AI doesn't manage Marathon well

What's the one distinguishing factor of Marathon? Your units have more turns to do stuff.

Workers take the same % of time, so primarily we're talking about military units.

First off, let me state my "normal" reaction to an AI declaring war. I almost always pull back, concentrate my forces, do some rush upgrades, change some more cities to producing military units, and wait. Yes, wait... Wait for the inevitable incoming stacks. Usually at least 2 stacks, sometimes more. The AI sends in stacks of what it considers "extra" units. These may or may not be its most powerful units, and usually consists of a hodgepodge of new and old. In this way, the AI is different from what most humans do. So, my "normal" reaction is to do my best to hold them off or, better, wipe them out. Once accomplished, this totally changes the complexion of the war. After that point, I can compose my OWN invading stack and/or go raiding, or whatever I feel like doing.

Now... back to Marathon. With the emphasized importance of units, and how they have more moves, it's important to preserve your military might. If you get knocked back on your heels, it is much harder in Marathon to come back. How long will it take to rebuild your military? A looong time.

So that's what I'm realizing. The AI does a crappy job of preserving its units. Even after you wipe out its stacks, it'll continue sending in horse units on raiding missions as they are built. A human would realize that, yeah I can wipe out that farm, but my lone Cav is going to be killed.

A human would do a better job of not exposing units and of putting units in a position where if they get hurt they still have the option to withdraw and heal, to fight again.

In this sense, I think that Marathon games are easier to win than games at faster settings. (multiplayer games aside of course.)

Wodan

That sounds about right. Twist things too far and something ends up breaking.

My preferred speed is Epic.


- Sirian

I had a war with Alex, killed all his units, and now... nothing.

I move in on a new city, and I KNOW I'm not going to get attacked en route. Each city I move in on has 3-4 defenders, and I know that's all I have to face.

My other 2 Marathon games were similar.

Wodan

ps On the other hand, Saladin hasn't been in a war for 1500 years. There's a narrow channel cutting between us (with a land bridge up north) and his 2 cities facing on the channel have a total of 8 transports (I have spies) all fully loaded with artillery, SAMs, and cavalry... just sitting there.

I'm playing a marathon game with raging barbarians and spending an incredible number of turns just gutting it out.

Heroic Epic is a fargone conclusion way before the discovery of Literature.

Yes, I agree that preserving units is a must given the number of turns it takes to generate one.

What is interesting to me is other Civs asking for Open Borders. I see no way of even aproaching another Civ at this point, the Barbs are coming in absolute waves and I had to build my empire against a coastline just so they could only attack from two directions and not three or four.

I'm using the Malinese because it seems that, with raging Barbs, the Skirmishers are the only early units powerful enough to have a fighting chance at survival. Of my 12 Skirmishers, 8 of them are already at Level 4 (10XP), the highest you can get when battling Barbs.

AI doesn't manage Epic well either. Essentially, AI is bad at conducting a war (besides the mentioned weaknesses it has many more), so anything that gives HP more turns for war before the spaceship makes the game easier.

Wodan said:

The AI does a crappy job of preserving its units. Even after you wipe out its stacks, it'll continue sending in horse units on raiding missions as they are built. A human would realize that, yeah I can wipe out that farm, but my lone Cav is going to be killed.

Click to expand...

But Horseman have the chance of being able to retreat from a combat gone wrong. If I were to send in a unit to pillage my enemies lands, that would be the one. And I have done just what you're talking about when I wasn't in a postion to launch a frontal attack. I managed to do quite a bit of damage to his infrastructure, pillaging three or four tiles, and my Horse Archer was still able to pull out and heal after being attacked. Plus I managed to win against a few units who were sent out to kill me. All in all it was a pretty successful raiding sortie and my Horse Archer still lived to tell the tale.

Another trap I'm falling into with marathon games is the need to build cities after so many turns. My timing is tuned more to the epic game and with the marathon game I'm crippling myself financialy by building cities too quickly, even though it seems like I'm taking forever to do so.

I went bankrupcy on my first marathon game too, so now I stop building cities when my research is under 50%.

