I once noticed that Louis sent out his longbowmen to attack my swordsmen when I stood in front of his city. The AI doesn't always do that, but it will at certain circumstances. It makes the game so much easier, having those pesky longbowmen commit suicide on my stack instead of costing me 1-2 units before I can kill them inside their cities.

It was by coincidence, but it's a very viable tactic to use if you want to win at higher levels. But what triggers the AI to do that.

- Is it because my stack didn't seem too strong to overcome?
- Is it because the AI still had sufficient forces left in other cities?
Did it look at my power graph? (I start worrying when an AI has double my power, but they don't interprete like that ofcourse)

It only happens when I'm standing in front of a heavily guarded city, like their capital, and wonder how the hell I'm going to take it :D

I've seen this odd behavior as well.

My current game (Hatty on Noble Highlands) with aggressive AI saw Louis declare on me to poach a couple of workers (even though our relations were +6 or better). I then nearly crapped myself when I saw two or three stacks of 8+ units (HAs, Swords, a few Cats) start rolling out of one of his central cities (I had founded confusianism and spread a bit to him...). The problem was that I had a couple of cites far from my production centers due to the cut up map of mountial chains and lakes. I started rushing my spare troops from my close border with China to those two sites, but knew they would arrive too late.

Of course the big stacks never got there, just a few HAs pillaging and one mini stack with a cat picking at one city. Eventually I got my troops in position wiped out his few pillagers and then sent them to seige Marseilles. I had 4 cats, 4+ HAs, 3 spears, 4 Swords, a few axes, and a few longbows. He still had around 10 units in or around Marseilles, but when I arrived he moved 6! of them out into German lands! He wasn't at war with Bismark, nor was that a direction toward any of my cities.

Now with 10 units in Marseilles (longbows and HAs mostly) I would have had to beat up my invasion force to take it, as it was I stomped it flat in no time. Just bizare actions from the AI. If he had sent 2 of his first SoDs at my furthest city he likely would have taken it, if he would have kept his defense in place he likely would have slowed if not blunted by offensive.

I'm hopeful there is more AI tweeking coming out, cuz right now their military decisions are not particularly good.

Maybe it's just Louis making these 'tactic decisions' in between cognac soaked du Sade-esque orgies in his grand palace :D

Yep, in wars, I've frequently had an entire enemy SoD wreck itself upon my city with multiple specialized defenders and high defense value without even reducing defenses.

Then, when I try to sack his city, he will inexplicably either move archers/longbows to suicide themselves on my attack stack or go guard some nearby health resource. 4 longbows go to guard a pig pasture, leaving their city wide open:crazyeye:

It has seemed to me that the AI will always hold back a certain number of units in a city as defenders, but anything more than that it will use to attack targets of opportunity. I had the AI going around my stacks next to the city to attack individual units coming up to reinforce the attack, rather than leaving those units in the city as defenders. Plus it loves to suicide Cats to damage large stacks.

It has seemed to me that the AI will always hold back a certain number of units in a city as defenders, but anything more than that it will use to attack targets of opportunity. I had the AI going around my stacks next to the city to attack individual units coming up to reinforce the attack, rather than leaving those units in the city as defenders. Plus it loves to suicide Cats to damage large stacks.

I've noticed the same thing. I think that the AI has a formula for determining what would be adequate to defend a city. Once that is satisfied, it is programmed to crank out its best offensive unit and sortie against the besiegers. Of course, any good invader will have cut off their resource access, so the best offensive unit they can make turns out to be archers/longbowmen.

The tweak that would make this more effective would be for the AI to save the sortie units until there are enough to do some serious damage. If they hit your stack with 2 suicide catapults, and then 2 longbowmen, there's a chance they could break the seige, rather than just give your Swordsmen a chance at another promotion.

New units with no promotions usually leave the city. A fleet will leave port if there are no ships in the area, unless you move one in their borders, then they will frantically sail back to safety. A scouting unit will lead a landing force.
These are just some things an AI is programmed to do.

he will attack with units for as long he thinks he has enough minimum defence units. Guessing he thinks, waiting in sieged city with loads of units isn't helping him either.

If you bring an army next to an enemy city, the AI will generally attack until they have what they consider to be a "minimum level" of defense remaining in the city. I have often noticed/exploited this with barbarian cities; their magic number seemed to be 3 archers. WHen they had 4 archars and I brought a praetorian up to the city, they attacked it, wounded it and died, then the remaining 3 let it be. If however the AI thinks that they will win said fight, then they will attack with everything that can make it back to the city in the same turn, but may be more adventuresome if they have more than the minimum defenders.

Also, they will generally not use Artillery on stacks of 3 units or less. 4 and they will catapult-raid you, but 3 seems somewhat safe, their catapults just sit in the city as useless defenders.

Poor tacticly challenged AI...

he will attack with units for as long he thinks he has enough minimum defence units. Guessing he thinks, waiting in sieged city with loads of units isn't helping him either.

Yeah, but it really would help him because the human player usually wants to take the city without pillaging too much of the surrounds - so it will still be useful once captured. But the AI seems to prefer ruining all the surrounding land first and then attacking - by which time you've built up enough military to withstand them even though you may not have had enough when they first declared war! Silly strategy, but anyway they must think the human is going to play the same way and don't expect an approaching stack to go straight for their city?

Well I guess I'm unlucky. The AI never makes bad military mistakes like moving units. For example I was sharing a continent with america and the japanese. I wiped out the americans early on, but turned to culture after that. Around nationlism Half the AI delcared war on me when I signed a military alliance with china (I guess he doesn't have many friends). The Japanese sent 2 dozen samuri at me when I had minimal military forces.

I was palying on noble, have you guys downloaded the new patch?