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[peacenik]

I should note, having played through it a little more, that the other civs are fully formed. I'm not sure what happened with Isabella, but every game it seemed to happen that way.


In my current game (current AI build, too), Isabella is thriving at about 980 AD. Nothing strange about her expansion ability, power or culture levels.

 

[9RedWing19]

3.) I also noticed an unusually large population of destroyers parked in that city, despite the fact that I was threatening to take it

I've observed this phenomenon several times - the AI leaves naval forces in a city that is in danger of being captured, when these naval forces could safely be moved to a nearby port.

 

[Iustus]

Some reflections on the most recent build:

3.) I also noticed an unusually large population of destroyers parked in that city, despite the fact that I was threatening to take it -- and also despite the fact that I was using my fleet and occasionally shipping troops back and forth. Now there HAD been some fast and furious naval combat at the start of the war, and my aircraft had dinged most of their ships even if I couldn't engage them in the water. It's possible that they were repairing, and it's also possible that, given my air superiority, the Zulus didn't want to sortie their fleet unless a ship moved within easy range of port, to prevent air attacks, but it seems pretty foolish to wait in port when they might be able to do some damage by going out on the high seas.

4.) I noticed that the AI, where appropriate, is aggressively building ships, and using them in a "picket line", off their coast, with typically two to three ships per picket. Very nicely implemented.

I've observed this phenomenon several times - the AI leaves naval forces in a city that is in danger of being captured, when these naval forces could safely be moved to a nearby port.

(4) above was meant to at least partially address the (3) problem. I am curious to know what unitai those destroyers parked in the threatened city had. If you hold down the ctrl key under chipotle mode, you will get a screen like this with the information I want:

(This picture is showing 3 assault sea galleons, 1 escort sea galleon, and two escort sea frigates).

In the case where there were destroyers parked in a city, was there a picket line of ships nearby? That is to say, perhaps there were no holes in the picket line to be filled (visibility wise), so the excess ships were in port?

-Iustus

 

[jkp1187]

In the case where there were destroyers parked in a city, was there a picket line of ships nearby? That is to say, perhaps there were no holes in the picket line to be filled (visibility wise), so the excess ships were in port?

-Iustus

I had blown large holes in their fleet by that point -- there was no picket to speak of, at least none in the sea between my Roman (former Mali) possessions to the north and the Zulu continent. There had been some serious naval battles after I'd declared war. Nevertheless, the Zulus still had a respectable fleet of destroyers and at least one battleship. All of the destroyers appear to be tasked to "escort" duty, and the transports to "assault" duty. There are also some battleships and destroyers in Ondini, too, again, all tasked to "escort" duty, along with a couple of "assault" transports. I could not see the tasks listed for all of the units in Nobama, so in lieu of a screenshot, I'm just attaching the 1927 and 1928 savegames.

It looks like there were 11 destroyers and 1 battleship in Nobama, and 2 battleships and 2 destroyers in Ondini.

Note also that thanks to my spy, you can see that Nobama is still building the Apollo program in 1928 (which will complete in 111 turns,) despite the fact that my tank army has just taken Ulundi.

I've also included the 1933 turn, which is after the Zulus capitulated, just for completeness' sake, because I'm not sure if the Zulu fleet remained in port when I took those cities, too, or if they actually survived to the end of the war.


http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/Marcus_Aurelius_AD-1927.CivWarlordsSave

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/Marcus_Aurelius_AD-1928.CivWarlordsSave

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/Marcus_Aurelius_AD-1933.CivWarlordsSave

 

[Quagga]

Here's another screenshot of a stack packed with Machine Guns. In the picture, my vassal Monty is providing completely ineffective support to my invasion of America.

 

[jkp1187]

Here's another screenshot of a stack packed with Machine Guns. In the picture, my vassal Monty is providing completely ineffective support to my invasion of America.

At least he threw some infantry and a cavalry in there, too! Most of my vassals do the same thing, but they at least show up for the battle despite suicidal odds, landed Grenadiers and such to take on enemy Infantry....god bless 'em! They also send ships and bombard city defenses. NOt the most helpful thing ever, but better than nothing, I suppose.

