I was duking it out with Catherine this morning and noticed that the AI just isn't very bright sometimes. On one hand the computer can display an incredible grasp of good tactics - especially when it comes to placing cities to block an advancing civ. But on the other hand it can really be dense during war.

Typically I would build up my forces, march them to the border, declare war, take over management of a city, then sue for peace. Repeat.

I was wondering how dumb Catherine really was after signing the 4th peace treaty with me - especially since it was obvious I was starting to run out of the capacity to build forces. Heck I almost lost the 4th engagement.

On the other hand, if you don't take over a city, they often want an arm and a leg to sue for peace. Game I just got done with Catherine, that's how it went. She wasn't on my border, so I couldn't just waltz over and attack. And, it got pretty annoying having raiding cossacks hitting me all the time, through the neutral (who she had open borders with).

Wodan

Catherine - min my game - just built her FIRST piece of SPaceship SS Casing with FOUR TURNS to go ... I already had the thing nailed and even if she were super woman, she's not going to build the whole thing in 4 turns (rsp. because *I* had the space elevator) ... so why was she even bothering with it???

the AI just isn't very bright sometimes
Just sometimes? The main problem with the AI is that they always do the same thing. All of their cities are the same. Their war tactics (or lack of) are always the same. Their negotiation strategies are always the same. Once you figure it out they are all puppets to be used to further your own victory.

The computer isn't always very demanding at the peace table if you haven't conquered a city. In my current game as the Egyptians, the Greeks are on my eastern border, sort of wedged in between me, the ocean to the east, and the Japanese to the north. I have strong cultural borders so naturally Alexander was mad at me. He changed to Hinduism, which is the religion I founded and is my state religion, and then a few turns later declared war on me out of nowhere. He ran roughshod through my territory because I wasn't well prepared, pillaging everything in sight and nearly taking one of my largest towns.

After I got organized and destroyed most of his attacking armies, I realized I really didn't want to fight a prolonged war and have to deal with conquering cities and pacifying them. So I went to the peace table to see if he was ready to talk turkey. And sure enough he was... he demanded nothing, and we immediately went to peace. I don't know if he desired peace because I destroyed his attacking units, or if there was some other reason, but he agreed and has stuck with it. I just know not to trust the opportunistic jerk again!

Actually I've yet to see the AI accept peace right after I take a city, though they accaisionally accept it a few turns later, and I'm not playing at high levels yet. Started out back on chieftain to get a feel for all the changes. One of the big things I actually like so far about the AI is that the "conquer and repeat" tactic doesn't seem to work. Maybe the AI breaks down at higher levels?

On one game Isabella founded a site on a tile that was the only viable tile surrounded by water and impassible ice. DUMB place for a city.

Typically I would build up my forces, march them to the border, declare war, take over management of a city, then sue for peace. Repeat.

I was wondering how dumb Catherine really was after signing the 4th peace treaty with me...

This kind of thing highlights the need for some sort global reputation system, whereby the AI's trust of you is modified by how frequently you've re-declared war after agreeing a peace (amongst other things possibly).

In the situation Eigenvector described, instead of agreeing on another treaty after loosing another city, the AI may simply fight it out or alternatively ask their allies to declare war on you.

Something like that, I don't know...

Something I was a bit disappointed to see was still in from previous civ games is the situation when an AI declares war at you despite clearly not being in a position to win the war.

Had a such yesterday - Alex declared war out of nowhere, I destroyed his pathetic invasion force, and proceed to take the closest of his cities, whereupon he accepts peace.

I realize that making the AI make realistic judgements of its chances is hard, particularly against an unpredictible human player, but I would have hoped they'd got it beyond misjudgements quite that bad by the fourth game.

On one game Isabella founded a site on a tile that was the only viable tile surrounded by water and impassible ice. DUMB place for a city.

EXACTLY.

This is a perfect example of why the AI is as dumb as a brick: Perfect land to the north (which the AI has alreayd scouted, because I've seen their units all over it), and they bring in a settler and found a city in the worst place possible. Where's the sense in this? If the settler had got off the other side, it would have been a comparable nirvana.

http://img306.imageshack.us/img306/4154/civ4screenshot00019na.th.jpg (http://img306.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot00019na.jpg)

Likewise, Alexander and I were on the same continent and he's scouting the west side (he's east of me) with axemen and such ... okay, i can dig that.

Until I saw him scouting with a freaking CATAPULT ... the thing was on it's own, there were no barbarians over there, no other civs, nothing else to do other than scout ... why the catapult???

http://img288.imageshack.us/img288/2190/civ4screenshot00026mw.th.jpg (http://img288.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot00026mw.jpg)

No, we're not at war ... he sent that thing all over the place scouting ... what a Dodo.

