An Easy Fix for the Combat AI

[DarkSchneider]

I was playing a game of Civ V today, and I got to thinking sbout how bad the combat AI is. Essentially the same strategy will always work against the computer: kill off all their units in the field, and then steamroll all of their towns. What was even more amazing is that I was able to defeat an entire attacking force with just an archer and the ranged attack from the town itself. So my question is...

Why can't the computer AI do this? The fact that the AI hasn't wrapped itself around a concept this simple is beyond me. If the computer happens to have a ranged unit inside a town by accident it will leave the town to chase after units thus putting itself in a position to get killed off.

Perhaps the entire focus of the combat AI should be to preserve the computer units instead of killing yours.

 

[DarkSchneider]

Wow, so... no comments? No one thinks this is a major oversight by the person designing the AI?

 

[slowjames]

Really all depends on how exactly the AI is written. What you've proposed would have several detrimental effects, like making the AI extremely agression averse. It's hard to say without seeing what they've done and the specific challenges they face whether it would be easy to make the AI better.

 

[Earthling]

There's been a lot of threads on the issue which is probably just why this one didn't get a ton of responses. I don't agree with slowjames' analysis -what you proposed would realistically be a step up. Though major overhauls are needed all around, there's no universal panacea here.

I think the following is very accurate at least though. It would make the AI play far better, if it turtled in with crazy defense, particularly taking advantage of higher difficulty levels, though it would likely annoy many players by making the game boring (or, specifically, harder, which would irk some players. And endgame nuke/capital snatching tactics, which do exist despite dozens of people being wrong still wouldn't be prevented)

Perhaps the entire focus of the combat AI should be to preserve the computer units instead of killing yours.

 

[Jediron]

Perhaps the entire focus of the combat AI should be to preserve the computer units instead of killing yours.

Ha. And how is the AI gonna do that ? If i can find that unit, it's dead meat

 

[DarkSchneider]

I think that the computer should turtle at the very least when your forces in any given area greatly outnumber/outclass theirs. Just the one unit in the city would make a huge difference. Having an archer in a city roughly doubles its attack early on, and there's no way to damage the archer until the city falls, meaning the archer and the city are attacking at full strength while the strength of the attacking units is waning.

 

[Stalker0]

I think that a defensive AI would likely be far harder than an offensive one for a player to deal with.

Especially at higher difficulties, the AI has all the advantages to peaceful building, its in war that players have the advantage. But since the AI has more units, if it works to maintain them it provides less gaps for a human to exploit.

Of course, overall the main goal should be to have the AI adapt. If its playing defensive while the player takes over the map them that's not useful either.