Experience Farming?

[GoldenWheels]

I was playing a game last night, and I noticed something new to me, although it may not be new to you guys. It could just be because I had never encountered this particular situation. Anyway...

Started off as Genghis Khan (on Noble at normal speed on Pangea, to get all the facts out there). The leader (or anything else) is immaterial as far as I know however to this event. The idea is you can force your opponent, trapped within his city walls with no metals, to put crummy units intot he field indefinitely to boost your own units XP (if this is an old idea, I apologize, i have not seen it here, though i have been gone a while.). I explored around and came across my first neighbor, Mehmed.

I caught him early. With only his capital (that i could see) to deal with, i charged in with keshiks after a HBR beeline. Mehmed had no iron and no copper (ouch), so of course he is stacking his city with archers. Not being the best city attackers, my initial (too small) keshik force falls. So I post a few guys I knew wouldn't get the job done alone outside the city, and begin creating an army back home. One by one I send 2 keshiks and an axemen his way. Looking in his city, he has six archers.

Then, with an army on his door...he sends one archer out into the field. I quckly gobble him up. I think i need a few more units...and just as I get over there, he sends out another lone archer. Bam. Gobble gobble. Im curious now, so I halt the attack, and see what he is going to do. Sure enough, as soon as he built another archer after his sixth, he sent it out into the field to become quick and EASY XP for my army. Archers are like turtles without a shell outside the city walls. This basically continued for the next hour as he continually dumped hapless targets into my lap as soon as he built them. I have no reason to believe it will ever stop either, as he was still sending me easy targets even after I had some seriously superpowered units. I didn't lose ONE unit while attacking the archers in the field.

I did discover a small city further south, so I have to wonder if he was sending them out to protect them, or merely trying to force the battle in some typically dumb AI fashion (the archer would often appear right next to my city attackers (!), as if he was trying to sneak by and go commando in my empire or something). That IS a variable that may matter, if it was the SECOND city drawing the archer out. Too repeat this you might need to allow your opponent two cities. I also don't know if the number of garrisoned troops (6) is a reliable number, it may be totally variable as i have not been able to test this again under different circumstances. (I was too busy laughing and building mega powered keshiks). But if this happened randomly i think it must be repeatable and exploitable (!). (hell, you could even leave his land UNpillaged so he could create cannon fodder FASTER for you.)

Certainly this is similar to letting an opponent nurse a city and build XP attacking that city over and over without finishing it, but that is a far riskier proposition than finding the limit/formula when the AI will gift wrap XP on a silver platter for you.

(again, if this is old I apologize. I think its new, but sometimes I think there is NOTHING in CIV that isn't old news to someone here!!! )

 

[Carl v.]

The AI is a lousy warlord. Besides, it is not a real AI, because it has not the ability to learn from mistakes (quite human too, I fear). But I have never experienced such a level of stupidity as you tell about. Must have been fun.

Reminds me about an old science fiction-genre where human creativity beats robotic "sense" and parameters. Always.

 

[gdgrimm]

That strategy has, indeed, been around for quite awhile. Use just a few units to keep one civ pinned while continuing to expand on your own.

The downside is that eventually you get hit with War Weariness (happens faster at higher levels). That forces you to either "finish him off", or let him go back to building.

That, in turn, usually leads to another war later. You've hampered him enough that even letting him build some still lets you get ahead with military techs. Then when you came back to war, this time around you actually take the whole empire, rather than just hampering him.

Be sure to thank him for the cities he built for you.

 

[GoldenWheels]

That strategy has, indeed, been around for quite awhile. Use just a few units to keep one civ pinned while continuing to expand on your own.

The downside is that eventually you get hit with War Weariness (happens faster at higher levels). That forces you to either "finish him off", or let him go back to building.

That, in turn, usually leads to another war later. You've hampered him enough that even letting him build some still lets you get ahead with military techs. Then when you came back to war, this time around you actually take the whole empire, rather than just hampering him.

Be sure to thank him for the cities he built for you.

Hampering him isn't the idea or point at all, perhaps I explained it poorly.... the fact that he was pumping out helpless units right in front of my army rather than keeping them garrisoned in his city, giving me free (basically) XP of off easily defeated units is. In fact I was far past "hampering him", I was actually LETTING him live by my benevelont mercy (LOL!)...I could have finished him at anytime. Why do that when he's feeding my army promotions?

War weariness is certainly an issue, and obviously happiness is much harder at higher levels. But if I could figure out how to replicate this exact situation (something I was hoping someone else would do, LOL) where the enemy stupidly puts easily defeatable units right outside it's city, you could repeat it each time you finished off an empire, keeping each last city as an XP farm until finishing it off....leaving your army stronger and more promoted than when you finished.

 

[Wlauzon]

Sometimes you just gotta wonder.. what is this stupid AI doing?

I am currently in a game in a permanent alliance with Roosevelt. We are at war with Mao, who is almost 800 points below either of us (why the stupid AI declared war, I have no idea..).

Roosevelt has one foothold city on the Chinese continent. It has about 20 or more bombers in it, and around 30-40 other units such as modern tanks, mech infantry, gunships, etc.

Yet Roosevelt has failed to take a single size 5 city from the Chinese that is only about 6 squares away and only has about 6-8 low level units, I think the best is Rifleman.

At this point I am just wondering what the Roosevelt AI will do.. I keep airlifting more and more ground units in there just to see if he will ever really do a major assault.

 

[mice]

That XP trick would work better with axemen because you could take them all the way through to infantry. Presumably you were developing in other areas with settlers and econ while pinning down that neighbour. Good trick. I'm gonna try it.

 

[voek]

The AI has a set amount of defenders in its city's depending on size and difficulty level you are playing. For example at Emperor a Ai will guard his capital with 3 archers. If it has more they will stay in the city as long as there are dangerous enemy troops (yours) nearby who threaten the city. When you move them out of sight or direct attack, the AI will move out the archers above the number of three. You can lure them out. It is well know and one of the exploits against a AI since it is programmed to do so and therefore is predictable. I wouldn't keep my forces waiting long btw, just to lurk out the extra defenders and the finish of the city since on higher levels the cost of your army just lying there is too great.