Crafty AI

Some interesting stuff in current game.

I know the boat attacking a city's land units is fairly rare, but I've seen it multiple times now in one game.

Germany attacked with 2 armies of cav at the same time, something I've never seen. I've always found AI armies to be fairly rare, and when you do see them, usually its a pretty silly combo on units. These were both full of cav, 3 cav each. Ultimately, still pretty stupid if left without defensive units to protect them, but potentially dangerous on offense.

The AI dropping off multiple boatloads of troops at the same time for island attacks. Literally, multiple ships carrying troops. Maybe only 3, but 3 5/2 knights before gunpowder was a shocker the first time I saw it. Good thing I'm paranoid and overstuff my island cities with troops.

Dunno how rare this is, but I made Berserks 3/2 amphibious available with Ironworking for Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and maybe France and Norway, and I've seen some single tile island cities fall to them (not mine, other AI cities).

I had eight Elephants land on my shores recently, that's quite scary, maybe not in the long-term, but in the short-term of potentially losing all your improvements in an outer-ring city. After using the ship-chaining exploit to get more troops onto the small island in one turn I just managed to avoid problems, but two more lots of 4 weren't far behind should they have managed to capture the city. I counted a total of 20 Units the AI had across their entire flotilla, which is almost human, if it had only thought to land them all at the same time instead of one turn apart.

I'm seriously starting to wonder if your name isn't programmed into the ai, like, "if playername = 'buttercup,' then 'completely f#%& with' "

I'm fairly certain the old dev at my neverwinter nights mod did the same to me regarding loot drops.

Also have seen the AI drop off multiple boatloads of troops but it seems to build up to that after several increasingly stronger attacks. I've never been attacked by an AI army, though there have been quite a few AI battle leaders floating around, esp AI v. AI. I've also mod'd some units for amphib capability, but the AI never seemed to recognize this and translate it into battle doctrine.

Has anybody ever seen the AI to perform an amphibious attack? I can't prove it with 100% certainty, but after almost 14 years of playing Civ 3 I came to the conclusion that the AI simply does not "know" what amphibious is. (Similar to how it does not know that workers and artillery units can be captured from a boat even by non-amphibious units.)
I vividly remember one of my games (Demigod), where the Vikings were my next door neighbor just across a small channel. They landed quite a few Berserkers on my shores, but never attacked from the boat. At one point they even unloaded a Berserker right next to an undefended city of mine instead of walking into that empty city... (And yes, the Caravel was on a tile right next to my city, so the Berserker could just as well have been unloaded onto the city tile instead of onto the tile next to it...)

Ive seen the AI attack from the boat in the Hegemon scenario ive been playing recently. Even though its modded, it shouldnt have any difference in that mechanic.

In my last two games featuring the Vikings I have had undefended island cities captured amphibiously by Berserks.

I have also seen Marines and Berserks attack from sea... and being landed next to a city.

In one case the Vikings have done both in the same turn: from the first ship a berserk killed one of the two defenders (I was expecting an attack), while the second ship dropped of two berserks next to the same city.

And those Carracks were running in the same convoy with the same escort ship!

Has anybody ever seen the AI to perform an amphibious attack? I can't prove it with 100% certainty, but after almost 14 years of playing Civ 3 I came to the conclusion that the AI simply does not "know" what amphibious is.

Click to expand...

Absolutely. I see single tile island cities being conquered fairly often enough.

edit: One of my latest edits was to give a toned-down berserker to several civs, but buildable with ironworking (I think). Happens much more often now.