Early wars bad for the AI?

BigChiefLizzy

Warlord
Joined
Jul 17, 2007
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292
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I thought in the last patch the choice to attack early was reduced a bit, but can't say I have noticed that myself. At King/Emp level it seems like waiting for the inevitable early attack with a few archers and warriors works well; kill the attackers while beelining iron working and then counter attack and take a city or two.

If I don't have enough units to take their capital accept peace for a nice amount of gold /gold per turn and use that to upgrade warriors to swordsmen... use these units to finish off my next attacker, or my original target if I'm actually left alone for a few turns :crazyeye:

Plus more distant AI's seem to war with each other very early and often, so that slows their development too.

Given how bad the AI is at combat, I think they need to tone the early attacks down a lot more. (I have been rushed early on, and lost/quit but not in a while now - it's very predictable!)
 
I believe there's wide concensus that the AI's are hampering themselves with these early rushes, Montezuma being the worst of them all.
The AI could be okay with it on Deity, where they have lots of units anyway, and a huge bonus to replenish those units quickly.

When an AI is being designed, the goal is of course to get something that is engaging for the human player, not necessarily something that is best for the AI's game.
 
Montezuma is bad at it. He will constantly attack you throughout the game, but his attack force will be completely obliterated by just a couple of archers plus a siege unit after he gets swordsmen. He sics them all towards your capital while ignoring anything in between, so you can set up strategic snipe points to kill off his units. Alexander does the same thing as Monty, but his units are a lot stronger so it makes him a lot more competent at it.

Isabella wasnt so bad, she waited until she had a mass army of cannons, rifles and her UUs before attacking, but I already had artillery by then so she still failed.

If you beeline the strongest ranged defenders and keep a few built (Archers > Crossbows > Cannons > Artillery), you never have anything to worry about with AI attacks, maybe except at Deity level, but in earlier Civ games you didnt need to play at the hardest difficulty to have an AI semi competent at war.
 
Its bad throughout the game. :p

Last game I had 5 artilleries he just kept sending more and more units at them.
 
Hard to compare to previous versions due to 1upt but AI warfare is awful bottom line. That said some civs like Siam, Germany, France, Iroquois tend to do pretty well because of their forays into battle while civs like Japan, Aztecs, Mongols, tend to be much worse off.

I don't envy the AI programming job. Must be very difficult as nearly every game with such open ended play has "bad" AI.
 
Hard to compare to previous versions due to 1upt but AI warfare is awful bottom line.
I say it wasn't better in Civ III (the only previous version I know).
Despite 1upt, the AI, when it comes, comes with a force in Civ 5. When it just has a couple of units available, it seems to be waiting for more before attacking.
In Civ III units would come piecemeal if the AI didn't have stacks.

But in both versions the AI exposes their units badly.

I don't mind too much, though. I've never seen a game with an AI that was all that great, and as long as an AI forces the human to play tactically well, it doesn't matter to me if it isn't tactically good itself.
I'm drawing the line at that crazy AI embarking, though; the AI shouldn't embark its units with an enemy vessel nearby, I hope they can come up with a bit of code to prevent the AI from doing that.
 
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