Drawing AI artillery out of cities

[Deathwing]

This is something the AI does that still amazes me, but I randomly thought it would be a helpful tip to share with anyone who does not yet know about it.

AI artillery (catapults, trebs, artillery, etc) can do a lot of damage from within a city, and you can't hit it. The solution is to move a worker two squares away, probably a worker you captured earlier from the enemy. The artillery unit will leap into the middle of your troops to capture the worker, allowing you to easily destroy it (and probably retake the worker), leaving the AI city ungarrisoned for the taking.

A patch to stop AI civs being fooled like that (particularly with ranged and artillery units) would be a worthwhile investment, I reckon!

 

[CYZ]

I hope the devs spend their patches on something else to be honest. There have been several battle tactics using works as bait/cannonfood and if you don't want them in the game, don't use them.

 

[Deathwing]

Agreed that there are plenty of things that need patching in priority (AI in general, and a lot of technical work regarding bugs and crashes), but I'm not sure what you mean by "if you don't want them in the game, don't use them"? If you mean workers, you can't disable them... If you mean AI, you can't really avoid it (even in an all-human game, players often quit leaving AI).

 

[CYZ]

Agreed that there are plenty of things that need patching in priority (AI in general, and a lot of technical work regarding bugs and crashes), but I'm not sure what you mean by "if you don't want them in the game, don't use them"? If you mean workers, you can't disable them... If you mean AI, you can't really avoid it (even in an all-human game, players often quit leaving AI).

You can avoid using workers to fool the AI into leaving a good position. I agree the AI should be programmed not to take the bait (most of the time) but it's still a weak strategy/glitch that you can avoid by simply not using it.

 

[Deathwing]

I appreciate you clarifying that. Yes you can avoid exploiting glitches/strategies. I know I won't

 

[elthrasher]

You can avoid using workers to fool the AI into leaving a good position. I agree the AI should be programmed not to take the bait (most of the time) but it's still a weak strategy/glitch that you can avoid by simply not using it.

One can avoid deliberately baiting the AI unit with a worker like this, but many is the time I've approached a city, realized that I was going to get chewed up by artillery and then fallen back only to have the artillery give chase.

Basically end up with the same result.

 

[robvollman]

One can avoid deliberately baiting the AI unit with a worker like this, but many is the time I've approached a city, realized that I was going to get chewed up by artillery and then fallen back only to have the artillery give chase.

Basically end up with the same result.

Exactly. The "worker bait" is only one version of the same core problem: the AI is easy to bait out of a great position.

I'd love it if they could somehow program the AI to bait us - to suck a human player into a trap.

 

[CYZ]

Exactly. The "worker bait" is only one version of the same core problem: the AI is easy to bait out of a great position.

I'd love it if they could somehow program the AI to bait us - to suck a human player into a trap.

I agree. Perhaps by putting a siege unit in a visible field near your army, with their troops positioned just in the fog of war behind it.

 

[MadDjinn]

eventually the AI won't take the worker bait.

The easiest way to get a ranged unit out of the city is to stay 1 tile away from their range. It doesn't always work (sometimes they realize what is going on), but as long as you're range attacking the city/units, they'll move them out.

 

[fromar]

I've seen the AI remove siege units from their cities to go to the aid of another city a lot.

In a recent game, there were two cities, north and south. I sent my army in to attack the southern city, and the cannon came rushing out of the northern city as fast as it could.

Since my laptop is trash, it turned itself off without warning, and I had to reload a few turns back from the autosave. The same thing happened again.