Does the AI ever liberate?

[Ozymandias9891]

Question: does the AI ever liberate cities they capture if they originally belonged to another civ, or to a city-state?

In all my time playing, I've never seen this happened, and a similar scenario occurred recently to me when I was playing as Rome. The Brazilians had captured my city of Ravenna, only to then have it captured by the Egyptians, who were my friends (everything in the tool-tip was green, we had the same ideology, defensive pact, DoF...the works). When I asked for my city back, they flat out refused.

So I was just wondering if it has ever happened that the AI liberates cities or city-states.

Thanks!

 

[Haig]

I've seen it happen in BNW post-fall patch. If I remember correctly a message informs of it.
I don't remember was the liberated city one of mine or another AI's.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

I have seen Venice as the only one liberating cities until now...

 

[Moriarte]

Happens in my games very often. I play deity mostly. By the way, i had a game just before fall patch where Genoa captured Cusco (Pachacuti was still alive after that) and that meant that i don't have to get Cusco in order to win domination. I wonder if it's the same after patch.

 

[Walter R]

I've certainly seen CS's liberated but I don't think I've seen a civ city liberated.

 

[Ozymandias9891]

@Haig: I'm actually playing with the patch, and in the 8 or so games I've played since then, I've never seen it happen.

 

[Ozymandias9891]

@Walter: I've never seen that happen, so I dunno... I find it weird.

 

[Veras]

I've seen it only once when Hiawatha liberated Kamehameha. I was still playing on Vanilla.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

AI will only liberate a city if it has chosen to pursue a diplo victory

 

[fotonut]

Carthage and Assyria were fighting on my borders over a city state Assyria had captured. After a long battle Dido captured it, and liberated it. However, although the war was still on, Dido did not seem to have much interest in sticking around, and Assyria recaptured the city state two turns later. I thought what Dido did was pretty strange...

 

[jlafleur]

America liberated Brazil from the Aztecs in my current game.

 

[Ozymandias9891]

AI will only liberate a city if it has chosen to pursue a diplo victory

Well that's interesting to note. I'll keep an eye out for it in my next game.

 

[shaglio]

It happened in one of my recent games. It was definitely POST Fall Patch because I was playing on Scrambled North America, which came out just a few weeks ago.

Alex had gone to war with Harun and got Sejong to tag along. Sejong wiped out Arabia's last city and puppeted it. Later Alex went to war with Sejong (because he's Alex) and liberated Mecca.

I didn't think much of it until, later in the game, the World Leader vote came up in the WC. Based on the number of delegates Alex had, I saw that he would be just a couple votes shy of winning, so I figured I didn't need to "buy" any CS's votes just before the election. I hit next turn and the Ozymandius screen popped up and it was then that I realized I forgot to factor in Arabia's votes because he liberated them. Facepalm!

 

[cpm4001]

I think @MagmaDragoon is right; AI Civs will only liberate if going for a diplomatic victory. I've seen it happen a couple times in my games (a couple times in GnK and at least once in BNW). In the GnK one that I can remember off the top of my head it was Greece liberating Byzantium (which was annoying because I was killing Greece at that point...) while in the BNW one it was Sweden liberating Russia I believe (irony, irony...). Both of those civs are of course highly Diplomatically flavored.

 

[redwings1340]

I had Askia liberate a city state in my deity game pre-patch, when diplo victory was off (and I had control of most of the city states anyway). I then proceeded to gift the city state 1000 gold and a couple of units to help it stay alive (with arsenal of democracy) and allied it back that turn . Thanks Askia! I think I've seen it happen otherwise, but it's not too common. I'm not sure I've seen civs get liberated though.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Happened several times. I've seen Casimir fight against Washington and only a few turns later, Poland liberated 2-3 city states (not sure) in one game. I was surprised to see dark blue dots turn into regular CS colours, especially since that was actually a smart thing to do. CS Ally is often more profitable in the long run than a city which was lost 50% of its' population twice.

I think Alexander also did that once or twice... And I think I've seen that happen in the game where everyone really hated Genghis the CS killer.

About liberating civs, well, Alexander once liberated Askia. He had a lot of CS allies at the time, and he was going for Diplomatic victory I think - he was trying to coup every single CS in his favour, the vast majority of them already in his pocket, and I'm certain he was spending a lot of money on them too. Very smart for an AI. Too bad for him I couped some back and paid for some (I was Portugal, so money was easy to get) until he was no longer dominant in CS's.

Anyway, back to the liberation... There was something even weirder about that one. The very next turn my Spy saw Alexander was plotting against Askia. Why the hell would you free someone just to plan his destruction? While a DoW never happened, it was still strange.

 

[Ozymandias9891]

Well, I just wish it was more common for civs to liberate previously captured cities. I tend to do that a lot with allied civs, so I don't find it fair that they wouldn't do the same with my cities. It seems like Firaxis has made the warmonger/liberator modifier only apply to the human player and not the AI...

 

[NameUndisclosed]

I've seen civs liberate city-states a fair few times, but civs liberating other civs has, in my experience, been far rarer. There are only two times I've seen it done - one was when Sweden liberated Palenque from the Celts (despite himself owning Tikal). It was reconquered by the Arabians some turns later, only for the Swedish to liberate it again. It's currently back in Celtic hands. The other was when Greece liberated Siam, and subsequently reconquered them a while later.

It might have been that Sweden was going for a diplo victory, but that doesn't explain why they liberated the Maya a second time after Catherine had already gone to space. I haven't got a clue what Greece was doing.

 

[Smote]

I believe civs with a goal of Diplomacy victory will liberate other civs... I did several playthroughs on TSG71 (aiming for venice diplo vic) where I conquered everyone and picked a civ to gift most of the cities to. China kept or burned every city i gave to him. Portugal (who went patronage) however would liberate any city that wasn't very useful to him (no new luxury or wonder in city).

I cant prove it, but it feels right

 

[Xiao Xiong]

Carthage and Assyria were fighting on my borders over a city state Assyria had captured. After a long battle Dido captured it, and liberated it. However, although the war was still on, Dido did not seem to have much interest in sticking around, and Assyria recaptured the city state two turns later. I thought what Dido did was pretty strange...

I have let the AI recapture a city before. I was razing it though. Sold all the good buildings and the AI was throwing units at it. I decided ok, have your 1pop city with no buildings.

After being capped three times that cs might not have been worth much.