List of AI Stupidities

I'm playing my first King level game, and it's going quite well. What I'm sick of, is the AI forming a new "pact" every bloody turn. It's not that I'm afraid, the few cities of theirs that I quickly captured after their show of hostility are doing a great job of taking the heat off my mainland - it's just I'm tired of clicking through those silly useless messages.

Oh that's another thing, the AI always uses the same paths (whether it be sea or land), so if you capture/create a city near that path, and give it coastal fortress + walls + 3 decent defense unit's, and you're basically set up for an easy ride as far as your important cities go.

I was recently playing a game where a Viking coastal city also bordered a samll (ie one-sqaure) inland sea. On approaching this city, I noticed that a viking sub was in the sea.

When I attacked and captured that city, the sub remained. It must have been made in another city, and sent across the mighty oceans, to do inland waterway patrol (wonder what the captain in the AI navy did to deserve that).

Anyway, I just let the sub patrol the waters for the rest of eternity.....

I'm sure this has been covered already, but I doubt that most of the newer visitors have bothered to trawl through all the previous posts so I will retread old ground having first admitted that I am doing so just to cover my back .

I am playing with the Americans on a large map and raging hordes. The barbs have not set foot on my home continent since 3000BC, have turned up once on the second continent I colonised and their route to my cities was blocked by a mech infantry in a fortress , but they are swarming over the AI's cities. They managed to capture the Aztecs' fourth city early in the game and held it for centuries until I could be bothered to get a spy across to it - 364g for a size 8 city!
They also turned up on another island partially settled by the Aztecs and had over 20 partisans all over the 2 cities. They for some reason decided to position themselves all around on of the cities, seemingly without pillaging, as they would my terrain, but not do anything else and let the AI troops pick them off one by one. The other load went at the second city, but not before fortifying 2 partisans within the city radius. The other city clearly has city walls as they were throwing themselves vainly at the defenders for ages until they had almost wasted all their units. But when they came to kill the last unit in the city, there was a single partisan left and the other two who had been fortified. The first partisan had already moved and so could not march into the empty city, but neither of the other units did. The Aztecs must have rushbought a unit, because the flag came back, but when it attacked the unit outside, it was a cannon. The unit died obviously, but the other two fanatics still did not think it was a good idea to either (a) take out the cannon, or (b) just march into the now-empty city. Stupidity!

What is the city limit? I think I remember someone said it was 256, I hope its not...
How many people have worked out how the population is worked out per settler? I thought I would work it out today and realised it went: 10 + 20 + 30 + 40 + 50 (000's). I know this must already be know but it was nice working out for myself in about 30 seconds.

I had a civ offer me technology, gold, etc. to declare war on an enemy and a few turns later after nearly destroying the targeted civ another civilization offers me goodies to declare war on the same civ im taking out(this only happened to me twice)

Not sure how this happened, but maybe its a case of my stupidity rather than the AI's, or even the AI being exceptionally cunning..

I was fighting a losing battle against the russians. During the Russians' turn, they met with me and offered me a cease fire if I was willing to pay them 1000. I weighed this up, and decided to pay up - if I didn't, I would lose a strategic city on a choke point, and open up access to the rest of my lightly-defended cities.

I paid up. The russian turn resumed, immediately with a "Our cease-fire with the russians has expired.", and of course the inevitable "sneak attack"....

So I wasted 1000 to lose my city anyway.

Hmm I think thats mostly your stupidity...

Yes, but it is a pain-in-the-backside that the length of treaties is not consistent. I mean, that one lasted about 3 seconds (in Civ-time, and in Real time).

Originally posted by Dell19
I have never seen an AI have a ship trapped in a one square sea...Has anyone seen this though on TOT.

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I have often seen this in my games, Civ2 classic.

I haven't read through all the posts in the thread, but one phenomenon I noted was the AI terraforming the shared terrain even when my workers were on it and the benefits accrue to my city.

I have been known to do this if I've built a city (or more usually discovered an advanced tribe) and the only way to get irrigation to it is to irrigate some of the squares for an AI city. To get from the water source to my city, I'm quite happy to let them have one extra square of irrigation in the knowledge that I will soon have farmland all around my city and they will still be size 3, sending occasional phalanxes to try and poke my riflemen through my city walls. And knowing the way that the AI selects the resource squares inside your city radius, it is unlikely that they will ever use this irrigated square.

Originally posted by duke o' york
I have been known to do this if I've built a city (or more usually discovered an advanced tribe) and the only way to get irrigation to it is to irrigate some of the squares for an AI city. To get from the water source to my city, I'm quite happy to let them have one extra square of irrigation in the knowledge that I will soon have farmland all around my city and they will still be size 3, sending occasional phalanxes to try and poke my riflemen through my city walls. And knowing the way that the AI selects the resource squares inside your city radius, it is unlikely that they will ever use this irrigated square.

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Thats actually sensible though, the AI is just stupid...

Someone thought that making terrain improvements like irrigation when you only have 3-4 cities is a silly thing for the AI to do. I disagree. I always begin developing early, even if only on selected resource squares. This increases the city's growth rate. I find that if I wait till I have like 10 cities it is too late. I begin at two cities even, depends on how close good city sites are.

The idea is that the improvements increase growth, thus increasing production, thus making it easier to aquire settlers. The extra settlers increase the rate at which I can found cities and improve the ones I have. And so on.

I think that early development is not an AI flaw at all, it is a key to aggressive expansion, which is key to a solid power base in the beginning, which is useful for winning.

This would ruin my expansion strategy though because all my settlers are needed to found new cities

,Originally posted by Dell19
I have never seen an AI have a ship trapped in a one square sea...Has anyone seen this though on TOT. Well yes, as ACHINZ said, they pop up and do this enough if the terrian is right [dance] [dance]

After a defensive unit and a granary, settlers are usually the third thing I build. The next things I build are usually settlers too.

The granary is to halve the food loss when population increases, thus DOUBLING GROWTH and preventing famine. Also makes it quicker to build settlers.

At this point the settlers usually take a wee while to build. By improving oil with mines I directly decrease the time to build a settler.

By improving wheat with irrigation I improve growth. This means that the extra population needed to build a settler accumulates faster. It also means that extra sets of hands (to add to my production) accumulate faster. Thus I can build more settlers faster.

I am not advocating wasting your time fully developing a region before founding a new city, I am advocating a balance. On the way to founding a new city make the improvements which will best benefit you.

Of course, if there are a couple of prime sites within easy reach found the cities first. If you will be sending the settlers some distance then make improvements on the way.

I have found that making terrain improvements increases your growth by so much that ignoring them untill you have many cities is stupid. Thus, if the AI makes early terrain improvements this is not stupid but GOOD.

i hate how when the AI captures of of your cities, write when your set and read to liberate it with nukes and armor they ask for a peace treaty. and its inconsitancy it was like 1967 and saw sioux develop wheel from chinese. what!?!?! and they fought with armor and everything?

also what is that extra air, land, ship units supposed to be?

the land looks ike a clown with a flame stick on a unicycle...

Have you ever killed an enemy musketeer with a settler?

Surely you cannot because a settler, like caravans have an attack strength of 0 so you could not attack the musketeer in the first place...By defending it would be easy though. Just put your settler on top of a mountain with a fortification.

Does any thing define how long the Barbs stay around ,if it takes you a while to get to them
[dance] [dance]

The barbarians usually come straight for you when they are created but occasionally the land is shaped so they just sit there and eventually attack. I have never seen barbarians actaually disappear.