etc. I would love to see this system come back.
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Old November 23, 2001, 00:34   #38
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Quote:
I don't enjoy a game where the gameplay is forced on me...
Boy I couldn't agree more. Another "force" (in addition to that imposed by the AI expansion) is that imposed by the ridiculous corruption. It forces your empire to have a very particular shape and very particular city improvements. Between those two things my game is the same every time. I already find myself playing much less and I really really want to love this game. I really hope they fix it.

They definitely need to:
1) Give the AIs more individual personality. I feel like there was more differentiation in Civ2 for Chrissakes.
2) Tone down the expansionism - playing the Rush/Vassel game every time gets old
3) Drastically reduce corruption. At its core, the point of the game is to build things in cities; they seem to have forgotten that since many of your cities often can't build anything.
4) Fix the Wonders. They're unbalanced, and they need to give you something for coming in second to build a wonder: gold, techs, shields to other cities -- something. It's just too frustrating otherwise; losing 390 shields in a forced conversion to courthouse makes you want to quit games. Obviously the better you get at Civ3 the less this happens, but I don't think it should ever happen.
5) Most important: the tools we need to make scenarios.
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Old November 23, 2001, 02:05   #39
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Thanks for the tips, random.

I think I'm beginning to understand how this works now. Just changing strategy mid-stream in my current 16civ Monarch game. I was 4-5 advances behind leaders, trying to catch up w/ 80-90% science. No chance--and with no money, too. Setting science very low and buying tech with cash hoard is very effective. Like you said, you really have to work it every turn to do this. Shop til you drop and get the best bargain.

In the past I've tried to knock out and take over at least one other civ entirely so I have a bigger empire. I think I like this better. The trick is to keep the vassals just strong enough to produce techs for you. Not too strong that they're a threat, but not too weak that they can't give you anything. A delicate balance. Sometimes you can "drain" the civ and they're not a working vassal, just a weak neighbor that can do nothing for you.

Doing these two things and I'm right there with the leaders in tech, and always have spare cash for upgrades, etc, when not buying tech. Turned my game right around.

I do think backstabbing during 20 turn peace will hurt you, but again, if you keep them just strong enough, you may be able to provoke them into starting hostilities. I've done it a couple of times to the vassal I have in this game withing a few turns of the peace. Then I put him in his place and they paid for peace in tech again.

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Old November 26, 2001, 11:14   #40
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Putting the Vassal Strat in it's place
Now that the game can basically be beat without too much effort once you get the tactic down, I wonder how it can be "fixed" to make it viable but not a guarantee.

Most of the fixes that we can do ourselves are medicines worse than the disease, but here's what I think can be done to easily fix this problem:

1) Remove the corruption decrease given from enemy palaces.

Does this make any sense at all? I sware I think it's a bug, but it's definately noticable, and it just doesn't make sense. Corruption is misappropriation because the government can't personally check in on what's going on, and stealing because your away from the main lawkeeping forces.

So why do enemy buildings reduce YOUR corruption, and why do yours decrease THEIRS? I think it is also the cause of the AI trying to build cities as close to you as possible, which would also be kind of nice to fix.

Unless the enemy is kind enough to use their police to arrest criminals stealing from you and helping you to ensure the local governers aren't putting the people to work efficienty, it just don't
make sense.


2) Make reputation count for more. Historically, look at Hitler for a moment. Other countrys placated him to stop a war as he absorbed multiple countrys, but then he invaded Poland and most countrys woke up and realized that when you deal with the devil you're sealing your own fate. The vast majority of foreign powers who didn't join him declared war on him, and thus came WWII.

In Civ3 Japan could have invaded San Francisco and the Americans still probably would sue for peace, even if the Japanese sued for peace after Pear Harbor, Midway, and invading Hawaii...and razing LA.


So after that 3rd war-peace invasion you launch, they should absolutely refuse to accept peace unless they've almost totally been destroyed. One more attack on them and your on the sh** list for at least 100 turns during which you'd be lucky to get 2 gold a turn for peace.


