Dumb AI, again

6K Man

Bureaucrat
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Jul 17, 2007
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in a Gadda Da Vida
I’m playing a LoR game with about 25 AIs on an overlarge map (the diplomacy is, shall we say, interesting). Russia is a former minor civ that my sometime-friends the Koreans are at war with. Wang asks me to declare war on Russia, and I agree, because Russia is a 4-city civ facing Korea which is more than 3 times bigger, and besides, Russia is halfway around the world, on the other side of some nations I don’t have open borders with. It’s essentially a free diplo bonus with Wang, as I’m not going to lend anything other than moral support.

So what does Peter of Russia do? He sends a stack marching east, through Egypt, the Holy Romans, and Carthage. It’s a decent-sized stack for a 4 city nation, with several Muskets, Trebs and Maces. Unfortunately for Peter, I had been massing troops at my westernmost city (plotting to go after Carthage and worried about Holy Rome, who hates me) and I smashed the 20 unit stack with Cuirs/Cannon while suffering negligible losses. But that’s not even the point. Peter sent a 20-unit stack halfway around the world to attack me, while at war with Korea which was right next to him. Stupid. I took 60 gold to make peace with Peter next turn, and he proceeded to lose 2 of 4 cities to Wang before vassaling.
 
a 20 unit stack?!

I have never seen a stack that big unless on deity.

even on immortal, most AIs i encounter (shaka + monty included) attack with a wimpy load, i.e., 1500 AD monty sends 3 ships worth of maces and trebs lmao
 
The AI is sometimes even more stupid... I had Zara's capital under siege and he gave his archers Guerilla I. It was on flatland.
 
a 20 unit stack?!

I have never seen a stack that big unless on deity.

even on immortal, most AIs i encounter (shaka + monty included) attack with a wimpy load, i.e., 1500 AD monty sends 3 ships worth of maces and trebs lmao

Really? I'm an Emperor level player at best, and I've seen Montystacks numbering in the triple digits. Mind you, I play on settings that seem to promote unit building (Epic speed, large maps).
 
The AI is still quite bad with intercontinental invasions. They sent hardly more than 3 or 4 ships worth, often obsolete units (or no siege, unbalanced "mini-stacks"). Only Ragnar can be quite dangerous, because he is unpredictable (declare at pleased or "dagger"), has fast ships and will use his amphibious Berserkers and even promote them to grenadiers or so.
I am not sure I have seen triple digit land stacks, but probably close, certainly more than twenty (normal speed and map size, even on monarch).
 
This seems like a good opportunity to plug my LoR ModMod, as improving the AI is a major part of what I'm trying to do there. It looks like the problem is in the way the AI chooses a target city to attack, LoR uses Better BTS AI, and according to their comments they've made the distance the city is from their civ less important than in standard BTS, so the AI would rather march halfway across the map for a juicy target than attack a closer civ.
 
Pacal seems obsessed with suiciding his Chariots against my Formation elephants, so his eventual death in that game was no surprise. Neither of us had copper or iron, so it was elepults+HAs vs holkans+archers. Then, in the later war, camel archers+elepults vs holkans, longbows and cats. The other AIs helped me finish him off and I got an 1857 AD diplo victory, last in every demographics category except imports/exports.
 
Really? I'm an Emperor level player at best, and I've seen Montystacks numbering in the triple digits. Mind you, I play on settings that seem to promote unit building (Epic speed, large maps).

hard to say...maybe it's because i go for quick skirmishes (takes 2 cities in 2 turns then go for peace treaty right away)

the biggest stack I've ever encountered by an enemy AI was in an immortal game where Joao took a city from me with about ~10 cuirassiers, 5 grenadiers with 2 trebs and it took him forever to get my city defense down low enough, and that was LATE in the game (early 17th century)

whenever i get DoW'd, it's always something like a 2 unit "stack" from Mr. Orange, a 1 unit wandering maceman from Pacal pillaging my land or at most ~7 or 8 jags with elepaults early in the game from Mr. Zuma (my main source of ragequit). AIs concentrate building useless nonaggressive units like airships and galley that gets added to their power ratio which make them look intimidating. From what I've seen on higher levels, AIs tend to stop at rifleman then begins to spam culture.

p.s., i don't think this game is really designed to spam units like the AI did, this is why victory conditions such as religious, diplo, cultural and space were created.

Or else, they might as well call this game "Evolution of the Warlords"
 
Alex just threw his huge, experienced but slightly out dated army at me, he had like over 80 cavs, many over level 4, and 50ish infantries with CR2+. Too bad I had tanks and ground attack planes so crushed his invasion.

The dumb thing is if he waited a few turns, he'd have industrialism and at least motorized infs.
 
This seems like a good opportunity to plug my LoR ModMod, as improving the AI is a major part of what I'm trying to do there. It looks like the problem is in the way the AI chooses a target city to attack, LoR uses Better BTS AI, and according to their comments they've made the distance the city is from their civ less important than in standard BTS, so the AI would rather march halfway across the map for a juicy target than attack a closer civ.

Interesting, will check it out.
 
The dumb thing is if he waited a few turns, he'd have industrialism and at least motorized infs.

BTS? Mech inf requires Robotics. Were you thinking tanks.
 
Really? I'm an Emperor level player at best, and I've seen Montystacks numbering in the triple digits. Mind you, I play on settings that seem to promote unit building (Epic speed, large maps).

Yeah, I've seen that much from Cathy and Shaka. I think it was huge/marathon earth 18 civ maps. They get control of asia or Africa, and they can bring it.
 
I've seen the same size stacks on standard Pangaea Maps. (but I do usually play aggressive AI)
 
Playing with Random Personalities seems to handicap the AI and thus make them more dumb.
 
Playing with Random Personalities seems to handicap the AI and thus make them more dumb.

Apart from those whose personalities do not match their civ and traits. Imagine Huayna of China with the Hammurabi personality - good luck beating his culture with a space victory!
 
Hammurabi almost never goes cultural in my games, which makes sense, because he favors Bureaucracy.
I don't play with unrestricted leaders (HOF doesn't allow it), only random personalities.
The game becomes too predictable when playing with the original leaders. (You don't want Monty or Shaka as neighbour.)
 
Recently, while at war with Celts (Boudica), I was crushing her empire with my multiple SODs from the east, she had a HUGE SOD in the west, sitting in the open, not moving to help save her empire. It was very nice of her to leave it in place so I could slowing colat the stack to next to zero defense, and then mop up with my smaller SODs. Thanks honey, that was really nice.
 
Mao had 2 vassals (the useless 2 city variety), he had a total of 4 oil and was trading 1 to each vassal.

I pillage 2 wells, now he has 0 because he's trading both away and he won't break the trade agreements.
 
a 20 unit stack?!

I have never seen a stack that big unless on deity.

even on immortal, most AIs i encounter (shaka + monty included) attack with a wimpy load, i.e., 1500 AD monty sends 3 ships worth of maces and trebs lmao

Certain civs build a lot more troops than other. I for example had recently deity game, where AI had a stack of unbeliveable 250 units (Khmer).

Warmongers are not likely to end in SoDs because they are not able to keep their relative strenght for that long. AIs like Khmer, Carthago, Holy Roman, Justician etc. are much more likely to build megastacks, that are really tricky to encounter.
 
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