Ever seen an AI conquer another AI?

[Lone Wolf]

We all know that Civ2 AI is stupid. But what turned me off Civ2 was not the stupid AI per se, but the lack of dynamics in the game. Rarely I saw an AI conquering another AI. Perhaps the City Walls, which the human player can easy overcome, are a serious obstacle for the AI?

But are there any cases where some AI in a streak of brilliancy managed to conquer, or, at least, take a respectable number of cities from other AI? Have you seen them?

 

[Crowqueen]

Just now. The Japanese defeated the Germans and took Berlin.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

I've played several games where cities belonged to the wrong civ.

Sometimes they did it on their own, others when they took advantage of a civ I weakened.

 

[holiday_hawk]

I saw it a couple of times, but it is was early in the game.

 

[Aemilius]

I see it every time I play the game.

 

[Maniacal]

Yes, i have seen the AI conquor another AI, but rarely after mid game (though by then I've usually gotten bored and started cheating).

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Indeed. Typically they dig in at about the Middle Ages and you become the only shaker.

 

[BaconLad]

ive seen plenty of a-i/a-i action early on in the game, sometimes to no avail, sometimes strokes of brilliance that evan a human player would admire.
but towards the dark/middle ages or so, all the a-i civ's seem to forget about each other and concentrate on me!!!

 

[neutrino]

I think the likelihood of an AI civ conquering another AI civ is more likely before 1AD, provided that they start in a same continent. Obviously, it takes much more resources and time to defeat a rival civ after everyone starts to establish standing army with sufficient economic power to back it up. (Unless an AI civ has an overwhelming superiority, it generally does not wage an all-out war effectively as it does not coordinate its forces efficiently.)

In a recent freak game that I played, it went something like:

1200BC: Greek civilization destroyed by the French.
800BC: Babylonian civilization destroyed by the Spanish.
350BC: Chinese civilization destroyed by the Indians.

Wow! Three civs got wiped off the map before 1AD and my civ had nothing to do with this ... LOL! (It turned out that my civ was located far north, relative to everyone else, so mine was too distant to be part of the action. The only reason I noticed something was going badly for them, because my trieremes were busy exploring coastlines.)

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Fairly often, in ToT, in the science fiction game, the alien Civs (there are 3) will go after each other mercilessly. That makes sense in a way because there are techs they have in common that aren't available to the human players until the humans get the tech that allows communication with the aliens. So they mainly interact with each other in the early-mid games. And I've sometimes stared, aghast, when one alien will take out the last city of another alien -- because I needed to either conquer that city myself, or steal one of their techs!

 

[CSDanger]

Of course they do. Why not? If they are at war they all try to conquer the citys of theyr enemys. Sometimes the AI players are friendly but sometimes one of them want to rule the world and try to defeat any other player. The AI isn´t as stupid as many players think. The AI just want to do that what he/she want like a human player also do.

 

[Ace]

It would appear that the reason the AIs don't conquer each other as much after 1AD, is that by than the human player has become the dominant player and all the AIs gang up on the human player, and by late game, they always form an alliance to stop "human" aggression.

Plus, the AI does not seem to be able to launch a sustained compaign to eliminate another player, It likes to snatch a city, than get a cease-fire to regroup, but, a human player will keep after a target civ until it is gone.

 

[Terrapin]

Yeah, they fight each other like cats and dogs (until the late game), but for all the reasons stated, they only finish each other off very early in the game. Once or twice, I have seen post-1 AD conquests, but that was with restarts, so someone's new size 1 or 2 city got eaten by someone else's standing army.

 

[wonx2150]

Yer the AI always seems 2 kill each other off. They are usually at war with someone, unless your on a harder difficulty. Then they tend 2 gang up on you , not often do i get to gang up with the AI against another AI.

 

[civiijkw]

In my current game the Viking AI killed off the Egyptian AI in 2200 BC (first kill of the game). I had the privilege of doing the other 20 kills. I was a bit surprised when the Aztecs reappeared after being taken out earlier. Once that happened I could take in stride the second appearances of the Babylonians, Germans, Greeks and Spanish.

