(P)REVIEWS - Civilization IV: Warlords Review by Solver
Wars Revamped (Page 2)
As you may guess, this actually put Saladin close enough to a Domination
victory. No, I haven’t seen the AI reach domination yet, but with half of
vassal’s land and population counting towards the master’s domination
threshold, it’s certainly possible for the AI to at least come rather close. In
this case, it was evident that AI still lacks the high-level goal of achieving
Domination as one of its strategies, because Saladin did not attempt to fight
further wars to hit the required threshold, but I think Domination can now
happen.
If you want to see the Warlords AI in some military action, and check
out how vassalage changes the dynamics, then you should start a game with a
similar setup. Pangaea or possibly Highlands, Standard or larger map with at least as many
civs as are offered for it, and Aggressive AI on. I can’t promise that you will
like that particular game, but it certainly will give you a very nice overview.
Vassalage remains at least as interesting in the late game. You may run
into a situation where there are only two major powers remaining, each of them
having vassals. If so, it can break into some true world wars. I have fought a
modern war in Warlords, in which everyone was involved – which, at the time,
was me and four AIs, two of which were vassals, one was the master of both
those, and the fourth was independent.
While modern world wars can be fun, I have to mention a weaker point
that has, sadly, not been improved on in Warlords. I am talking about the AI
and air units. The AI use of air units is fine – it will, if it has a
sufficient air force, destroy numerous tile improvements, strike at incoming
units, etc. The AI doesn’t know, however, about a blitzkrieg strategy that
humans can, and often will, use. This means building a truly massive air force,
which bombards the enemy cities and their defenders with such power that the
incoming land forces have few problems taking over an entire civ.
The AI will not execute any similar assaults, it will still rely, in
modern wars, on large numbers of land units. Not that this is a problem, but a
blitzkrieg with a massive air force simply is much more powerful. Of course,
this leaves the AI pretty unable to defend itself against such attacks. It does
build a defensive air force of Fighters, but nowhere near enough to stop or
even significantly damage a squadron of 25 or more Bombers. It’s not a new
Warlords issue, it’s just something that has not been improved upon.
Speaking of fighting wars, I really need to mention the Trebuchet, a new
Medieval toy that has been given to us. Trebuchets are strength 4 units,
however, with a 100% attack bonus vs. cities. It means that, in the era of
Longbowmen, Trebuchets are able to not only bombard defences, but actually kill
some defenders. This is a maybe minor addition, but one that I really like. It
fills the huge time gap between Catapults and Cannons, and I’ve always felt
weird when, even in the Medieval age, attacking cities directly with siege
units was equal to suiciding those units. Not anymore, luckily. [ ... Previous Page | Next Page ... ]
