More on the "shuffle of doom" bug that's probably affecting aggression (pics)

[feralminded]

Was it not the case that whenever declaring war with Open Borders in place, all units get kicked out of the territory...? Or am I crazy and confusing civ4 with civ5?

If my memory is correct, then the whole theory of "attack is intended purpose" becomes weaker... OP has a point that could be worrisome IF Monty really was aiming at him. But from here, without access to the savegame, it seems hard to really know the true purpose/target.

Anyways, was that not the case with OB? If they took that away, then OB is too open for abuse...

Nope you have it right. The second he DoWs on me all of his units will be kicked out. I have not gotten DoW'd much in BNW (though its pretty rare I leave myself THIS open) but I cannot recall the AI ever DoWing on my from G&K with units INSIDE my territory. It's always been a rather deliberate and predictable series (move units to my border, DoW next turn, invade). This I have never seen before.

I will play with the save game to see just how much of my neck I need to expose to get him to DoW, I'll try deleting units and walls and whatnot. I will also load up the turn 130 save and see if I have literally no defenses before he marches his army out to see if I can't get him to properly DoW BEFORE he muddles himself inside my territory. I mean it is possible that he's just that scared of invading that he doesn't believe his mega army can beat me down so at the last second he fails his "courage" check and then the script goes off the rails somehow ... but I sincerely hope the Montezuma AI on emperor isn't that scared.

I'm completely dead here even a cheiftan level player would attack me with these odds. 2 catapults, 3 CBs, GG, 6 Jaguars, 2 pikes (Honor) against a CB behind walls, a warrior who's vapor the second you attack, a CB on a hill who will fold to jags like a paper doll, and a catapult completely out of position. And the profits from the attack are absolutely massive (I have hanging gardens and oracle, plus a ton of gold, plus the Uluru).

I'll see if I can't get more information tonight/tomorrow. That said I may get distracted by my current game which is an awful lot of fun. I am thoroughly enjoying this expansion and the faster we can identify these kinds of bugs and (hopefully) get them resolved the better all our game experiences can be. I tend toward a more builder-centric playstyle myself (unless I'm playing deity, then I just play to win) but bugs like this (and the ability to exploit them for massive player gain) really ruin it for me.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Was it not the case that whenever declaring war with Open Borders in place, all units get kicked out of the territory...? Or am I crazy and confusing civ4 with civ5?

No, that's part of what I'm saying, or part of what I was trying to say, anyway. As it calculates where its troops will end up once it declares and they are moved out of the borders, it never gets the starting conditions that it wants for a backstabbing attack.

 

[sanchopanda]

I've seen this shuffle several times, but didn't think of a bug until I read this thread. Every time when they were dancing I've thought they wanted to attack a neighbor but made peace before reaching their goal or that their path was blocked and they recalculated their way. Know I know that they wanted to attack me and one of my two invincible units (Conan or Robin Hood) were blocking kind of a key position. That's why in most of my games I never get attacked even if my neighbors are mighty and natural warmongers with huge armies that hate me like hell. This makes so much strange behavior I've seen clear...

 

[Jatta Pake]

In the Polycast, Firaxis said they selected leaders that would make interesting AI personalities. Perhaps Monty is just taunting you. Or he is crazy.

But I agree something isn't working. In Vanilla you would have been toast by now with that force coming at you.

 

[PhilBowles]

My guess is that they are trying to get there troops into position but cannot due an occupied hex or some such.

The AI now seems very wary of negative modifiers, and either unwilling or unable to break agreements - it won't backstab, it won't make a promise and then break it. Possibly it never receives the trigger to attack because open borders are still in effect.

 

[Silence11]

I had a similar issue with Askia last night - he had a huge military force shuffling in and out of my boarders, and I assumed he was coming for me. I was confused when he didn't attack, so finally I sent my spy over to Askia, and the spy said he was plotting agains Babylon. Babylon is located on the other side of my rather large territory (7 cities)... I think maybe it was a pathing issue? Eventually Askia abandoned whatever he was doing and sent his military home, but it took a long time.

 

[m_m_x]

i had the same "suffele of doom" in all my games, i think its a bug, serious one

 

[kurtkage]

I recall this behavior from Vanilla but for some reason don't think I saw it in G&K.

 

[MarshalN]

I saw something like this yesterday with the Japanese walking through, very, very slowly, my territory. The army was something like 20 units. They were trying to get at the Americans, who were on the other side of my land. The Japanese were fighting the Americans and were just taking a really long time getting there. It's a pathfinding bug, I think, where the AI has some trouble coordinating movement for a large number of units. In your case I think the AI is trying to figure out if it wants to DOW the citystate, and can't quite figure it out and got stuck in a loop. If it wanted to DOW you it wouldn't plop units inside your land.

 

[ToodleElNoodos]

Anyone else notice their Proletariat Assault also? I've had cases where I'm warned of a pending sneak attack, only to find an army of Workers crossing over the borders and....chilling.

 

[sanchopanda]

Anyone else notice their Proletariat Assault also? I've had cases where I'm warned of a pending sneak attack, only to find an army of Workers crossing over the borders and....chilling.

Not in form of an attack, but I've seen a huge number of workers, settlers and a few great generals moving lonely through my territory when I'm at war with that civilization.

