Open Borders and AI workers

[Pangaea]

Something strange I observed during a game I played. De Gaulle was badly losing the culture was in a terribly settled recent city, and a worker got into a sticky situation.

"Lads, some Open Borders would really help a guy out here. I know we're at war with Mali and India can't stand us either, but pretty please? "

"Aaach. Screw it. I'll just move anyway."

Aye, that's right. Right after improving that cottage, despite France having closed borders with both Mali and India (me), the worker moved through the territory and started chopping a few tiles further north, where de Gaulle had another city.



Quite a bit later, the city actually revolted to India, leaving those two units in the same ruckus. Oddly enough, they couldn't move, and were sat in that single square for a while, until that tile too flipped to India, and they got teleported further north to France's borders.

Very odd, so figured I'd make a note about it here. I thought the AI could never move through closed borders, but it seems like AI workers can, for some reason. Or something else weird happened here.

 

[lymond]

Did you not say France was at war with Mali? In that case the French worker can move through Mali as he pleases.

 

[Pangaea]

Ah, good point. I'm actually not sure now if they were at war at that time, or if the war had ended. Actually think they weren't at war and they had closed borders, but I'm not 100% sure, and may not have a save where I'm able to check. However, if they *are* at war, that would explain it ofc.

 

[Pangaea]

I actually had a save from that precise turn, 900AD. They were indeed *not* at war any more, and do not have open borders either. De Gaulle is slightly perturbed with me as well, due to a couple of workersteals early on. Don't think he would be willing to open borders!

 

[lymond]

Wait, you worker steal! Exploiter!!! Exploiter!!!

hmmm...maybe it was some tricky deal IBT if the war just ended. I think it may be possible too that DeG deleted the worker and you just saw a different one?

 

[Pangaea]

Hah, yeah, I sometimes fall to the dark side as well with that, at least when playing for the Hall of Fame (which this was). Shame on me Sometimes that gets me burned, badly. Actually lost a game recently due to that, with an axe nonetheless. Tried to workersteal but the unit was standing on the same tile as an archer of the AI I declared on. I thought the unit could move and snag the worker in the same move. But apparently he somehow got teleported while losing the movement point, meaning it was impossible to snag the worker. It was pretty weird. I moved him to the worker, war was declared, but the axe got teleported to a different tile, without movement points. That same archer then hauled ass towards my capital and beat a warrior. Game over

True, it's possible the worker got deleted, if the AI can do that. When looking at that 900AD save, I noticed a worker already chopping further north, which at the time I noticed this weirdness I thought was the same worker that had gotten north to chop. But it was a different one. So I suppose it's possible this one got deleted? But the military units a bit later didn't get deleted. They sat in that single tile until it flipped, and they got teleported north. Pretty strange stuff nonetheless.

Oh, and if you happen to check out that game, Victoria is down to a 1-city and 1-tile empire. I hoped she would get wiped out actually, but I guess she always had enough units in that last city for it to never flip. Would have been funny if it did

 

[Olafeson]

@lymond

does the A.I. actually delete units? I did not know that. Good to know.

You encounter some next level creepy stuff here pangaea, maybe your install of Civ 4 is haunted or the A.I. in your game somehow got connected to google deepmind and the singularity has occured for the first time. Meaning your Civ 4 A.I. is now the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world and did rewrite its own code just to mess with you a bit.

Okay time to go to bed i guess, i am writing nonsense once again. No idea what happened there, but nice observation.

Also did not know that capitals can flip. Pretty strange game you play there, how did victoria got reduced to a 1 tile capital with size 1. Especially since its her last city, so the palace got moved there and it provides culture.

 

[lymond]

Oh..that has happened to me, and not just worker stealing. Also, just declaring war and not realizing that the target has a unit or scout under my stack. Oh joy. And sometimes you can get teleported bizarrely further away than you'd expect depending on borders and stuff nearby. Very annoying, as the element of surprise is lessened greatly, and you likely face many more units.

I'm not totally sure, but just on experience I think I've seen it happen.

Either that, or the worker got his hands on some false papers.

edit: game approved...despite haunted computer and egregious worker stealing

 

[Pangaea]

Also did not know that capitals can flip. Pretty strange game you play there, how did victoria got reduced to a 1 tile capital with size 1. Especially since its her last city, so the palace got moved there and it provides culture.

I waged war on Victoria early-ish on, to snag London. It was a pretty sweet spot with some FPs, despite lacking proper food. She had two cities left after the war, and her palace got moved to Nottingham. That city flipped to me, so technically her capital (with a palace). The last city never flipped, but I had something like 80% culture in there. She had 7-8 units parked there, though, so flip chance may have been reduced to 0%, or very low. Washington's capital actually got under pretty intense pressure too, which surprised me. Think I had maybe 65% culture in it by the end, so it could have flipped if he vacated some more units.

Culture games are pretty boring, but this one wasn't too bad. If nothing else, it was fun to keep watch over the expanding cultural borders, and hoping cities would flip.

Speaking about more weird 'evil', Mansa lost Djenne in a war early on, and at several times when getting maps I noticed it was in resistance. Must have been 3-4 times. But he never got it back. Why? No idea. To me it looks like our options are to take the city (install new governor), or to raze it. But Mansa never got back Djenne. Very odd. Maybe my computer has got H(A)IV or Ebola or something

This is going way back, but I seem to recall Sullla playing a game where he tried to win conquest in an always peace game, by taking over everybody with culture. Think it was successful, but it was on Prince or something like that to make it actually viable. Might be fun for a novelty game, although it might be pretty boring too.

Here is Victoria's ever so impressive empire, where the sun presumably never sets.