 

[jkp1187]

Iustus,

By the way, when declaring war, one of the first things I tried to do was take out as much of the picket line as possible. Then, too, the rest of the AI pickets started acting aggressively (and doing well enough to sink one of my carriers and several other ships.) But these escort-tasked ships should've switched on to attack or something, I think.

Also -- the AI did not make any threatening moves despite my moving a large naval/amphibious stack near their sea borders. So, in a sense, the picket line isn't doing much for them. I'd think that if the AI sees such a force closing through its pickets AND relations are annoyed/furious AND there isn't any other mitigating factor (AI and Human at war with same third country, even though they don't like each other that much, Human has defense pact with AI's closest friend,) it may be worthwhile to have the AI declare war and launch a pre-emptive strike on the human's fleet before it can land. Otherwise, it's possible that the human will be able to land his army and then fight off the AI fleet in detail.

 

[9RedWing19]

(4) above was meant to at least partially address the (3) problem. I am curious to know what unitai those destroyers parked in the threatened city had.
-Iustus

I had another instance of the AI using its naval forces badly.

I was fighting Catherine and had moved a large force next to St Petersburg which was defended by a single Infantry. When I went to attack the next turn, Catherine had brought in an Artillery and now there were the Transport and 2 Destroyers in port. The transport had code "assault sea" and the destroyers had code "escort sea". I had no naval forces in the immediate area. Catherine then lost the transport and 2 destroyers when I took St Petersburg (and then capitulated when I offered it to her).

 

[jkp1187]

[EDIT: large map/epic/Prince/Tectonics/city flipping after conquest/require complete kills/16 civs]

A couple of observations:

I saw what I thought was the Greek fleet staying in port while I threatened to attack, tasked to "escort". They had a mess of caravels and galleys, while I was there with frigates and galleons. Then they started moving out -- they played cat and mouse with me for a little bit, so I let them go out. They ended up next to Knossos (which I had just taken,) and I let them go there. They could not land troops (other than by making an amphibious attack,) so I figured I was safe.

Far from it! They launched an all-out amphibious attack -- their losses were bad, but mine were total. They took down 7 grenadiers, a war elephant and a couple of trebuchet, and re-took the city (!). I had NEVER seen the AI do an amphibious attack before -- bravo!

I guess I'm of mixed opinions toward this now. It seems that when the AI is ready to go, this is a powerful weapon. (I was cursing Alex left and right...and although I was able to get him to capitulate, I could not conquer all of Greece thanks to the losses suffered here.) The problem is that I have not seem them ready to sortie on a regular basis. I wish that the AI would be more willing to switch their offensive naval units from 'escort' to 'attack' when the situation is desperate.

Athenian fleet in port: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/Questionable_--_cowardly_athenian_fleet.CivWarlordsSave

Athenian fleet sorties:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/Questionable_--_NOW_the_fleet_sallies.CivWarlordsSave


A questionable incident I ran into earlier: barbarians build city. They later build a worker. The Spanish take the city. But then, the Spaniards do NOT garrison their newly-taken city. Even odder, the barbarian worker just sits in (now-)Spanish territory, not moving. For their part, the Spanish do NOT go and capture it(??!?) Instead, I sent a unit in (via Open Borders) and take it for myself later!


Barbarian worker:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/QUESTIONABLE_-_letting_worker_sit_there.CivWarlordsSave



Finally, still noticing the odd behavior of the AI issuing a DoW even though they can't touch me with anything but caravels.... I believe that the power rating had Napoleon ahead of me, but given his position on the other side of the world, the DoW just seemed a bit odd. I mean, it'd be different if I had a colony or something within striking distance.... I understand the rationale that 'hararssing' wars like this can be tools of diplomacy and all that, still the war appeared to be done on his own.... [EDIT: meaning: he really had nothing to gain and everything to lose by declaring war.] Of course, not much happened b/c I wasn't in a position to do much other than shoot up a couple of his caravels. Greece tried doing the same thing later and I turned Alexander into a vassal (though not before he smashed one of my grenadier stacks using a massive horde of primitive units). I guess I don't mind it that much in the scheme of things (on the power graph, I DID lag behind both when they declared war, and humans do irrational things too, so it's not unrealistic,) but reporting it for completeness' sake.

