AI's misuse of artillery

[tenpenny]

I've read quite a few threads on the strategic use of artillery and have seen that most other people use it like I do:

1. They post a few artillery units in each of their cities to hinder attackers

2. They build huge stacks of artillery to reduce the health of enemy defenders to one red square before attacking with assault units.

Though I've seen the AI use artillery in the first way, I've never seen it implement the second strategy. The same goes with large bombing strikes on one target.

This seems unfair to me. You can take virtually any city, no matter how well defended, with artillery, but the AI cannot because it insists on using massive amounts of more costly assault units.

Is the AI meant to overlook this tactic, or is it just not capable of implementing it?

 

[Tassadar]

Using artillery mean waging a third dimensional war; artillery+defender+fast units. The a.i. seem to do not be able to handle this kind of combinaison. Its where human can took adventage on a.i.

 

[MrBiggBoy]

personally, i prefer the mass bombing method. besides preventing a mass loss of artillery, if the enemy does capture the city, your forces die instead of being taken over. if you can evacuate bombers, even better. i can build bombers on main island, rebase them to battlefield.

 

[tenpenny]

Regardless of your preference for artillery or bombing, the AI doesn't seem to utilize either type of bombardment very well. It's always attacking my healthy defenders without "softening them up" at all with bombers, naval bombardment, or artillery.

 

[Dinorius R.]

I'm finding it hard to feel sorry for the AI - they already have enough cheats working for them without using proper artillery tactics!

 

[Mîtiu Ioan]

Originally posted by tenpenny
with bombers, naval bombardment, or artillery.

In fact computer use naval bombardament ...

 

[ainwood]

Originally posted by Mîtiu Ioan


In fact computer use naval bombardament ...

Yep. It uses navbal bombardment quite a lot to destroy improvements as well as attack cities.

 

[tenpenny]

It also uses bombers to destroy terrain improvements and artillery as defense.

Still, I've never had one of my cities attacked by 10 AI artillery pieces, bombed by 8 AI bombers, and bombarded by 3 naval units on the same turn. I, on the other hand, do it to the AI all the time, and it usually results in my taking of thier city.

I'm just wondering if this is something Firaxis intentionally left out make gameplay easier or something its AI couldn't handle.

 

[Mîtiu Ioan]

Anyway field-artilery is bad designed because there doesn't exist - like in SMAC the posibility of an "artilery-duel".

Regards

 

[BillChin]

Originally posted by tenpenny
I'm just wondering if this is something Firaxis intentionally left out make gameplay easier or something its AI couldn't handle.

It is a combination of things. In a recent interview on the Apolyton board, (http://64.246.32.51/~admin1/forums/index.php)
it is disclosed that the AI was done in about 8 months of primary coding and testing by Mr. Soren Johnson. That is very little time given the number of lines of C++ code and the scope of the game. When queried about bombard units, Mr. Johnson said it is difficult task to get the AI to use them effectively.

I place most of this difficulty on design decisions and have suggested several ways to have the AI include bombard units in offensive stacks. None of them are easy to implement on top of the existing nest of code, but would have been easy to code with some different design decisions early in the process.

I also believe that if an experienced gamer were part of the loop early in the process, combined arms tactics would have been a much higher priority. In my opinion, Mr. Johnson is a brilliant programmer, but an average gamer, and he was working mostly solo during the early AI development.

Mr. Johnson deserves a big thumbs up for the work he has done with limited time and resources. However, there are glaring faults in the AI because of the one person working solo and the short time frame for coding. One person can only see so much, leaving many loopholes to be exploited. The short time means there is a lot that Mr. Johnson may have wanted to put in, but could not because of deadline pressure.

 

[tenpenny]

Thanks BillChin - that's exactly the answer I was looking for. I had hoped Firaxis didn't intentionally prevent the AI from using artillery offensively because they thought it would be too frustrating for the players.