Offensively minded AI artillery in 1.29f!

[DrJambo]

Dunno if it's just my imagination, but i have seen quite a substantial increase of offensively used artillery by the AI in 1.29f. One Japanese stack consisted of 4 artillery and 4 infantry sat on my borders and caused me no-end of bother..

Can Firaxis confirm whether an increase use was introduced in 1.29f... or anyone else for that matter?

Any which way, it's made for some interesting industrial age wars.

 

[ainwood]

I certainly saw offensive artillary in 1.21f. Haven't even installed 1.29f yet!


Actually - its ocurred to me that this behaviour is a direct result of the flag in the editor as to whether an AI unit is offensive or defensive.

But does the AI bombard with a defensive artillary sitting in a city under seige?

 

[SirJethro]

I haven't seen offensive artillery in either patch.

 

[Aristos]

I have finished my first game 1.29 and i can say it was the most enjoyable ever.
To your question: YES, i attacked the germans and they used all its arty sitting in their cities to bombard my aproaching attacks AND the improvements bordering their territory. I just attacked early enough (just after they started building Panzers, cut their unique rubber resource, and was able to win the war with infantry and artillery. I would have like to see the germans with a lot of artillery though.

BUT i can asure you that they used their arty sitting in the cities when i aproached.

Let's see if they stack it also. Now i am entering the industrial era with the germans. We will see.

C-ya

Rebel Rick

 

[DrJambo]

Originally posted by ainwood
I certainly saw offensive artillary in 1.21f. Haven't even installed 1.29f yet!


Actually - its ocurred to me that this behaviour is a direct result of the flag in the editor as to whether an AI unit is offensive or defensive.

But does the AI bombard with a defensive artillary sitting in a city under seige?

1. Artillery don't get an offensive/defensive tag in the editor.... they just get "artillery".

2. Yes the Ai was bombarding me with their artillery from their own cities. At one time a small Ai city was bombarding my improvements from his city and all i got was the message since i couldn't actually see the city or the piece of artillery firing (artillery range of 2 ya see).

 

[DrJambo]

if you wanna see the Al with a lot of artillery, flag it under each civ's preference list for building in the editor (civilisation tab).

I also do this for air and naval units for a lot of civs. This way you geet a feast of the blighters...

 

[Catt]

Even before 1.29 I'd seen many examples of the AI using arty to bombard my tile imrpovements - often with arty placed in mountains under a pair of infantry. I still haven't seen the AI wheeling artillery into my territory to assist in an offensive thrust against cities.

I think (but would have to check again) that Soren indicated in the recent chat that no real changes were made to the AI's use of artillery in 1.29f.

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by Catt
. . .
I think (but would have to check again) that Soren indicated in the recent chat that no real changes were made to the AI's use of artillery in 1.29f.

Another inexplicable unexplained pronouncement from Soren. The lack of accuracy continues.

WHY aren't they being used offensively? Bombardment units were a major offensive force in the Napoleonic Wars, and important offensively throughout the 20th century.

I modded the game to have accurate unit values. So cavalry will rarely defeat riflemen and never infantry. So AI units attackingwith artillery before tanks are going to lose. Well, the AI cheats so much it evens things up.

 

[bobgote]

They always attack my improvements. Mainly with bombers, but with artillery on their borders. I haven't seen them moving it around tho, or moving them into war either.

 

[Catt]

Originally posted by Zouave


Another inexplicable unexplained pronouncement from Soren. The lack of accuracy continues.

Actually, I think it can be explained as an answer (rather than a pronouncement) to a question that went something like "Have you changed the AI's use of artillery in the new version?"

WHY aren't they being used offensively? Bombardment units were a major offensive force in the Napoleonic Wars, and important offensively throughout the 20th century.

I modded the game to have accurate unit values. So cavalry will rarely defeat riflemen and never infantry. So AI units attackingwith artillery before tanks are going to lose. Well, the AI cheats so much it evens things up.