3) When negotiating peace deals the AI should prefer to give gold per turn and pretty much refuse to give gold in a lump sum. Especially the second time they want peace, they should refuse to give things up front.


4) The game otherwise works as normal, but once you've betrayed 2 civs with war-peace 3 times, everyone in the world refuses to make any deal that isn't basically screwing you into a hole in the ground.

When the world sees that you are a backstabbing warmongering lier they should realise that helping you will doom them to defeat.


5) After that 4-5th betrayal the Civ should fight to the death until a certain amount of turns have elapsed, after which they will only accept peace if you're giving them a big pack of good stuff, which they will of course refuse to ever give back.



With this done the vassal strategy will still be excellant early, BUT unless you are extremely careful and shrewd having more than 2-3 vassals at once EVER will be nearly impossible.

And unlike the mod'ing we would have to do, this makes perfect since. The problem with this is simply that the AI is stupid and easy to exploit, and all Civ games seem to suffer from that or the AI is made into such nazis that diplomacy is pointless. People are confusing it's aggressive expansion as intelligent, and it isn't. It's stupid for one reason: expansion is the only thing the AI does, EVER!. Even when it is painfully obvious that you are getting ready to make a death march on their capital the AI still thinks building settlers is A Good Thing™.

Civ3 could EASILY establish a middle-ground where after they see 2-3 backstabs they catch on to your little game and go midevil on your hiny.

This truly should be easy to fix (as AI rarely is), because it doesn't even have to be dynamic to work. A few hard-coded rules that decide when the AI decides diplomacy with you is a stupid move and boom, the major exploit is fixed.
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Old November 26, 2001, 18:19   #41
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Randomturn:

I agree that forced play leads to boredom. I had a 4 day weekend to play, and I really thought I was going to, but after getting my first game on Wednesday night to about 5 cities, I saved it and decided to use the rest of the holiday reading some books I had been holding off on. So much for replayability.

Another force of game play, the first one I noticed actually, is in the mid to late Industrial age. Generally you have enough production to have every improvement in every city by then, and the 4 turn tech limit prevents you from getting on with the game, and there aren't any wonders left to build 'till the modern age, so the only really useful thing to do is build a military and go attack someone. I know that this is sometimes useful for obtaining coal, oil, and rubber, but if you already have those resources, or if you trade for them, then there's nothing useful to do with all your production!

It saddens me that there's a built-in "time for war" like that.

Yep, every game has a different world and different opponents. And yep, every game's pretty much the same.
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Old November 26, 2001, 18:50   #42
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A more peaceful way is to put down a city on mountains then immediately trade it to an AI. Ask what the AI can give you in return and you'll get 2 techs plus some gold. Put the city in a place that it will never grow (or even better, will starve to death). Or, put the city just two squares away from your capital, hoping that it will defect back to you (but get ready to wait for a long time for that to happen). Then, whenever you see a 2-tech lead from the AI you repeat the trade. This way you don't need to worry about science anymore.
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Old November 27, 2001, 14:52   #43
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eMarkM - glad you're getting the hang of it.

Plutarck - agreed, the game needs to be improved in such a way that does not destory the good things. It's good that some of the AI civs expand aggressively. It's not so good that they all do, and that they cut into you territory to do so. That's just fresh meat to a good civ player, because the AI will never be able to match him in military strategy. It's just a city farm. The expansionist AI civs should still expand, but away from the human player.

David Weldon - good call on the third game force. That seems to be hapening to a lot of players.

Xin, I think the AI buying cities is pretty buggy all around (as with its willingness to buy cities from you that you have troops massed near to retake) and ought to be patch-fixed.

On a general note, some people have been asking about whether the Rush/Vassal strat ought to be used on lower levels of difficulty. The answer is sure: if you have the opportunity to do so, then you will certainly win more quickly. In practice, however, the opportunity to employ the strategy tends to be less at lower difficulty levels, since the AI is less able to plant so many cities so near your territory so early as difficulty level declines.
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Old November 27, 2001, 23:05   #44
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hehe, I like how the vassal statagy essentially makes feudalism the most efficient and corruption free form of government .