 

[feralminded]

Anyone else notice their Proletariat Assault also? I've had cases where I'm warned of a pending sneak attack, only to find an army of Workers crossing over the borders and....chilling.

hahaha ... next civ expansion I want this to be a viable option ... just give workers a 1 strength so I can try and raze a city with the proletariat uprising.

 

[phoinix]

I also had the same issue on my 1st game in BNW last night. In my case it was between two AIs. Brazil had a shuffle going on its borders with its neighbor Morocco for 10-15 turns but finally managed to DoW. Barely managed to cross the borders though, only got 2-3 tiles pillaged. Morocco did more damage... It seems odd because they shared quiet wide borders and there was a lot of free space to move units.

Yet another issue due to strict 1UPT

 

[pittbully]

Feral- i would like to add my experience to yours. Everyone here is stating that its a pathing error but im not sure. The celts in my game backstabbed dow'd me and had a large force aiming for a young ripe city that a greedily placed far ahead of my own expansion to claim some good territory. They began to move to my city (12 units-spears, archers, catapults, and a gg). So i moved a chariot archer and an archer forward to stall and kite them. But when i did this, they turned away and shuffled around their capital untill i built a force to take their two cities.

The terrain here was mostly flat desert with an occasional hill or two but my city did border lake victoria, however they never even made it to my border. They did end up embarking a single catapult to another city where it was killed before it could reach land.

And this game im playing now, egypt just backstabbed me and snatched a city up just fine with chariots, spears, and catapults...

 

[Stellarnight]

I experienced something similar to that. The Zulu amassed a MASSIVE force of Impi, C.Bows and Catapults. I thought i was doomed. The Terrain however was jungles and hills along with the fact that there was a 2 tile bottleneck in the east caused by a lake and a 3 tile bottleneck on the west.

Credit to the Battle AI. Shaka attempted to bring his forces to try to surround my city and attack in mass(rather than piecemeal). But the terrain and my own constant shuffling of my troops must have messed the AI badly. Shaka was undecided and kept shifting his forces around to try to get a perfect attack. After like 20 turns of dancing around, he finally declared war.

The movements of the troops became far better once he declared war because he have place to move. However, the prioritizing of targets leaves much to be desired. Instead of slaughtering all my c.bows who were standing around, the Impis kept trying to get a good position to strike my city and this resulted in them getting repulsed when a human player would have killed me in 5 turns.

Though i still lost my city in the end. Kudos to the AI. They flanked me from my open west front and took my city while i was busy fighting off the east. They even did an amphibious operation across the lake.

 

[Djinn8]

The only other thing I can think of is he wanted to go straight for my capital (southeast of the picture just a hex) but since I have a unit parked in the mountain pass he can't seem to figure out how to go through the wide open field just to the north. I dunno for certain.

I think that's the most likely answer. I've had a similar situation happen with Songhai trying to get through a 1 tile mountain pass and refusing to DOW (this was in GK). And I can't count the number of times that the AI has bypassed cities in favor of attacking my cap.

 

[Chiatroll]

It is really weird. I saw it also in a game I had where I started next to china and they declared war on me before the classic era and continued to declare war on me until the industrial era when I wiped them off my island for the wonders.

Thousands of years of Wu yelling at me then occasionally sending someone by himself near the hills so he could be slaughtered by an army on superior ground. This is on marathon so it was like a thousand turns of idiotic shuffling.

I figured the AI is just really bad at handling not having good ground to attack from so it dances when they hadn't put in a good way around having no good offensive positions.

 

[SamBC]

A save to reproduce any weird behaviour might be very helpful to the devs.

 

[feralminded]

So I played with this for a while last night and managed to solicit a DoW within 5 turns by moving my units just a bit. The problem is that even after the DoW he was grossly ineffective and I managed to hold off the massive assault losing only 1 CB in the process. Honestly it was an extremely disappointing attack, I was excited to finally see the DoW but even afterwards he continued to ineffectively shuffle his units within range of that city which was able to completely pick his army apart (1 unit per turn between the walls and CB). In the end something broke and the AI did a miserable job here of attacking, even after I coerced him into the backstab. I understand that the AI isn't very good at tactical combat but what was most disappointing is how it continued to shuffle AFTER the DoW instead of moving to eliminate the CB and catapult outside the city and not actually moving the bows and cata's he had to siege. In fact the only thing that did any damage were two knights he had off screen that swept in and took out the CB that I built from that city a few turns after the fight started.

 

[Doviello]

One thing that annoys me is that the AI 'never stop shufflin'. Even at peace times, their units will NEVER stop and fortify, no they just have to move every damn turn, all of them, forever. It's basically impossible to play without "Singleplayer Quick Movement" on.

In my experience, this shuffling get much worst in Island/archipelago maps, because during coastal attacks the AI will happily shuffle/embark its units near the coast, leaving those vulnerable transport ships to be sniped by my frigates, one by one. In my last game (large, king, continents) i declared war on Darius, which had no navy, and before i could take a single coastal city, i must have sinked about 20 land units by shooting transports. GGs included. He could had set up his artillery, but decided to embark them instead, for what? I played 7 games of BNW already (@ king), lost 5, the only 2 games i won were continents and archipelago, because having oceans in the map is a huge handicap against the AI.