Late-game AI unit clogging

[orangecape]

I agree that if the AI actually gave us a reason to build anti air it would make the modern era much more interesting. I actually find a use for sea units on many/most maps but every unit that is AA is just a waste of time. I would be intrigued to see if the AI can actually make good use of bombers - obviously with enough of them it can't lose, but with a reasonable mix it would make things much better on the clogging front.

One other thing that I don't know if Thal has addressed is artillery. The upgrade from cannons to artillery is absolutely ludicrous and I find they totally change the game. If I see a mess of infantry or cannons I am fine attacking into it but as soon as I see the AI is full of artillery I suddenly have no interest in attacking whatsoever - the losses are bound to be severe. I think artillery are simply too powerful and too defining in their era. Either a loss of their 3rd point of range or indirect fire would be fine I think, but having both is just brutal to deal with. I don't find the same thing with rocket artillery because by then I have tanks/modern armor to rush them or planes to fly over them.

 

[doktorstick]

In the beta bug thread I noted how Japan was spamming cruise missiles. We hadn't gone to war at the time. I won the game with the space race, and then declared war on Japan.

This is from one of their cities (that's 95 missiles, 7 fighters):


And here's how much money they have been losing per turn:


As for the battle itself, it left something to be desired. Both cities they attacked were within 4 tiles of their border. There were several problems with the attack/defense:

Round 1

• Japan immediately destroyed all but one of my units.
• Japan knocked my two closest cities down to 1 health and kept launching cruise missiles at them. They went from about 140 cruise missiles to about 100 that first round.
• SAMs only attack once; I couldn't tell if my fighters were intercepting at all.
• Japan did not take over the cities that first round, even though they had the ability to do so with their fast moving units.
• I sent a MI into their territory. Japan took it out with land units.

Round 2

• Japan sent a nuclear weapon at my capital. It was the first move they did, and my sole remaining SAM did not fire. I do not think my city fired either, come to think of it.
• Japan used only 3 cruise missiles opting to attack with a helicopter and move some armor into my territory.

Round 3

• Japan sent a bomber against my capital.

Round 4

• Japan fired one cruise missile against my city, attacked it with a helicopter, and took it over with MI.

Round 5

• Japan launched 2-3 cruise missiles against my capital; SAM fired once.
• Japan attacked with the helicopter and took over the capital with more MI.

After that round, Japan still had 84 cruise missiles in one city and more spread out in other cities.

The AI used the missiles so-so, though it did a good job of nearly wiping out my army on the first turn. It spent some time moving the mass from one city to another. SAMs are expensive at 12gpt maintenance and aren't an effective counter to air, especially since you are limited to a few around a city (two tile range, terrain factors) and 1 shot. Fighters weren't very effective either, but to be fair, the simultaneous moves had me scrambling trying to keep up. For all I know, each fighter and SAM shot down 1 missile and then was on cooldown. No defense against the Big One doesn't sit right since the techie/cultured/peacenik takes the opposing path.

 

[Thalassicus]

What difficulty was this on, by the way?

 

[doktorstick]

Emperor.

 

[Thalassicus]

On the topic of their net income, I strongly suspect there are some vanilla game UI errors in displaying AI income. I've often seen AI's with large negative gpt values yet maintaining a positive gold balance... unless the game is just giving them free money, which could be possible.

The darn thing is since we don't have access to the core AI stuff we have no way of putting a cap on how many units they build. Either they clog the ground or they'll clog the skies... which is one reason I want to move from relying on the inexpensive and expendable missile to a more expensive air unit for them to spam.

Does it take long to go through lots of attack animations for cruise missiles? The one main reason I hate bombers so much is their head-on-keyboard slow attack animation. Why they don't use the same speed as their rebase mission is baffling!

At least with the AI attacks we can just walk away from the keyboard for a few minutes... bomber animations and the road linkage bug are my only gripes with Civ V's art, it's otherwise something I visually enjoy a lot.

Anyway, back on topic thank you for the playtesting info, I'll see what I can fiddle with in regards to anti-air capabilities.

 

[doktorstick]

It was a different type of slowdown. Since it had to figure out what to do (or not do) with probably near some 200 units, it took a few minutes. Some of the missile animation didn't happen at all; the "did 1 damage to city" messages were scrolling.

I agree plane animations are annoying, particularly when it gets stuck in a circling loop. Oi!