Does the AI play to the Victory Conditions?

dalgo

Emperor
Joined
Feb 23, 2002
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Location
Auckland, New Zealand
I played two recent games on Revolutionary with different victory conditions and the AI used quite different tactics in each.

In the first game I was using the default victory conditions – Europe and Independence. The REF was large (764 units) but the AI only landed them 12 at a time and after 56 turns I lost to a Europe victory.

In my most recent game I decided to turn the Europe option off and just play for Independence. Again I faced a large REF (630 units) but this time the first landing comprised 44 units. I had used most of my guns and horses to create a defence force of 60 dragoons and while that was easily enough to account for the initial landing it left most of them injured.

The AI landed 44 units on seven consecutive turns, and then followed it up with a landing of 104 units on the eighth turn. I had a very strong setup with 14 colonies and was still able to trade with Europe but I had to scramble to survive, micromanaging guns, food, horses and saleable goods with my 25 wagons. However I did lose Jamestown to the big landing. I recaptured it and won the game in 1671.

So – did the AI deliberately send in only a trickle of troops in the first game in order to win a Europe victory, and then change tactics to all out assault in the second game when that victory was no longer an option?

There is another possibility – the number of ships available. In the first game the King had only 29 Man-o-War at his disposal while in my latest game he had an impressive fleet of 107 ships. Does that have a direct effect on the size of the landings?
 
The King's fleet has a direct relationship to the size of the landings.
 
Thanks Dale, that's the answer. I went back through some of my previous games and it appears that the King uses approx 10% of his ships for that initial landing. I should have noticed that before.
 
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