It wasn't Epic or Marathon, I play in "normal" but I can relate this funny event:
Ceaser declares war on me, out of the blue!
A single Horse Archer comes along and dies a horrible death against my Spearman.
I wait for the waves of Ceaser's legion, and wait, and wait.
It seems that was it! One unit attacks me and several turns later we make peace.
Weird, eh?

It wasn't Epic or Marathon, I play in "normal" but I can relate this funny event:
Ceaser declares war on me, out of the blue!
A single Horse Archer comes along and dies a horrible death against my Spearman.
I wait for the waves of Ceaser's legion, and wait, and wait.
It seems that was it! One unit attacks me and several turns later we make peace.
Weird, eh?

Click to expand...

I've had almost the exact same scenario but I just assumed that the AI was bribed into war by another civ.
But I suppose there is no way of knowing that is what happened.

My experiences are a bit different. I play monarch and marathon. The AI will save insane amounts of forces for attacks, and they often declare war in waves (which is smart, hit me when I am already weakend). Last night Alex declared war on me (I was highest in score, he was far behind). He came in with about 40 units. I killed him cause he had grenadiers and knights, I had Infantry. No matter how many units I make I am still no 3 or 4 in soldiers on the demographics screen. I am 800 points ahead of no 2 in score.

I'm noticing this alot... I adjusted the speed a little to compensate for this a little... but also to make the mopre fast paced on marathon:
I but unit production at 100% and biulding production at 150% instead of 200% like they are norally on marathon..

I have just finished my first two marathon emperor games, and I want to add some notes in what has already been said.

1. In Marathon it is just plain and simple to eliminate at least 1 opponent (usually the only problem is overexpansion) by taking the short route to Iron Working. If you happen to find someone like Gandhi nearby, you can be pretty sure you will have a very big military advantage and - due to the slow speed) he will not be able to catch up (if ever) before losing most of his cities. In short, Marathon makes early aggression easier - or any other aggression when you are in a technology advantage.

2. If you also disable Tech Trading (for example, because you want to play against many opponents in Huge map and dont want to start seeing the well known "late AI cooperative Tech discovery"), the military civs get in a really awful state. In Marathon it's all about getting the upper hand, and AI that lose millions of turns to create units that will eventually lose very easily have no chance at all. In my latest game I was just making a joke on Ceasar with Modern Armor and Stealth Bomber against his Riflemen - just two full eras away technologically (and he had the 2nd biggest area).

3. In Marathon it does pay A LOT to do the following:
a. Get a Great Merchant and take the cash
b. Use the cash to bribe so as the two most dangerous opponents opponents get into a war.
c. Just watch out and wait. In about 20 turns both of thems will have almost no units left. After that you can usually get both of them, either immediately or even later.

4. If you get an early religion (one of the three first), go quickly and search Sailing (especially in Pangea map) and EXPLORE all the coast. Turns for religion expansion are just like turns for battle: they count all the time. If you get first trade routes to the others, you have secured easy money and happy neighbours.

Willem said:

But Horseman have the chance of being able to retreat from a combat gone wrong. If I were to send in a unit to pillage my enemies lands, that would be the one.

Click to expand...

Umm, the retreat skill only works on offense.

Willem said:

And I have done just what you're talking about when I wasn't in a postion to launch a frontal attack. I managed to do quite a bit of damage to his infrastructure, pillaging three or four tiles, and my Horse Archer was still able to pull out and heal after being attacked. Plus I managed to win against a few units who were sent out to kill me. All in all it was a pretty successful raiding sortie and my Horse Archer still lived to tell the tale.

Click to expand...

Was this against a human or against an AI? Also, did your opponent (whichever it was) just get finished demonstrating military superiority over you? I'd guess "an AI" and "No".

(To use your horse archer analogy, I'd guess your opponent didn't even have spearmen, let alone pikemen. AIs don't build nearly enough of either of them, and they build too many Swordsmen.) In other words, you went raiding with a unit which was more powerful than anything your opponent had.

This isn't what I'm talking about at all. Yes, I'm sure you did just fine in that game. (Just to be sure: you're a human, right? You're not Alex in disguise?? )

My whole point is how the AI deals with war, and how the Marathon speed (and to some extent, the Epic speed) really emphasizes some of the AI's weaknesses in this area.

