Is it me or is it a joke when fighting the AI after the industrial era. If i'm losing a game even on high difficulty I always say to myself "How do I salvage this game?" and the answer is usually one of two things: either use all the tricks in the book to maintain tech paritity and win with a space race or get to the industrial era with a strong footing and use bombers/fighters and tanks to easily defeat an AI which should be much stronger than me and take 10 times as long to conquer.

The AI builds far too few fighters, next to no bombers which it never uses en masse against any targets (usually wastes them on improvements), doesn't try to aggressively gain any form of air superiority and builds next to no tanks. It should mass tanks bombers and fighters and use them in coordination. I feel like I'm Germany invading France everytime I play at this point in the game. All the AI has are massed Inf, Sam INf and some artillery units with a few tanks spread here and there. LAME. Not only that but the AI's stupidity ruins the balance because it completely obsoletes Germany's UU and makes America's less useful (I never liked the navy seal anyway since it's barely the equal of inf one on one. and yes I know of its other shining abilities/match-ups)

If the AI actually massed tanks, fighters and Bombers then Germanys UU would become one of the most effective statistically (as a UU that late should) and Industrial wars would be a blast to play.

I pretty much agree with everything you said.

One thing I noticed, is that half the reason the AI doesn't use an air force properly, is it always seems to avoid researching it in the first place (but yes, even after getting it, it seems to put minimal effort in having an effective air force)... I did what I could to at least force the AI to put a higher priority on researching flight. In my mod, the AI will research it quicker then in a default game... but yes, it's still not as good as it should be with modern warfare.

Also, it's use of tanks is pretty pathetic... and yes, Germany's UU is pretty much useless... I never seem to run into enemy tanks of note (other then the occasional stray).

Is there a way to upgrade the AI to entice it to build a better airforce?

BTW Wolf I tried your mod and it's pretty damn good!

Is there a way to upgrade the AI to entice it to build a better airforce?

Yeah... play MP ;)

Actually, prior to 3.17, although thier defence force is a pain in the butt, they seem to spam SAM infantry, which makes air-bombing thier stacks almost impossible.

20 SAM infantry have almost as good odds as fighters in terms of interception :(

And with 3.17, who needs fighters when interception promoted anti-tanks do almost as good a job?

The AI suck at any warfare and at many other things on top of it. It's because it is the AI.

There is a better AI mod for BTS - the AI there does suck a bit less.

The Better AI Subforum: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=245

The AI does not convert cottages into workshops like many humans do in the modern era.

The quetion "why" seems to be best answered by the fact it doesn't quite know what to do with the extra layer of warfare: air.

This is strange: it builds and uses airships rather effectively: why doesnt' it use bombers the same way?

The AI is not exactly competant at warfare in any era. Once its initial stack is dealt with it has a tendency to just leave a small stack in each city. Now in the early stages with archers and longbows, this is relatively difficult to deal with. You've got to lug in siege engines as about your only option.

When you move to the modern age cities are no longer as defensible - you can soften them up with aircraft and missles to the point that conventional military is little more than a formality to actually take the city. The AI's one and only tactic of holing up in cities is hence weaker.

The AI sucks at combat because it only has 1 strategy.

And that is composed of..

1: Have a SOD

2: Pack units into cities to defend them when under attack

3: Send rubbish units to waste more of my time

Yeah the AI is shockingly stupid at warfare from beginning to end. possibly it gets worse as eras progress. the solution is simple play against humans.

The Cause:
Poor programming

mboettcher, please check your PM box.

It's not poor programming. It's the complexity of the game, and advances that are needed in AI programming.

I think the AI prefers to just show up and steam roll more than anything else.

The real problem is lack of complexity in the Air department. As a previous poster stated the AI LOVES Sam Infantry, which arguably, are more useful than fighters (provide ground troops, take cities as a last resort and STILL have a decent interception chance) as oppposed to fighters (basically just intercept chance and sniping at the enemy).

And since the AI isn't putting a priority on the Air force, I'm not going to put as much effort into SAMs, I'll have some fighters within range of things but mostly I'm building bombers in place of Martys. Losing a few bombers occaisionally is much more preferable than having to constantly produce artillery which is just going to die, I'd rather spend those resources on the troops to take and hold the cities.

