AI use of Flak and Mobile SAM

[player1 fanatic]

I think we all know that AI never builds there useful units.

Only exemption is when AI player is resourceless, when he builds Flaks instead of Riflemen and later upgrades them to Mobile SAM.

I guess that AI doesn't put any value into AA rating so he thinks that these units are just weak defenders, not worth building.


So, has anybody tried to tweak these units in some way, to make AI think that they are better and start building them.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I think we all know that AI never builds there useful units.

Only exemption is when AI player is resourceless, when he builds Flaks instead of Riflemen and later upgrades them to Mobile SAM.

I guess that AI doesn't put any value into AA rating so he thinks that these units are just weak defenders, not worth building.


So, has anybody tried to tweak these units in some way, to make AI think that they are better and start building them.

My experience is the same - the AI chooses the unit with the highest defense value as defender, so in normal epic games the flak is only build if there is no rubber.AA is ignored completly.The reason why flak is prefered over riflemen must be the 10 shield difference between both(flak70/rifleman80), because the attack value of the flak is lower.So my concusion is the only factors which count are the defense value and as second cost.Perhaps attack or another ability if the costs are the same...would be interesting to test.

Best would be a seperate airdefence flag for the AI - but that is something unlikely to happen for CivIII.
AFAIK, there are only two ways to get the AI using them:
- give them the highest defense value of all available units (or at least the same as the second best, if the AA unit is cheaper)
- create a factorylike improvement or wonder which spreads them at a constant rate, perhaps with high maintenance to "pay" for the units.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Running some tests in DEBUG mode with the Pacific Conquest I made a small, but perhaps interesting observation.There seems to be an exception for the "highest-defense"-rule...if you make the AA units very cheap, the AI sometimes prefers them over their beloved "best defender".It will still choose infantery etc. in every city with a decent production, but in cities which would need a couple of turns to complete it and which can complete the cheap AA unit in a few turns (best is a single turn), it chooses the AA unit.

So costs in combination with production seem to have an impact on building behaviour which exceeds the influence of defense under special circumstances.10 shields is of course not an acceptale value for the rules, but depending on difficulty 20 or 30 could be enough to trigger this effect.Possible balancing: reducing attack/defense to 1 for FLAK/SAM units-since it is not needed for influencing AIs building behaviour.

I will test this in epic games.