Help, my AI is building artillery

[WildWeazel]

It's widely known that the AI never builds units with only the artillery strategy flag. I've never heard or seen any evidence to the contrary. So why in my last game did a few artillery units show up?

I was playing player1's patch suggestion mod (a set of minor changes to C3C) with a few of my own tweaks. When I founded some embassies in the latter half of the game, I noticed that 2 AI capitals had a single artillery unit in them. They were not captured from me, as I was playing a peaceful builder game and had never built any artillery. It was not a units32 error, because I was later attacked by the Iroquois and they used their cannon against me- which I captured, and it was called "(Iroquois) Cannon". I checked the BIQ to make sure player1 hadn't done anything clever, and sure enough they were just ordinary artillery units as in the regular game. At least 2 AIs definitely built their own artillery units. Now granted this was as few as 2 units among 19 AI players over 200+ turns on a fairly militarized large world map, but it is very interesting nonetheless.

Could it be possible that the AI is programmed to build artillery, but the weight given to them is so low that it rarely happens? If so, is there something we can do to make them build more?

[Gojira54]

I recall playing a mod (not one of mine) not too long ago where a large number of units surprise attacked one of my cities, and in that surprise attack group were 2 catapults. That was my first battle. My thought was that one of the civs perhaps started with them?

[WildWeazel]

Not unless some kind of bug is happening. The starting units and players properties were not changed in this mod. I could play it in debug mode and keep an eye on AI city production, but given the rarity of artillery in the last game that could take a very long time.

[Kumquat]

Just building artillery? When I play the epic game the AI always builds a few of them I never knew it was a rare phenomenon or anything xD I have even had the AI attack me with an arty once though. Getting attacked by an arty is really rare though...like seening a unicorn kind of rare.

[Tortosa]

I've had the AI build them in regular C3C epic game, only using them if I was in range of their cities that had one, when I took the city they were captured, like enemy workers. Rare yes, but I never thought it was a bug.

[tom2050]

Originally Posted by Kumquat

..like seening a unicorn kind of rare.

I agree, it is literally that rare! Sometimes I wish the AI would go on an artillery craze, and actually use them. That would be almost scary, getting your units pounded down by arty and mass bombing runs, then getting your city taken with a blitzkrieg, and fortified by 40 defenders

Tom

[WildWeazel]

In my experience the AI is pretty decent with using artillery units when it captures stacks from me. I've had to abandon a few sieges after my Artillery in the back got turned against me. But this is the first time I have ever seen or heard of normal artillery units being built by the AI.

[Yoda Power]

Originally Posted by Weasel Op

It's widely known that the AI never builds units with only the artillery strategy flag. I've never heard or seen any evidence to the contrary.

I think this is where you are mistaken. I think the AI have always been building artillery. Atleast they do in my games.

What difficulty level are you playing?

[zo-zo]

They always build artillery in my epic games, infact in a typical game a large percentage of artillery I have is captured from the AI.

[tom2050]

In un-modded epic games, i would usually encounter artillery rarely in the early game, but by modern era, it was not uncommon for me to run into good amounts of artillery in more powerful civs, but they usually always just sat in cities. Civs not as powerful seem to tend to build offensive/def units instead. IIRC, when playing WW2-Global, US AI would build a decent amount of artillery as well, as did some other civ's.

Tom

[Kumquat]

The AI will only march up to your borders and hit you with an arty if its one they captured it...I think xD Only been attacked like that once or twice and I remember it wasn't there arty they were using...and it was like only 1 arty and a defender If they build the arty themselves they keep it in there cities for def for some reason. Using arty in a combined arms tactic is something the AI doesn't 'get' like armies and naval invasions

[JSnider]

True .. in my experience the AI blds arty but usually leaves in the cities, will bombard with them from there. Still it might be that AI can be tempted to bld more if something is tweaked.

[Ares de Borg]

My AI is building lots of arty, but mostly SPGs and AT guns. Must have something to do with ROF, I guess (my AT guns have 4-5 ROF to punch through the 2-3 extra armor points of my tanks).

[Optional]

Originally Posted by Kumquat

The AI will only march up to your borders and hit you with an arty if its one they captured it...I think xD Only been attacked like that once or twice and I remember it wasn't there arty they were using...and it was like only 1 arty and a defender If they build the arty themselves they keep it in there cities for def for some reason. Using arty in a combined arms tactic is something the AI doesn't 'get' like armies and naval invasions

Your first sentence surprises me a little bit. Did the AI really 'march up to your borders' with an arty and then hit you with it? Since you're saying this only happens with captured artillery units, wasn't the artillery simply around? It would surprise me if the AI applied a different strategy to captured arty compared to their own.
The difference might be that once they've built an arty of their own, they fortify it in the city it's built and don't do much with it, except maybe bombard a passing enemy ship or so. If they're capturing one in the field, that's a different starting situation. They're probably more likely to use it, since it's out there anyway. But if you really see them marching up to your borders with it, like in really using it deliberately as an offensive weapon, then I would advise you to post screenshots or something, because this would be a huge surprise for everyone!

[wolf_brother]

Originally Posted by Ares de Borg

My AI is building lots of arty, but mostly SPGs and AT guns. Must have something to do with ROF, I guess (my AT guns have 4-5 ROF to punch through the 2-3 extra armor points of my tanks).

I've noticed this as well. The AI will build artillery on its own, but only if you make the arty worth building (in the AI's eyes). So medium-to-high Rate of Fire is a must.

EDIT: This actually makes perfect sense given what else we know about the AI"s unit building habits. The AI looks at the battlefield and considers each and every unit's worthiness individually, not in a group. So the AI will not build hordes of weak (ROF 1-2, Range 1-2, etc) but they will build a scattering of strong arty pieces.

[Logitech]

I've seen AI artillery, but I have never really checked if they were captured or not. I do know that the AI very rarely uses artillery offensively like us humans.

If it is a matter of making artillery more valuable to AI I'd sugjest making the bombard value much higher. I always am like, "Oh come on! You can't take out a mine and road?! You cannons are lame!"

[WildWeazel]

Really guys? AI has been building artillery all along? From all of the old threads discussing how to get them to build and use artillery, and the complete lack of artillery in my games to this point, I was under the impression that it never happened.

The problem with just making artillery stronger is that it just gives the human player more of an advantage in building more of them than the AI will.

[wolf_brother]

Originally Posted by Weasel Op

The problem with just making artillery stronger is that it just gives the human player more of an advantage in building more of them than the AI will.

Perhaps set them to be unbuildable, and auto-produced by the capital?
Though that would only work in a scenario and not in an epic game.

[Ozymandias]

Some notes from the Archives:

How to make the AI build artillery pieces

Civinator's Land Artillery Thread

Best,

Oz

[Bluemofia]

My AI always build artillery, just never use them on anything other than defending cities for defensive bombard or bombarding as I walk up to the cities.

I've never seen an AI use artillery for offensive missions; though sometimes I've seen them using regular units with bombard like artillery in EFZI2.