Napoleon's DoW:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploa...apoleon_DoW_without_Astronomy.CivWarlordsSave



Whew. I think I'm going to take a break from playing this week.

 

[Yakk]

That does remind me. I have a game where the Americans control an island far off their continent.

There is not a single improvement on the island, even though there are size 10 to 15 cities on it defended by multiple military units. The AI forgot to build workers (maybe because it thought it had enough back home).

The same is true of the water resources -- completely unimproved.

In a completely unrelated note, I've seen AI placing stacks next to my border, yet not invading. We have closed borders. Those units might be there to see into my territory (but why large armies?), but if they are there to invade, it doesn't make much sense. Once you have railroads (or even a decent road network) placing an army next to your opponents borders seems pointlessly threatening.

 

[jkp1187]

That does remind me. I have a game where the Americans control an island far off their continent.

There is not a single improvement on the island, even though there are size 10 to 15 cities on it defended by multiple military units. The AI forgot to build workers (maybe because it thought it had enough back home).

I seem to recall seeing a similar situation in my previously-mentioned game. The Egyptians colonized an island that wasn't that far at all from their homeland. I recalled seeing very little in the way of improvements at all. At the same time, the Spanish colonized an island on which I had managed to plant a colony -- I saw the usual worker development.

Confusing.

In a completely unrelated note, I've seen AI placing stacks next to my border, yet not invading. We have closed borders. Those units might be there to see into my territory (but why large armies?), but if they are there to invade, it doesn't make much sense. Once you have railroads (or even a decent road network) placing an army next to your opponents borders seems pointlessly threatening.

It appears to be a pattern of behavior with the AI -- they seem to do this a lot with ships, presumably for spying purposes. But there's no real point to doing this with army units, since they can't see any farther than you'd see normally with your borders....

Hmm. Did the AI build a fort maybe?

 

[Nor Me]

Iustus, Blake, great work etc. I've just been playing with the 2/12 build and noticed a few things.

The AI can be very slow at building workers on islands. This might have something to do with building lighthouses fast and so not working any unimproved land squares. I've seen resources left unconnected for most of the game because of this.

In my last game, I saw a capital build 25 work boats in a row. I'm not sure why that was but they had no workers and hostile ships kept the work boats all in port and the one fish unimproved.

In the early game, settlers still aren't getting the escorts they need. It's normally a good thing that cities don't build units early until they are adequately defended to the high Better AI levels. But units won't escort settlers when they think they are needed for defence. Archers are cheap compared to settlers.

I've just seen another AI diplomatic victory for a warmongering civ. With 15 surviving civs, Catherine was some distance ahead in score but she was some way behind in tech despite a solid economy. This was mostly because she insisted on giving away techs to more advanced vassals before trying to trade with them. Were I in her position, I'd be giving away technology in order to give my vassals a chance of getting something worth trading for as well as to help them militarily. When you give away all your advances, the chances are your vassals will trade them for you so if you don't ever have anything to trade with them, you'll never see the rewards.

I saw the AI not building the Internet when it could. So I had a look at the source and it seems your not the only people to have trouble with > and <. As far as I can tell, the AI will only build it when they've met 2 or fewer players.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Some time ago the preferences for the various civics have been changed. I personally think that the AI prefers mercantalism too much now. I've played a game a while ago where all the AI's switched to this civic once it became available. Of course, once one of them chooses to go for mercantalism, it is more interesting for the other ones to choose this civic.

