AIs and the Art of War

ok... will start on nightmare mode next game and not use the increasing difficulty
will also try the aggresive barb option
 
I hope it challenges you.

If you want more barb involvement then Barb World is also an Option as it will place a barb city on the map for every AI/Plyer that starts the game. Do you use Start as Minors Option too? If so do you feel it gives you an edge? It did have some problems in the past. I don't know if they got fully addressed.

Sidenote: I also bet that you use SM all the time too. So far anecdotal evidence points to it actually being an easier way to play than not using it. AI seems to be not as up to task on making super units as the player. Not that using SM isn't Fun. It's just that it's AI development seems to be behind the regular play AI.
 
I notice that the AI is still using Great Generals to scout, sometimes totally unescorted, and is spamming a lot of scouts in my game as well.
The barbarians however are doing great, they wiped the two biggest continents clean of civs before prehistoric era ended. I don't mind as I have Barb civs on so those continents will get repopulated anyways. Playing giant map on snail with reckless barbarians so it looks like they just overwhelmed those civs with sheer numbers.
Barbarians were also 1st to discover sedentary lifestyle.
As far as wars between civs go, my two neighbors have been at war 3 times but with no real results. Everyone just founded their 2nd city though so too early to tell if the AI is competent at warfare.
Playing on emperor with increasing difficulty, no sm, latest svn.

Edit: Closest neighbour declared war on me after settling 2nd city close to my borders. Has about 12-15 stone macemen/axemen and sends a stack of 4, with one enforcer and one scout. Only does this when my stack of 4 axemen is not near my city. Attacked my city with no success.
 
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Sidenote: I also bet that you use SM all the time too. So far anecdotal evidence points to it actually being an easier way to play than not using it. AI seems to be not as up to task on making super units as the player. Not that using SM isn't Fun. It's just that it's AI development seems to be behind the regular play AI.
Defense is a bit harder on SM for both player and AI. I have a bit of work to do to teach the AI better defense strategy, with and without it, but particularly with it. That said, it's very difficult to hold your cities against the AI under SM as well - when they come at you it can be just as overwhelming and somewhat surprising how difficult it can be to hold against those kinds of merged forces. It can be done but not by staffing all your cities with enough of a defense force. The same trick I need to teach the AI is what players will need to learn they need to do here - have a defensive stack or two and make sure to put them where the attacks are coming in. It's a little different to the standard staff defense everywhere kind of thinking you can maintain in a normal game.
 
attached save file

i was at #1 but AI at #2 was close. suddenly he attacks using ICBM and stealth .. my production collapsed and i am unable to build any good weapons and AI takes 4 cities

cause: he destroyed most wonders including the department of energy with his nuclear first strike. so power plants stopped working and kaboom ....

it was the best first strike seen from AI in a long long time ... took 4 cities and nuked over a dozen cities
 

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after another 10 turns of war.... it is a stalemate. i have captured 6 cities and AI has taken them back the very next turn. he just nukes it till all troops die and walks in.
on the brighter side as i capture tech each time, the gap has reduced a lot. there is now a radioactive belt of 10 burning cities ....

as i have -80 rep for nuking so guess there will be no peace. till we nuke each other to oblivion
 
after another 10 turns of war.... it is a stalemate. i have captured 6 cities and AI has taken them back the very next turn. he just nukes it till all troops die and walks in.
on the brighter side as i capture tech each time, the gap has reduced a lot. there is now a radioactive belt of 10 burning cities ....

as i have -80 rep for nuking so guess there will be no peace. till we nuke each other to oblivion

Quite an endgame setup,must have had plenty of "cold-war/arms race" build-up time before you and AI being able to wield so many nukes. To me thats always the most fun, trying to out-pace your rival as both of you dedicate countless resources and production towards an end-result everyone knows will be the undoing of both sides. MAD.. All while the ever-escalating run-away economy presses on ever closer to the inevitable brink...

(Sounds a little to close to home here lately...)
 
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I had a game a few weeks ago, started on monarch (v40.1), increasing difficulty (I manually let this adjust every 125 turns). My Ottoman AI neighbor, went early on full unit building, had a stack of about 30 units (1 city only), when my total units where less than 15, and all scattered around my borders and in my 2 cities. The stack reached my border (obviously with hostile intentions), I had previously scouted him and started building defensive units, moving the rest near my closest to him city. And then, reaching my border, the Ottomans just went back (around emperor or deity difficculty at that time).