Just like in real life
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Old November 28, 2001, 19:08   #45
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Randomturn:
A little off topic here, but I have found a small workaround to the forced gameplay issue. Play at easier levels. If I turn it down even to just Monarch, I can generally play however I want and not have the pressure of playing "perfectly" and still stay in the game. The lower you turn it, the slower the AI expansion and research, which gives you more time to do sub-optimal things and still be competitive. You could maybe make up for that by changing the barbs, or the land type, or playing an inferior civ even.

The only downside is that you're almost guaranteed to be in a dominant position by the middle Industrial Age, and there's not much reason to play past that, but at least you can have a relaxing and different game up to that point.
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Old November 28, 2001, 20:35   #46
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Xin -- are you sure you can found a city on mountains? The game prevented me from doing so.
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Old November 28, 2001, 23:07   #47
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Sorry I never tried to build on mountains. When I wrote mountains I really meant 'food deficit terrains'.
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Old December 2, 2001, 10:02   #48
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The strategy sounds great. However, what about those of us (I can't possibly be alone in this world) who's real life luck extends into the game. I seem to do okay vs. barbarians, but I can't win crap against another civ. Example: I attacked a regular horseman on it's last health in the plains, with a full strength Elite warrior and lost. This is a common occurance for me and why I avoid war at all costs. I've even had galleys sink my attacking sub. WT*?! Any suggestions?

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Old December 3, 2001, 19:33   #49
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David Weldon: I sometimes do the same thing! But the AI just falls too far behing at those levels, so those games get boring too.

Dayison -- try attacking with lots of units. Use horsemen/knights/riders primarily since they generally escape battles they're losing. Back them up with spearmen/pikemen to defend them and station in your new city, and the odd swordsman if your horsemen need a little help. Rush build a barracks in your new city and a couple of turns later your units are ready to take the next city.
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Old December 6, 2001, 01:28   #50
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Randomturn, great thread.
I adapted a variation of your vassal state approach in playing a deity game, on a regular size map.
The objective of the first war is to grab 6 to 8 cities from one neighbor civ. Soon after my civ had 4 cities ( all had barracks ) , I produced 10 veteran military units. By this time the AI already had about 10 cities. Hopefully two of them tied in wonder building. So about 8 cities could produce military units. Normally AI produced only regular units. I chose to play Aztec civ. After one of my uu, jaguar warrior , won a battle, my civ got into golden age. My shield production from the 4 cities almost doubled. and therefore could produce enough units to sustain the war. The first war resulted in capturing 8 cities and a production of a leader that I used to rush build a forbidden city in the center of captured cities. I then negotiated a peace treaty and obtained all technologies from this defeated civ. In the meanwhile expanded my home land to 8 cities. By the end of the first war, I had about 16 cities that should match the size of other civ.
The objective of the second war was to produce 2 to 3 leaders and to capture 6-8 cities from another neighboring civ. Some of the captured cities were sold for technologies. A size 10 city could exchange for 2 to 3 techs. Leaders were used to rush build the Sistin Chapel, Newton's University and Universal Suffrage.
After the conclusion of the second war, concentrated on building infra-structure for science and change the government to democracy. This would take your civ into the loop of tech trading. With a little bit of luck, the war effort gave me a big piece of land that contained all the strategic resources, and come of them could be exported for gold, enabling a 100% science.
The third war might not be necessary. But if a strong militaristic civ suddenly declared war (such as Russia ). It would be an opportunity to get another one or two leaders for rush building of Hoover Dam or SETI.
I missed the caravans of the Civ 2. In Civ3, war is the opportunity on deity level, and I managed a win on space race on 1410 AD
In this regard, a civ with an early golden age is attractive civ in a deity level SP game.
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Old December 12, 2001, 08:32   #51
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Not the perfect strategy!
Hi all,

I just accidentally lost my long reply after hitting 'back' on my browser, so I'll summarise.

