Has anybody seen the AI build tanks/panzers?

I hear a lot of AT/gunship bashing, and I realized I have never seen an AI build tanks, therefore gunships or AT were useless to build for me or the AI.

Has anyone seen the AI use tanks yet?

Have to add that I play King difficulty.

Yes they do, oh yes they do. Especially Germany.

smallfish said:

Yes they do, oh yes they do. Especially Germany.

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That's interesting to hear. I also play on King and have never seen the AI do this. But, then again, I'm usually so far ahead on tech that it doesn't matter. And I never build tanks either, since I avoid that whole tech branch to keep the Great Wall active.

I rarely see tanks. Usually I see Russia invading the world with Mobile SAM launchers. Those things should be seriously nerfed, say, half strength with 100% against aircraft or something. It's ridiculous to see a Mobile SAM launcher go toe to toe against infantry and do pretty well.

bcaiko said:

But, then again, I'm usually so far ahead on tech that it doesn't matter.

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Maybe that's it, Me too. I better move up a difficulty. Funny, started playing warlord this week and no I am at King and it doesn't feel that different. maybe if the others have a lead they'll start using tanks.

dac050 said:

I rarely see tanks. Usually I see Russia invading the world with Mobile SAM launchers. Those things should be seriously nerfed, say, half strength with 100% against aircraft or something. It's ridiculous to see a Mobile SAM launcher go toe to toe against infantry and do pretty well.

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That'sright. I saw 2 SAM launchers of a city state killing 2 paratroopers + 1 mechinf on terrain favoring the paratroopers.

I rarely see tanks. I think I've seen more GDRs than tanks.

Depends. Japan and Egypt seem to build an air force really quickly in every game I play while some others do build tanks. I think maybe the terrain for a lot of maps makes the AI focus on different units.

As mentioned before, Germany builds a crap ton of Panzers in my games. I've actually not gotten the chance to be attacked by these mobile SAMs yet.... Hmmm... maybe I shall investigate their effectiveness in my current playthrough.

By the way, I might be blind, but is there no building to set up a anti-air defense in a city? I realize you can just leave an AA unit in the city, but besides that, is there any way to have a building ("Flak Gun") or something of that nature that will increase air defence?

Himmurabi said:

Depends. Japan and Egypt seem to build an air force really quickly in every game I play while some others do build tanks. I think maybe the terrain for a lot of maps makes the AI focus on different units.

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Also interesting to hear, given Japan's air units bias is (shockingly) low at 4.

If I recall correctly, SAMs have a strength of 65, and Infantry has a strength of 70 (75?). So, they are pretty equivalent, plus the SAM has a bonus of giving you air cover. I don't remember how expensive each is, but I've seen the AI come at me with pretty much nothing but SAMs, which just seems lame.

bcaiko said:

[...]Japan's air units bias is (shockingly) low at 4.

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Actually it's air unit bias is 6.
-naval 7
-standard offense 8
-mobile (like horsmen) 4
-all other 5 (recon,ranged,defense)

That'd make air units a third favorite for japan, if no coastal cities 2nd. Seems plausible.

Egypt however has a 4, you probably meant that.

Game I'm currently playing my spies noticed Arabia churning out lots of Great War Bombers (got 2 in his capital and few other cities have 1 each) he's also working on a carrier. I haven't seen tanks in his lands yet (probably hasn't researched Combustion) but he's got sole control of his continent so maybe he's gearing up mainly for naval/air assaults on neighbors (hopefully me, I could use a good battle since he's slightly ahead of me in techs - I know he has Flight and Replaceable Parts while I went after Refrigeration and Combustion but last summary showed him having 1 more tech total than I did).

As for the Mobile SAM army, I'll keep an eye out for it and if I notice it, I'll adjust both the SAM and the AI flavor for it in my mod.

yes they do.
they also build GDR now :|

Zenstrive said:

yes they do.
they also build GDR now :|

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They've always built GDRs lol

I'm not sure why people are saying they don't build all the units in the game...? Maybe ya'll need to play beyond OMT sometimes

dac050 said:

If I recall correctly, SAMs have a strength of 65, and Infantry has a strength of 70 (75?). So, they are pretty equivalent, plus the SAM has a bonus of giving you air cover. I don't remember how expensive each is, but I've seen the AI come at me with pretty much nothing but SAMs, which just seems lame.

