(more) odd ai behavior

Bucephalus

Shooting from the lip....
Joined
Nov 16, 2003
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Location
England's green and pleasant land.
In my current game, the Celts sent an invasion force overseas to my island. Before they could get there I successfully sank everything except for one red-lined tranport. So what did they do next, run for a safe harbour or land its forces regardless then run home? Neither. The loaded transport just sat there. Curious, I refrained from sinking it to see how long it would remain unmoved. It sat there for 32 turns until it was sunk by some unidentified sub. Any observations?
 
The AI doesn't like to move transports without an escort. It was probably waiting for another ship to arrive.
 
Other funny thing the AI tends to do is sent out ALL his useless units when starting a war. (these units are the prime food of my artillery and cavalry). The AI even sends away the cities defenders for an attack when you appear at the gate with about 10 cavalry and an infantry. BTW: when you get the infantry unit you should protect all vulnerable troops with it. I hardly ever see the AI attack infanty in the open field.
 
Zakharov said:
The AI doesn't like to move transports without an escort. It was probably waiting for another ship to arrive.
For 32 turns?!? :wow:
It probably went stuck into a loop. Say 2 options almost equally "good" - wait there for an escort to be built (wasting x turns) or go back and heal (wasting y turns). Suppose x<y, for a slight margin. The transport wait there. Next turn, the AS find itself short on troops and delays building the ship in favor of a cheap unit. In the meantime, the transport sat idle, so x and y remains the same. Next turn, same story...

A human player would have moved the transport back, since no turns are actually wasted until the escort ship is finished and starts to move. So, next turn, y would have been lower than x[/y]. But, hey, we're talking about AS...
 
Hey, it's just a computer! ;)
 
Your problem is definitely one of the stupidest things the ai does. They will usually do the same thing if you sink one or two of their escorts and they still have one or two left. They will just sit there, even if it's one square away from your city, waiting for a new escort to arrive and give them three until they can start moving again.
 
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