Smartest Thing You Have Ever Seen the AI Do

[noncognosco]

Hello all, my first post although I have been lurking in here for a few months.

I know we all like to complain about the quality of the AI, but in my experience it is mostly just the tactical AI that is really dumb whereas at other levels it can surprise you.

Here is the smartest thing I have ever seen the AI do: I was playing as China on a large continents map. Shared a continent with Mongolia, Inca and Persia. DOF with Persia and cooperatively took apart the Mongols and then the Incas. Foolishly I assumed that Darius would leave me alone for a while so I went off to conquer the Romans who has a smaller nearby continent to themselves. In the middle of that war, Darius denounces me and when I look back over to my homeland I notice he has infantry to my riflemen and is surrounding me on three sides.

So naturally I crap myself, give Augustus a peace deal and move all my troops back to protect myself from Persia. Meanwhile I start teching like mad trying to get caught up but it seems like I keep falling farther behind. For some reason, Darius keeps holding off on the inevitable war (this is not the smart part).

So I start thinking, I am in trouble here and I need to figure out a way to win this thing. I realized that I had enough CS allies to win a diplo victory so I tech toward Globalization. Still no war. All of a sudden, Darius declares on one of my CS's. I can't figure out what his game is. Finally I figure it out when he conquers the CS: this completes the quest of two other critically located CS allies and causes them to flip to his side. Next turn he immediately DoWs on me and I am toast.

So basically he was smart enough to figure out that a quick battle against one CS would change the whole strategic situation, eliminating one CS ally on his borders and flipping two others. It also deprived me of any chance to turtling to Globalization while holding off his much larger and more advanced army.

So: anyone else have any stories of the AI doing something cleverly right?

 

[Smote]

I saw a city state run a lancer up, pillaging a road crossing across a circular river. Then he planted 2 artillery in the middle of the circle and started bombarding down the city. Very hard to kill w/ riflemen, since the river protects the artillery!

I'm sure it was accidental genius, but it was genius nonetheless

 

[Civ'ed]

I was playing as Egypt, and Bizzy had denounced me, and I thought he was gonna kill me. I had a small army but because of economical and thus research problems, I had to disband my troops. Few turns later:
Bismarck declares war on me.
I managed to hold off his invasion of warriors and an archer on king, but when I saw a landsknecht I quit.

I have never played Egypt since

Nonetheless, Bizzy was smart enough to see I had financial/technological problems, and had no soldiers. He took the advantage.

 

[Truthy]

Elizabeth invaded a maritime city state. I sent it a gift of 1000 gold and made it my ally. Just after that, Elizabeth withdrew her troops and apologized to me saying "It was never my intention to harm our relationship".
I was expecting her to denounce me and declare war.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

The American AI once sent out waves after waves of land troops and naval support alllllll the way down to the southern tip of the world to reach a single tiny island of mine. Turns, attack, a war of attrition. Again. Here's a few more. Resilient.

An Era later, i realized what was soooooo important about that single by_now_medium sized city. Heavily defended, monitored.

On that map there was **TWO** Uranium tiles only. Guess where one of these was!

 

[ezwip]

I had played for a bit but didn't know units could jump right out of the water and attack me. After all I couldn't shoot at them in the water unless I was in a city. Instead I figured that they couldn't even get onto shore right there. So I had everything lined up to go through what I had imagined was a choke point. That's when all of the Persian spears popped up out of the lake and obliterated my men. I was toast and it was embarrassing.

 

[Lance of Llanwy]

I was just playing a game where I was near Genghis. It was Tectonics, so there was a single-hex choke south of my capital and a river south and east of it with some wine, wheat, deer, and marble clustered around the river. So I hastily settled the cities after Genghis had founded a city a few hexes away. I then dutifully queued up monuments, bought a worker, and went back to focusing on my capital. By the time I had checked back on my southern cities, I made a startling and unsettling discovery: Genghis had acquired most of the tiles on the eastern side of the river, including one of the plum riverside-wheats and a wine! I fumed and purchased the forest tile between the two cities and cursed my inattention.
Of course, he never got around to improving the wine, so I promptly sold him some.
Baby steps, I guess.

 

[Mustakrakish]

I DoWed on Bismarck and after I conquered one city he was smart enough to offer peace...

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Surrender /jk

The smartest thing was when Askia attacked Athens which I had recently "liberated" while my horsemen were away, my warrior didn't last long, but then Askia managed to totally botch the actual attack.

