Does the AI ever do anything smart?

[tjs282]

Awesome, thanks for responding. Yes, I remember being allowed to give an ultimatum... sometimes. But it's not a regular choice. I know this for sure, because I've tried countless times praying for the Ultimatum option to show up, particularly when Settlers/boats are on the move, but, no, it either requires specific criteria or is completely random. However, the AI appear to have use of it to a far greater degree

It's not random, and the same rules apply to you as to the AI. Available boot-orders (soft = "Please remove your troops", hard = "Leave or declare!") depend on whether the unit(s) has an A/D value ≥1, how many there are, and how long it/they have been on foreign turf. IIRC, Lanzelot explained it to me thus:

• Unescorted units with A/D=0 can only ever be given the soft boot-order, so any number of Settlers, Workers, or normal Scouts, may stay within foreign borders indefinitely
• A single invading unit with A/D≥1 can only be given the soft boot-order on the first turn (which will probably be ignored, unless the AICiv is afraid of you -- unlikely at higher levels, especially in the early game); if that unit is still there on the second turn (likely), the hard boot-order can be given
• Multiple invading units with A/D≥1 can be given the hard boot-order immediately

So e.g. if the AICiv keeps moving a single Military+Settler pair within your borders, you will only be able to hard-boot it on the second turn. If two such Settler-Pairs, or a Settler-Pair plus a boat arrive during the same turn, then you should be able to hard-boot them all immediately. Bear in mind though, that they'll be booted to the nearest friendly/neutral tile -- so may be booted further forwards, rather than back where they came from...

 

[walletta]

It happens at Demigod and above aswell. I constructed an elaborated trap, forcing AI to "Remove your forces from our territory or declare WAR!". They removed their forces.

Lanzelot suggested you surround an enemy unit before giving that ultimatum. Does that mean they don't move like knights (in chess) and can't hop over things?

I often find a foreign warrior fortified somewhere on my turf for no particular reason and use it to do the 'f*** off or declare' thing, when I'm ready, and I pretty much always get the desired reaction.

 

[walletta]

Speaking of surrounding things, I have surrounded vast armies that were crossing my land to pointlessly invade someone on the other side. Captured slave workers are useful for this and will keep hordes of tanks and cavalry safely corralled until you decide what to do with them (shepherd them out, herd them on their way or get them to declare and then blast them to eternity).

 

[Buttercup]

[*]A single invading unit with A/D≥1 can only be given the soft boot-order on the first turn (which will probably be ignored, unless the AICiv is afraid of you -- unlikely at higher levels, especially in the early game); if that unit is still there on the second turn (likely), the hard boot-order can be given

This is not strictly true. The case I had was a Galley which was heading round my coast. I was extremely interested in preventing this boat from reaching other civs (and the inevitable exchange of techs) and was also looking for some war happiness to bolster my production. Turn after turn it just gave me the lame option, it was quite memorably infuriating...

 

[justanick]

For you:

Their turn - reduce to one Spearman
Your turn - hurry production
Their turn - 1 Spearman

That is so. You can of course draft units and move units from other cities there.

For the AI:

Your turn - reduce to one Spearman
Their turn - hurry production
Your turn - 2 Spearmen

It is worse than this. When you investigate a city that has 1 spearmen left, declare war and defeat 1 spearmen, then a new (but at least unfortified) spearmen can be in the city because AI has whipped it without any turn having passed. The extraordinary whipping happens when the war is declared. This can be very frustrating. You may not be able to take the city and even if you can take it it might be autorazed.

There are 2 conclusions:

-Wait for war till the cities of AI are big enough or have culture so they will no be autorazed.
-Make sure than AI uses governments without the option to whip. Force them into anarchy by gifting them a new goverment tech work deviously well. And if they are in a goverment with the option of gold rushing make sure they have none. Selling a tech below value can ensure this.

 

[Buttercup]

There are 2 conclusions:

-Wait for war till the cities of AI are big enough or have culture so they will no be autorazed.
-Make sure than AI uses governments without the option to whip. Force them into anarchy by gifting them a new goverment tech work deviously well. And if they are in a goverment with the option of gold rushing make sure they have none. Selling a tech below value can ensure this.