Spoiler :

Also, do you recall the huffing and puffing recently about the first picture of a black hole? That was actually my rig, with a little weird lighting. It has a 42-core CPU. Maybe that's related. I don't know.

edit: game approved...despite haunted computer and egregious worker stealing

Cool. It's my first ever submitted culture game (I had a rare glance at the Elite Quattromaster status thingy). It went pretty well overall (got 16 Great Artists), though I can't compete with the incredible 1200/1300s dates, or even 1100s

 

[Pangaea]

Looked through a few screenshots, and noticed another strange thing. At the time I was really confused, and still am tbh. This is really early in the game, like 3800BC or something (actually, think the screenshot is from a little later, the yields are too high, but I noticed the same issue that early). In other words, capital borders have expanded, so you would expect inland capitals to have 21 land tiles, one for each tile in its BFC.

But what is this??

This wasn't on Deity either, where AIs will get 2 cities really early. Nor on super-low levels where you can get settlers from huts (if AIs can get that too, not sure).

Not that it matters much, maybe just a weird glitch, but it's something that surprised me at the time. Think it was from one of the games I aborted for one reason or another, so I didn't think more on it. A little odd, though.

 

[Lennier]

By default conquered cities can’t flip back to the loosing civ, so that would explain Djenne. (There is an option to allow flipping after conquest; I’m assuming Pangea did not have that option selected for his game.)

if Civ A looses a city to Civ B, Civ A cannot culture flip it from B. However, another Civ (let’s call it C) can culture flip it from B; then A could flip it from C.

 

[Pangaea]

By default conquered cities can’t flip back to the loosing civ, so that would explain Djenne. (There is an option to allow flipping after conquest; I’m assuming Pangea did not have that option selected for his game.)

Thanks, wasn't aware of that, and it would explain Djenne as it was sniped by Peter during a war.

Does this only apply between AIs however? I'm pretty sure I've conquered cities and then had them flip back later due to culture. And I've never used that option in the settings because I quite frankly wasn't sure what it did. Think it happened to a city in a recent Lain playthrough as well.

 

[AcaMetis]

They can still revolt due to culture pressure, but they can't flip unless the option is checked. Shouldn't be able to, at any rate.

 

[ArchGhost]

does the A.I. actually delete units? I did not know that. Good to know.

Yes, they do. I've seen it happen occasionally with boats, watching the overall picture in debug mode (the crtl-z cheat) in all-AI matches. I have no idea what prompts it.

I'm also pretty sure AIs also either auto-delete workers they capture or there just isn't a mechanic for them to assimilate them and they die like any normal "free kill" unit.

Also did not know that capitals can flip

I play a lot of Earth18 map just for fun and I've seen Paris flip London (across the channel even) in a game where Louis got all the wonders up to HGB except GLH which went to China. He could exhibit even more pressure on Berlin (3rd ring!) But Freddy tends to both build more units and fight back culturally more. Captiols starting so close is probably the only way it could happen between AIs, due to the heavy bias on invested plot culture vs. per turn output

What's nuts about this is the AI is more than happy to garrison as many units as it takes to prevent this, but when Liz is being stupid and staying at 2 cities, apparently she couldn't build units fast enough

 

[krikav]

The AI does delete units.
I was trying out a strategy to stunt the AIs techrate by gifting them 100s of warriors for them to upgrade to rifles.
Alot of the warriors simply dissapeared.

 

[Lennier]

Thanks, wasn't aware of that, and it would explain Djenne as it was sniped by Peter during a war.

Does this only apply between AIs however? I'm pretty sure I've conquered cities and then had them flip back later due to culture. And I've never used that option in the settings because I quite frankly wasn't sure what it did. Think it happened to a city in a recent Lain playthrough as well.

They can still revolt due to culture pressure, but they can't flip unless the option is checked. Shouldn't be able to, at any rate.

What AcaMetic said. Pangaea might have conquered a city and have it flip to a different civ than he conquered the city from--I've had that happen on occasion. And I've often had conquered cities repeatedly go into revolt due to cultural pressure from the original civ.

 

[Pangaea]

What AcaMetic said. Pangaea might have conquered a city and have it flip to a different civ than he conquered the city from--I've had that happen on occasion. And I've often had conquered cities repeatedly go into revolt due to cultural pressure from the original civ.

True, it's possible I don't remember it correctly, and that they flipped to a third party. I do know cities have gone into revolt though, and I've been worried about them flipping so have stuffed military units in there. A revolt in a big city for 50 turns ( ) is still very painful, but it looks like I didn't know the mechanics here, and those cities actually cannot flip -- only go into revolt again and again.

I know a city flipped in one of the recent Lain games, but maybe it was the same deal there too. Perhaps Lain captured a city on the border, and with the culture of the original civ gone from the area, the other civ's culture overwhelmed the city, and it eventually flipped while Lain was killing stuff elsewhere with no/few city garrisons. It seems the most likely.

 

[6K Man]

I always thought deleting units makes sense if they’re obsolete and you’re likely to lose them in combat. Killed units add to war weariness; deleted units don’t. Can anyone confirm?

 

[NickGabben]

I know a city flipped in one of the recent Lain games, but maybe it was the same deal there too. Perhaps Lain captured a city on the border, and with the culture of the original civ gone from the area, the other civ's culture overwhelmed the city, and it eventually flipped while Lain was killing stuff elsewhere with no/few city garrisons. It seems the most likely.

I think that was the Alexander game where Saladin captured a barb city that everybody was after. Lain then declared on Saladin and took it only to have it flip to Korea a couple of millennia later.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I always thought deleting units makes sense if they’re obsolete and you’re likely to lose them in combat. Killed units add to war weariness; deleted units don’t. Can anyone confirm?

AI pays very little for upgrades though, it's chump change for it on high difficulties. I've won some maps by taking a vassal and foisting tons of warriors/catapults on it. A way to absorb AI bonuses, sort of.