First, I'd like to talk ONLY about Deity, Huge map and 16 civs. (The only real game.) On deity, the AI starts with a 67% bonus on production and growth (requires 60% of what you need.) Also, for reference, I am playing with 14 civs on the one (large) continent, with two on a large island.

Reasons why this strategy is bad:
1) There are always several militaristic civs nearby, who build units much faster than you;
2) There are too many civs nearby, such that you simply cannot dominate everyone relatively close. Also, as it's a huge map, the distances are great enough to be too spread out if you were fighting constantly with 4 or 5 civs.
3) Everyone neighbours about 4 or 5 civs.
4) Everyone knows each other.

Thus, if you attacked everyone, you would be spread too thinly, the militaristic neighbours on the other side would also take their share for your work. There are always more neighbours who are militaristic and ready to fight (with a prod. bonus) if you neglect constant diplomacy. In summary, in a world where you can quickly dominate those around you, it can work, just as it did in Civs I and II (where you could win while BC) - but as soon as you are confronted with a large world, closely linked and teaming with civs, you're lost.

To quote the original post:
1. The AI adds cities and develops land much faster than you can.
2. It is very aggressive about building cities near your borders to hem you in.
3. It aggressively trades science, making it impossible for you to get a huge science lead.
4. Corruption in large empires slows your perimeter cities to a crawl.

In my humble opinion (and I mean this, because I do not have the time to read every post, nor try this strategy, taking the time I take to find the perfect decision for each build and each move) but I believe the best, most effective and most personally rewarding strategy is to beat them at their own game.

1) They were programmed to be expansionistic for a reason: citizens are power. By the time you dominate your neighbours, there are other civs, a little out of reach, who have 10 times the producing power (and a bigger military) than you.

2) You can develop fast. If you adopt a more focussed strategy than the AI can achieve (get key city sites, after calculating the number of turns it will take them to settle there, and get there just before) and hem them in before filling in the gaps, they curb their expansion. This way, you can also target the key resources (that you know of.) (PS It helps if you start on a river with a couple of cows to grow settlers fast!)

3) Of course you won't get a science LEAD! There are 16 civs all trading (except you ?!?) so that when one gets a new tech, all will get it soon. Thus, you have approx. 10 civs researching only a few options at any one time, which you cannot match. But why not take advantage of this!! As soon as one gets it, buy it, and sell it immediately to everyone else. You make a huge profit and everyone likes you because you gives they nice things! Then you don't need to waste your time researching, which is always pretty slow in deity.

4) Corruption is in the patch.

Just like to add, also, that the AI always tries for the wonders. If you get them, then you've wasted nearly 600 shields x 15 civs! What a bonus! I know it's hard, competing against the prod. bonus, but it's worth it! The Great Library means that you automatically get new techs, and then you sell them for several thousand gold altogether (I don't know if this is still possible after the patch) which is huge BC! It is hard - whenever I suceedded, it was with a couple of shield to spare, but the effort involved in getting it and the risk of missing was worth it. Oh - and it didn't rely on being lucky enough to get a great leader.

I must admit to adopt a perfectionist strategy takes time, and I am only around 1AD in my current game of which I talk (and the only game beyond this stage that I've bothered with.) But I have managed to get both the Great Library and the Sistine Chapel (both key wonders) with the likely prospect of JS Bach's cathedral. I successfully took over 8 cities on my borders through culture at the same time, and I got around 25 cities BC.

Trying militaristic approaches in other early games and knowing the layout of the current game I predict that it would have led to me being in a similar position in terms of size, with smaller neighbours but no infrastructure. And so how do you possibly expect to be able to beat the rest of the civs, who produce units much more quickly and who are 10 times more developped than you? Ref: David Weldon on civs not trading and waging war. Essentially, the suggested fix to the stragegy was to wait for peace to end - but this is leaving the whole 'vassal' thing and reverting to normal gameplay, and selected strikes. Notice that trade is essential.

