Help, my AI is building artillery

tom2050 said:

I agree, it is literally that rare! Sometimes I wish the AI would go on an artillery craze, and actually use them. That would be almost scary, getting your units pounded down by arty and mass bombing runs, then getting your city taken with a blitzkrieg, and fortified by 40 defenders

Tom

Click to expand...

It was scary enough to see the AI go for ONE city with 50 Ships (15 of them cargo ships, escorted by DDs BBs and CAs), bombard the hell out of the city and storm it with marines, unload tons of other units within the city and fortify them - all in a random game, not a scenario! That happened to me after I modded my ships in some ways EJ suggested. I've never seen that before, I guess the AI had a bright moment.

So the AI can use the big guns... when they are mounted on a ship, that is.

As others have already said I've seen the AI build artillery occasionally but I have never seen them use it for anything other than defensive bombardment when I attack there cities. I can't remember them ever bombarding me as I approach, just defensive bombardment when my units attack.

I did see a post a while back and a biq uploaded that shows if artillery have a range of four plus the AI will use them to bombard from it's cities like crazy and build lots of them. I think another factor was modded two, like giving the artillery an attack value or something like that. Sorry can't find the thread or remember the poster.

Nick

Optional said:

Your first sentence surprises me a little bit. Did the AI really 'march up to your borders' with an arty and then hit you with it? Since you're saying this only happens with captured artillery units, wasn't the artillery simply around? It would surprise me if the AI applied a different strategy to captured arty compared to their own.
The difference might be that once they've built an arty of their own, they fortify it in the city it's built and don't do much with it, except maybe bombard a passing enemy ship or so. If they're capturing one in the field, that's a different starting situation. They're probably more likely to use it, since it's out there anyway. But if you really see them marching up to your borders with it, like in really using it deliberately as an offensive weapon, then I would advise you to post screenshots or something, because this would be a huge surprise for everyone!

Click to expand...

I thought I had the SS of that It seems it got lost somewhere, I posted it in the interesting screenshots thread.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6511039#post6511039

It seems the picture that I had died Should have uploaded it to photobucket not civfan...oh well lost to time now.

Here's my theory(s): (1: the program is either writen so that the AI is never consitant in what it builds/uses/does. (2: the program is just writen badly and we are all seeing one of the multiple failings of civ. I think I like theory 1 better, but #2 is just as plausable.

The reason that you saw artillery in the last game is probebly just some kind of AI code realizing that it's never really built artillery against you, and so it's may be trying to throw you off. Catch you off guard.

But the real answer I believe we will not know unless the code is released.

And yeah, I think artillery could use a little more power, don't you?

The strange thing is, AI artillery with Charm enabled, actively attacks like a human does, and brings defenders with them if A/D is 0/0. It still puts some of them in cities, but moves them around constantly as it sees fit.

The problem is, Charm only targets city improvements and Small wonders if there is a Charm Barrier building built. Once the Charm Barrier building is destroyed, no buildings will be hit anymore. And furthermore, Charm artillery, Charm ships, or Charm aircraft all act similar, in that they cannot damage units at all, but they can destroy roads, railroads, mines, and irrigation.

Why in the world did Firaxsis not make normal artillery like this, but able to damage units... ???

Tom

tom2050 said:

The strange thing is, AI artillery with Charm enabled, actively attacks like a human does, and brings defenders with them if A/D is 0/0. It still puts some of them in cities, but moves them around constantly as it sees fit.

The problem is, Charm only targets city improvements and Small wonders if there is a Charm Barrier building built. Once the Charm Barrier building is destroyed, no buildings will be hit anymore. And furthermore, Charm artillery, Charm ships, or Charm aircraft all act similar, in that they cannot damage units at all, but they can destroy roads, railroads, mines, and irrigation.

Why in the world did Firaxsis not make normal artillery like this, but able to damage units... ???

Tom

Click to expand...

Interesting. So this is a way to incorporate religion to a degree:

1. Make the Civ's main religion building the Charm Barrier.
2. Enable Priests, Necromancers, and 7th Day Adventists with Charm.
3. They seek to destroy the religious buidling (which of course is a probably critical Happiness building) and foment rebellion in the countryside represented by destroying terrain improvements.

Nice find, Tom!

Ozymandias said:

They seek to destroy the religious building (which of course is a probably critical Happiness building) and foment rebellion in the countryside represented by destroying terrain improvements.

