Any time I ever see an AI Great General, it is always just sitting there in a city minding its own business, even at Deity. I've seen the AI use all the other Great Persons, but not this one. It seems odd, since even if they didn't want to take the time to write any kind of intelligent actions for it, it could at least be scripted to try and move with the nearest friendly unit.
Anyone ever see an AI use a Great General?
- Thread starter E66man
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wurstburst
Prince
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- Dec 9, 2009
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This is one part the programmers got right. The fat generals stay at home, while the grunts go off to die in the war. 
It seems inevitable that halfway through a big war, I'll come to a city in the middle of my enemy's territory with a GG sitting in it, with no other troops around. Once in a blue moon, I'll see them out and about, but even then always in their own territory.
It seems inevitable that halfway through a big war, I'll come to a city in the middle of my enemy's territory with a GG sitting in it, with no other troops around. Once in a blue moon, I'll see them out and about, but even then always in their own territory.
You might be interested in this discussion that included this topic from a couple of weeks ago.
firecat318
Warlord
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- Sep 21, 2010
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Never have seen the AI use them in battle. Someone should tell the AI that cities are already easy enough to take, and that having a great general doesn't help their case too much. 
I have to disagree here. You're right in that they manage to guard settlers OK. And yes it's therefore a natural question to ask, "If A, why not B?" And if that were the only issue, I suggest they would already have done it.they were lazy
The problem lies in the difference between the strategic movement of a settler versus a GG. The settler needs to get from town of birth to a rough area of the map, that's all. The AI probably knows where it's going. It doesn't need to synchronize with any other troop movements. It just needs to be guarded. Easy. The GG must synchronize with the ebb and flow of its other troops, and it must do so while predicting the flow of opposing troops. I would suggest this is a task that is three orders of magnitude harder for the AI, and one that I expect we will never see satisfactorily solved by any AI in a game produced by a small company outside the realm of full military simulation and billion dollar budgets.
While I agree that realistic and tactically useful AI behavior inlcuding a GG is a long way off they could have had a least SOME measureable impact on the game if they just assigned them to any unit designated for an attack. Even if all he did was hang with the ranged units (the movement speed is sufficient to move with any ranged unit) it would STILL make some difference. A thousand miles away from the battle in some city is doing nothing at all right now.
wurstburst
Prince
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I would have sympathy for this explanation if the AI sent the GG into war, but did a poor job of protecting it. But the fact is that the GG's seem to just sit in a city - usually very far from war zones. That's not happening because of the difficulty of protecting and positioning a GG. It's happening because of poor programming. It should be a rather modest programming effort to direct a GG to move to the general location of an active war zone. It appears that either they didn't specifically target getting GG's into war zones, or they did and it's glitched.
What's even worse (pretty funny actually) is that the AI will send out a settler right into the midst of a war zone - sometimes traveling right though my territory during the war - but they won't send out a GG.
Arsenic Steel
Warlord
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I have seen the AI mobilize and use every other kind of GP even it is just for the tile improvement. However GGs seem to remain in whatever city it spawned in. The programming for use of a GG seems missing.
The movement and protection of a GG is not that far off from a settler. Sure a settler has the added function of plopping a city at the target location. So the target location for a GG to move would in essence be no different from the target of a settler, exept there would fighting going on and instead of plopping a city the GG would ZZZ while protected by a military unit. The AI would not need to predict anymore movements than it does now, as the military unit moves the GG moves.
Yes the computers use of a GG will not be as efficient as a human. At least the GG will be doing something more than sitting in city being useless if it is not a CS or OCC.
I agree with the folks who are pointing out how trivial it would have been to have the Great General do *anything*. There are numerous options that require no real effort and while not 'intelligent' per se, are a marginal improvement over doing nothing at all-
* Automatically burn on a Golden Age
* Automatically burn on a Citadel regardless of the logic of having a Citadel in that location
* Automatically head for the closest friendly military unit whether that unit can benefit from the General's bonus or not.
The current lack of use on the General feels like the game waving a big red flag at the player that the AI is basically unfinished (not like any additional indicators were needed). I've looked at the matching thread in the General Discussions forum, and I would say that the cases mentioned there by other players where they have seen a General outside a city don't really indicate any use by the AI, since there are times when a General will spawn outside a city. The Social Policy from the Honor tree and the Brandenburg Gate Wonder come to mind.
* Automatically burn on a Golden Age
* Automatically burn on a Citadel regardless of the logic of having a Citadel in that location
* Automatically head for the closest friendly military unit whether that unit can benefit from the General's bonus or not.
The current lack of use on the General feels like the game waving a big red flag at the player that the AI is basically unfinished (not like any additional indicators were needed). I've looked at the matching thread in the General Discussions forum, and I would say that the cases mentioned there by other players where they have seen a General outside a city don't really indicate any use by the AI, since there are times when a General will spawn outside a city. The Social Policy from the Honor tree and the Brandenburg Gate Wonder come to mind.
