Best AI ploy I ever saw.

So I started a game on Immortal as Poland. It was a very, very nice starting location with the exception that my only horse resource was in a very precarious spot close to Harold Bluetooth. Which is a BIG exception for Poland. But it also provided an opportunity because right next to the horses was a wonderful spot for a city which completely chokes off one of the only two access directions to my starting area, is on a hill, is ABSOLUTELY defensible, and is within range of 3 fish, a truffle, gem, and Dye resources. Excellent! So I give up a little early development to throw down two early cities, one on a mass of flood plains and desert hills plus Mt Sinai and the other in the spot you see here.

I'm all set, right? It sure seems so. Except the AI pulled the best stunt I've ever seen it pull, by far. Attached are before and after shots. When the first general appeared I was like "hey not a bad move from an AI but a human player would realize one fort doesn't buy you much there, I still have the horses and I have 3 defensible tiles next to the fort such that I can capture and raze it in one turn. When the second general appeared I was all like... NO. NO. NO. NO. But yes. Lost my horses and had to pay through the nose to the Huns or somebody to get more, much of my production squares for that city gone, and very difficult to deal with until at least cannon since, while I can raze the forts with a big effort, I can't get rid of them without capturing Copenhagen which is extremely difficult at my current tech level and have to maintain constant war since as soon as I make peace they fix the forts.

Ugh. I couldn't believe the AI did that to me.

Ugh, that would feel awful. You know what you have to do now though...beeline artillery and TAKE THAT SUCKER OUT!!!

On the bright side, you still have a canal to have a more mobile navy.

Once Cathy settled a couple of cities on islands next to my empire and put 2 atomic bombs in them...she never used them but she had a pretty good counter-attack grid set up if I ever tried to assault her continent.

But I never played Poland before! I just wanted my Hussars!

WHATS THE POINT OF HUSSARS WITH NO HORSES AND A STATIC ARTILLERY BATTLE WITH GREAT FORTS! YES I AM YELLING.

The other direction is Montezuma and a deep wall of jungle/rivers/jungle hills, overlapping cities, and dug in Pikes. All I wanted was some nice open terrain to play Hussar Polo.

Don't worry...Hussars are on the way to Dynamite.

poor horses.

Harald, you cunning bastard!
That sucks amigo. I'd be gearing up to take that damnable Dane out!

That is impressive. I'm sure there wasn't some special intent behind it but the results are impressive nonetheless.

What I want to know is, how can the AI crank out generals like that? Seems like it is cheating somehow, unless it already had one and got the other from Honor - or something like that.

The worse that happened to me was Assyria asked to be friends, asked for open borders, then used that agreement to get to the other side of my city. He then declared war and had me surrounded. I couldn't believe it happened.

I'm not so surprised. It reminds me of something I've seen in Civ III. It was extremely rare in that game for the AI to build defensive land improvements, but once I saw the Byzantines had built 2 defensive improvements in a row on a bottleneck quite like yours here, spears fortified on top. I took a screenshot then as well, you wouldn't see that kind of thing often.

I think the AI does know what a bottleneck is. The stolen horsies is probably just coincidence.

Denmark definitely had a great general from Honor and must have popped one or two more from the THREE WARS that *ss declared against me trying to push through my city before going the Great General Land Grab. He would declare war, move 4 units and a boat in range, and I would proceed to slaughter him. I had Oligarchy from the Tradition tree so that composite bowman garrisoned turns it into a slaughterfest.

It's quite simple when you are ready to take him out, put ur GG on horses, it will connect them instantly and get you two citadels for price of one, then just burn the other one and you are home free.

I thought that great generals could only land grab from inside your territory, or adjacent to your territory, but only in neutral tiles.

The AI seems to build more fort and in better places. I got fort bombed in one game where the AI build 4 forts and ended up stealing my fort!

Maxym said:

It's quite simple when you are ready to take him out, put ur GG on horses, it will connect them instantly and get you two citadels for price of one, then just burn the other one and you are home free.

Click to expand...

You can only put a fort in your own territory, and I'm fairly sure it also doesn't hook up the resource for you. I don't think there's any way to reclaim those spots short of taking Copenhagen.

Your citadel just got citadeled.

This should be a meme.

Once as Sweden back in G+K I had Russia as a neighbor. Her having founded a city six tiles from my capital, I hastily bought most tiles around it and plopped Citadel near by (thanks to an inevitable war) for good measure. However, a hundred turns later she placed her own great general relatively cclose to Stockholm, stealing a horse pasture my city was working. In the grand scheme of things, that was relatively minor for me, although Russia, being Russia, received twice the horses I would have kept. My main problem with that Citadel is that it really changed the landscape for war. In the future, the jagged borders between the two fortresses would be a deadlocked killing field, with waves of infantry and cavalry being mowed down by Crossbowmen and Gatling guns.



Quite an interesting game.

Optional said:

I'm not so surprised. It reminds me of something I've seen in Civ III. It was extremely rare in that game for the AI to build defensive land improvements, but once I saw the Byzantines had built 2 defensive improvements in a row on a bottleneck quite like yours here, spears fortified on top. I took a screenshot then as well, you wouldn't see that kind of thing often.

I think the AI does know what a bottleneck is. The stolen horsies is probably just coincidence.

Click to expand...

The AI has bottlenecked me before as well. It's def programmed to use cidals in choke points.

Spam galleasses, boom boom boom boom boom, one horse pillages the citadels.

Nice trick tho, it's nice to see the AI making some good tactics too.

I also noticed that AI started using citadels in quite cunning fashion. In one my game Assyria has always been attacking Morocco, which I started protectinga nd slowly turning in my protectorate. Because of my support Assyria couldn't take Casablanca which occupied edge of penisula, controlling several key resources and multiple farms. So in the end Assyria just sent 2 generals and basically took 80% of Casablanca's land territory.