I like you're thinking here! I should have tried this when I was performing my recent horse invasion, I did have Republic to give away after all.

 

[walletta]

LOL - gifting forms of government is another counter-intuitive master stroke that some mad genius must have thought up. I am way too one track minded for this game.

 

[tjs282]

Examples of similar stupidity are always fun, so please share, but I was wondering if the AI was ever smart. It certainly seems to be programmed to plonk units in the way in peace time. I often pick a nice spot for a city only to find I have to wait a turn or two for an AI unit to move off it. But that's not really what I mean. Is the short answer 'no'?

Oh I dunno -- in my current game (Random Emp Koreans), the AI has done quite a few (sort-of) 'smart' -- or at least unexpected -- things:

The Russians actually managed to capture Seoul (Pop9) using an eRifle (defeating a single fortified vMusket) which they'd shipped across about a dozen Sea/Ocean tiles by a Galleon (guarded by 2 Friggits). Seoul was one of only two landlocked cities I had at the time, and it was a long way from the Russian border, so I had mostly left it unguarded. I had only a couple of Galleys/Caravels at the time, and hadn't got (m)any bombardiers on my southern coast, so their ships could sail my shores unscathed.

Spoiler :

The loss was a shock (A=4 vs. D=4+4*(50+50+10%)=8.2!), but it didn't actually hurt me that badly, since Seoul had been very disadvantageously placed relative to my empire -- the free Palace-jump actually helped me a little (it would have helped more if it had gone to a different city -- but I wasn't expecting to lose my Cap in the first place!). And it didn't help Cathy much either, since half its adjacent tiles were Mountain and Desert, so it immediately started starving. I took it back 3-4T turns later (at Pop4), using Hwacha-bombing and a massed Knight assault -- had to rebuild the Lib and Uni (and HeroicEpic), but could have been worse...

Later on in the same game, the Indians beat me to Hoovers by using a 'prebuild' -- not a Wonder-cascade as such! That made me swear very loudly -- especially since I was the one who'd sold Electronics to Gandhi in the first place, thinking at the time that I wouldn't be able to build Hoovers myself.

Spoiler :

I got into the Industrial Age a long way behind Gandhi, Gil and Mursi, beelined to SciMeth while (pre)building ToE, took AtomTheory and Electronics as my freebies for tech-trading, waited 2T to waste everyone else's ToE-shields, gleefully sold Electronics for a huge pile of cash (>1400g and >250GPT!) and then kicked myself when I noticed that I could build Hoovers in Moscow after all (it wasn't actually on a River, but a River bordered one cut-off corner of its BFC).

I'd only captured Moscow a couple of turns earlier, and had been cash-rushing Slaves out of it. So I did a quick calculation of Jaipur's SPT -- which turned out to be wrong, since I didn't account for them having built a CoalPlant there as well as a Factory, but never mind -- and decided I could probably beat them to Hoovers after all. I disband-rushed a Lib, CH, and Factory in Moscow (didn't need a Market, because it had MoM and ShakesT), pumped it up to Pop14 over the same 3T, and set all my Slaves to railing and mining its tiles. My Hoover-build time was down to ~18T when Jaipur completed it, about 25T ahead of the schedule I'd estimated for it. I reloaded an earlier save to figure out how the hell they'd done that, and discovered that Jaipur had been 2T short of building Battlefield-Medicine (350s at 35 SPT) when I sold Electronics to Gandhi -- another 13T (=> +455s) was enough to get them Hoovers instead

OTOH, I was able to use the Hoover-shields to (pre)build UN instead, shortly after I sold Fission to Gandhi for another large pile of cash...

And after the Russians were defunct (finished off by the Summies), and I demanded that Gil leave or declare (he DoW'd), I actually saw the Summies roll an Arty-unit out of Novgorod and station it under a couple of Infs, in order to bomb my vInfs fortified on the Hills above Moscow. Only 1 Arty, admittedly, but it almost counts as 'smart' usage, compared to what the AI usually does -- and also gives the lie to the cliché 'the Civ3 AI never uses Arty offensively'...

