Have you ever seen AI invade?

Nope. In all my games I have never come under deliberate attack from another European power. On the odd occasion they have dropped a lone soldier off near one of my colonies but I'd put that down to a normal colonising mission rather than a direct threat.

The natives on the other hand have repeatedly made surprise attacks on my pioneers, colonists and scouts and burned my colonies to the ground.
 
Once I saw the Dutch(IA) that attacked a friend (MP)! He didn't protect his colony and they attacked by sea :p!!!
But It is the only time :(!
 
So... it can be that given enough resources and military power, the AI can do military operations, hopefully ... I wonder if

<iTargetNumCities>4</iTargetNumCities>

in world info don't govern the number of cities after which the AI won't want to expand ... Anybody knows?

I think I'll run some tests with the world builder, giving an hord of soldiers to the AI, declare war, and see if it is able to do something remotely offensive, like in Civ 4. I hope so.
 
Well, given that the King's army can be 2-3 times your size (or larger) and have superior units and still fails to take out your rebellious little colony, an AI colonial power would need to be pretty strong to even hope to make a good show. On top of that, the king's army receives a ridiculous number of promotions they didn't earn - that's the only way they can hope to win. The AI Colonial power would need to have some way to gain those promotions - in my opinion, even if they slaughtered all the natives they probably couldn't do it. FF would help some if they caught a large number of them.

In addition, in my experience, the AI favors soldiers (infantry). They make a lot of them when it comes to war. Not enough cannons and not enough dragoons - most importantly nowhere near enough ships to sustain an invasion.
 
I have seen them invade natives but I have never been invaded by another colony.
 
Hell yeah! I must be playing a different game or be more obnoxious than other players. The AI colonies sure attack me.

The AI will send folks to additional islands or continents by ship to scout and colonize.

I've even had an island colony attacked from the sea and captured by shipbound forces belonging to an AI I was at war with. However, I reloaded the game and watched this happen a few times. I am still not convinced the intention was not to settle rather than attack. It might have been just because we were at war that the forces fought.

But when you have 2 colonies borders pushing up against each other with lots bells / spirit the other AI will eventually attack you. And attack big. I think the borders pushing against each other triggers some kind of arms and force build up.

I've had forces with 30 to 100 cannons suddenly appear outside my cities. At that size they don't even bother bombarding they just take out the sentries and roll straight in. Then when you try and retake your city the AI picks you off with 20 dragoons moving 6 squares a turn (via roads + Founding Father).

If you provoke them enough they will attack with serious force. Letting the AI's develop over a long game and then fighting with them instead of REF is an interesting way to play this game.
 
agaro said:
Hell yeah! I must be playing a different game or be more obnoxious than other players. The AI colonies sure attack me.

The AI will send folks to additional islands or continents by ship to scout and colonize.

I've even had an island colony attacked from the sea and captured by shipbound forces belonging to an AI I was at war with. However, I reloaded the game and watched this happen a few times. I am still not convinced the intention was not to settle rather than attack. It might have been just because we were at war that the forces fought.

But when you have 2 colonies borders pushing up against each other with lots bells / spirit the other AI will eventually attack you. And attack big. I think the borders pushing against each other triggers some kind of arms and force build up.

I've had forces with 30 to 100 cannons suddenly appear outside my cities. At that size they don't even bother bombarding they just take out the sentries and roll straight in. Then when you try and retake your city the AI picks you off with 20 dragoons moving 6 squares a turn (via roads + Founding Father).

If you provoke them enough they will attack with serious force. Letting the AI's develop over a long game and then fighting with them instead of REF is an interesting way to play this game.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I'd call an attack by 100 cannons 'interesting'. :eek:

Those are certainly bigger numbers than I've ever seen. Do you play with 'Aggressive AI' set on? I have had the AI attack me but only after I had declared war first. However I do play on very large maps so don't get that kind of border conflict.
 
dalgo said:
I'm not sure I'd call an attack by 100 cannons 'interesting'. :eek:

Those are certainly bigger numbers than I've ever seen. Do you play with 'Aggressive AI' set on? I have had the AI attack me but only after I had declared war first. However I do play on very large maps so don't get that kind of border conflict.
Click to expand...

No, I play with Aggessive AI option set to off. The aggressive AI option makes them declare war too often, usually without much to back it up - a bit like a yappy jack russell.

I also play on the largest maps but with the intention of dominating the new world economically, I don't bother declaring independence or fighting REF. I set up colonies in locations to deliberately block the ability of other AIs to expand into areas that I want, and always keep my borders closed. I also try to coexist with natives for as long as possible.