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In every G&K game I've played, the AI beelines Rocketry, even if I have spaceship turned off.

And I mean extremely beelines. It leaves the bottom of the tree at Rifling and doesn't come back until after Apollo. I was watching Maya move SAMs over plain roads in the DMZ just tonight. So it has SAMs but apparently is running them on electric motors...

This is perplexing, because after Rifling is the part where I lean super-heavy on the bottom. The bottom is lovely here. Fertilizer is a score and specialist booster. Railroad is the best land tech in the game. The AI prefs are stupid for leaving it behind. No use learning how to make the next infantry class if you can't get it to the front in time to save your city.

GhostSalsa said:

In every G&K game I've played, the AI beelines Rocketry, even if I have spaceship turned off.

And I mean extremely beelines. It leaves the bottom of the tree at Rifling and doesn't come back until after Apollo. I was watching Maya move SAMs over plain roads in the DMZ just tonight. So it has SAMs but apparently is running them on electric motors...

This is perplexing, because after Rifling is the part where I lean super-heavy on the bottom. The bottom is lovely here. Fertilizer is a score and specialist booster. Railroad is the best land tech in the game. The AI prefs are stupid for leaving it behind. No use learning how to make the next infantry class if you can't get it to the front in time to save your city.

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They can always churn them out from their own production cities double quick.

And Rocketry is a great tech. Rocket Artillery is nothing to sneeze at, and outside of a bottom tech really lategame unit, SAMs will laugh off anything you can throw at them from the air, in addition to being able to hold against Industrial/Modern ground units on their own.

I just lost a full-health Siege II GW Bomber today... because this AI had a SAM two tiles away from the target.

Basically, the AI builds units not based on hard coding, but based on a formula that determines how "good" a unit is and what units it needs to round out its army. This is why the AI makes so many mobile SAMs; they're very powerful for how early rocketry is in the tech tree, and the AI sees high strength, interception, and OK mobility and spams them like mad.

Tanks suck right now so the AI almost never builds them unless it's Germany, whose tank is OK. I do see a lot more Modern Armor now than I used to, however.

AI using SAM offensive/defensive Unit once they hit rocketry but before they find anything better than Infantry can make your great war bomber moot even if AI is behind you in techs but you happen to be exploring the top part of the tree. Despite airpower coming earlier now.

It's happened in limited fashion in one of my game so far, and it's actually nice to see AI have a counter against airpower that early, though its possible the AI built it as a counter to my bomber force. India who I am friendly with had a decent sized army, and Apollo's but did not have as many SAMs. Doesn't make airpower useless, it just makes less useful and OP, and forces a more combined arms approach to war, which is great.

Yeah, it's all based on unit flavors. If I were to just nerf the stats of Mobile SAM without touching the Flavor, the AI would still churn them out because it reads the flavor more than game stats (which is why AI won't touch new units unless you add a Flavor rating for them).

I'll probably tweak Tank flavors up a bit and SAM flavors down to see how the AI uses them next game... right now they're spamming GWI, Artillery and Gatling Guns pretty heavily (haven't seen much cavalry/anti-cavalry line from Spain but as I said before she was in a resource poor area and might have abandoned all her Pikes for lack of horses to upgrade, replacing them with Tercio which she's upgraded to Riflemen).

China made peace with Spain (I'm still rabid after her extermination, though and Polynesia hasn't called it quits but did withdraw his naval invasion force after I shared intel with him that the Incans were about to sneak attack) and a short while later asked me to aid her in a war with India. I agreed immediately (got one of my naval strike forces off his coast where I liberated Budapest) so perhaps I'll see what he's using right now... I know he's Modern era.

Arabia just entered Atomic and I still see Cavalry around his capital (along with an AA gun) and his planes have disappeared (whether he's disbanded them or loaded them into carriers, I'm not sure yet... I know he was building a carrier but I've been pre-occupied with Spain and keeping an eye on the Mayan/Inca war so I lost track of it) and I'm actually hoping he's foolish enough to DoW me (even if he is more advanced in tech, I look forward to meeting him head on... my destroyers are tired of blasting frigates and privateers out of the waters and I'm in the process of building some subs... hopefully they'll find that phantom carrier).

Germany does. Did not check France yet. They love their knights/lancers ...