Modern Era Combat -- Naval and Air and City/Settlement Capture

[ggalindo001]

I just finished my first game on 1.30 -- with no AI mods (so vanilla). Difficulty was custom, mostly Deity with one setting Immortal.

The Good:

1. IMO the AI is playing better than any vanilla AI since Civ IV. I'm not saying that the AI is -good-, and certainly it is not Old World good by any stretch, but it is competitive for a change.

2. I did lose two settlements on the fringes of my territory in the era (which has rarely happened), however, I -should- have lost at least 2 more. In one scenario, the AI had destroyed all defenses on an island settlement but for some reason did not claim it with their naval units. On the other (on a main continent), the AI's inability to concentrate its forces to an objective allowed me to barely hang on with the settlement and a worn down infantry. This did cause me to divert significant air resources to preventing its capture.

3. The AI is getting better at building AND using naval units. I had several raging naval battles throughout the age, and had to be very tactical to win. I found I had to have 2 packed fleet commanders in major battles in order to gain supremacy. And the AI successfully was using naval units to beat down city defenses as well.

4. The AI both built and USED aircraft. I haven't seen this in a long time in a vanilla AI game -- and in a limited sense, was able to use the aircraft to force me into tactical changes on the open seas. AI prioritized city defenses and naval units (in particular packed Fleet Commanders).

5. AI more willing to declare war when they sensed a weakness. In one case, I had a very strong defensive posture around my capital except via the sea. Attack came from the sea first, requiring me to move defensive units away from the shared land border -- and required a very tactical series of battles to hang on to my capital.

The Bad:

1. I highlighted it above -- AI continued to pick "non-strategic" targets vs. settlement capture. In all cases, settlement capture would not have caused the AI to go over the settlement limit.

2. AI air force was more focused on target selection than kills. Too often bombers were used to beat down city defenses that were not under imminent threat vs. using said bombers against more imminent threat units.

3. Over emphasis on build of tanks above all else. Instead of a mix of units including infantry and artillery, too many tanks which on the defensive side of the equation makes the AI more vulnerable.

4. Naval units not capturing districts and/or settlements. I had several vulnerable island settlements that were bombarded but never captured.

5. Slow capture of settlements -- instead of going in for the kill, AI would sometimes waddle around before capturing a settlement

Not Combat Related Good:

I did lose in the end when the Economic victory was achieved by Bugunda. Others were actively going after the Scientific Victory. This felt good.

The Ask:

1. I think the AI combat tuning still needs work. I really wish there was a slider or weighting to make the AI more aggressive from a combat standpoint. Maybe the devs will continue to work on this.

2. Air and Naval AI -- starting with where we are is a good start -- would like for there to be more logic. Focus around more dynamic AI logic esp. with Air units could be very much game changing.

3. AI Army Commanders -- too many not being used properly. They are being build AND promoted, but in human player combat, they are not effective at all. Even if not packing their units, they should -be- with their units to level up and provide benefit. Focus around the AI logic here would be tremendous.

4. Take a page out of Old-World in terms of AI combat technique. Still too many "lone wolf" units that are easy to pick off, too many "wandering" heavily damaged units in the same boat. I'm not expecting to play against a human intelligent opponent, but it would be nice if this was tunable -- esp. at higher levels.

Overall:

I think the AI is improved in the latest 1.3.0 patch. Hopefully we will be able to see more improvements in combat AI, esp in the areas identified. I think the biggest thing that could also help is some sliders or configuration that allows users to more configure the level of AI aggressiveness, etc. esp. in the areas of combat. Right now, the AI combat skills are mostly on the lower end of the difficulty scale -- if this could be tuned by the user to allow for a more robust AI combat experience, I think it would be well received.

 

[UWHabs]

Yeah, in my latest game I actually lost multiple settlements in the game. In antiquity Napoleon destroyed one of settlements with elephants, and then in modern I actually had a hostile IP one-turn one of my towns, and an AI opponent took another one of mine too.

In all cases, they were very lightly defended, so at least AI decision making was good there. I do think there's a few things of AI that could be even harder. For example, after Napoleon took my first settlement, he started to move some troops towards a second town of mine. But... he just kind of stopped. He was probably 1 turn away from capturing it, but just kind of stopped attacking it, and let me keep a unit there. And he abandoned the town he captured, so I could just sneak in a few cavalry around the back of it and took it back. And then immediately was willing to take peace (and even worse, was willing to give a captured settlement from someone else back in the deal). It's better than the past, but they're still way too willing to peace out and give up. I would have peaced out without that extra settlement, just taking my 10 turns to recover would have been worth it. They definitely need a better "I have them on the ropes, let's not give them a chance to rebuild" AI for sure.

In modern, it was somewhat similar to the description above. They can pick off some troops here or there, but just don't have a priority going. The settlement they captured they did well on for me, but then they seemingly just kind of kicked around and did nothing with it, and it wasn't hard to take back. With a little more pressure, they could have turned around and gone after another slightly loosely defended settlement of mine not far away, which would have reduced my stranglehold on the area. Instead they seemed to care more about floating a random settler out to who knows where and not focus their military. At another spot, they just kept walking an artillery up to a group of 6 revenges. So yeah, sure, they get one shot at one of my boats and drop him to like 80% health, but then I have a slew of counter-attacks to mercilessly destroy it.

 

[Sekou]

Your assessment that AI commanders are not being used properly made me recall a goofy moment from a recent game. I was nearing war with Tung Trac- only a matter of time who was declaring first. So I spent some Influence to see where her commanders were located and how many. There was one, all by himself, literally wandering in desert tiles . Nowhere near her borders, not engaged in another action, just off on some John Locke-insprired walkabout. Quite humorous.