This makes a very long game. The action usually only starts after 300 turns. The land locked AIs eventually fully develop their areas and try to expand with lots of bells / spirit, plus they start producing lots of surplus weapons and people (because they are fully developed, they don't have much else to do). I usually know they are going to attack soon when the AI keeps wanting to open borders every 10 turns or so.

Eventually the AIs declare war and attack, and I usually have to take most of their cities to finish the war, this can take a while. Sometimes I am fighting 2 AIs at the same time.

The AI wars are quite different to fighting REF. Against REF I have the advantage of fighting in my territory so I can see the enemy and use my own roads, and I know how big the REF is and how it arrives in discrete waves by sea. But against AIs I don't know how big the enemy force is, or where it is - it usually builds up out of sight and then quickly materialises using their own roads.

I think these wars are much more variable and challenging than fighting the REF. It's also a bit stressful - I can hear lots of cannons and horses rumbling around when the AI has their turn, but I don't know where they are going to turn up. I can have a fighting withdrawal for a while, but I know my economy is going to be toast if I let the huge AI forces break through my main defensive lines, or kill too many of my troops.

But usually I have been preparing for a while so I create separate battlefronts from the sea, deep within the AI territory which sucks a lot of the AI force back to defend their homeland.

It's an engrossing way to play - games are quite long and can take a week. Lots of moves are strategic to get into dominant positions, or get the opposition out of good positions, like a big game of chess really.
 
That is certainly a different way to play the game. I don't recall anyone posting a similar strategy before. I wonder if the designers envisaged this type of gameplay. Presumably you are playing with all win conditions turned off?
 
Yea, I've seen the local natives sometimes attack the other colonial AIs and invade all their cities but after awhile they eventually sign peace. I've seen AI colonies invade each other too.
 
dalgo said:
That is certainly a different way to play the game. I don't recall anyone posting a similar strategy before. I wonder if the designers envisaged this type of gameplay. Presumably you are playing with all win conditions turned off?
Click to expand...

Actually I usually played with the Independence condition still active - but your question got me thinking.

In my games one of the AI's would usually declare independence which would bring in the REF for a 100 turns or so. The only real impact for me was I had to stop using my Privateers while the Man-O-Wars were around - but eventually they go. If it was convenient I would sometimes attack the AI that declared Indepence as well to get some of their colonies while they were distracted fighting the REF.

If the REF defeats the AI this was a bit of a problem because the REF takes over their colonies and cultural area, and I couldn't do anything about this, just concentrate on the other AIs. The European REF's cultural area is a bit different because it doesn't have a boundary - you can move through it, you just can't build there or harvest the squares which is a pain.

But as a test I tried a game with all conditions off. This is better because no-one ever brings in the REF. There is also no downside for liberty bell production except stroppy natives (eventually). I get messages from the king about the mega REF he is building but that is all.

The forces in the field in these final AI battles are so big they push the limits of the game mechanics. It becomes a bit tricky to move around forces with 100+ units on a square - moreso when there are different unit types.

It's OK when the AIs attack my forces although it can take about 3 minutes for the individual contests to play out one by one. But that's sort of fun to watch and a bit scary while you wait for the overall battle to play out.

However, it's a bit of a chore to for me to attack big forces one by one. I thought there was a way to launch a multiple unit attack by holding down shift or something, but it doesn't work. Does anyone know how I can do this?
 
I don't know of any way to launch multiple attacks - but then I've never needed to. It certainly does sound a challenging strategy. If you continue to sell goods in Europe I presume the tax rate would eventually hit 100%. By then of course your colonies would be self-sufficient anyway.

Do you have your own set of victory conditions? eg every AI nation reduced to a single colony or something similar. What kind of game time do you rack up in your games?
 
Vorpal+5 said:
there is stack attack as an option... otherwise what you say agaro is very different from my experience, even in hardest difficulty, the European are rather dormants for me...
Click to expand...

Hi Vorpal,

Could you give me keystrokes for stack attack ... I thought you could do it somehow, but I haven't been able to get it to work.

Also for AI to attack you - you have to reject all their trade offers, don't open boundaries, don't trade maps, don't give them money. But the real clincher in Vanilla Colonization seems to be the boundary conflict and your boundary expanding and stopping them developing the 8 squares around one of their cities.

I saw you also posted in the TAC Mod thread. If you can get over your technical issue, in that Mod the other European nations are much more aggro - they will attack you even without boundary conflict.
 
I was on a southern island with 2 indian tribes. The french were on the main island north of me.

After culture bombing to force 2 indian villages to abandon and cede the land to me, the French built a city in one of my planned city locations.
 
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