In my present game, I'm on a continent with a bunch of civilization who all (except 1) have the same religion. Of course, we all love eachother and are happily trading away (except for a bit of war because it's the aggressive AI setting). All of these open borders lead to a huge foreign trade route income, so I expected the AI to prefer to stay out of the mercantalism civic. However, I just saw the tech leader on our continent switch to mercantalism (not his favourite civic). It has a horrible effect on his commerce rating. I added the commerce graph to demonstrate this. The white line is the line from the civilization who just chose to use mercantalism. Note that it also hurts some of the other AI's, but to a far lesser degree. Personally, I think it is a very bad move from Bismarck (the leader of the white line civilization).

(For the ones who notice it: the increase of the white, orange and light purple lines, 200 years ago coincides with the end of a war between these civilizations. It is unrelated to the above remark but also interesting. It is probably related to the war blocking trade routes and causing war weariness.)

Commerce graph.JPG

 

[Uncle_Joe]

I agree that it seems to select Mercantalism a little too often. I've also said that many of the Civs seem to avoid Free Religion for too long as well. They are losing out on that 10&#37; free Science which can be key late in the game.

 

[Wodan]

The graph, while interesting, doesn't have a validating counterpoint because we don't know how much Civ X gained from the added specialists. For all we know, the added research (etc) is more than double the loss.

That said, it sounds like they are too blindly choosing mercantilism, so maybe it bears looking into.

Regarding Free Religion, lately I've been doing a lot of experimentation comparing that to the various religious strategies. e.g., Free Religion vs Sankore/Spiral. The tendency I think is to try and hang on to Sankore/Spiral as long as you can. However, I've about come to the conclusion that it's idiotic to not get FR as soon as possible. The 10&#37; bonus blows away the piddly +2/+4 per city from the wonders.

That's not to say Sankore/Spiral are not worthwhile, merely that they are wonders whose benefit has a time limit (like Colossus or many others).

In addition, there are other benefits to religion (such as dip modifiers), so if you want to keep religion regardless of the harm to your economy, then Sankore/Spiral help mitigate the pain somewhat.

Anyway, I diverge.

Wodan

 

[Roland Johansen]

The graph, while interesting, doesn't have a validating counterpoint because we don't know how much Civ X gained from the added specialists. For all we know, the added research (etc) is more than double the loss.

That said, it sounds like they are too blindly choosing mercantilism, so maybe it bears looking into.

You seem to want to play devil's advocate.

In this case, the drop in commerce output is about 80, while 16 specialist are added. And no, the civilization doesn't happen to have the pyramids and use the representation civic. The specialists will probably barely increase the output of great people because they are spread out over all of the cities. Let's assume that every city has a library and thus can enable a scientist (which is probably not true for 2 just captured cities), then it's 80 commerce versus 48, both before multipliers from buildings. Very negative, I'd say.

I used the graph because a visible representation is often far more convincing then a representation with cold hard numbers. It's easier to see allthough not as accurate and precise.

I agree that it seems to select Mercantalism a little too often. I've also said that many of the Civs seem to avoid Free Religion for too long as well. They are losing out on that 10&#37; free Science which can be key late in the game.

I personally prefer organized religion over free religion in almost every case. A 25% bonus on building production (which is harder to get bonusses on) is worth more to me than a 10% bonus on science. It seems that Blake agrees as the civilizations often pick organized religion when not at war or planning a war. When at war or planning a war, they often pick theocracy.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

I personally prefer organized religion over free religion in almost every case. A 25&#37; bonus on building production (which is harder to get bonusses on) is worth more to me than a 10% bonus on science.

To each his own I guess. Most of the time many of my cities are no longer building buildings so that 25% is wasted. And usually it my older, more established cities that are 'full up' and building units or else science/commerce depending on specialization.

All I know is that late in the game, the AIs almost ALWAYS seem to drop behind in the tech race, even if they are competitive or leading earlier in the game. The key difference I can point to is that I'm gaining 10% more than them through the Free Religion. I'm also saving on Civics upkeep as Organized Religions can be quite expensive late in the game. Finally, depending on how religions spread, Free Religion can actually result in more happiness in most cities than sticking or OR.

 

[Roland Johansen]

To each his own I guess. Most of the time many of my cities are no longer building buildings so that 25&#37; is wasted. And usually it my older, more established cities that are 'full up' and building units or else science/commerce depending on specialization.