Really the smartest thing though was in cIV not V. Bloody Dutch!

 

[CV-110]

Haven't played much, have seen them grinding experience on barbs. Even Civ leaders are joining the MMO craze

 

[smitbr]

Would have to say the smartest thing the AI did was be so fundamentaly flawed it made me quit playing thus freeing up my time for other games.

But seriously, anything smart I've seen them do is by pure chance that is quickly unravelled rather than any sort of strategic planning. cIV might have had stack of doom but they sure had some real beautiful moments of strategic genius

 

[noncognosco]

I don't mean to be snippy, but can we please limit responses to genuine answers? If you don't like Civ V, that is fine. We already know who you are and it is unneccesary for you to turn every thread into the "Here's what I hate aboute Civ V" thread.

Thanks!

 

[Bibor]

Certain AIs fare better in warfare and some AIs also fare better in general empire building.

The best moments:
Legitimate threat from Ottomans who beelined to UU and Cannons and attacked my lands. It kept pushing me and I lost a city, eventually the AI crumbled because it handles the loss of melee poorly (continues to press forward with cannons).

Arabia wiped out both Germany and France from a boxed in (and DOW-ed) position. Literally, to the last city.

AI rushbuying walls when I went for a swordsmen-only early rush.
...
In any case, there are numerous indications both in CIV5 and CIV4 that AIs can be coded be at least decent in CIV. It just needs more work.

 

[brxbrx]

When the AI gives you a bunch of cities as terms of surrender, and as a result your empire is wholly crippled by the unhappiness.

A truly brilliant maneuver.

 

[pxpdoo]

Going for a Diplo victory, and three (3) turns before the vote had enough CS's as Allies to win. Awesome, right?
Until Darius bribes two of them over to him.
Okay, then, I re-bribe them, using the last of my treasury. Awesome, right?
Until Darius bribes one of them back over to him.
(He does NOT want me to win lol)
So: I wait until the turn of the actual vote, not knowing if this is going to work. I am short one (1) vote for victory, but I don't click on the vote yet...
I go around to every other Civ and offer them a resource or two, seeing how much $$ they'll give me for it, until they're out, then on to the next Civ and repeat, until I have over 1,000 gold again. Then - still not clicking the vote yet - I flip a CS over to myself.
THEN I vote, and it works and I win.
Darius was clever x2, but I ended up being sneakier.

 

[noncognosco]

Bibor - I haven't said it before but I recently joined this forum after months of lurking and I want you to know I appreciate your consistent standing up to the haters. Civ 5 is not a perfect game by any means but it deserves better than the credit that a lot of players here give it.

brxbrx - How do you know that the AI truly is not doing that on purpose? They obviously offer to give you cities that you don't want and are in no position to take militarily. Sure it is probably just stupidity but what if?

 

[pxpdoo]

I don't mean to be snippy, but can we please limit responses to genuine answers? If you don't like Civ V, that is fine. We already know who you are and it is unneccesary for you to turn every thread into the "Here's what I hate aboute Civ V" thread.

Thanks!

Seconded.

 

[brxbrx]

Bibor - I haven't said it before but I recently joined this forum after months of lurking and I want you to know I appreciate your consistent standing up to the haters. Civ 5 is not a perfect game by any means but it deserves better than the credit that a lot of players here give it.

brxbrx - How do you know that the AI truly is not doing that on purpose? They obviously offer to give you cities that you don't want and are in no position to take militarily. Sure it is probably just stupidity but what if?

i just thought it was funny. no use defending this game's AI, i really don't think the devs intended to have it send settlers first into combat as a distraction, followed by sending a few waves of artillery to die on my bayonnets, finished with their infantry entrenching on the coast to unsuccessfully resist my naval bombardment instead of fleeing; all of this with the sole purpose of distracting me with their apparent stupidity while they go for a science victory.

 

[Civ'ed]

Actually I remembered a smart thing I saw Askia do:

Inland Sea (or the kind) as germany. Askia DoW's me. Persia is in the way. His two city empire (they had quite a few wars over there), consisting of Gao and Thebes, was maritime so he sent an invasive fleet.

God bless guided missiles and Panzers, he almost made it.

 

[noncognosco]

brxbrx - I am not trying to defend the tactical AI, which we all know is just ridiculously dumb. But the premise of this thread is that the AI is capable of making smart moves at the strategic level, even if it usually manages to waste its advantage through tactical foolishness.