AI reducing city to one defender, and then gives up..

[Koning]

How often have you encountered this ankward situation:

An AI civ declares war on you and moves its stack of doom to your border city. You, ill prepared, whip a defender and rush your troops to the city under siege. It is too late and too little, the enemy catapults reduce your defences quickly and attack the next turn. After heavy fighting you're down to a last heavily injured defender. You are certainly going to loose the city..

But then, the AI suddenly stops attacking and waits for the next turn, despite having some troops left that could have easily taken out your last defender. You whip a fresh longbowman, troops from other cities arrive, and you survive the second attack wave. Later on,you counter attack and win the war. but how different woulld the war have gone when you had lost your important border city..

This scenario has happened too often in too many games for me. Initially, it was a great relief since I could survive unexpected invasions. But now, it annoys me greatly and makes the game less challenging.

My question to you: does this also happen in your games? And is there something I can do about this irrational AI?
(Oh, I play BTS 3.19 with BUG mod, emperor level if that matters)

 

[lymond]

Never seen it happen. All troops should have expended there movement/attack points that turn. You can check the log to see what attacked you.

 

[misterfilmgeek]

(Oh, I play BTS 3.19 with BUG mod, emperor level if that matters)

I play with the same mod, and I have seen some strange war-time behavior, but nothing quite that stupid - usually the AI is happy to attack at almost any odds above 0%.

In my most recent game, I did see all of the following:

Asoka declared on me unexpectedly, and attacked with a stack of two (2!) units. I was able to fend this off, of course. Later, in the same war, I invaded him and he responded not by attacking my stack or turtling, but by sending a stack of three (3!) units to attack one of my cities with three defenders, each stronger than his attacker. He suicided them anyway. He then wasted a catapault taking one of my workers. He moved his units around contantly during the war, never settling on one strategy to attack or defend against me. None of this behavior is out of the ordinary.

In short, the AI is not good at warfare. There are probably decent mods out there for it, but BUG is not one of them. (Edit - I forgot that BUG is not an AI mod, so this is the default game-play.)

 

[MrCynical]

Never seen that happen. I have seen the AI waste turns bombarding away city defenses when there's only one or two defenders which they could easily take out despite the defensive bonus. That's about as close as I've seen to it.

 

[elmurcis]

I have seen situation when AI moves stack next to my city.. and than 1 turn do nothing (no - really, I 2x check that situation.. mine and road was still there, city defence not reduced).. it was enough to whip extra defense and hold city (thanks also to Chicken Itza - 1st time ever it actually saved me because enemy need 1 more turn to get down defence bonus)

 

[capnvonbaron]

There have definitely a couple of times that I managed to hang on to a city by a hair with desperation whipping/drafting, but I don't know about just one unit. Usually its two or three very damaged units, and had the AI had pushed the attack they could have succeeded... but instead chose to stop and heal, so I got to keep the city. I presume the idea was to minimize their losses, but in the end it hurts them because I can bring in extra defenders, or even an offensive stack to pummel them silly.

I'd say its happened just as much as the AI succeeded in taking the city outright though, so its really situational. It is certainly notable when it does happen though...

 

[Koning]

Interesting to read your experiences. The one-defender-left scenario probably is an extreme case, but the AI has poor judgement in conquering cities. Multiple-turn bombarding city defenses despite overwhelming numbers and delayed attacks (for healing?) are commonplace and gives away the surprise advantage of AI invasions.

Has anyone tried the Better AI Mod? I read it makes the AI less erratic at warfare. Or maybe I should just move another level up for more challenging invasions.

 

[damerell]

But then, the AI suddenly stops attacking and waits for the next turn, despite having some troops left that could have easily taken out your last defender. You whip a fresh longbowman, troops from other cities arrive, and you survive the second attack wave.

Perhaps the AI had sufficiently few troops left able to move in that turn that if it took the city, those troops from other cities would immediately retake it. I don't know if it considers such a possibility, but if it does - if you are planning a war of conquest, the last thing you want to do is damage a good city by having it taken three times with the attendant destruction of buildings.

 

[AdamCrock]

This must be something wrong with the AI if he makes a bad choice like that. I admit that I have never encoutered this situation before or maybe I wasn't paying enough attention to that and dismissed it as a stroke of good luck ? I must be paying more attention to the AI play as it seems "dumb" sometimes ....

