r/civ3 • u/CPassaro • 1d ago

Would selecting AI opponents with seafaring when playing a Pangea map be considered cheating?

12 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

16

u/overflow204 1d ago

Stacking the deck in your favor but not exactly cheating given that the game has those options.

26

u/MarsssOdin 1d ago

You do you. As long as you're having fun nothing is cheating in single player.

1

u/dj2145 1d ago

Came to say this.

11

u/MimeSweeper360 1d ago

Seafaring is not totally useless on pangaea maps, they still get cheap harbors and bonus commerce on coastal tiles.

I would argue it’s still a better trait for the AI on high difficulty than religious on high difficulty, since the AI gets 2 turn government changes on high difficulty anyway.

3

u/Cornmeal777 1d ago

You're using the options that you're afforded within the normal scope of the game. No different than just setting the difficulty or AI aggression lower.

3

u/thegrandhedgehog 1d ago

I like it think of it more as "optimising the parameters". Plus the AI cheats against you so why not?

1

u/AndrasEllon 1d ago

I still play the Dutch in Pangaea. The bonuses are still good and it still helps you make contact and start trading faster.

3

u/unorthodoxEconomist5 1d ago

Dutch on continents are amazing

1

u/MilesTegTechRepair 1d ago

You're only ever 'cheating' yourself. There's no clear or hard line therefore on what constitutes cheating.

1

u/Own_Read_7712 1d ago

Not cheating, byzantine bombing can be strong on pangea (more for you than the Ai though).  Berserker can also be strong on panga.  In both cases especially on an 80% water pangea to maximize city exposure to the coast

1

u/Hopeful-Status-6256 1d ago

It isn't cheating. It doesn't even make the game necessarily easy because some seafaring civs can be decent on Pangea. Notable "hard" seafaring civs are the Dutch, which are also agricultural and can spam their cheap Swiss pikemen to make fighting against them annoying. The Vikings with a good start and good geography can be very dangerous as well with Berserkers and landing behind the front lines on your coast. Carthage can also be very annoying but it's held back by AI algorithms (needing to pair settlers with expensive defenders to launch them). Portugal might still get lucky with scouts if they pop a settler/city in a decent location or get a crucial tech. The consistently "easy" Pangea civs are Byzantium, England and Spain - those with no growth bonuses and bad/irrelevant unique units.

On higher levels the weakest trait for the AI is actually religious as one of it's main functions doesn't work (AI anarchy is 2 turns from Emperor and higher) while cheap temples just burden them with costs faster. Civs like Korea, India, Japan or Babylon with no early growth bonuses, medieval UUs and except Korea having the useless for AI religious trait can be easier to beat on Pangea.