AI Military tactics improved?

[makrisgialos]

Dear All,

I want you please to share your experinces in the subject above:If AI military tactics improved or not.

1:AI now builds battleships,Fighters,Bombers,Tanks etc?

2:Is AI now uses them wisely,or at least,better than previous versions?

3:When at war,the enemy'sgreat Generals are still unprotected and near your borders without protection?

4:Ranged weapons are first in line or stay back?

 

[Becomedeath]

I still find the AI putting ranged units up front, although this might be more to do with terrain in some cases, still it's predominant enough to be noticed.

AI as far as I can see is protecting GGs.

Fighters check, never seen it use bombers other than on city attacks, and even then quite rarely. Although this could be more situational than anything else.

As for it using them better than previous versions, can't really say. Sometimes it's smarter than others, erring towards the lesser end of the scale.

 

[André Alfenaar]

Battle AI is pretty smart now. He keeps his ranged units away and buids aircraft. I have not seen a battleship yet, but in a way that is a bad investment. Destroyers: a lot!

The AI is even smart enough to retreat his remaining troops when an assault goes wrong. He attacks in waves of several units. However, sometimes you can sneak kill a general. But at least he is trying to use them offensively.

 

[André Alfenaar]

A ranged unit up front is not always bad. It is called skirmishing...

Also one should account for the limited sight of the AI. Sometimes he makes a 'stupid' move simply because he didn't know that your unit was there to counterattack him.

 

[turtlefang]

My own experience has shown that:

1) The AI now builds tanks and fighters. I have not seen BBs or bombers yet.

2) The AI is better in that its sending them in larger groups but still terrrible. I don't see single units advancing on cities and getting killed like I used to see BUT I don't see very good tactics either. It has improved - from an F to maybe a D or D-.

3) GG are better protected but about half the time still end up "out there" and easily killed.

4) Ranged units are highly variable. Sometimes they hang back, sometimes its all you see the AI build, sometimes you find wandering artillery or cannon units. I think the use is better but this one an opinion based on the fact that I'm seeing more of them used together more often.

Overall, I the AI better at combat but its a marginal improvement. Tactically, it still seems to "kill the nearest unit or weakest unit" regardless of what that ends up exposing it to in a counter attack. And defensively, it reacts poorly. If you have airpower, your going to kill it if you can see it. And its a feel - so others may feel differently. If your careful and methodical, you still won't lose many units to the AI. Its only when you get careless or overly aggressively and haven't scouted out the area (or maybe when I get careless and don't scout out the area).

AI combat, IMHO, is the worse aspect of the game. If this was improved and brought up to standard, the game would improve substandially.

 

[Becomedeath]

On a side note, it's "defense" of cities is appauling. Once you get through the unit swarm, if it's made one, it will shoot at targets in an apparently random order, never quite finishing things off.

For example, it will fire at artilery which can't take cities and ignore tanks that can.

I guess it's using some kind of broken threat assessor.

 

[Sonereal]

On a side note, it's "defense" of cities is appauling. Once you get through the unit swarm, if it's made one, it will shoot at targets in an apparently random order, never quite finishing things off.

For example, it will fire at artilery which can't take cities and ignore tanks that can.

I guess it's using some kind of broken threat assessor.

More than likely, it's because a single artillery piece is more of a threat to a city than a tank, which has to break itself against the city defenses to be a threat. This makes no sense if the city is already on its last legs of course but at that point, nothing could really help.

 

[Becomedeath]

True.

Just thinking about it I wouldn't even want to start sketching the variables involved.

But I think it's this sort of situational intelligence that lets the AI down. Sadly, it's not isolated to city defense.

 

[makrisgialos]

Dear All,

Thank you for your experiences.
It seems,and i agree with you that the AI didnt improved much as we expected.

In the previous versions,i have made a series in improving this.

1)I have achieved,the enemy units that invade,will pillage my tiles IMMEDIATELY in order to make them more dangerous or disastrous for me.
2)I have manage to"pursuade"the AI to build MANY planes and bombers by increasing their values in offense and defense.Suggestion is,if anyone wants to see them in game to edit these values by increase them VERY high(like the Battleship).
Also i have doubled the oil resource quantity,cause AI seems to prefer tanks and not planes.

Ending i will say that CIV V could be the best Civ ever.But the lack of clever AI makes CIV V fail,unless someone can edit by a mod.I think there are a lot of good modders.
So far,i consider CIV 1,CIV 2,CIV IV,the best AI in all civ series.

 

[Becomedeath]

It doesn't fail, it's just incredibly complex to make something with as many components as Civ perform in a way that humans will find complicated for long.

Even if the AI didn't have these issues, it would ultimately be overcome by learning it's tactics and adapting to them, something the AI would be unable to do.

Why are people expecting intelligent dynamic tactics from a machine? This expectation wasn't there when the AI could stack it's way to victory, or defend a city in such a way that it could wear you down over time regardless of your military strength.