Well, It is pretty hard to create a convincing AI without making them obviously cheat, and IMO Civ 4 is doing a fairly good job.
Sometimes you just have resources that they desperately needed, and they would declare war even though they're much weaker than you. Expansionist leaders may simply declare war when they run out of room to expand.

Wanna see some wacky AI activity? Build some Spys and, every few turns open up your rival's city-view to see what they are building, how they have their specialists allocated, and what they are researching. That oughtta give you a few laughs.

Well, It is pretty hard to create a convincing AI without making them obviously cheat.

And yet I watch the same naval unit travel into one square, back again, same square, and back again countless times ... "cheating" doesn't stop the AI travelling around with zero purpose, rhyme nor reason.

Some things strike me as silly in the AI strategies. But then I try to think around them, see if what looks like an incongruity could make sense when viewed from a different angle. This might apply here:

Catherine - min my game - just built her FIRST piece of SPaceship SS Casing with FOUR TURNS to go ... I already had the thing nailed and even if she were super woman, she's not going to build the whole thing in 4 turns (rsp. because *I* had the space elevator) ... so why was she even bothering with it???

You speak truth. Won my last (second so far) game via space race, then kept playing just to try things out with no pressure in an "unofficial future."

Made spies, sent 'em on their rounds... and darned if every civ capable of it continued -- or even commenced, after game's end! -- to build their own starships. =@.@=

I started a big military build-up, and they still kept with the space stuff. When they'd finished one component they'd start on another... and their tech research path was chosen as if the space race were still going.

This seemed bizarre and stupid to me at first. But after a bit of pondering (cue Pinky and the Brain here) I reckoned it might make sense. Here's my rationalization -- can't call it deduction, it's mostly guesswork:

In another thread someone mentioned that in Civ IV the AI civs each play to win the game, rather than to defeat the human as in Civ III. If this is accurate (and to me it seems to be right), then even if they can't win, the AIs each try to beat as many rival AIs as they can. Maybe even to the extreme of trying to accumulate brownie points after the game's over. Why not? In a way, that's what I was doing! :-D

Anyhow, that's all speculation merely. I invite those who know things to confirm or shoot down the guesswork.

And yet I watch the same naval unit travel into one square, back again, same square, and back again countless times ... "cheating" doesn't stop the AI travelling around with zero purpose, rhyme nor reason.

Isn't that just the "Explore" action? (I agree, it's annoying.)

This is a perfect example of why the AI is as dumb as a brick: Perfect land to the north (which the AI has alreayd scouted, because I've seen their units all over it), and they bring in a settler and found a city in the worst place possible. Where's the sense in this? If the settler had got off the other side, it would have been a comparable nirvana.

That doesn't seem like too bad a spot for a city. Sure there will be 3 unworkable tiles, but she managed to block off that passage to any naval ships that don't have an "open border" treaty. Plus there will be two hills and one cow in there. And, how many of those water tiles are coastal vs. ocean? (It looks like all except two within the initial radius.) If it's enough then it means that the city will be able to grow farily far past 20.

That catapult I can not explain, though. However, I did do a bunch of exploration in one game with a work-boat. That single boat managed to circumvent the globe!

That single boat managed to circumvent the globe!

:-D !!! Y'know, I might have to write the sea chantey of the crabbing-boat that sailed 'round the world.

i had an AI on the opposite of the world declaring war with me
its a huge wheel map, i was on left top, he was on right bottom.
after he marched his huge troops of praetorians to my border, im already with riflemans lol.

In balance, it seems the Civ4 AI is a bit more grown-up than in Civ3. Nothing in particular is significantly better, but there does seem to be refinements in general all around. I'm certain glad that I'm not seeing the AI's rushing to try to build a city on a single open desert square in the middle of four of my cities.

But, that said, I get a bit :sad: when I see five AI's come to me and offer me Optics + 20gold for my Music. Seriously now. Are the AI's all reading from the "Kelly Blue Book" for what "Music" is worth?

-cc

From my games, it seems city placement is one the things the AI is generaly good at with some occasional brain farts. I have noticed AI civs building cities in useless locations once there is nowhere else to build...they don't seem to realize those cities will only be a drain on their resources.

Has anyone else noticed the annoying 'turtle-ing' the AI tends to do during wars? It seems whenever I invade an AI country, even with a smallish force, it leaves tons and tons of units in it's cities and doesn't do a good job at all at moving it's forces to the area I am attacking. I left riflemen healing themselves two tiles away from an AI city with close to 10 units and seen it do nothing, just sit there and wait to be attacked.