 

[tjs282]

This is not strictly true. The case I had was a Galley which was heading round my coast. I was extremely interested in preventing this boat from reaching other civs (and the inevitable exchange of techs) and was also looking for some war happiness to bolster my production. Turn after turn it just gave me the lame option, it was quite memorably infuriating...

OK, I could well be misremembering what Lanzelot said -- or maybe the A/D≥1 consideration only applies to land-units...?

If you have 2 or 3 Curraghs or Galleys to spare, you can block AI-Curraghs/ Galleys from travelling along your coast by lining up your ships along a straight stretch, so that they would have to end a turn on a Sea-tile -- which the AI won't do -- in order to sail past (needs more ships to block SEA-Civ ships, doesn't work if the AI ship-owner has the GLight)...

 

[walletta]

tjs282 obviously for you the game must be real fun, what with being less smart than the AI

Only kidding

 

[tjs282]

tjs282 obviously for you the game must be real fun, what with being less smart than the AI

Only kidding

Feels like that sometimes, yeah!

It's ironic: when I first started playing Civ3, I gave the AI a lot more credit than it deserved, but I could beat it. But now that I know that it's dumb as soup, I struggle... ("Would anywun tell me if I wuz gettin'... stoopider...?")

 

[Buttercup]

If you have 2 or 3 Curraghs or Galleys to spare, you can block AI-Curraghs/ Galleys from travelling along your coast by lining up your ships along a straight stretch, so that they would have to end a turn on a Sea-tile -- which the AI won't do -- in order to sail past (needs more ships to block SEA-Civ ships, doesn't work if the AI ship-owner has the GLight)...

Yes, that's my usual routine. As you can see by my stack of Caravels in the other thread (if you're necro'ing this 5 years later... nevermind). I guess in the game I mentioned in this thread I was in the process of building them

It's ironic: when I first started playing Civ3, I gave the AI a lot more credit than it deserved, but I could beat it. But now that I know that it's dumb as soup, I struggle... ("Would anywun tell me if I wuz gettin'... stoopider...?")

I was going to write something similar in the other thread. When I first started playing Civ 3 I was very war-oriented and just pretty much built units and attacked things. Learning about all the other tricks acts as a good diversion to this to the point where you find yourself doing all kinds of wonderful maneuvers but have forgotten how to just spam units until the opposition is dead. Most likely because that tactic isn't so hot on tougher difficulty levels, but it is a skill in its own right.

 

[Lord Plebian]

Assuming that you haven't busted your trade-rep in the meantime, there could be lots of reasons for this:

• As a result of war or a third party's border-expansion, they no longer control sufficient excess Lux to ship one to you (whereas if you'd accepted the deal 'as-is', you would have deprived them of the last of that Lux that they controlled -- the one they were using to help keep their own citizens happy)
• You (may have forgotten that you) had also included a one-off payment (e.g. a Map, a Tech, lump-sum gold, etc.) in the original deal -- only the 'per-turn' conditions show up during renegotiations, so it could be that the AI wants another one-off payment
• Your population has grown, or you've gained control of another Lux, or you've built Markets in one or more towns since you made the deal -- all of these will make an additional Lux a lot more valuable to you, so now you've opened renegotiations, the AI will want you to pay more for it
• If the original deal also included GPT payments one way or the other, you or the AICiv might no longer have available GPT

Regarding that last, the AI (and you) can only pay GPT if if there is actually a net positive income at that instant in game-time (total Treasury-size is not taken into account). So if they could pay GPT 20T ago, but now they can't, that means their net income has gone to zero or negative in the meantime (maybe because someone else cancelled a GPT-payment to them, e.g. as a result of a DoW).

The problem with all of these is that the AI can also say that it doesn't want to renew the deal. If they're just going to tell me that they would never accept the deal, why would they even offer to renew it s is?

The first one isn't true because I can always negotiate to get it back. I'm pretty sure it's not the second one because I also traded with another civ who told me they didn't want to renew the deal until I pitched in all of 10 gold. I know for a fact it isn't the third one, because it's most recently happened in the RARR mod, which doesn't let markets do that. And I can trade over ocean tiles, so war shouldn't affect it. Though my trade rep starts trashed in every game anyway, for some reason.

