AI Weirdness

[mcwill123]

Hi All

I was playing 0.41j using the high to low option at Emporer level. I started out as Bannor and managed to reach the high score. Then I was switched to Balseraph. They had maybe 5 or 6 cities. When I looked at them, I was amazed to find that two of the cities on their border had no troops in them whatsoever. One of their cities had 12-15 troops and another had somewhere around 7. They weren't at war with anyone, although there was another Civ at the border. Also there were plenty of barbs not far away. One of the cities would have had a warrior trained in 22 turns. I don't remember what the other was producing. It took, I think, 3 turns to get some units to the most remote of the cities. Strange. Why can't the AI civs leave cities wide open on my borders? :/

 

[Emptiness]

When the AI captures cities with its offensive units, those units move on to other offensive tasks. The captured city is left undefended until it can produce a defender, or until a new defender is produced in another city and moved there. Current defenders located in other cities are not relocated, so if there is a delay in unit production a city can remain undefended for a significant period of time. Those undefended cities were probably former barbarian cities that had been captured recently.

When the AI founds cities there will usually be defenders immediately available, because the AI almost always sends escorts with its settlers. This may be why you haven't seen undefended cities on your border. A barbarian city would need to appear near your border and then by captured by an AI.

 

[mcwill123]

Interesting. In this case it looks like they returned to the first two cities the civ founded.