Do AI players really depend on resources?

[xiaoafei]

Sometime, I find AI may cheat on resource. For example, once, I played China against Japan. I managed to surround it's final city in the center of a continent. That means, it had no harbor, nor road connecting with other civs. Since it was antient time, there was no airport either. I double checked every tile of the city (including the city tile itself) to be sure that it has no iron. Attacking with horsemen, I redlined every unit in the city, seeing no swordsman nor samurai. So I thought 'OK, no problem anymore', and took a little break to heal my wounded soldiers. To my suprise, The Japanese did fight back with a samurai a few turns later! At first, I thought it might be that the samurai was wounded when I attacked the city. But this would be impossible, coz I prepared for that attacking for several turns and didn't see it outside the city. If it was already there in the city, it must had already been healed, and thus would have shown up during the battle. I don't think a pikeman with only one life point left could be better than a healthy veteran swordsman or samurai so that AI would hide the latters all the time. So I really think AI cheated. Another example is that AI builds railroads on every tile it has while it can trade for my iron all the time.
Does anyone else here has the same feeling?

 

[Protean]

Not so. The city must have been building the samurai when you began attacking, and during the turns when your troops were healing, the building que finished and the samurai was created. If you lose the resource you can still finish units that are currently in production.

 

[xiaoafei]

Not so. The city must have been building the samurai when you began attacking, and during the turns when your troops were healing, the building que finished and the samurai was created. If you lose the resource you can still finish units that are currently in production.

I disconnected it from iron for at least 15 turns. Because it was the capital city and was built in a good place, I couldn't believe it would take it so long to build a samurai. Actually, during the battle, there were new pikemen (normal ones, with 3 life points) coming out from the city. I could tell this through attacking and counting. because when you redline one of his pikemen, another pikeman will replace it. Thus one can know how many units and what units left in the city. So, it was impossible that it began creating samurai before the battle.

 

[warpstorm]

The AI plays fair with resources. A quick test with the debug mode on will show this.

 

[Brain]

I disconnected it from iron for at least 15 turns. Because it was the capital city and was built in a good place, I couldn't believe it would take it so long to build a samurai. Actually, during the battle, there were new pikemen (normal ones, with 3 life points) coming out from the city. I could tell this through attacking and counting. because when you redline one of his pikemen, another pikeman will replace it. Thus one can know how many units and what units left in the city. So, it was impossible that it began creating samurai before the battle.

When enemy units are in a city you can only see one unit at a time (the best defensive unit available). Even if there where 50 pikemen you would only see one at a time. It's quite possible that the samurai was in the city but you didn't see him because they had a better defensive unit available.

 

[vmxa]

The AI did not cheat on resources, so there must be an explanation, most have been covered. As Warpstorm mentioned, you could play in debug and see it.

The AI was not in the AA as Chiv is required and that is in IA, same for Pikes. Both need Iron. Post a save for this if you have it.

 

[shumble]

Maybe the city itself was built on top of an iron resource. If you do Ctrl-Shift-M, you can see just the map view. See if maybe the iron is hidden under something that you couldn't see.

Or like previously mentioned, post a save here so others can take a look.

 

[xiaoafei]

The AI was not in the AA as Chiv is required and that is in IA, same for Pikes. Both need Iron. Post a save for this if you have it.

Oops. I really made a mistake here.
Actually it's interesting. I think I made this mistake because we have a totally different history. Riders lived in around 100BC, which is typical AA for us. We even don't have anything like MA, coz our history kept it's continuity (with resonable advance of course) until 150 years ago.

right, pikemen also need iron. why didn't I realize that? maybe it's because compared with them, the samurais are more like trouble makers and I really didn't want to see them.

 

[xiaoafei]

Maybe the city itself was built on top of an iron resource. If you do Ctrl-Shift-M, you can see just the map view. See if maybe the iron is hidden under something that you couldn't see.

Or like previously mentioned, post a save here so others can take a look.

Unfortunately, I didn't save at that time. I think I'll test this on purpose sometime later.
btw, No iron under the city tile. I checked that.

 

[Desertsnow]

Could Japan have started importing iron in the interim?

 

[Renata]

That's what I was thinking. Trade routes don't break due to unit blocking unless both trading partners are at war with the civ doing that blocking. That's why it's relatively easy for barbarian galleys to block trade routes: everybody's at war with them at all times.

In order to break the trade route in a situation like that, you'd have to pillage every road leading into the enemy capital and destroy the capital's harbor by bombardment, if it has one. Or, if you can figure out who's selling the iron, either declare war on them, too, or pay them the no-doubt exhorbitant fee they'd want to ally with you.

Renata