EDIT: On the other hand I saw some good moves by the AI too like razing the cities instead of capturing them (Rome), attacking least expected border and exploiting open border traties (to retreat and heal). Makes me wonder ...

 

[karadoc]

Has anyone tried the Better AI Mod? I read it makes the AI less erratic at warfare. Or maybe I should just move another level up for more challenging invasions.

I know of a mod which makes the AI a whole lot smarter than the 'Better AI' Mod...

 

[calibur]

I know of a mod which makes the AI a whole lot smarter than the 'Better AI' Mod...

Let me guess... C2c? Rom?... Fine I give up, those are the only mods I know by name other than k-mod. I was one acronym away from a pretty nice light troll...

 

[MrKlew]

Were his units injured? I have noticed the AI is often reluctant to attack with injured units. I have sometimes held off AI stacks by bombarding them with siege/bombers/cruise missiles. The AI will often wait to heal even if it has a 10:1 unit advantage.

 

[ShengWuLien]

I saw something similar recently.

I was goofing around on Prince/Tectonics-Mediterranean/Marathon/Large with some extra AIs. Early in the game Isabella (one of my closest neighbors) died at the hands of a barb invasion. After winning an elepult war on the other side of my empire I sent some spare catas and axes off to conquer the old Spanish cities. Madrid, the Buddhist holy city, was still in the hands of the barbs and I wanted it.

When I got there, Mansa was laying siege to the city with a bunch of chariots and catapults. There had clearly been a fight because a lot of his units were wounded. The barbs had one wounded archer in the city and Mansa could easily have grabbed it before my troops arrived. But his army just sat outside the city and so I was able to snatch it.

The AIs make some exceptionally poor military decisions. On my latest Immortal game, Monty suicided an army of over 9000 war elephants, knights and other medieval dross against my stack of rifles fortified on a wooded hill. I didn't lost a single unit, I think he lost 45 or so.

 

[s.bernbaum]

Were his units injured? I have noticed the AI is often reluctant to attack with injured units. I have sometimes held off AI stacks by bombarding them with siege/bombers/cruise missiles. The AI will often wait to heal even if it has a 10:1 unit advantage.

I had a similar occurrence in a recent game. The AI quite attacking when there was one defender left. My "rescue" stack arrived the next turn, with no moves left. The AI stack just sat there that turn. My stack attacked on the following turn, finding that the AI stack contained entirely badly damaged units. Apparently, they were all in "heal" mode, which is why they did not finish the original attack.

 

[SnipedSoul]

I've noticed that the AI seems reluctant to attack with injured units even if they have a huge stack against one or two defenders.

The AI is much kinder to its troops than us merciless humans. Maybe they feel empathy for their digital brethren?

 

[nfw]

From what I've gathered, when AI makes an unit, it will assign it a role such as defense, pillage or attack, and that role will not change. So it's possible the only units he had left were assigned to roles other than attack. There are times when I take a city but leave it undefended within reach via rail but the AI wouldn't take it, because all its units were assigned to defense.

 

[AdamCrock]

From what I've gathered, when AI makes an unit, it will assign it a role such as defense, pillage or attack, and that role will not change. So it's possible the only units he had left were assigned to roles other than attack. There are times when I take a city but leave it undefended within reach via rail but the AI wouldn't take it, because all its units were assigned to defense.

This is very good observation. I have payed too little attention to AI sripts for units. This is most likely the reason for an erratic AI behaviour and probably can be fixed by some AI mods

 

[Manco Capac]

From what I've gathered, when AI makes an unit, it will assign it a role such as defense, pillage or attack, and that role will not change. So it's possible the only units he had left were assigned to roles other than attack. There are times when I take a city but leave it undefended within reach via rail but the AI wouldn't take it, because all its units were assigned to defense.

Scripts can change over time. But true it doesn't flip all the time.

Beware of the UNITAI_PILLAGE archer who decides to camp 2 tiles away from the undefended capital.

 

[traius]

Let me guess... C2c? Rom?... Fine I give up, those are the only mods I know by name other than k-mod. I was one acronym away from a pretty nice light troll...

I'm guessing the mod link in his signature

 

[Manco Capac]

Karadoc made a titanic job on upgrading AI's to make them virtually intelligent and goal-focused (they finally try to win); it is understandable he tries to publicize his work.