Buttercup, I know what you mean. When I first started Civ III, I would do the exact same thing. I always played as the Germans because I love how they started with archers and spearmen. Well, after I lost my first game as the Byzantines through a backdoor domination loss (They just kept building cities and I didn't realize that domination victory was a thing, so I only had like five cities).

 

[walletta]

Aahh, early experiences! I can recall fortifying a warrior on a mountain tile in the middle of nowhere and being really chuffed watching it bumping off barbs riding out of a camp a few tiles away.

 

[Lord AJ]

Awesome, thanks for responding. Yes, I remember being allowed to give an ultimatum... sometimes. But it's not a regular choice. I know this for sure, because I've tried countless times praying for the Ultimatum option to show up, particularly when Settlers/boats are on the move, but, no, it either requires specific criteria or is completely random. However, the AI appear to have use of it to a far greater degree. (I agree, civ 4 is appalling for one-sided diplomacy).
.

The criteria for ultimatums is not something random. You can give them only if there are ai units in your territory and you don't have an RoP with the civ. You'll get the option to give these ultimatums EVERY TIME the above conditions are fulfilled.

 

[Lord AJ]

Moving points is not relevant for barracks, it is relevant for healing. Healing does only occur to units that have left 100% of the moving points. Moving over railroads if fine, moving over roads is not.



That is probably because they donnot move the defenders.

If an AI unit does attack one of your units, gets damaged and then fortifies it will not heal because it has not left 100% of moving points. It will reach the next turn unhealed and only heal after this because 100% of movement points will be left.

Isn't it the number that's left in the movement points that matters? This way, even if you spend a turn walking on a road, you'll still have the unit healed as the number being shown by the game so still the same due to the road movement bonus.

 

[justanick]

The criteria for ultimatums is not something random. You can give them only if there are ai units in your territory and you don't have an RoP with the civ. You'll get the option to give these ultimatums EVERY TIME the above conditions are fulfilled.

No, you donnot. Those is only required conditions, but not sufficient. We are only talking about the later as those are not obvious in nature.

Isn't it the number that's left in the movement points that matters?

It is. 100% movement points need to be retained.

This way, even if you spend a turn walking on a road, you'll still have the unit healed as the number being shown by the game so still the same due to the road movement bonus.

No. Full movement point need to be retained. You can move over railroads, you can even use ship chains. But you cannot move over roads or move over unrailroaded tiles with units given the trait to treat all tiles as road. If you set the road factor from 3 to 100, than moving one tile will cost 0.01 movement points which is more than zero and thus too much.

 

[Lanzelot]

This is not strictly true. The case I had was a Galley which was heading round my coast. I was extremely interested in preventing this boat from reaching other civs (and the inevitable exchange of techs) and was also looking for some war happiness to bolster my production. Turn after turn it just gave me the lame option, it was quite memorably infuriating...

Ships are a different matter. As far as I know, they can never be booted the hard way. (Though I'm not sure about whether they will be removed, if the AI also has land units inside your borders and removes them because of your boot order. But probably not: I just had a case like this: I had land units and ships inside an AI's territory. They gave me the hard boot order and I obliged. When I got back control after the interturn, I found that my land units had indeed been kicked out, while my ship was still in it's original place. So I assume the same applies to the AI.)

However, you are right that there is one fundamental difference between the AI and the human player here: when the AI gives you a hard boot order, you can't ignore it: it's either war, or your units get kicked out to some square outside their borders. The AI however can always chose to ignore your boot order and leave the units where they are without declaring war.

 

[Bartleby]

...
However, you are right that there is one fundamental difference between the AI and the human player here: when the AI gives you a hard boot order, you can't ignore it: it's either war, or your units get kicked out to some square outside their borders. The AI however can always chose to ignore your boot order and leave the units where they are without declaring war.

Do you mean to say that when you tell the AI "remove your forces or declare war" that they will sometimes do neither? I have never seen that.

 

[Lanzelot]

Yes, that happens to me all the time. I will upload a .sav file, when I see it next.