Disclaimer - I'm not a military historian, nor particularly knowledgeable about military history. With that disclaimer, and based on my limited knowledge, I will state that I agree that Zouave's mods more closely imitate realistic warfare than the game does out of the box . And other mods do so as well.

But the game designers never intended to simulate realism as closely as possible - they have said so on more than one occasion. Many decisions made and clearly evident in the "out of the box" version of the game are the result of gameplay decisions - wanting to make a more entertaining, engaging game. But you can't please all of the people all of the time.

If a game closer to realism is your goal, by all means try out Zouave's mod (there are others as well). I've just found that most realism mods take a lot out of the game experience -- I wouldn't want to play a game where the AI will always "lose" because it doesn't know how to deal with a specific unit (artillery) very well, or it doesn't know how to adapt to a specific mod effect (i.e., making more modern units have an overwhelming advantage over older units is more realistic, but the AI won't "know" that it is vital to save enough gold to upgrade - it will instead continue to manage its treasury as if having pikemen in the age of riflemen is not a huge problem).

All that said, I would really like to see the AI bring stacks of artillery into my territory as a component of its offensive maneuvers - something I've never seen it do, under current or previous versions. Would certainly up the challenge (and fun) . And I can't think of a good "gameplay" reason for this failing - I just think they didn't master programming the AI to use arty the way a lot of human players do.

 

[mdisaster]

Hmm, a couple of week ago the English attacked a town of mine with a stack of a dozen of riflemen/swordsmen and four catapults. Not very effective, but a nice try anyway

(I think I still had 1.21f at the time, BTW)

 

[Anglophile]

I would just like to support Catt's implied (at least I inferred an implied) view that game play matters as much or more than realism - at least when one is playing a game; as well as the view that adding realism/complexity tends to diminish the realitive effectiveness of the AI as the human player handles these things better than the AI. This leads to the paradox that adding complexity makes it simpler/easier for the human. While I too would love to see an AI that is significantly better than now both tactically and strategically. However, I know from my company's attempts to develop even semi-smart systems on things much less complex than Civ3 (by people much smarter than me), that this is not a simple task. Really easy to complain about but falls under my motto 'everything is possible to the person who doesn't have to do it'. AI has advanced alot since I started playing computer strategy games 15 years ago but I suspect we're a couple of AI generations away from really smart/competitive AIs. But then, do you really want your butt kicked every game at Cheiftain? Be careful what you wish for...

 

[GhengisFarb]

First of all artillery ARE OFFENSIVE. They can be used defensively but they are designed by definition to be offensive.

One of first things you realize when going through artillery school is that you AREN'T GOING TO BE ABLE TO RUN FROM THE ENEMY. If you're on the defensive you're dead. Simple as that, the enemy is going to outrun you. Artillery stay behind the front lines and destroys/softens up the enemy forces so that when the cavalry(tanks) and infantry break through they won't have to fight another entenched enemy line.

However, artillery can work well on the defensive, but its only chance of succes is to destroy the enemy before it comes into contact.

Think about it. When a castle was being sieged who were the catapults more important to? The defenders where a shot might kill 1-20 enemy if it just happened to hit somewhere near them, or the attackers where every shot put another chink in the wall or one step closer to breaking down the gate?
(unless, of course, they were really bad shots)

All hail the "King of Battle!"

 

[Jon Shafer]

Until the modern age (not Civ 3 wise), artillery was very ineffective. It's suspected that only 8 to 10 percent of all casualties caused during the Napoleonic times were due to artillery fire. Their main asset was to demoralize enemy soldiers... after all, how many guys want to charge ahead when they've got huge balls of iron flying around decapitating people.

 

[bobgote]

Originally posted by Trip
Until the modern age (not Civ 3 wise), artillery was very ineffective. It's suspected that only 8 to 10 percent of all casualties caused during the Napoleonic times were due to artillery fire. Their main asset was to demoralize enemy soldiers... after all, how many guys want to charge ahead when they've got huge balls of iron flying around decapitating people.

If i'm not mistaken, the main use of artillery then was to destroy fortifications and cause mayhem in said fortifications rather than kill people.