Next they went to its other neighbor (hostile stack even larger), Elizabeth. Did the same exact thing. For some reason, it cancelled its plans for war each time, don't know why.

Eventually they started a war with me (having 3 cities, me 5-6 or more), I razed one of theirs, so that threw them a lot behind in score and power, and gave me additional expanding space.

Later on, me and my neighbor gal Elizabeth again on war with Ottomans, the Ottomans far back in tech than me and Liz, we wrecked them, but she never took any city out of him. The last Ottoman city, being more than 50% English and 0% my culture, I left it for Liz, who had a massive stack of about 40 units, including siege weapons. She never attacked it, but instead kept moving around it. I took my siege units, bombarded the city to 30% defense (the minimum at that era), took out most of the defender units...still Liz was just strolling around with her massive stack (I guess the country was appealing for her army?). So ... I just took the city and gave it to her as a present, some hundred years later gaining it back through culture revolt.

Oh I'm so waiting for the upcoming unit AI redesign! (Yes I am being patient Thunderbrd, just sharing my recent story about AI and its current art of war...)
 
Quite an endgame setup,must have had plenty of "cold-war/arms race" build-up time before you and AI being able to wield so many nukes. To me thats always the most fun, trying to out-pace your rival as both of you dedicate countless resources and production towards an end-result everyone knows will be the undoing of both sides. MAD.. All while the ever-escalating run-away economy presses on ever closer to the inevitable brink...

(Sounds a little to close to home here lately...)

no, most cities had 10K build per turn, nukes cost 3-5K. so each city was producing 2-3 nukes per turn

after another 10 turns of nuking , most border cities had come down to 1 pop. also the turn time has increased to 15 minutes.
so i took peace by surrendering 2 cities. my first loss in a war to AI .... but his 290 power robots backed by nukes were just too powerful. also he was gaining cities...not from me but other AI. soon his city count was going to overtake me. rest all AI are min 30-40 techs behind us, so it will be a cakewalk to goble them up.

on the brighter side, another 100 turns and the tech tree will be completed ..... that also will be a first for me to complete the entire tech tree.
 
Oh I'm so waiting for the upcoming unit AI redesign! (Yes I am being patient Thunderbrd, just sharing my recent story about AI and its current art of war...)
Certainly displays the need doesn't it? How much more fun would the game be if they weren't total idiots?

Sounds like they do a pretty good job with Nuke warfare, which I remember a number of BtS games where they were terrible at it - they'd get to the point of nuking and would throw a hundred + nukes at one plot all at once. It's not like the game lets you drill to the core of the Earth to explode the whole planet but that seems to have been what they were trying to do.
 
as the peace let me scrub the nuclear fall out and rebuild, i went on diplomatic offensive and got almost all other AI player declare war on #2.
now trying to eat off the small AI to have a lead on number of cities, before restarting conflict. maybe have 100 ICBM ready also
 

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as the peace let me scrub the nuclear fall out and rebuild, i went on diplomatic offensive and got almost all other AI player declare war on #2.
now trying to eat off the small AI to have a lead on number of cities, before restarting conflict. maybe have 100 ICBM ready also
What version are you playing? I tried to load one of the previous saves you posted on the latest svn but it won't load (unreadable save on win10 task manager).
 
What version are you playing? I tried to load one of the previous saves you posted on the latest svn but it won't load (unreadable save on win10 task manager).
He plays one before SVN 11132 - point where we broke save compatibility.
So its V40.1 or SVN 11131
 
AI player #2 also used to peace to get 11 new cities.

so i had to betray one of my allies, who was being crushed by AI. took out his 5 cities in one turn.
the hover artilery is amazing. it can go deep and clear a loaded city

note: we need a hover worker to work on those lake tiles.
 

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i used levithan artilery to take out 6 cities and thought i was smart....

but the AI was smarter...he used this oppurtunity to strike back. and now with my earlier allies as enemies

looks like this will be first game where AI actually is as cunning as a human player
 
Sorry fellas, just started with the C2C mod and trying to catch up on it's current state and "ideal" settings for the AI to be effective in war. I keep seeing "SM" thrown about and have no idea what it stands for? Little help?

Much appreciated,
VI
 
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