Civ III AI stupidities

[Renata]

@ oldstatesman: Fantastic story.

I do hope they get the aI right in Civ4...it is so frustrating to watch dumb crap like this when you know it could be better...I am not asking for "human like intelligence", only a decent aI decision tree....

Ditto. Things like the AIs building a settler that will complete five turns before the city grows, or the lack of any war strategy beyond 'head for the weakest target'.

 

[vmxa]

Well I am for the crazy settler building being fixed, but I am not sure if it is wise of them to do a lot to the war skills.

The reason is because the large number of players that have come here and Poly and struggled at chief or warlord. If the AI was much better, they would have to really abandon the game.

I suspect they are the norm, not all the nuts on those sites like us that play it we understand it.

Of course it will not bother me, but if they get too tough for everyday buyers, it won't be a success and ther will then not be any addons or a Civ V. Come to think of it I may not be around long enough to worry about civ 5.

 

[Dreadnought]

The AI wastes 50+ units on a hilltop-walled city that was surrounded entirely by desert and had no resources whatsoever. Even when a I launched a huge attack against his capital he still attacked it

 

[oldStatesman]

Well I am for the crazy settler building being fixed, but I am not sure if it is wise of them to do a lot to the war skills.

The reason is because the large number of players that have come here and Poly and struggled at chief or warlord. If the AI was much better, they would have to really abandon the game.

I suspect they are the norm, not all the nuts on those sites like us that play it we understand it.

Of course it will not bother me, but if they get too tough for everyday buyers, it won't be a success and ther will then not be any addons or a Civ V. Come to think of it I may not be around long enough to worry about civ 5.

I beleive they can achieve a decent aI that will be suitable for all level players. If the decision matrix is scalable, they will not need to give the aI the huge production bonus to make up for inane decisions and lack of any real strategy beyond the current turn.

Civ3 had a good aI in a lot of respects; it's weaknesses are all the more apparent because it does do some things right - I understand the marketing, technical and personnel issues that forced the game to be released unready for prime time had much to do with this problem. The original code was flawed, and no amount of patching will ever make a flawed engine run like one that was well built out of the box. Kudos for Firaxis to have done as good a job as they managed under the circumstances; at least on the technical side of things. (Now as far as the follow through on finishing up that patch job, that is another story...and for another thread....)

 

[MarcoPolo]

I don't know if it was already posted but the AI will often trade it's workers for just a little gold. That's pretty stupid considering how much they needed them to make improvements at the time.

 

[CivFan91]

I have already mentioned that the AI won't blast you off the face of the Earth if you are in a huge military disadvantage, but an Emperor game was even more idiotic: The AI signed peace when it was about to beat me up in a war. The following is a summary of what happened:

I was in the middle of a war with the Aztecs. Their ONE disadvantage was that they had no Iron, while I had a single resource. However, my 25+ units were almost all killed by a true SOD, one even large for Emperor level. They backed me up to the city with the Iron, which was not defended well enough to repel a SOD of about 35-40. If they took that city, I was out of luck, because my one decent combat unit was the Gallic Swordsman. However, as I was about to lose the city, the Aztecs negotiated a Peace Treaty, giving me the treaty, money, and a tech out of the deal. Because of this, I had time to build my own SOD of Gallic Swords.

I was more than a little miffed that they didn't see that all hope would have been lost if they'd pressed a few turns...

 

[Padma]

I don't know if it was already posted but the AI will often trade it's workers for just a little gold. That's pretty stupid considering how much they needed them to make improvements at the time.

This was realized as an exploit early on, so by Conquests they have made Workers relatively expensive.

In Vanilla & PTW, it was bad eough that buying workers was considered an exploit, and was disallowed in some competitive games.

 

[CivFan91]

Yeah. To be fair, whenever Workers are added to my deals, I always add 50 Gold per Worker. I always have around 1000-1500 Gold in the MiA,* so it's no real loss.

*I realized recently that MA could be Middle or Modern Age. I now call Middle Age MiA, and Modern Age MoA. I know I can safely use MiA since units are never Missing In Action.

 

[BobCW]

I know I can safely use MiA since units are never Missing In Action.

Tell that to my workers. Never again will I automate!

 

[CivFan91]

I have started wars from automation. This technically is an AI stupidity. I never automate, because another AI stupidity is Automated Workers do stupid things to your terrain...

 

[oldStatesman]

This was realized as an exploit early on, so by Conquests they have made Workers relatively expensive.

In Vanilla & PTW, it was bad eough that buying workers was considered an exploit, and was disallowed in some competitive games.

But not expensive enough...and they still let them go way to easily. In Emporor I can still afford to buy them at just about anytime...or trade a useless tech or strategic resource for them, especially horses, iron, and saltpeter in the late industrial and modern age after their usefuleness has gone.

This is one of the most damaging things you can do to an aI - they simply don't build enough workers.