Has anyone else noticed the annoying 'turtle-ing' the AI tends to do during wars? It seems whenever I invade an AI country, even with a smallish force, it leaves tons and tons of units in it's cities and doesn't do a good job at all at moving it's forces to the area I am attacking.
Yes, IMO this is the AI's single largest military weakness. The AI needs some kind of threat assessment for invasions - at some threshold level, it needs to decide that it *must* use nearly every available unit to take down that stack. Right now an invasion is basically a city-by-city affair with no significant reinforcements or reallocations of resources.

Yes, IMO this is the AI's single largest military weakness. The AI needs some kind of threat assessment for invasions - at some threshold level, it needs to decide that it *must* use nearly every available unit to take down that stack. Right now an invasion is basically a city-by-city affair with no significant reinforcements or reallocations of resources.

I have noticed this same thing in every game I've played. I attack a civ and they just sit in their cities. And what's worse, they put most of their troops in their capital regardless of how far away I've been. I'll be marching towards a town on the outskirts of thier empire and they send no reinforcements! They really need to work on fixing this.


...this has been on Prince difficulty, not one of the lower ones.

The AI seems too defensive. It can only compete in space race or diplomatic victories. If you are going for domination victory, the AI does not play to win... it just keeps building more and more defensive units to make your victory little harder. There is NO WAY to win a domination game by staying defensive. This is my experience with Aggressive AI option turned on at Noble.

Here is some of their war time behavior:

- They will always send few transports full of units to attack your least defended cities. This is so predictable, that I always have few battleships waiting to sink them.

- They try to open mutiple war fronts to split your attention.

- They will not make amphibous landing.. no matter what. Yesterday they could have captured one of my cities had their armour done amphibous landing (they had 8 modern armours, my city defended by one SAM Infantary). Instead they put their stack next to city. Next turn I destroyed half of their stack and moved in enough defence in city so that they could not take it.

- I have used ICBMs against AI few times, but they have never used it against me. Why is that? In Civ II games, they were so good at using power of Nukes in diplomacy or in war time. Anybody remembers the spine chilling feeling when you were at war with a civ and their diplomat showed up with this sentence "Our words are backed by NUCLEAR WEAPONS". It was almost certain that your cities will be nuked in next few turns. In CiIV, if I am fighting war in another continent, I feel no threat in my mainland.

Anybody remembers the spine chilling feeling when you were at war with a civ and their diplomat showed up with this sentence "Our words are backed by NUCLEAR WEAPONS".

Man, spine chilling is the perfect word that moment. Those were the days...

And yet I watch the same naval unit travel into one square, back again, same square, and back again countless times ... "cheating" doesn't stop the AI travelling around with zero purpose, rhyme nor reason.
I've only seen this with ships on explore, and they only loop aorund once, and the ship is near land - so I'll conjecture that it is probably the effects of their search algorithm dealing with collision to land. I haven't seen any of this behaviour at all for ground units.
But, that said, I get a bit when I see five AI's come to me and offer me Optics + 20gold for my Music. Seriously now. Are the AI's all reading from the "Kelly Blue Book" for what "Music" is worth?
It seem the algorithm is just padding the difference of the amount of research with money. So if all the AIs have Optics, and they're itching to have music (I'm assuming that the ability of putting money to culture is important to them), they'll all use the same algorithm to try and get the tech. It seems that there are hidden weights used for the tech tree. I can get the AI to give up 2-3 tech for alphabet alone (I haven't exactly add up the research points, but I'm pretty sure I'm getting more of the bargain).
nigam: the AI's very defensive for domination/conquest players probably because there isn't a good code in Civ 4 for the AI to act well to have that type of victory, or it could be the case that getting such AIs to work well is algorithmically (very) slow, while simply having the AI to defend well against that style of human players is much easier. The game seems CPU intensive enough already, and this might be the compromise that had to be made.

Just sometimes? The main problem with the AI is that they always do the same thing. All of their cities are the same. Their war tactics (or lack of) are always the same. Their negotiation strategies are always the same. Once you figure it out they are all puppets to be used to further your own victory.

furthermore, they always have the same attitudes. I'm going to play with random personalities from now on because it's getting really boring.

I've only seen this with ships on explore, and they only loop aorund once, and the ship is near land - so I'll conjecture that it is probably the effects of their search algorithm dealing with collision to land. I haven't seen any of this behaviour at all for ground units.

I've seen it with one of my scout on autoexplore.

I'm left wondering what CIV would be like if, say over the past 5 years, Firaxis had focused on beefing up the AI at the expense of other bells and whistles. Maybe if CIV 4 is considered "mature" in terms of game play, graphics, etc, they can finally get down to making real break-through improvements in the AI for their expansions.

The turtling thing is very true. Once you've got an AI on the defensive, they're usually done for.