AI does something smart, then incredibly dumb

Playing a cooperative Hot Seat game with a friend: Emperor, Continents, Standard/Random everything else

My friend is playing as the Shoshone and has Alexander pinning him into a peninsula on the continent; I'm on the other side in one of the worst starting positions I've ever seen: a jungle mountain zone surrounded by desert to both north and south, so I'm of little help.

We can see Alex arming up, but he's very friendly. My friend decides to DOW him before the inevitable. The problem is Alex has him outmanned and cutting to Athens is going to be bloody. Working in his favor is that his 2nd city is on a chokepoint and if Alex takes the war to him, he can grind his troops up. So war is declared, hoping that Alex walks into the trap.

Alex doesn't take the bait - very smart. If the Shohone want Athens, they'll have to go through the hordes.

Except the hordes evaporate. We don't know where they went, but they went away from Athens. A token crew of hoplites walked out into the open to meet the attack and were steamrolled. Everyone else retreated...into oblivion. Athens sacked. What looked like a 30 turn slugfest turned into a cakewalk.

I've played enough BNW (and fought Alexander) to be staggered by the outcome. I thought he was putting his game at risk, and instead, he's up a capitol.

Fortune favors the brave.

HB

Maybe he ran out of money and had to disband some troops? He might have been propping up his economy with trade routes/deals with your friend which disappeared as soon as he got DOW'ed thus leading him to running a negative economy.

GnK update made it so that AI will sacrifice a city instead of wasting it's troops in a last stand.


That said why did they let go of Athens. Money issues might be why the troops disappeared or you misread his intentions and he instead marched his troops to attack someone else and hadn't yet Dow. A surprise attack m