New AI Likes ICS?

joyous_gard

Prince
Joined
Oct 10, 2010
Messages
476
I am playing Alex, King, Standard, Continents. Been wiping out Suleiman with 3 Hoplite, 2 Catapults.

In the meantime, Napoleon is snaking a string of cities three tiles away from one another straight to my capital!

I don't know how his smiles can handle it, but enough is enough. I will have to take him down a peg (I hope).

The 6 cities headed straight for my capital does look a little odd. I think he must be just building settlers.
 
I've noticed that too, pre-patch the AI would usually place their cities with 3 hexes inbetween, now its only 2 (is that the minimum distance?).

Maybe it got changed because it helps the AI defend, since more cities can fire on attackers?
 
Indeed this is true, my 1st game on King Pangea, Persia Had 8 cities all really close quite early on in the game. He became quite the economic powerhouse using ICS. France was same.

They normally built a quite abit of cities but they get em out faster atleast in my last few games on king & all ICS style( really close ) France is annoyin the hell of out me post patch he gets 1 hell of a boost early game.
 
Getting a few turns in this morning, Nap is planting cities to keep me from moving in.

It may be coincidence, but he keeps extending the city chain towards my capital and even though my troops are there he plops a city down. It really looks like that ICS game that those guys did to prove that ICS is a good strategy. They were plopping cities down on the front like this.

Also, he is at Musket and Cannon and I am only at Sword and Catapult. I am doing fine in battle, but am I going to lose because I am so far behind? There's a whole nother continent out there and Elizabeth is on my continent also. Not sure how she is doing. She finally DOW on Nap though. So I think we may sleep together.
 
Prepare for war! Before you know it Nappie begins to complain that you're expanding way too much in his direction and that your land is his! I think you should try to befriend Elizabeth to get her into the war too.
 
but simultaneously encouraging the AI to use ICS in the very same patch.
The AI, pre-patch, already did ICS (just not the same way as a player would do) due to the crazy happiness bonuses it received (I play Immortal). Now the problem is much worse. I played 2 games post-patch and in both, the AI founds cities like crazy. Doesn't even build military units to defend them (since cities are mostly invulnerable early on now). So, we have AI with ~10 cities by turn 70 or so and I have maybe 3. I noticed Tradition is the *main* policy choice for the AI now and they love the +33% bonus for fighting in friendly lands. With the horse and city defense nerf, coupled with not having to deal with happiness, ICS is the *ideal* AI strategy.
 
I just started a game as Persia/immortal/continents last night. I'm about 75 turns in. I've had to expand aggressively in order to keep pace with the Ottomans -- he has his sixth settler out and I'm about 10 turns away from mine. The other 6 civs have between 3 and 4 cities.

All of the AI cities are packed fairly tightly with roads and pretty well defended I'd say. I really haven't been tempted to engage in early war (a first for me). My cities are very sparsely populated compared to the AI, but that is because I've been emphasizing production and trying to max happiness for an early golden age.

I've actually been very impressed with the way the AI is expanding aggressively in strategic directions & managing to field a decent sized army. Of 8 civs on the continent, my military is ranked 4th in size. All in all, this is the first game of C5 that I am actually having fun playing. Kudos to the changes so far (and the modding community!).
 
Hah! Nappy is doing this in my game as well. Had 6 or 7 cities down where they were always 3 away from the previous city. Eventually he declared, couldn't touch my border city that was surrounded by hills, I researched Longbowman (England), and pushed back and took all of his cities with 4 longbowman, a catapult (gift), a spearman-then-pikeman (upgraded during the war). 1/2way through the war I got swordsmen.
 
I find CiVs that follow this ICS strategy for some unearthly reason seem to forget to build a military. In my current game as England I noticed siam to the south of me creating a growing ICS blob. Seeing as he was pushing on my borders and making ridiculously bad trade deals and telling me how much my army sucked, I decided to teach him a lesson; I expected a nasty war; I bought off 2 CS with 5 unit militaries to help as well.

