AI just sits outside an enemy city and gets bombarded to death

[Rohili]

I was hoping the latest patch would fix this stupid AI behaviour, but apparently not. I still see the AI fortifying wounded units within bombardment range of enemy cities/ranged units, letting their units get slowly picked off.

This is so even where there is a lot of free space behind the unit where it can retreat to heal. To add insult to injury, there are often full health units nearby that the AI could have used to attack the city, but cannot do so because the space adjacent to the city is occupied by the injured unit. In the mean time, the city is merrily healing away, completely undoing the AI's prior efforts at damaging it.

Since I do notice that the AI's tactical prowess has improved a bit after the patch, it puzzles me that such a basic tactical error hasn't been rectified. How difficult is it to programme the AI to pull back its wounded units?

[Doctor Phibes]

Originally Posted by Rohili

I was hoping the latest patch would fix this stupid AI behaviour, but apparently not. I still see the AI fortifying wounded units within bombardment range of enemy cities/ranged units, letting their units get slowly picked off.

This is so even where there is a lot of free space behind the unit where it can retreat to heal. To add insult to injury, there are often full health units nearby that the AI can use to attack the city, but cannot do so because the space adjacent to the city is occupied by the injured unit.

Since I do notice that the AI's tactical prowess has improved a bit after the patch, it puzzles me as to this basic tactical error hasn't been rectified. How difficult is it to programme the AI to retreat its wounded units?

Uh huh. It can't even manage this elementary procedure. I've been bemoaning elsewhere how unlikely it would be for the AI to rotate damaged units out when it has limited space to do so. That is a tough problem for the AI, but one that a human can easily deal with. I clean forgot how dog stupid the AI acts even when it has clear paths to manoeuvre. But, I agree with you, this one should at least be fixable unlike a host of other 1upt issues...

[slo]

Well I see that as well, but they have made some improvements...I had sub stationed in an area that would continue to pick off troops as they made there way towards my land, so the AI did something very impressive.....It sent awhole bunch of workers in the water to scout out where the sub is! Very impressive....(as you may or may not know any unit can see a sub when within one hex of the sub.) using the cheapest units avalable to scout me out was good...

[Doctor Phibes]

Originally Posted by slo

Well I see that as well, but they have made some improvements...I had sub stationed in an area that would continue to pick off troops as they made there way towards my land, so the AI did something very impressive.....It sent awhole bunch of workers in the water to scout out where the sub is! Very impressive....(as you may or may not know any unit can see a sub when within one hex of the sub.) using the cheapest units avalable to scout me out was good...

Well, that's remarkably adaptable. Of course I might wonder how a bunch of workers in those little transports are supposed to hunt subs. (But that would be ungenerous - and apparently it's now wrong to expect any kind of realism, what with Fountains of Youth and so forth.) I'm afraid I think this is not good, it's poor. Workers are cheap, but they still cost resources, and I presume your sub picked them all off. And then waited for the next bunch of suckers. Obviously a couple of destroyers could have done the job and survived (with XPs, yay!). But since Civ5 is even worse at handling naval warfare than Civ4, I guess dogpiling with cheap units is all it's got.

(I haven't played an archipelago game post-patch, must see if there is the tiniest improvement on its dismal showing pre-patch.)

[joyous_gard]

Yeah, I am not seeing much improvement in troop movement. Sometimes that fortified til healed guy gets a promotion and messes me up though through insta-heal, attack.

AI bombarders and cities sometimes do a good job focusing down units. I think that is the best AI improvement so far.

[halyavin]

Originally Posted by slo

It sent awhole bunch of workers in the water to scout out where the sub is!

Nope, it sent workers to another continent. If you do random stuff, sometimes you do a good thing.

[Botzarelli]

Perhaps it was random but on the Paris/Culture Win TSG I had an Iroquois City very close to one of my cities and the Iroquois rotated units within bombard distance of the city and moved them away before they were killed, building up lots of free XP without facing the risk of actually attacking the city.

[SickFak]

Originally Posted by slo

Well I see that as well, but they have made some improvements...I had sub stationed in an area that would continue to pick off troops as they made there way towards my land, so the AI did something very impressive.....It sent awhole bunch of workers in the water to scout out where the sub is! Very impressive....(as you may or may not know any unit can see a sub when within one hex of the sub.) using the cheapest units avalable to scout me out was good...

Originally Posted by halyavin

Nope, it sent workers to another continent. If you do random stuff, sometimes you do a good thing.

In other words, even a broken clock is right twice a day...

It didn't send those workers on purpose to scout the sub. It just did something incredibly stupid in the right time, which made it look "smartish" from human perspective.

[Nares]

Originally Posted by Rohili

Since I do notice that the AI's tactical prowess has improved a bit after the patch, it puzzles me that such a basic tactical error hasn't been rectified. How difficult is it to programme the AI to pull back its wounded units?

There are two entries in the tactical moves XML that could control that behavior.