How to tell if AI cities are in civil disorder?

[MrSweetchuck]

Something I just realized that I didn't know the answer to, and that is: how can you tell if another civ's cities are experiencing civil disorder? In Civ 1, you could easily see the when cities were experiencing disorder because you would see that anarchy icon over the city. In Civ3, your own cities have black smoking coming out of them, but now I just realized that I'm not sure if I've ever seen this happen with an AI's cities?

 

[tjs282]

Generally, the AI will starve its towns (by reassigning multiple citizens as Entertainers) rather than let them go into disorder.

 

[MrSweetchuck]

Oh ok, I just realized that I had never seen that happen before, so I wondered if the game itself was keeping that information from us (i.e. not showing black smoke over AI cities), or if it generally never happens.

Although I was reading this post, and someone claims they actually saw an AI's city fall into disorder by pillaging everything around it:

I have seen ai cities falling into disorder for a couple of turns (!) that were size 30 metros once (so I suspect they couldn't run a lux tax anymore). Then the former super power will be down the drain (and your forces are built up), you can start conquering. Even if you end the war by now due to war weariness spreading around your empire, ai normally wouldn't be able to recover within the next 20 turns of peace.

 

[tjs282]

So maybe it's possible(?), but look at the date on that post: June 24, 2003. I can't say for sure, but I suspect that might actually predate the release of Conquests -- and if so, then Grille would be talking about seeing AI towns in disorder in PTW, possibly even Vanilla.

As far as I know it is definitely confirmed that the AI will not use the Lux%-slider at all (in Conquests, at least -- not sure about the previous versions).

 

[Fergei]

I assume AI governors 'manage happiness', because it would be weird if they were managed by some other coding. With that enabled cities will still fall into disorder when there is a lack of commerce (e.g. lack of roads in size 5+ city n the early game or when roads are pillaged). So the 'manage happiness' setting can infuriatingly fail. Whether the lux slider usage of the AI would overcome that I do not know. It would be strange if they put the lux up by 10% every time rather than creating an entertainer.

I've never seen smoke coming out of another Civ's city though, be that AI or human. So I think the only way you could tell is by investigating a city or building an embassy.

 

[justanick]

Generally, the AI will starve its towns (by reassigning multiple citizens as Entertainers) rather than let them go into disorder.

Yes.

As far as I know it is definitely confirmed that the AI will not use the Lux%-slider at all (in Conquests, at least -- not sure about the previous versions).

AI in Conquests may be very unlikely to use the luxury slider, but is it actually confirmed, that it nevers happens? I very vaguely recall having seen a screenshot showing AI to use the luxury slider. The scenario to look out is a single city AI with lots of commerce from tiles.

 

[Bartleby]

I had a pic in the "interesting screenshots" thread a while back that showed the C3C AI using the luxury slider.

 

[WeirdoJoker]

I had a pic in the "interesting screenshots" thread a while back that showed the C3C AI using the luxury slider.

This may be a silly question, but how can you tell the AI is using the luxury slider?

 

[Bartleby]

In the "commerce" box, you can see they have 50% going to the treasury, 40% to science, and 10% to luxuries.

 

[MrSweetchuck]

As far as I know it is definitely confirmed that the AI will not use the Lux%-slider at all (in Conquests, at least -- not sure about the previous versions).

I just did a quick and dirty test to see.. Loaded up several games (and different years of each), and probed around investigating cities. In Civ3Conquests, I didn't see any AI's using lux (not saying that it can't happen, apparently Bartleby saw it once in the screenshot he linked above).. However, in Civ3 Vanilla, it was the first thing I found. I was actually running a test of something else (a pillaging strategy, in fact), and so I had some interesting before and after screenshots of a city I intended to pillage. The AI was using a 50% (!) luxury tax before I declared war on them:

Nanking before war (50% lux):

Nanking after declaring war and pillaging it (0% lux):

 

[tjs282]

I had a pic in the "interesting screenshots" thread a while back that showed the C3C AI using the luxury slider.

Then I sit corrected.

Any ideas as to what (presumably rare) condition(s) triggers them to do that?