AD 175

Siam: 9 Cities, (based on trade screen) 387 Gold, 39 GPT, Iron, 4 Luxuries
England: 6 Cities, 765 Gold, 72 GPT, 6 Iron, 4 Horse, 6 Luxuries

Start of War
England: 2 Knights 7 Longbows, 3 Pikemen, 1 Longswordsman, 1 Trebuchet
Siam: ALL i SAW WAS 2 WARRIORS.

Final Peace treaty: 12 turns later
Siam down to 5 Cities, Pays entire treasury 190 Gold, 36 GPT and Wine (lost other luxury cities)
England: 8 Cities (1 razed) 3 Knights, 4 Pikemen, 1 Longswordman, 1 Techbuchet, 10 Longbows

Casualties England 1 Pikeman vs. : Siam: 2 Warriors, 2 Bowmen, 2 elephants)

The elephants and 2 bowmen were built during the war - I saw no other units. I have seen this in my other games one or 2 civs usually just end up ICs spamming and having no real military and get rolled up by the player BUT other AIs cant touch them as they build no catapults .

Rat
 
In my experience, it would appear that an AI will ICS if he has no competition. On a huge Earth map I found that in the 'old world' all the civs there had not filled out all the space. Not even close to it in fact, since the entirety of Europe and Sweden/Norway was untouched. There was an obvious reason for this really, they had all been playing a more balanced game in the face of having to compete with their neighbours. It had worked as well, there was no clearly supreme civilisation over there thanks to them all taking more interest in their own defense and the new difficulty in assaulting cities (nice to see them massing up huge forces and catapults in preparation), as opposed to the usual discovery that one mega-civ has caught a break and rode a wave of puppeteering across the lands.

India started off in south America on its own. It went mental. Despite India having a disadvantage towards having lots of cities, they had done it anyway and just stuffed the entire place to the brim. The Aztecs were doing the same thing in north America, because their only competition there was me, and I was too busy doing my Dwarf (Inca) thing in the mountains until the moron decided I couldn't take him on with a manufacturing level five times greater than the average.
 
The AI is ICS mad on my game, too. Playing as the Aztecs, I had Russia expanding rapidly to the north of me. They were ahead of me in points and tech (I believe they'd hit Renaissance and I was in Medieval still) so I decided to do what Aztecs do best and stick 'em on the sacrificial altar. This was my first war post-patch. I was expecting a tough fight.

She had about double my cities, and I literally walked into Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novgorod and Rostov. I think I saw one archer and two longswordsman during the entire war. No resistance at all- Catherine even founded a NEW CITY. DURING THE WAR. Even during the time when she's lost her first three city, she still finds time to build a new city. What?

Then I had Elizabeth snaking towards me post Russia's defeat, denouncing me, and then declaring war because I'd climbed incredibly high up the leaderboard. Fair do's, I guess- I mean, I DoW'd on Catherine for the same reasons- but the snaking destroys any sense of immersion for me.

Also, the AI clumping loads of cities together just looks like total crap. It doesn't feel like I'm treading deep into enemy territory, it's more like just moving next door. -_-
 
The elephants and 2 bowmen were built during the war - I saw no other units. I have seen this in my other games one or 2 civs usually just end up ICs spamming and having no real military and get rolled up by the player BUT other AIs cant touch them as they build no catapults .

She had about double my cities, and I literally walked into Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novgorod and Rostov. I think I saw one archer and two longswordsman during the entire war.

I'm curious what level of difficulty you guys are playing on. I definitely saw that sort of thing pre-patch at lower levels of difficulty. But, my experience post-patch stepped up to immortal difficulty has been very different.

I'm about 125 turns in now -- I'm a few turns away from my 7th city The 2 largest civs have 8 cities and they also have the largest armies. One other civ has 7 cities. One civ (India) has only 4 cities -- but they're huge! The rest have 5 or 6. Pretty even distribution really.

