Baitin' the AI

BlackX

Chieftain
Joined
Mar 10, 2006
Messages
42
Location
Saint John, NB, Canada
If you wish to lower the number of enemy units in a city try this. Leave your stack of troops 2 tiles away from the city and put a scout warrior or better, some cheap obsolete unit between your stack and the city. The AI will destory it but the unit will be left out in the dark for you to eliminate. Chances are they'll be damaged in addition to loosing the city bonus. It's best to use a 2mp unit so you can attack and move back to your stack. When you use a unit that is really weak compared to the AI's it can't help itself but attack it seems.
 
So the AI is defending a city with, lets say, 9 units. You move your obsolete scout next to the city and the AI attacks and kills it. Now they have 8 units inside protecting the city... I think I'll stick with seige units.
 
The obvious downside of this is, you have to spend hammers building all those weak bait units, while you shuold have been building something useful. Even if you can lurk 6 of the 9 defenders from the example above out of the city: Yoy have to suicide 6 of your units - you could have build 2 or 3 catapults with the hammers instead.

Still .... I am thinking of early rushes, where 1 unit out of 3 or 4 capitol defenders might matter, and you not have catapults yet. I wonder if it does work with a worker as bait. You could probably take the worker back right next turn .... In the other hand - in early game workers will often have better things to do ....
 
workers used to be very good for this as they could move into the city and you would just get them back. but in bts they can no longer move after capture so the ai deletes them.
 
workers used to be very good for this as they could move into the city and you would just get them back. but in bts they can no longer move after capture so the ai deletes them.

You saved me the effort trying it out :D Thanks :D
 
Don't know about the OP's suggestion, never tried it myself, but I do know that in the early game (i.e. when you are axe-rushing), if you see a city with a bunch of archers and a settler, move away from the city. (Like, 2 or 3 spaces) Give the AI some breathing room and it will move its settler out and take a stack of archers with it.
 
I've been able to bait an archer or two out of a capital with wandering scouts. If they're unpromoted scouts popped from huts (and there's little scouting left to do), then I think that's the best end for them. Before you sacrifice them, you could use them as recon units (for instance, to see if they're hooking up copper or iron). The strategy seems highly situational though.

You don't actually have to sacrifice them to have some effect. Once, I was able to distract a couple of wandering archers with one scout, but they couldn't get to me right away. I just led them around the map for a while while their cities burned.

Does the AI try to bait you out with weak units? I think that they have tried a couple of times on me (send one or two weak units out with a SoD trailing behind). It tends not to end well for them :nuke:.
 
I presume the OP is suggesting using existing inexperienced, obsolete units left over from Ye Olde Garrison, not building new ones specifically to be used as bait. I do this whenever possible, as the alternative seems to be just deleting them, which always makes me sad - that's no way for a warrior to go out.

Maybe if I managed my troops more effectively, this wouldn't be an issue, but I always seem to find many of my early units suffer this ignoble fate. Far better to have them die doing something useful in battle, like luring vital defenders outside to provide a cheap and easy XP lunch for your more modern units. No?
 
weren't workers like the best combat units for milking deity?
 
I have never tried the rope-a-dope baiting strategy described, but depending on location of some of those obsolete units (I certainly wouldn't want to have to wait around for them to show up!), I'd agree with dermoth. That's no way for a warrior to go, to just delete them. And, frankly, I'd think they'd rather go doing something useful.

Although I would say there is nothing shameful about being an MP in an inner city.

I might try this tactic the next time I come across a city with a smaller garrison of three or four, and send out a willing warrior to reduce the garrison a little. I can't see the harm.
 
If you bait with the unit and it is destroyed it will add to your War Weariness. It wouldn't be a good strategy if you are fighting the AI that has the SoZ. I would either upgrade the older units, use the older units as garrisons in very safe cities or delete them.
 
Baiting can be very good in late-ancient/classical age when you start a war with a heavy-duty power by knocking out their copper/iron. Every unit you bait out is then a unit that is never being replaced, so tit-for-tat is very worth it (especially defending axes when you've got a bunch of archer-munching swords).
Baiting a now-copperless civ's axes with Impis is awesome - shock impis on a forest will usually damage them enough that they're easy to finish off with a second impi or an axe of your own (and often win outright, the odds are ~40%), and it's a bait they almost always fall for (conversely, they leave your woodsman II/III ones alone). Once their axes are gone, you're free to ravage their lands to your heart's content and the tit-for-tat was massively worth it because you're now outproducing them several-to-one.
 
the baiting technique, make sure you pillage that road, or else that unit just return to the city immeditately after battle
 
Top Bottom