AI Wonder cascade

[Doshin]

I was wondering how the wonder cascade works with AI cities. I'll take a hypothetical situation:

----------------
Wonders available: Pyramids, Great Library

Civs: America (AI)
Persia (AI)
England (Human)


Turn 1

Washington- 3 turns to Pyramids
New York- 40 turns to Great Library

Turn 2

Washington- 2 turns to Pyramids
New York- 39 turns to Great Library

IT: London completes the Pyramids


---------------

My question is, what would happen now? The human player would switch New York to another unit/improvement, and put Washington onto building the GL. But what does the AI do?

Just something I'm interested in knowing

 

[Dwarven Zerker]

What happens next?

The AI will switch to whatever wonders are available to it at the time. If you (or a different AI) complete the Pyramids and England has Lit (Great Lib.) they will switch to the GL. If Persia doesn't have Lit. they will build something else (aqueduct, barracks or something.)

Note that it is a very good idea to hold selling wonder techs to the AI until after any cascades have ended. I've accidently cascaded myself right out of a wonder or two in a four or five wonder cascade (and just 2 turns before I was to complete the most expensive wonder!)

 

[Doshin]

I think you've misunderstood my question. I know that the AI will switch to a wonder if it's available, but what if only one wonder is available and its being built by another of their cities. Taking my example again:

-----------
Turn 2

Washington- 2 turns to Pyramids
New York- 39 turns to Great Library

IT: London completes the Pyramids

--------------

Now clearly at this point if a human played as America they would switch New York to something else (e.g. a spearman). Then they would switch Washington to the GL, which would complete the next turn. Thus they'd still get a wonder, albeit it a different one from the original one started.

So would the AI react as a human would, or would they just switch to the most expensive improvement? If they do just go for an improvement, it could be a good method of denying the AI multiple wonders.

 

[Dwarven Zerker]

You're right. I did misunderstand your question. I would at this point give credit to the programmers of the game to switch the highest shield accumulation to the wonder and switch the lower to an improvement/unit. I don't have any direct testing data to support it but in similar situations in my games the wonders seem to cascade that way.

so from your example...

Washington- 2 turns to Pyramids --> Improvement/Unit
New York- 39 turns to Great Library --> New Wonder

EDIT: I was thinking it was turns into build not turns left. Sorry for any confustion.

 

[MadScot]

Just to clarify, because the intent is right although the example is wrong.

Washington, with only 2 turns left to get the Pyramids, and thus a mass of shields stored, would swap to the Great Library, and New York, which was 39 turns away from GL and thus had few shields accumulated, would swap to something cheaper.

There is no doubt, this is precisely how the game works; the AI is coded to reshuffle wonders so that the minimal number of shields is wasted. If it were any other way then a wonder cascade would not occur. It's the stored shields for an aborted project being transferred to another wonder which causes a cascade, especially if the first wonder completed is more expensive than any others available.

 

[Grille]

I second MadScot's thoughts.
The ai will switch the wonder in the city where most shields are accumulated. At least in most games it looks like that.
For this reason, it's sometimes useful to sell a wonder enabling tech (in case of tech lead) with a certain delay, if you've just beaten the ai to another wonder.
Example: You have just researched astronomy (you are the first civ to discover that tech) and completed Leo's in the same turn, while the ai had tried to build Leo's, too.
If you sell astronomy instantly, the ai will switch to Copernicus (and very likely beat you due to the shield head start they got from Leo's). So it may be better to wait another turn to sell astronomy. Thus the ai has no pre-build and must start Copernicus from scratch.
edit: too early in the morning, accidently "ignored" Dwarven Z.'s post...

 

[Cannon]

Actually, I disscussed this question with another player in another thread, and he loaded his saved game to test it.

Turns out that the AI is smart enough to switch their production over to grab the next wonder just like us humans do,
'albeit not the same wonder we/AI had intended' when production began, even if another of the towns was producing that same wonder on our/AI's previous turn.

 

[MadScot]

The AI wonder cascading leads to all sorts of strategies - like trying to complete the less expensive wonder first, so that the AI can't cascade so easily. Timing your wonders for the same turn is best (if you still beat the AI, of course!!)

If you are sufficiently flush with money you can investigate the AI cities - since F7 tells you which - and try to finesse the wonder race to avoid a cascade.

Failing that, you get told when the AI starts a wonder, and I think it always builds from zero (doesn't swap from an improvement like the human might). So if you check the city, watch the improvements around it, check it's population, you can estimate the likely shield production, at least in the early races when there's no complications like factories.

 

[AlanH]

When someone completes a wonder and a cascade starts, my copy of Civ3 puts up notifications that civ A is building wonder x, even though I have previously been notified of that. This presumably indicates that civ A has indeed moved production of wonder x to a different city.

F7 allows you to see the current city wonder assignments for all the civs you know, so you should be able to track what it has done in the situation you describe.