Frustrating game.

So I'm having quite a lot of fun with the city building and research and exploration but the AI is just so damn frustrating.

For example I end up not expanding as much as maybe I should have and I have a low power rating. But I make friends with alot of the AI and feel safe.

But then one of my supposed friends just randomly declares war. This is a Civ game style ridiculous AI. You are warm friends for countless turns then just suddenly they declare war. Then after he declares war on me all the other AI end up declaring war too.

How can I enjoy a game with AI like that?

I understand some power gamers need a challenge but it sucks it has to be at the expense of us who like to play "realistic" games

 

6,103 views 3 replies
Reply #1 Top

I expand early and demand tribute. Try it out, get the pioneers out eaaarrrrrllly. Learned that with WOM. Maybe I've just been fortunate with my random map gens ;_;

Reply #2 Top

I don't know if you are aware of this feature...

In my current game I am trying to monitor the AI.

I am keeping track of Pariden and Kraxis in a tiny game {Conquest only}, take a look at this image for reference:

 

 

 

The "Relations With Us" section changes over time, monitor that and it "should" give you an indication of when to expect an attack. In my current game I am trying to bait the Queen to attack me, but no luck so far.... If I saw Kraxis and Queen Allied, then I would be expecting an invasion soon afterward as I normally don't bother w/ diplomacy other than trading Tech to weaker Sovereigns.

 

 The Queen's Power rating is 29, I think at this early stage mine is around 24ish...It's still early though. Later, her Power went up quite a bit and relations started becoming tense....She still has not attacked me although, at one point, she could have wiped me out with a Level 7 Champion. I had just expanded to 6 or 7 cities and had only militia in my 4 closest cities. Apparently, the AI could not figure out I was vulnerable, and could be seriously set back or defeated with one champion....I assume it is this "We're still settling", because the two champions {one Kraxis/one Pariden} basically starting guarding one area of the map, not sure why...

{If your wondering, Kraxis I guess had a bad start, because he had only 2 cities and was level 3 while Queen was level 8 or 9...So, AI should not have been at all worried about war on 2 fronts}

 

This next image illustrates what I am talking about:

 

 

As you can see in screenshot, Naegach's army has 1 pioneer, and another, lower level hero {assasin iirc}. Just above the highlighted stack is a LvL. 9 hero  {Empire} He is unrecruited as yet. Just South East of Naegach is a Kraxis army. That army consists of a hero {maybe Karavox himself, idr} w/ 4 pioneer units....My units are North West, standing just inside my border {purple color}.

The reason I am taking the time to point this out is that the 2 AI armies have stood there now for 60 turns. Maybe there is someone smarter who can explain why 2 armies would just stand there for 60 turns, with pioneers, and do nothing...


The game, at this point, is really just a curiosity for me than anything else. I don't really want to select some "insane" or "impossible" option, just to have enemies with 1.5 more health {or w/e} just standing around doing the same silly routines.

After reading a lot of posts about features, wishlists, bugs, etc. imho AI is the MAJOR feature needing to be addressed: Like Stardock's CEO pointed out, hard-coding vs. moddability - from what I am seeing, I personally would leave 1.2 out there for posterity & modders like HF&mrqp, but remove modding and hard code AI for a separate version of FE. There are just not enough modders that can do what has to be done to reach a UBER_MOD with FE.


Just my 2 rubles on that subject.


S_S

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reply #3 Top

FE is really 30% civ and 70% war game. In order to win you have to focus on spamming pioneers and troops.

Everything centers around the power rating. Focus on keeping it higher than all of the AI factions, and the AI will join hands and sing kum-ba-ya with you for the entire game.