 

[Anithraldur]

I've seen some very odd behavior for AIs in Civ II. I've seen them of course conquer others early in the game, and the mediocre behavior in the middle games. But has anyone noticed how a world-power AI (say, one which a massive empire and huge population) occasionally just decides to crap out and stop trying to fight or expand? I.E., they stop building units, declaring war, etc., even if they're a homicidally agressive Civ like the Celts. Also, does anyone know if the "dumbening" is a result of the human civ becoming powerful, or what it is specifically that causes it? Is it research crossing a certain threshold? As well, I notice that AIs are a bit easier to maneuver into alliance before a certain point in the game, but after a cutoff date (1 AD again?) they become much more resistant to it, no matter how powerful you are.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

It depends on the power rating. If you are supreme, everyone will be more suspicious of you and will band together to "contain" you.

 

[civiijkw]

In my second game (only prince level game, happened to be on the large world map) I played Persia and knocked out the Spanish (Aztecs restarted in Australia), English (Carthaginians restarted in Novaya-Zemlya as by then I was well entrenched almost everywhere else), Japanese, Celts and Vikings.

The Souix built up a solid railroad web in the U.S. (12 core cities) with some additional cities at the fringes and had tanks, battleships, fighters and fanatics. They were content with slow expansion and I was able to take them down by grabbing (location names, not actual Souix names) Newfoundland, Oakland and Mexico City, funneling in aircraft via Ireland/Greenland, airlifting in units, finally taking control of the sea.

A critical AI stupidity came when I took Washington DC, moved in 8 battleships (each with just enough movement left to do so and also fortify them), moved in a few land units, and then just sat through the turn end as the Souix used their rail net to send 30-50 units trying to retake the city. I didn't lose a single defender (only battleships fought) and the Souix army was now weak enough for my invasion to go forward.

Another true AI stupidity was the Carthaginian settler in Novaya-Zemlya (two-tile island with a tundra and a glacier) sitting there unable to build a city (also surrounded by destroyers and battleships) and the Carthaginians answering my offer of peace by saying that only my possession of the UN kept them from destroying my worthless civilation (I don't remember the exact wording). Eventually that Carthaginian settler spawned a second settler, but no Carthaginian city was ever built. Somebody else that I talked to said that they've never seen such a worthless restarting position.

 

[dagriggstar]

Quite often, when playing the Mongols
Set everyone to the Mongol personality and you get a super-agro game...

In any case, most memorable games with AI conquering each other I've played...
Playing as Australia (moded them into the game) against a Russia, Spain, France, England, Babylonians and the Americans. Russia expanded rapidly and (no Asian civs to stop them and I wasn't particually good at the time) soon gained ridiculous amounts of power. France was killed off before 1 AD, however England (about 1800AD), Spain (about 1300AD) and Babylon (about 1900AD) all conquered by Russia. Ofcourse, I just built up ~ 50 units to take Moscow (Via Artic circle of all routes) cause civil war, take second capital, more civil war, get them down to a manageable size, win on points.

I remember playing as England, I built a couple of scandanavian cities too...Mongols went on rampage, conquered all of Asia. Then they destroyed the Aztecs in about 1800AD, Zulu's around that time too.

So...it does happen...just not very often...

 

[ermcool]

I to have always had the same thought about the AI. And I still would have the same thought except for this one incident that occured when i first started playing. I was on my sixth game, it was on a repmade map, the Asia-Pacific map. I was India, situated along the coast of California. I had struggled abit, I had a good economy, but my research was far behind. While the IA was researching stealth bombers I had just researched fight( thats how bad it was). I had managed to build a small wall around my entire country. Well, somewhere toward the end of the 20th century the Russians up and decided they would declare war on me. Needless to say, as I was struggling to produce riflemen they were building tanks and mobile infantry at a quick rate. Somehow I had managed to grab the nuke tech, and had built two nukes as soon as the war was declared. I knew I was in trouble when both missiles were shot down by the missile shield. The Russians moved rapidly towards my border(the line of forts) The tanks and Mobile infantry cut through my 'wall' with little effort and were soon on there way to Dehli and Bombay. I think it took the Russians a total of five turns to almost completely wipe India off the map. Two things that halted the extermination of India: I had built a city in hawaii, and the Russians had never built any kind of port cities, so they only had my two port cities to build on. After that I never counted the IA out again.