Why are the AI warmongers such idiots?

Yes I know, not exactly an original theme...

Started a new game last night, and quickly discovered that Alex was my nearest neighbour, with Gandhi to the North and Askia to the North-West. As you can imagine I made sure my military was something like. Meanwhile Alex had 3 additional cities by T44 (playing Epic speed) then went off to fight Askia. Then he had a pop at me, his units got minced, and he paid me for peace. I built Great Wall and got upgrades to Longbows, Alex finished off Askia; meanwhile Gandhi is pumping out wonders and of course Alex is now his immediate neighbour. They denounce each other.
Some time later Alex has regained no1 military, I'm a very close no2 miltary, I have three strong cities and of course great wall, and Gandhi is still building wonders not military and not getting along with Alex...so take a wild guess who Alex DOWs? Me of course, with predictably the same result; but as I have just researched Navigation I doubt I'll be accepting any peace terms.

If instead of wastefully going for me he'd have captured Dehli, he would be much stronger and richer - surely the AI code could analyse that that was the smarter play? As it is, once I've built a navy I'll help myself to most of his cities (well at least the ones worth keeping) and probably then attack India myself.

Video Game AI is not comparable in Critical Thinking (sic. Strategic Planning) to the average human player. AI makes decisions based on a limited algorithmic set of functions which can result in what appears to be suboptimal play. Put bluntly, humans are still smarter than the computers on which we play Civ 5.

It's going to be a sad sad day when the AI is straight out-thinking us.

Then I will burn my computer and take up agriculture.

Long live the overly rule-driven and predictable AI!!!

Walter R said:

Yes I know, not exactly an original theme...

Started a new game last night, and quickly discovered that Alex was my nearest neighbour, with Gandhi to the North and Askia to the North-West. As you can imagine I made sure my military was something like. Meanwhile Alex had 3 additional cities by T44 (playing Epic speed) then went off to fight Askia. Then he had a pop at me, his units got minced, and he paid me for peace. I built Great Wall and got upgrades to Longbows, Alex finished off Askia; meanwhile Gandhi is pumping out wonders and of course Alex is now his immediate neighbour. They denounce each other.
Some time later Alex has regained no1 military, I'm a very close no2 miltary, I have three strong cities and of course great wall, and Gandhi is still building wonders not military and not getting along with Alex...so take a wild guess who Alex DOWs? Me of course, with predictably the same result; but as I have just researched Navigation I doubt I'll be accepting any peace terms.

If instead of wastefully going for me he'd have captured Dehli, he would be much stronger and richer - surely the AI code could analyse that that was the smarter play? As it is, once I've built a navy I'll help myself to most of his cities (well at least the ones worth keeping) and probably then attack India myself.

Click to expand...

Yeah the AI is kind of dumb. But since you are almost as strong as him he might want to take you out so that he can take out the rest with out having to worry about you,

The AI will never outsmart humans.























(or will they)

kingfish101 said:

The AI will never outsmart humans.

Click to expand...

Challenge Accepted, Dave

And I remember reading an article in 1977 in a science teachers magazine about how we would never have computers that could play a good game of chess. Now we have computers that can win at Jeopardy and play very very good games of chess. 4x games are a bit more complex than chess but hopefully the same will be true as time goes on: better algorithms plus better computing power for brute force future projections will hopefully improve the AI's in the future. Of course like someone said when they get too good it will be time to quit or then they can add a "Real People Mistakes" feature sort of like Douglas Adam's "Real People Personalities" (poor Marvin).

I just won a game as Indonesia by Diplomatic Victory. I had been going for Culture Victory but runaway Arabia was spamming Wonders and had ridiculous Culture-based resistance. I contemplated attacking him, but he was far away and ahead in technology. He got the first ideology and took Order. I decided to follow him and so did most of the world. Surprisingly, Korea and Siam took Autocracy and science leader China ended up as the lone Freedom civ.

While I am barbarian hunting, converting the world's city states to Hinduism (I had ludicrous faith production), allying city states by various means, and stashing the world's archaeological treasures in my Louvre and museums, no one notices that my army and navy are sub-par. Most of the lower rank Order civs (Netherlands, Portugal, India, Polynesia, Japan) launched a massive naval war against the Autocratic "fascists" of Siam and Korea. Japan also settled some desert islands near China but failed to defend them when China attacked. I posted unneeded Scouts and Caravels to watch the proceedings.

Back in medieval times Siam had already lost the major city of Si Satchanalai to the Netherlands, who razed it to the ground, so they were already weakened when this all began. During this modern war the Order civs pounded Siam with Privateers and Frigates, but never landed any more than token land forces. Siam and Korea never lost any cities in about two hundred years of warfare. It was a fun game but none of the AIs managed to do anything with their warring, so they practically handed victory to me. It would have been more challenging if they were capable of finishing off an opponent.

The funniest moment came when Siam contacts me to express concern about my "troop movements near our borders" -- the aforementioned Scout and two Caravels. I solemnly promised that this fearsome force would not be unleashed on him any time soon. Meanwhile every turn there is a huge naval battle just off his coastline, and Sukhothai is in flames from constant naval bombardment. But no, he's worried about a Scout and two Caravels...

Its very likely that he was afraid that you might decide to join that large fleet.