Summary:
-------
Strategy depends on the layout of the land, your opponents, and especially your strengths. Playing a militaristic civ may lend itself to this - but it does not mean that it is the best strategy, nor does it mean that you will win. If you think this, try playing on a huge map with large continents with a non-militaristic civ. If you suceed, well... (I'm surprised) but good for you, did you enjoy it? It wasn't you only option to beat deity.

P.S. A hint for those who din't find it easier to play in peace: When you sell your world map, make sure you get theirs, and continue the process. You should get everyone's and a profit. Then you can trade world maps with everyone on any given turn, and turn a healthy profit, and they like you better. When initially changing to republic (around 1000BC) I only had 3000 gold to rush build a whole lot of things I wanted for my beloved cities, and so, did this every turn, got about 100 extra gold per turn (on top of my 250 per turn, mostly from other civs) which helped finance a few extra temples for new cities. When this was finished, I could ask for a Treaty/Alliance/Passage with just about anyone and be accepted (people get nice very quickly with such high levels of trade!)
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Old December 12, 2001, 10:34   #52
eMarkM
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I'm wondering how this strategy works now post-patch. They obviously targeted those that like to rush from the beginning by having cities w/ no culture automatically razed when captured. This prevents the rusher from using every city they take as another warrior factory. So how are others adapting their style for this change? I don't strictly practice the rush-from-the-start strategy, so I don't know.

e
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Old December 12, 2001, 10:34   #53
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Plutarck: great post. This current patch seems to have moved in the right direction. I agree with your assessment about the loopholes in the AI, and your suggestions about fixing them. I also agree with randomturn's assessment of the sameness of the civs, in that they are all blindly expansionist. One of the best things about Civ3 is the upgrade to the AI, but there are still a few glaring holes to patch, and I hope they take the time to work on it. Companies who put care into refining their games, and keep an eye on their original vision instead of merely their bottom line, are the only ones whom I will continue to support in future.

Of all the diplomacy problems, three stand out to me:

1) The concept of civs giving away more concessions in diplomacy only when losing (and more so the more they lose) is flawed. It tilts toward the military rush too far. There is a lack of balance between honor and force. Diplomacy is the art of negotiation, and these AI's are pathetic negotiators, but ONLY when you are taking their cities. There's a complete lack of accounting for the very crucial element of humanity involved: feuding. Sometimes blood goes so bad, trust is completely wiped out, and diplomacy is closed off completely. As Plutarck explained. These civs need to find some backbone if you push them too far. No civ should keep licking boot after boot if the oppressor continues to exploit them. They should accept peace, but not continue to offer concessions, and certainly not more and more and more and more the worse their AI sliding scale says they are losing. That's just flawed.

The AI's willingness to give concessions of ANY kind should permanently end after certain kinds of betrayal. In fact, if you play by the book, honoring all your agreements, the AI should be MORE willing to give you concessions, not less.

2) The concept of military alliances having to last twenty turns makes them extremely undesirable under republic/democracy, whereas realistically, those are the types of government most likely to ally with many nations. The AI needs a better method of recognizing when a war has rightfully run its course. If you have fought hard and well against an enemy and inflicted losses on him, but have to bow out of the fight because war weariness in your lands has become oppressive, or your own forces are teetering on the verge of cracking, for your reputation to be blackened by establishing peace seems unbalanced to me. In fact, rep suffers worse under this condition than blatant, extortionistic, bald-faced lying of the sort described in some posts here, where the AI is raped for its trust, and ruthlessly betrayed, because it allows you to do that to it. There ought to be a more complex alliance system, allowing more options to choose from when forming your alliances. The one-size-fits-all 20 turns deal comes up short in many instances.

In fact, the 20 turn deal is problematic across the board. Some types of deals should last longer, some should be shorter, and there has to be a serious enforcement of these deals. Betrayals ought not to be rewarded. Some types of concessions should incur a more rigorous agreement, lasting longer and with more severe penalties for betrayal.

3) Perhaps the whole idea of giving and taking cities via pure diplomacy should be canned. It should CERTAINLY be canned for you in a particular game if you violate any treaty that involved such a dealing. That is to say, if you make a deal for 20 turns involving the AI giving you a city, and you break the deal, no civ in that game should ever again be willing to make any deals with you that involve city exchange, not even that of you giving cities to them for free.