As far as military, the two largest civs also are in the top 3 military. I've fallen to 6th out of 10 civs now discovered on my continent. Granted, I've been investing huge production into barracks, stables, and armories in my 3 military cities because I'm about to switch over into massive military expansion time....but I'd say I'm sitting pretty vulnerable right now.

Oh yeah, and I'm trailing India by 3 or 4 techs, but it's about to be more like 5 or 6 cuz they sign one research agreement after another after another. I'm trailing the majority of the civs on my continent by 2 to 3 techs. I'm hoping they're the smaller techs I've been holding off on......
 
I'm curious what level of difficulty you guys are playing on. I definitely saw that sort of thing pre-patch at lower levels of difficulty. But, my experience post-patch stepped up to immortal difficulty has been very different. .

I am playing on King. I started another new game. I can confirm again, that the AI seems to be making no real effort to build a substantial military at all. They may have made the tactical AI smarter but it is a bigger pushover as it hardly builds anything. War fighting is now even a bigger joke.

It is just spamming cities in the most e-tarded locations. Lizardbreath is spamming non-stop settlers into useless locations.

Rat
 
Well, I just can't help but get the feeling the computer is trying to even everything out. I should be dead right now, but I took some cities from Nap, got a peace deal.

He ICSed some more while I tried to get to rifle. He DOWed on me 2 turns before I hit rifle (he was still at Musket/Cannon. I tooled him. My two cannons are on steroids and the rifles were patient and I used the idea I saw of sending my knights around to get some of his workers.

Ultimately he gave me a ton of cities and now I am in third place. All of the sudden, everyone is friendly and has tons of luxury resources to help me get to 0 frown. In the meantime they are in modern.

Not sure how I am going to lose, but I think it is lost to Catherine for science. War is a serious grind and not much fun if you can't roll on fools. I might have to go down to Prince or below.
 
I got school by Napoleon on King. It was embarassing!

Then in my second game, I watched Napoleon fold Oda like a napkin. He had a HUGE army in both games. I won the second game just as we was setting up his units along my border. He also fielded a a proper combined force each time.
 
Some AIs will expand to fill all available space pretty quickly, I've noticed this before and after the patch on immortal. Of course, some decide to only found 2 cities even when they have room to expand.
 
I am playing on King

Try jumping up to emperor. I started playing at king and I was having the same sort of games you're describing. Since I moved up to emperor and again to immortal, I've noticed the AI seems to have larger armies with each successive step up.

Then again, maybe I've been fortunate with this game -- it's possible the the dice have just rolled well. Maybe the conditions of the world I'm playing are pretty ideal too. With a few exceptions, there is quite a lot of good land for each civ and natural borders that seem perfectly placed for each civ to expand within. Also, because there's 10 civs on one continent (19 in the game with 25 CS), it seems that everyone's borders are starting to bump each other at about 6 to 9 cities each. So, there shouldn't be the problem where one civ has access to a huge swath of land and is able to place 25 cities or some crazy amount.


AI seems to be making no real effort to build a substantial military at all.

So, I last posted at turn 125 or so. It's 35 turns later. I completed my military buildings in my 3 military cities (one for melee, one for mounted, and one for naval). Melee city built 1 immortal and 1 swordman; mounted city built 1 chariot archer and 1 horseman; and the naval city built 1 trireme. Result, I've moved from 6/10 military to 3rd largest military. I'd say I pretty much doubled the size of my military and there's still 2 civs on my continent with a larger military.

I'm about settle my 8th city. 2 civs have 9. And I gotta say -- they seem to be picking good spots. In fact, it's been pretty annoying because I've been beat to at least 3 areas that I really wanted for strategic reasons. Not only did the AI beat me to those 3 areas, but they settled on the tile most strategic given their location relative to mine, e.g. on a hill tucked behind a river.....

On the other hand, I've noticed that the Chinese and the Americans have settled in some pretty bad locations, but then again, they're sort of boxed in and they don't really have access to good land without settling behind other nations' lands.
 
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