Pleasantly surprised by the AI!

[DrJambo]

I have to say I've been pleasantly surprised on more than one occasion by the AI and the actions the AI's taken during wars against me. So much so, that several of the AI's manoeuvres have ultimately cost me victory.

As an example, in my current game I'm playing as the Americans (randomly chosen) on a standard sized "snaky" Achipaelago map on Prince level and was leading in points with Elizabeth of the English closely behind. As the game has neared towards its climax I would say that it has essentially become a race to victory between the two of us.

Now, she started the space race first, ringing alarm bells everywhere considering I hadn't started the Apollo program yet! My immediate reaction was to bribe someone to go to war with the English knowing full well that none of the other remaining civs had a hope of winning a war against them. So, I coerced the Russians into action in a vain attempt to stall the space ship construction and they soon pleaded with me to join the war. I did, thinking I could continue to build improvemnts and keep the English at bay and maybe at the same time pillage a few of their resources. All was going fine until the English somehow managed to sneak 2 transports and 2 destroyers round to the back of my empire (we're on separate land masses) and unload a mass of tanks, marines and artillery. Since then, I've lost one city and I'm in a small crisis dealing with this invasion. My fleet, consisting of destroyers and a carrier and fighters, is sitting off the English coast a long way away from immediate relief help. My plan has majorly backfired.

I picked an archipaelago map because I love having to rely of the naval aspect of civ games. Based on previous civ installments I didn't really expect too much of a naval challenge and consequently thought my advanced homeland would be safe from anything. Well I'm pleased to say I've been so wrong and although I'm currently paying the price for complacency, I won't treat the naval AI so lightly the next time. What started as simply pillaging my sea resources eventually turned into a full scale round the back invasion.

In Sirian's interview over at Apolyton I'd read about last minute improvements made to the naval side of things, but I honestly didn't really believe it.

Great stuff.

 

[asmodeus81]

In my last game on noble, I tended to pick on the weaker nations (though i did conquer the 3rd score ranked nation, they were still behind me in tech by a little bit). I left my home continent with a pretty dismal military force (maybe 2 mech inf and if lucky a SAM infantry in each city) and airlifted/transported/rebased nearly my entire military over to another continent. I was only challenged on my home continent by a couple of destroyers sneaking past my naval blockades and pillaging a few fishing nets. I thought it was risky, but it allowed faster victory overseas to restation most of my military there.. I suppose if I'd actually tried to pick on enemies who weren't weaker outcast nations I might have seen a proper counter invasion or something.

In conquering my home continent my neighbour offloaded a couple of knights and a war elephant in the early game from a galley or two back behind the front line, but they only managed to pillage a couple of mines.

 

[DrJambo]

Difficulty level definitely makes a large difference. I started on Noble but didn't even complete my first game before I had decided to restart on Prince.

I adopted the same strat as you. Picked on the weaker civs, particularly the ones sharing the same starting landmass as me. It was only when Liz started knocking on the old space race victory door that I was prompted into action against a military equivalent.

The wars always seem to start with pillaging sparring, as the AI builds up a force worthy of a full invasion. The fact that I modded the capacity of transports to hold 6 units instead of the measely 4 also seemed to benefit the AI's invasion.

 

[TLHeart]

Nice to know that the AI took advantage of your mod also.

At first as I played the game at noble, I thought that the AI was cheating when deciding where to attack me. Then I noticed, that while pillaging sea square, a person can see the military strength in the cities, and decide on the best invasion route. The AI almost always goes for the least defended city, even if it is 8-10 moves around the land mass to land the invasion force. And it is no longer just one unit, the ships are full.

 

[Psyringe]

On my latest game on Monarch, Louis XIV sent me two invasion forces. One crossed the largest ocean in the game to unload six cavalries and three grenadiers right into my scarcely defended backlands. I was backwards in tech and would've lost two to three cities, had Cyrus not stood true to our defensive pact.

Later on, I spotted an equally strong force on its way to another coast. I managed to trade a tch for peace.

Civ4 may be the first Civ game where you actually have to worry about AI landfalls - I like that a lot.

 

[Bast]

Yes, this is the best AI of the Civ series. Really nothing to complain here.