Wodan

I finished my first marathon game over the weekend. In hindsight, I saw some of this behavior as well. But, the benefits of a marathon game (better diplomacy, deeper strategy) far outweighed these "problems" for me.

I did notice that the enemy failed to bounce back with newer armies after their initial forces were destroyed. But, I guess I really just didn't consider this a problem, I considered it to be just how wars go in real life. Generally (but not always), when a nation loses its elite, front-line armies, it's "game over" (Rome against Carthage would an obvious exception).

That being said, what about possible solutions:

1. Turning up the difficulty? I still play on "Noble" because I like the idea of a "non-cheating" AI where production speeds are concerned. But maybe for Marathon, I should change this?

2. Someone mentioned changing the production rate manually for units only. Is this really possible, and if so, what other effects might this have?

3. ????

Marathon can be a blast. . . this thread makes me sad since I don't want it to be a push-over

Is the generation of barbarians affected at all at marathon speed? At epic the barbarians are more of a challenge in the early game than other civs, if you are on a big wide continent and they come at you in waves from several directions. In my present game I killed off considerably more barbarians than in conquering two other well developed civs in the early medieval period. As a result of the necessity of having a large army to defend from barbarians it was relatively easy to conquer the other 2 civs with my well-trained army of swords and macemen (and only a couple of cats).

I'm playing my first Marathon game right now: Prince, Incas, warmongering, pangea. I didn't pitck these options to have an easy game: I wanted to play an agressive game on Prince and I wanted to win via Domination, thus the financial attrib.
Anyway..... yeah the computer war AI sucks. I've taken 3 civs out already at 300AD: all they built was 3-4 archers in each city (gandhi, isabella, catherine). I'm going up against Tokugawa now and he's sending some troops after me, but only about 4 swordsman and a couple of chariots. Since I have vass/theoc with barracks in all my cities, I should have no problem kicking his tail.

5cats said:

It wasn't Epic or Marathon, I play in "normal" but I can relate this funny event:
Ceaser declares war on me, out of the blue!
A single Horse Archer comes along and dies a horrible death against my Spearman.
I wait for the waves of Ceaser's legion, and wait, and wait.
It seems that was it! One unit attacks me and several turns later we make peace.
Weird, eh?

Click to expand...

I've had a few of these "phoney wars." My guess is that the AI is doing it because you're too far ahead of them in technology, it doesn't have the resources to beat you and it believes that you don't have the resouces to beat it.

So, if you're in war, you get war weariness, people get angry and your production and research drop, you have to stop producing libraries, temples, etc., you probably change civics and you also start producing additional units that have a support cost.

DraconisRex said:

I've had a few of these "phoney wars." My guess is that the AI is doing it because you're too far ahead of them in technology, it doesn't have the resources to beat you and it believes that you don't have the resouces to beat it.

So, if you're in war, you get war weariness, people get angry and your production and research drop, you have to stop producing libraries, temples, etc., you probably change civics and you also start producing additional units that have a support cost.

Click to expand...

That wouldn't make sense though since he would experience the same problems himself. And if it works the way it did in Civ 3, the civ that declares war suffers from WW earlier. So he'd only be shooting himself in the foot if that was his motivation.

Willem said:

That wouldn't make sense though since he would experience the same problems himself. And if it works the way it did in Civ 3, the civ that declares war suffers from WW earlier. So he'd only be shooting himself in the foot if that was his motivation.

Click to expand...

First, that's why I said "my guess."

Second, from an AI POV it could make sense if he's not changing civics and is continuing to build improvements while I'm losing turns changing civics and I'm shut down for units.

And, third, as someone else mentioned, he could have been paid to declare war and the AI would calculate out whether it was a net-benifit for a minimum-turn war far better than I. i.e., what he lost in production/research he made up for in gold/techs.


Anyway, that's why it's a "guess" to the motivations of the AI. It's doing it for a reason. It does it reasonably frequently, but not every game, when I'm way ahead in the early/mid game. I just don't know exactly why, I only note that my lead tends to drop when the AI starts doing this junk.

I've also noticed, but didn't elaborate, that the sometimes the civilization that does this, does it right after I've had a war and declared peace. Almost like they're ganging up on me to cripple me with War Weariness. And, frankly, it has worked in the past. I've lost comfortable leads as the AI tag-teams me from war to war.