How come brute force is regarded as intelligent but finesse isn't?

Given the complexity of the task, Civ performs extremely well. Is there room for improvement? Definately. But given the state of the game at inital release and the state of it now, you can't say that the development team aren't moving in the right direction.

As with any modern game, it develops over time. Civ 5 will most likely be out for a good 4-5 years more before a successor based on the longievity of it's predecessors. A complete overhaul of the tactical AI isn't something that you're going to patch as it's probably a hefty part of the program. The nuts and bolts are easily replaced, the ship can keep on sailing with a couple of loose ones, the AI itself is like replacing a bulkhead.

In the meantime, either tolerate its shortcomings and enjoy it for what it is, or get over yourself and develop adaptive, creative, tactical AI that demonstrates both environmental awareness whilst predicting numerous strategic outcomes of it's actions and learns from it's own compound experience yourself, I'm sure the military would fund you rather well for it's invention.

 

[Becephalus]

They are improved quite a bit from the release version, but still not anywhere near a clever player. The AI plays like it is maybe 8 years old?

 

[makrisgialos]

They are improved quite a bit from the release version, but still not anywhere near a clever player. The AI plays like it is maybe 8 years old?

Well said mate.

And also,a reply to "Becomedeath":

Mate,civ 1 civ 2 civ iv was better in AI behaviour.I cant accept what you are saying.
This game has been updated SO many times,yet things remain the same.
I have many strategy games to see and to show you that are also complicated,but their AI is much more clever.Dont give excuses to guys that simply didnt do their job as they should.
If you dont know how to create a game and support it,or update it efficiently dont do it.Civ iv was also very complicated,but the AI was much more agreesive and clever.

 

[Becomedeath]

When we live in a world where AI can behave in anyway superior to an 8 year old, let me know. I'll build a bomb shelter.

 

[jdog5000]

Mate,civ 1 civ 2 civ iv was better in AI behaviour.I cant accept what you are saying.

The AI in Civ4 was okay at appearing to play the rules of that game well enough. It was actually pretty bad at war when first released and it had no real strategy of any kind. The Civ4 AI only became decent at war in the expansions when Firaxis adopted the work of a modder named Blake.

But the more important point is that combat in Civ4 was really really easy for the AI (and the human). Balanced attack forces weren't really necessary when combat was about putting 20+ units in a stack together. Relative positioning of individual units on the battle field was nonexistent.

The Civ5 AI has to deal with a much more complex game with far more variables. Under the hood it has advanced by leaps and bounds because it had to even to give the current level of behavior. For example, the AI now has cities specifically running a military production strategy, and it's offensive and defensive operations will request specific units that they need to balance their forces. These simple abilities are new to the series!

 

[Adrenaline15]

i think the AI does a decent job. but it just needs to be able to replenish its forces or pull them back when its on low hp, i think the problem here is unit preservation, where alot of RTS AI fail at.

more importantly, i think cities should not be able to bombard units; but only defend itself from attacks(damage cap at 3) the one that should bombard stuff are only the ranged units garrisoned within.

this way AI will be able to still take cities with overwhelming numbers, where it should be the case.

 

[Becephalus]

When we live in a world where AI can behave in anyway superior to an 8 year old, let me know. I'll build a bomb shelter.

Just to be clear I am on this side of this argument.

The AI is actually much better than Civ4 it just has harder problems to solve. On top of that claiming it is worse even qualitatively then Civ1 or Civ2 just shows you don't know what you are talking about.

It is one of the better TBS AIs I have ever seen. Yes it is still horrible, but making good AI is REALLY REALLY hard.

 

[Becephalus]

i think the AI does a decent job. but it just needs to be able to replenish its forces or pull them back when its on low hp, i think the problem here is unit preservation, where alot of RTS AI fail at.

more importantly, i think cities should not be able to bombard units; but only defend itself from attacks(damage cap at 3) the one that should bombard stuff are only the ranged units garrisoned within.

this way AI will be able to still take cities with overwhelming numbers, where it should be the case.

Yeah I don't think cities should have a ranged attack at all. That would really help the AI and take nothing away from the game.

 

[ShahJahanII]

And what about overseas conquest, eh? I have never had a problem where the AI has attacked me from overseas. I don't even bother building a navy when I am alone on a continent.

 

[GrayingGamer]

And what about overseas conquest, eh? I have never had a problem where the AI has attacked me from overseas. I don't even bother building a navy when I am alone on a continent.

I don't bother playing non-pangaea games, simply for that reason.


The AI has definitely gotten better. There are plenty of situations where the AI plays very well, positions units correctly, targets mine correctly, etc.

But there are still plenty of situations that cause the whole "huh?" reaction.

There is no doubt in my mind that the 1UPT system is far more challenging, AI-wise, than the previous stack systems were, so I'll be patient =) They're obviously making progress.

 

[Becomedeath]

The AI knows it's a computer and has an inherent fear of water.