Does the AI have a crystal ball?

[Angmar]

It is 1000 AD or so I and am the technology leader ( or so ) at this point. I am currently pushing towards Democracy and Im one or two techs away from it.

I currently have a horde of Zulus at my front door looking for blood cause I wouldnt give them a tech. To get to my civilization they had to come tromping through Rome. Conviently enough while I was moving some galleys filled with Immortals up to take a Zulu city near some salt peter I saw their army coming and started moving my troops north to meet them. I have a decent standing army and cities well connected by roads.

The 'first wave' of this attack was a lone swordsman who colided with my first city with a pikeman and an immortal guarding it. That combat was short and sweet with the swordsman quickly impaling himself on my pikeman. Turns later I have reinforced my northern most cities with extra pikemen and immortals and his big army arrives next to my northern cities. What do they do? WALK RIGHT BY!

Now what has changed since the first swordsman arrived, I now have three if not four pikeman in each of the northern city. All of them with an immortal or two. These are all fortified within the city walls. To mass this many troops on my northern border I had to strip defences from the middle of my empire and move them north. Leaving a couple cities empty of defenders which will in a turn or two have goons from the south of my empire guarding them.

Now when I go rampaging across the enemy countryside I have no idea what cities have troops in them ( though I know the AI always has defenders ) nor how many are there. I just see the best defender. In theory this means that to the AI my northern cities should look the same as when they smashed their lone swordsman into it. Now that there are 10+ swordsman and 10+ impis they are ignoring my fortified cities and moving south to what I know is less defended ground but no AI unit has seen that territory in 1000+ years.

So does the AI have a crystal ball and is scanning my territory and finding cities that have no defenders in them and are going for them? Or did he just peak into the cities right by his troops and realize that it was going to be a hell of a fight and the next line of my cities only have a pikeman and a immortal in them and those are much tastier targets?

How do you reinforce versus and enemy that knows all your troops locations? I know that the Zulus dont have Espionage as they are farther down the tech ladder than myself and Im 10+ techs away from even getting the option to research it.

Help?

 

[eyrei]

I sometimes think the AI does have a crystal ball. While anytime after the establishment of an embassy you can investigate a city, it costs a decent amount of gold to do so. The AI seems to sometimes get this info for free. What the AI is probably doing is seeking to capture workers (oh, how they love to capture workers) that will be recaptured on the way out of your territory, destroy improvements, and possibly take a poorly defended city. The reason the AI did not attack your cities was that it knew it would lose half its army trying to kill one pikemen. It is simply looking for easier pickings, and probably doing some scouting for its treasured world map.

 

[Magnus]

They do that to me as well - when they start doing smarmy stuff like that - the solution is get your boys out of the cities and meet them in the field and whoop their ass there.:rocket:

As a side note - one time a very large force of theirs started to walk into my empire (generally precipitating war) - well before I asked them to leave, I immediately tripled the defense of all the border cities - it turned a surefire declaration of war into an AI backdown. So the converse is true as well.

 

[FullofHoles]

Unfortunately, yes. The AI does know where all of your units are. Any doubt can be erased by watching how their ships move when you are moving a small, flexible force to anticipate their landing zones. The AI will back off BEFORE they are within visual range of defenders. Sometimes you can play this to advantage by keeping their ships bouncing back and forth and never landing... thus giving you time to MAKE adequate defenders, but it is a serious problem that the AI does know.

That aside, I have found that the AI use of land units, especially horsemen, to be very well done. It can take me mammoth amounts of effort to kill their horsemen with my slow-moving units.

The AI use of ships is abysmal. Sea-based assaults are difficult, but more likely to yield captured cities when planned well but the AI cannot handle ships well at all. Once the AI reaches industrialization, the transports pose a serious danger but I can hold off anything less while I am fielding vastly inferior forces if the assault comes by sea.

 

[Marlos]

Granted, I do not have a complete answer to your question. It certainly does not seem "fair" that the AI has military clairvoyance, but I think that the game has been made that way.

Like you, I too am in my first game of Civ3 as the Persians, and when the Zulus and I went to war (which appears to be inevitable when their lands border yours) they IMMEDIATELY headed for my weak points.

I had my northern border with them about 2/3 covered with fortresses. These were in areas that their largest cities were situated. When war erupted, they flanked the fortressed areas and began attacking the units and cities on my eastern and western coasts. :shotgun:

In addition, they bypassed several larger and better-resourced cities of mine to defend a crappy little podunk town that they had built right in the middle of my territory. I initiated the war by bombarding their little enclave with 3 or 4 catapults, and they quickly came to their defense.

I negotiated peace, improved culturally with improvements and militarily by trading for iron. Their podunk town joined mine in a few turns, reducing the amount of frontage I had to defend, leaving more troops available for our mutual northern border. Then I returned their favor, declared war, and took about 2/3 of their territory in the process. :good job:

It seems that the AI is just plain smarter in this game and doesn't do things like try to plow over your strongest units fortified in a fortress on top of a mountain, like they did in Civ2. I enjoy the military aspects of Civ, but it seems that learning how to beat the AI is going to take longer this time than last.

Perhaps that was Firaxis' idea. Plenty of replays for $50, just trying to figure it all out!

Good luck, my friend.

 

[Civilizator]

I think it is a proof of real artificial intelligence, the fact that they pass by does not mean they know other cities are less defended. It may simply mean they are heading to attack cities that have either resources or wonders. Of course you would do the same and I am sure you often do it, when you think you do not have power enough to take many cities you concentrate on those that interest you most, or you just simply destroy as many terrain improvements as you can, or whatever...

 

[shirleyrocks]

The AI does *NOT* know where 'all of your units are'. Like Civilizator states, there are many many reasons why the AI will or will not perform certain actions. And, for a great many actions, the AI doesn't even distinguish (or know the difference!) between human and other AI civs, so to say the AI is somehow cheating against the human is ridiculous.

For a very interesting and indepth look at the Civ3 AI, I recommend reading this transcript of a chat room chat which 'stars' Soren Johnson, who wrote the AI for Civ3. There is a LOT of insight here, and the chat puts to rest many of the (false) arguments that are made time and time again in these threads. It's quite long, but Soren provides a lot of explanation about how the AI works and why certain features were or weren't included.



http://apolyton.net/misc/chat/civ3/civ3ai-1.shtml

 

[techy]

Glad you posted that link Shirleyrocks, seen so many people complaing about bugs and asking why certain things wern't done.
But what it comes down to is can the AI be programmed to cope with the options.
Can the AI be done so it behaves 'human' ?

I think this is the great part of CIV 3, because with a wealth of strategies available to the AI it does quite well. Most other games flounder on much less complicated decisions.

 

[shirleyrocks]

Amen to that, Techy.

 

[Angmar]

Thanks for that link Shirley it made me realize that the Zulus are going to go deep into my territory and cause as much havoc as they can.

Now that this has come to light Im thinking Im going to go back a couple of quick saves and change my defensive plans a little bit. Rather than fortify all my doods in a city Im going to see if I can place them on the Roman border and do everything I can to get Rome into the war against the Zulus with me.

.. Damn what is it only noon here .. 6 hours till I can click hit the space bar and have the next turn happen

 

[Dillo]

Actually if you beleive that in anygame the compuer doesnt know where you are and what you are doing you are sadly mistaken. Otherwise, they would be running in and trying to settle in your territory, trying to put troops in your cities. It has to calculate each of your moves and keep track of where all your units are and what they are what each city is, what resource you have in it. ect. They can say that they didnt allow the AI to know, but lets face it, the AI is controlling the whole damn thing.