I think this AI system has made great strides. There is a whole lot about it to like. If they can improve it some more, perhaps the game will remain fresh and exciting. If not, some of the remaining flaws and weakness may end up pigeon-holing the gameplay, as it has already done for Randomturn.

I would also very much like to see some more variation in regard to their expansionism. That the AI will continue to build more and more and more and more settlers, even after every square of eligible land on the world has been grabbed, is certainly flawed. I don't get any sense of personality from these AI's whatsoever. Where are the perfectionist civs? Why do these AI's attempt to grab the most worthless plots of land as far from their capital as possible? Some of these guys ought to be switching modes into "defensive" or other attitudes. All they do all game is look look look for somewhere else to plop a settler. They do have a warmongering mode, but the settler mode never shuts down. I have also yet to see the enemy AI's suffer any serious penalties on the diplomatic front for betraying their agreements with you.

And what about the round-robin wonder building? I'm starting to think it's a flaw to allow switching from one wonder to another. It's certainly unrealistic. If you go for a wonder, you should have to go for THAT wonder, and so should the AI's. The sameness of them all switching to wonder building at about the same point, and cascading all the ancient wonders within a few turns of one another, is getting really old. It should matter if you get to the tech first. You get a lead, and don't have some latecomer stealing it away from you, because they started the Pyramids (they ALL start the pyramids) some twenty or thirty turns before you started in on your Hanging Gardens. Likewise, building a Palace somewhere, and switching to a wonder later, is... well, I don't like it. The AI's don't do it, but if you don't get a head start, you won't get anything. Right now, a wonder is just another big improvement, and the wonder building from game to game is more vanilla than ever, more of THE SAME. As different as the landmasses are, and the resource layouts, the tech tree is a little too much the same from game to game now, and so is the wonder building. You can pick and choose one to get, but every civ on the planet immediately starting a city on every wonder in the game the moment they get the tech (or nearly so, some exceptions in the early game), even if they have zero chance of winning the race, is problematic. Is this really what was intended?

If you had to commit solely to a specific wonder, and were given back a portion of your investment (as gold, perhaps?) if you failed in the race, would make wonders more than the interchangable parts they are now. I certainly agree with randomturn on that: if you lose the race and are forced to dump 400 shields into a minor building or military unit, it's enough of a penalty to twist the game play away from what it ought to be like. Building a wonder in the real history was a matter of a civ making a huge commitment to some particular grand project, not of all of them starting the pyramids, then doling out the other wonders among the runners up for that grand prize. The cascade effect is just another concept where the lack of intelligence within the AI breaks down and shows through. The AI needs to be smarter about building wonders, just as much as wonder building itself needs to be made better. Right now, it's just a pure brute force approach, every civ pushing for every wonder, and relying on cascade to get something, for at least some of them. So what if the others completely falter as a result? Who cares, as long as at least one or two make it out strong to oppose the player. Well, that's a problem. What can be done about it? I'm not sure.


AI sameness is what eventually bored me for civ1 and (much more quickly, due to lingering civ1 burnout) also civ2. In Civ1, on certain dates, on the higher difficulty level, every civ on the planet would automatically declare war on you. It never varied, game to game. Come that date, you would be going to war. That just got to be so old after a while. There were ZERO options for playing to maintain peace, and zero variation in the AI's strategy. So every game got to have the same flavor after a while, even if you tried to vary it. Civ III looks at first glance to have resolved this major problem, but on closer inspection, the AI still has some glaring faults. I don't plan to adopt strategies that are specifcally aimed at exploiting loopholes in the AI. I'm getting my money's worth, so on the whole I'm quite pleased, but I do hope Firaxis keeps a strong commitment to upgrading the AI, and especially to closing down the sorts of exploitation that can unravel the entire weave of the tapestry they are trying to deliver.