All I know is that late in the game, the AIs almost ALWAYS seem to drop behind in the tech race, even if they are competitive or leading earlier in the game. The key difference I can point to is that I'm gaining 10% more than them through the Free Religion. I'm also saving on Civics upkeep as Organized Religions can be quite expensive late in the game. Finally, depending on how religions spread, Free Religion can actually result in more happiness in most cities than sticking or OR.

If you're not building a lot of buildings anymore, than organized religion is not that useful anymore. It's only useful then for spreading religions and maybe you've already build some monasteries for that cause. I usually have some recently conquered AI lands that still need some city improvements and also my old cities still need a few buildings that only become available in the late stages of the game. Sometimes I acquire a new religion that I wish to spread and I don't have the monasteries to build the missionaries.

By the way, the 10% won't give you a tech lead fast. If it takes on average 6 turns to research a technology (very dependant on game speed), then it will take you 60 turns to get 1 technology ahead of your opponents. And at that moment they will start benefitting from the research bonus that civlizations get for technologies that have already been developed by other civilizations.

More likely causes for a sudden technology lead can be found in conquest. Have you conquered some lands in the past and developed them into perfection in recent years? Do you now have 50% more cities than your opponents? Of course that will lead to some extra research speed. Especially in the late game when higher upkeep costs from a large empire are not that important anymore. And if you somehow have more resources than your AI opponents, then you can grow your cities larger and make use of every single tile that is in your empire. That will of course also give you extra research. These effects useally far outweigh the 10% extra research from free religion. Of course, every 10% helps.

Of course, to each his own.

 

[Nor Me]

In my current game, Washington was running mercantilism when he had open borders with only 2 civs which put together would have been smaller than him. That's good. Unfortunately he's met and signed open borders with more players since then and is still in mercantilism.

By the way, the 10&#37; won't give you a tech lead fast. If it takes on average 6 turns to research a technology (very dependant on game speed), then it will take you 60 turns to get 1 technology ahead of your opponents.

It's even worse than this. The 10% is only on base science; it isn't cumulative with libraries and universities. So if you have both everywhere that's 90 turns. Late game, I tend to see it give 5% to overall science. OR is often worth the cost if there's anything left to build.

The AI's other civic choices can be just as bad for it's economy. Farming and running specialists everywhere wouldn't be such a bad idea if they were running representation or pacifism They don't get as much out of towns by frequently not running free speech, even when aiming for cultural victory. They love nationalism but that size 10, 2 production island city is still building a rifleman rather than drafting it.

On a completely different topic, after the AI has taken a city with a large stack, they tend to leave all their siege units defending while heading for the next city with an attack stack without them. This stack sometimes ends up suiciding itself against a 60%+ defence and the city is defended with the worst possible units.

This might have something to do with bombard and collateral being put first in a stack so they can bombard and attack first. But presumably they are also being used as the first to stay defending because of it.

 

[Wodan]

In this case, the drop in commerce output is about 80, while 16 specialist are added. And no, the civilization doesn't happen to have the pyramids and use the representation civic. The specialists will probably barely increase the output of great people because they are spread out over all of the cities. Let's assume that every city has a library and thus can enable a scientist (which is probably not true for 2 just captured cities), then it's 80 commerce versus 48, both before multipliers from buildings. Very negative, I'd say.

Those numbers are better, and seem sufficient to prove the case. (That it was a dumb move by the AI.)

I used the graph because a visible representation is often far more convincing then a representation with cold hard numbers. It's easier to see allthough not as accurate and precise.

Agreed. However, the graph still needs to prove the case. If it does not do this (which it didn't), then it would be a good idea to supplement it with the cold, hard numbers. Which you did, so we're done here.

You seem to want to play devil's advocate.

Would you rather take the risk that the people reviewing your report take a look, say to themselves, "This doesn't prove anything," and simply delete it and move on? It's it much better to have me pick it apart first.

Wodan

.... Serving a vital need of the civ community.