I started my own mod just to add more gunships to the mix (see sig, shameless self promo), the AI likes cavalry so much it carrys over to the Gunships, and consequently I've had to actually build SAMs just to keep up a war effort.

It is not just air. AI tactics are pretty under-optimal in any circumstance, but it shows more in any scenario that asks for more than 1 square per turn. AI does not bitzkrieg with anything, for a simple example...... have you ever seen pure 2 or more moves stacks marching 2 tiles turn, trying to give a unexpected punch deep inside the enemy land?

Well, the reason for it is simply a not enough complex code for the default ruleset..... Better BtS AI team is going in that direction, but it is still very far away of a Turing test on Civ IV warfare ;)

P.S A true horror story: yesterday I was wrapping a SS race and decided to avenge myself of a ex-ally that had backstabbed me. I bribed JC against her ( Izzy ) and as I had the game won I decided to just give nuke support ( Izzy didn't had SDI... ). JC uses all his nukes on Izzy too and the roman army, that was one generation ahead of Izzy as well, starts conquering city after city.

I was stockpiling ICBMs and I drop 4 on Madrid ( major naval and land gathering point ) and it cleans all the units out of the city. JC had a Modern armor and a gunship 2 tiles away in a hill with nothing more than plains in the way ( so he could see the city and get there in 1 turn with the modern armor ). What JC does , seeing a holy city and capital, completely open? Retreats the tank and the gunship to the mainly gunship stack that was a tile behind ( cover , maybe ? ) and sends a 3 paratrooper stack that was 4 tiles away in direction of Madrid, besides sending 2 gunships to the city, that obviously can't conquer cities ( I had bomber range to the area so I could see all the action )... :wallbash: And to end, when finally the paratroppers get there ( with the city still without defenders ( no ecology and fallout is a PITA :devil: ) ) JC acepts capitulation of Izzy :confused:

I never thinked that I would see such a display of bad play in civ .... :(

Concerning AI and Blitz: I found a bug in CvPlayerAI::AI_getStrategyHash() where the AI thinks it has the appropriate units for a LANDBlitz when it can build DESTROYERS in its capital and the strongest land unit is a fast mover (Cavalry before Artillery, but also later with Tanks). This LandBlitz strategy is likely to disable AirBlitz and thus leads to significantly fewer Air units. I have told the BetterAI guys about it, but maybe this should also be fixed in a future update to the unofficial patch (Dresden feat. Solver).

;7231190']It's not poor programming. It's the complexity of the game, and advances that are needed in AI programming.

There is no AI programming in this game.

The AI isn't really.. AI. It doesn't use any modern AI techniques. It's basically a look-up table.

Why does the AI suck later in the game? unionized workers (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=284002) secured work no matter what the cost.

Mr. Cynical seems to hit the nail on the head. The AI strategy doesn't change but simply becomes weaker as the Humans' options evolve and it doesn't change its strategy.

The problem with the modern war and AI (which isn't so bad early because there aren't many options for offensives...) is the speed it takes place in. A single city is no longer an extremely valuable military asset because its a major economic one. Sometimes losing a little ground can gain a lot of ground as the air war and land war supplement each other. Tanks can cover two spaces meaning deaper, rapid strikes are possible with a versatile unit and defense is not as necessary because air forces can weaken counter attacks to the point where tanks (who are decent defenders anyway) are far more than effective even in small numbers. Plus one has to consider how many cities are in range of bombers and try to take cities in the zig zag patern to maintain multiple cities in range of the intended city. In earlier eras you'd avoid the weak cities and simply hit the strong ones one at a time. In the modern era even the crappy cities have too much culture to do this while simultaneously offering an airbase when taken.

it becomes better to take two cities with a weaker defense than one city and have a strong defense. Also the power ratio of tanks to its contemporary units is the highest of any non-UU making it a good defender despite lack of bonus'.

The sam infantry problem is solved by the fact that I upgrade 90% of the armor units I build to pinch. I figure that after the hard shell is cracked Most units will be gunpowders and that's the best way to deal with them.

And don't underestimate fighters as the only real annoyance left after all the first large stacks are gone are the occasional bombers which can slow down an advance quickly. Shoot down all the enemy bombers and use fighters to go in first to hit the strongest unit in a stack to make sure the skies are clear.

Yeah... play MP ;)

I didn't know swords, axes, and catapults could fly. I didn't know flying units could choke ;).