- Sirian
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Old December 12, 2001, 10:37   #54
Dayison
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I've tried this strategy and variations of it. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but civs remain defiant to the last city. I end up having to annihilate them completely.
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Old December 12, 2001, 10:45   #55
eMarkM
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One other thing I've noticed in the patch is the AI DOES seem a bit more defiant. Instead of taking two cities and they give me all their tech, I have to take 3 or 4 before they even come to the table. Often this means that "vassalization" is a one time deal. You'll get their tech alright, but by the time they cave in, you've weakened them so much that they've been marginalized and can't be "worked" again for tech, just small amounts of gold.

e
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Old December 12, 2001, 11:50   #56
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I do find it troubling that the AI civs will cave after incessant warmongering.

I think an interesting idea (i.e. - don't know if it's remotely implementable) would be for Civs that are on the verge of becoming utterly hopeless vassals to surrender their Civs to another AI, preferably one of the leaders in the world (assuming they have contact). So instead of bowing to the human and making him a superpower, they bow to the enemy of their enemy.

Alternatively, what if the soon-to-be vassal Civ simply capitulates and cedes all of its cities to you, and leave YOU to deal with the corruption and happiness issues?

Just some random musings.
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Old December 12, 2001, 19:45   #57
ledj
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Does anyone has a good strategy to win on deity level with huge map, 16 civs? Please enlighten me.
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Old January 7, 2002, 06:48   #58
Oho
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Quote:
Originally posted by sunshine
Can you please post a save game in which this works for you? Maybe my copy of Civ III is making Deity work differently, but I tend to meet an enemy civ in about 2250 BC,
--shiny
Ave !!!!

Likewise, I have not been able to make the Vassal idea to work. The only Deity games I have survived (lost both through space race) I played as Persian with something akin to Vassal startegy but not entirely. Besides how do you conquer a city right after establishment since size one cities are destroyed when occupied. I have not followed the game closely enough to know whether an additional defensive unit is created before the size grows to two.

My experince has also been that waging an early war is immensely difficult with the AI civilzations having such overwhelming production bonus and the imminent risk of revolts in the cities you just captured.

- Oho -
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Old January 7, 2002, 12:25   #59
randomturn
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The patch has made it so that size 1 cities are now destroyed if they have 0 culture value when they are captured. For the purposes of implementing the vassal strategy, this change need have little effect for two reasons:
1) destroying enemy cities brings them to the bargaining table just as surely as capturing them, though this makes for a slower game than just capturing them.
2) you can "chase the capitol city" (the one with the star by its name). The enemy's capitol is NOT destroyed when it is captured, and is immediately relocated toi another city (which will also not be destroyed when it is captured).

As for vassalizing on a big map, yes, it makes for a longer game since other civs are further away. Everything about a big map makes for a longer game, sothis shouldn't be surprising. If you want to get the hang of vassalizing before you try to use it in a big game, try it using it under the easiest conditions: smallest map, military civ with early fast UU (e.g., aztec, zulu, chinese), lots of civs, pangaea, maximum ocean coverage (to accelerate meeting other civs).

I'm not playing much these days, so I'm not here much. Game needs to be patched to address mod-making, late game tedium, and play-balance issues. When that happens I'll make some killer mods. Cheers.
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Old January 13, 2002, 14:23   #60
XCalibyr
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This'll sound pathetic, but...
... can anyone provide a 3 (or 1, 2, 4, 5, any)-step approach to beat Chieftain?

I just got the game a few days ago. My record is 2 losses, 1 win, and it was a crappy win - 4 opponents on a standard map. I destroyed one, but didn't do anything against the others and got a histograph victory in 2050. Like I said, crap.

I've never played Civ1 or Civ2, or SMAC, so I wasn't coming in with any knowledge (except my first encounter with the game at Sirian's Great Library, looking for things to do after he stopped with his Diablo 2 write-ups. Thanks for the heads-up, Sirian!).

I just want to be able to beat Chieftain on any size map, with the max number of opponents for that map.

Thanks in advance for any help. This should be an easy one for most of you to answer.
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