Disappointed in Attila

[Aussie_Lurker]

I don't understand how the AI can't be made to get something as simple as "protect vulnerable units".

Ever played the very hard or insane AI in StarCraft II? They'll only hit you when they have the advantage, with a strategically layered force, and retreat the second they no longer have an advantage - quite brutal. They'd never throw a constant stream of 4 zerglings at a time at you to be pointlessly mowed down by your defences, but the CIV AI seems very fond of doing this.

This is my point, though. In the one game where I've faced Attila, he has been *very* smart with his use of the battering ram. Holding them in reserve whilst using his warriors for cannon fodder & horse archers giving strong ranged defense. Then only bringing up the rams when the city's garrison has been completely wiped out. It was a truly amazing-if somewhat scary-thing to watch....especially as we were hostile at the time .

Also, when I finally did go to war with him, he used the FoW to his advantage-hiding all his strongest units in the Fog, & luring me into committing my own forces instead-then wiped me out on his home turf. Seriously, I don't know where all this Attila "hate" is coming from!

Aussie.

 

[Xotite potancev]

Seriously, I don't know where all this Attila "hate" is coming from!

Aussie.

No attila hate more attila love, as in i love some one that DOW's then sacrifices his units to my navy.

Ok the terrain was in my favor but then he did choose to attack.

Tilla DOWs marches around the lake from his empire to mine. I have city with wall on hill and archer in it swordsman beside it and early ranged naval unit on the large lake.

Ok he sent a horse first but then the next two units were rams that didnt even make it to the walls.
Next he seemed to descide ok that was dumb and sends 4 more units inc. two more rams across the lake ..sunk.

Attila may plan well with a city in open terrain but a good defensive position seems to give him problems.

 

[king Oosterveld]

not sure if anyone mentioned this, but the reason he didnt attack your dammaged warrior was not because of the AI system, but because battering rams can't attack units.

 

[ahawk]

As I always say, part of the reason the AI isn't better is that the companies building the game don't want to shorten the range of their product's market: in other words, a better AI might eventually demand too good of a CPU to still turn the profit they need/want/expect, since people might not buy the game if the improved AI causes even longer waits between turns. People already sometimes have long waits in the later game, and anything added to AI will increase that.

Attila in particular, as a handful on this thread alone have noted, has a harder time being programmed for. After all, the Hunnic UU is among the only UU in the game to turn a melee or ranged unit into a siege unit. Worse, the Hunnic UU turns a melee unit into a unit that cannot attack other units at all. In the end, it probably isn't worth the man-hours of programming to change the AI for one special instance (a unit that was melee becoming a unit that can only attack cities) that never appears anywhere else.

 

[PhilBowles]

not sure if anyone mentioned this, but the reason he didnt attack your dammaged warrior was not because of the AI system, but because battering rams can't attack units.

Yes, someone mentioned it right before I pointed to the part of my description indicating that the enemy unit in question was a Warrior... This is a list of different events within the battle around Seoul; they don't all involve battering rams.

UPDATE: The Huns were very briefly resurgent, and put up a better fight - they declared at exactly the right time, as a wounded archer passed by them and my Warriors were tied up dealing with a couple of Barbarian Spearmen. They had a poor unit mix, with only one ram which dawdled within arrow range without actually attacking the city, and were generally as lousy as before when attacking Pyongyang (very defensibly-placed, surrounded by hills and jungle), but they did manage to take a toll on my own units - I was probably losing one for every two of theirs. On defence when I got to Attila's Court they didn't seem to have any idea what to do - the horse archer ran from my bowmen while the battering ram stayed in exactly the same spot within range of both them and my catapult until its eventual destruction. So still a pretty bad performance all in all, but a well-chosen moment to declare war and a war that was costly for me even though I was never in serious danger of losing a city.

There won't be any further re-occurrences - the Iroquois didn't have my compunctions about not destroying civs entirely, so they took the surviving Hun city the turn after I captured Attila's Court.