Click to expand...

But the charm barrier building isn't the first targeted, its the last.

At least that's how I understand it. Tom, is that correct?

I've had some inconsistent findings with that portion of it.
I had a couple different cases:
When an artillery charm unit had no other flags but charm and artillery, it hit the Charm Barrier building last after other buildings were destroyed.
When I had the artillery charm unit with enslave, lethal land and lethal sea, it seemed to hit the Charm Barrier building first, but sometimes it was mixed results.

The one thing I know for sure is that once the Charm Barrier building bites the dust, no buildings ever get hit unless another Charm Barrier building is built (I hit a city over 100 times in a row, and no regular building was destroyed, so I'm pretty sure of this at least).

Still alot of unknowns.

You are right Ozy, Charm could be put to great use with some imagination, and can also make espinoage to view enemy cities a priority, for players to find where these powerful Charm Barrier buildings are located, so they can destroy them.

The best thing would be to find a way to allow Charm units to be able to hit regular units!

Tom

The strange thing is, AI artillery with Charm enabled, actively attacks like a human does, and brings defenders with them if A/D is 0/0. It still puts some of them in cities, but moves them around constantly as it sees fit.

The problem is, Charm only targets city improvements and Small wonders if there is a Charm Barrier building built. Once the Charm Barrier building is destroyed, no buildings will be hit anymore. And furthermore, Charm artillery, Charm ships, or Charm aircraft all act similar, in that they cannot damage units at all, but they can destroy roads, railroads, mines, and irrigation.

Why in the world did Firaxsis not make normal artillery like this, but able to damage units... ???

Tom

Click to expand...

Baffling isn't it? It seems they would have had no difficulty at all to program artillery to work right but just couldn't be bothered too.

Cheers

Nick

tom2050 said:

The best thing would be to find a way to allow Charm units to be able to hit regular units!

Tom

Click to expand...

Perverse / low probability idea: assign Stealth attack targets?

What I've noticed is the AI will build lots of artillery and will attack cities with it, but only if it can hit the city from outside it's borders. If there is a city with no culture and the AI artillery has a range of 2 it will stay outside the town and bombard it every turn.

Maybe one solution may be to increase the range on all artillery type units.

It is in the same vein as the army problem, not loading because movement has to be greater/equal to the army movement.

For some similar reason, they won't take artillery across borders to hit towns.

Pounder said:

What I've noticed is the AI will build lots of artillery and will attack cities with it, but only if it can hit the city from outside it's borders. If there is a city with no culture and the AI artillery has a range of 2 it will stay outside the town and bombard it every turn.

Maybe one solution may be to increase the range on all artillery type units.

It is in the same vein as the army problem, not loading because movement has to be greater/equal to the army movement.

For some similar reason, they won't take artillery across borders to hit towns.

Click to expand...

Since I realized that Charm does not actually make artillery work (it was by strange chance that the test map was made in a way that the AI used any type of artillery for a short period of time until culture borders expanded).

To build on what Pounder stated, the AI seemed to also (but rarely) bring in Artillery into a cities borders, only if the 2 civ's borders did not touch together (a gap of free space between the 2 civs). It would only bring in a limited amount though, and once borders touched, would never do so again (that I could see).

I think this is partially due to the reason that AI acts almost exactly like workers do, if an enemy unit or border is within 2 or 3 tiles of it, it fortifies in a city.

Tom

Interesting. So if you tried to eliminate culture, and therefore border expansion, as much as possible and increased the range on artillery the AI might actually move artillery round the map quite a bit and bombard cities with it. Would certainly make for a more fun game but its a big sacrifice to try and eliminate culture from the game. Also if cities didn't expand at least once they would not have many tiles to use once they got bigger.

Cheers

Nick

Ares de Borg said:

My AI is building lots of arty, but mostly SPGs and AT guns. Must have something to do with ROF, I guess (my AT guns have 4-5 ROF to punch through the 2-3 extra armor points of my tanks).

Click to expand...

... Yeah, so it's 11 years later but you know Yours Truly and my "spelunking" ("cave mining and diving") well enough by now, so -

Some specific example stats, kindly?

-z

Addendum - Just to make sure we get @Ares de Borg 's attention (... Sorry, I just couldn't resist.)

Haha, blast from the past. I never did finish this amazing game...