Some Logistic Feedbacks

[swapoer]

First, thanks for putting effort in developing this mod for years.

I started playing this mod recently and have achieved 2 monarch science victories on standard. After several plays, I think it would be a good idea to give my feedback.


Logistic Feedback

Personally, I think that a flexible cap of UPT is better than the current logistic penalty system. The current logistic system aims to tackle the Stack of Doom problem, but fails. According to some old threads in this forum, AI still tends to put up a Stack of Doom and this tactic work despite the logistic penalty. And this result fit my observations from playing. Stack of Doom is still the best tactic and AIs use it most of the time. IMHO, we can throw away the logistic penalty and have a UPT system in which the cap is decided by the logistic limit in this mod. The developer said he would not apply a UPT system, but didn’t give a detail explanation. So, here I am suggesting dramatically increasing the logistic penalty.


The problem of current logistic penalty is that the penalty is too small. For example, I have a logistic limit of 6 and another 3 would put me in penalty level I, which is -5% strength. In this case, putting additional 3 units in gives me -5% strength but it also gives me +16% strength from assault aid bonuses if the units are assault role units. In the end, I would gladly accept the penalty level I and even II. I can see from this example, the penalty doesn’t matter since aid bonuses are far better.

So here is my first suggestion. The level I penalty should be no aiding bonus. I believe this penalty would really hurt. The level II penalty could be not fortify, not terrain defense bonuses and additional strength penalty.

If the purpose of logistic penalty system is to eliminate or limit the Stack of Doom problem, we need a really big penalty to stop that from happening and I think we don’t need that much levels of penalty too. I suggest the level III penalty is the final big one, it could be something like -100% strength. Too much levels of penalty don’t make the mechanic better but just make the mechanic being lesser elegant. That is why I suggest that only 3 level of penalty is needed.

 

[[Y]]

I agree that the logistics system can be improved on, but I disagree with the how. Namely, I think the best part of the logistics system is the reduction of recovery time. The way to deal with stacks of doom should be hit and run tactics. What I think can be done here is:

1. At some level of logistic problems (probably Logistics IV), remove or cut in half defense bonuses from tiles. Fortify is still fine. One of the problems with SoD at the moment is its ability to bunker down at no significant cost.
2. Improve retreat odds from promotions. I love the idea of retreating as combat enriching tactic, but investing in a promotion that only applies when a fight is lost, and even then only apply a portion of the time, is not as useful as a promotion that helps win and applies all of the time. Better odds to retreat (or maybe a promotion that makes units behave like the mayan NU, which the mayan NU can then start with) would go a long way to dealing with SoDs.

I think those two changes could help a lot, as instead of eliminating SoD and implementing congestion-inducing rules (ala Civ V), it becomes a game of strategy. SoD would be an easy way to get units across, but it can also be efficiently combated by small stacks of hit-and-run units hiding in the hills/forests. The hit and run strategy may not deal a lot of damage at a time, but the health recovery penalty from Logistics will make it difficult to weather the guerilla warfare long term.

All that said, the game has essentially reached it's last major version, and no changes to gameplay should be expected. But we can always try to mod our own versions of RI.

 

[plasmacannon]

-100% would be too high of a penalty at any level.
I think the Logistical penalties are mostly used by Human players in determining an advantage for themselves more than the AI.
Aside from Raging Barbarians, I rarely see the AI invade with multiple stacks consisting of the maximum number of units in a stack to avoid a penalty. Humans might consider this.
I think the AI would probably just send in large stacks with your -100% penalty and just lose them. ;(

 

[swapoer]

Personally I don’t like a system which is designed to be used by human player only. If we put aside the being used by human player only feature, player would still go beyond the first few levels of logistic penalty, since it is mathematically better. So, we are going back to the beginning, what is the goal of logistic system.

If it is to tackle the stack of doom, a flexible cap of UPT is the best way. Failing that, we could give a huge stacking penalty to make stacking of doom mathematically inferior.

If it is just to provide a way for human player to attack the stack of doom of AI, it don’t need that many levels of logistic penalty. We can have only one level of logistic penalty, in which the aiding bonus is cancelled. So the player has a clear optimized number of units per tile, when they deciding no using Stack of Doom tactics. Player either have lower than the logistic limit or one stack of doom. Simple and clean.

 

[Soupy Delicious]

I have a logistic limit of 6 and another 3 would put me in penalty level I, which is -5% strength. In this case, putting additional 3 units in gives me -5% strength but it also gives me +16% strength from assault aid bonuses if the units are assault role units. In the end, I would gladly accept the penalty level I and even II. I can see from this example, the penalty doesn’t matter since aid bonuses are far better.

So here is my first suggestion. The level I penalty should be no aiding bonus. I believe this penalty would really hurt. The level II penalty could be not fortify, not terrain defense bonuses and additional strength penalty.

The logistics in the game actually works really well in my opinion. Though I've only made it so far as late-industrial era on Emperor, I've been pleased with it. The aid bonus over logistics penalty idea is intended, I'm pretty sure. A well composed stack will suffer penalties, but still be more combat effective than a stack without unit variety.

 

[onefinneday]

I really don't see the problem with the "stack of doom" - a bigger army should be difficult to match in the field. Civ4 does all sorts of things to give the AI a leg up, like far cheaper unit upgrades, but I see stacks of doom as a way to equalize some of the tactical advantages a human has over the AI. If I were playing against another human, one big stack of doom is not necessarily the way I would play even in vanilla - plenty of scenarios where opening a second front can be strategically what you want.

The bigger issue in vanilla is that the "stack killers" with collateral damage effectively do the opposite, that they mandate you stay in the stack or else. RI does a decent job of disfavoring many of the factors which make the stack of doom necessary in vanilla, and I think the stacking penalties work well to limit SoDs. I'm not sure, but does the AI tackle multiple objectives if its armies are large enough? I've seen the RI AI do some strategy like sea invasions that are less common than vanilla. I had to make peace once because I left my capital insufficiently guarded.

If you really want to tackle the SoD issue, you would need a different basic unit for military forces in the game, instead of the civ traditional "you build one unit and it does one thing". Attempts to fit the way Civ represents units into a "stack" mindset is going to be counterproductive. I just don't see it as a fatal issue - it works for Civ, because Civ is not a wargame.

Way back in the days of early vanilla, before better AI, the AI would send out its units on pillaging campaigns. With RI's units featuring better mobility, I don't see why it wouldn't use recon/mounted stacks on pillaging raids.

The one thing I find bad about RI combat is that light skirmishers are way too strong in the early game, being able to crush almost everything else in the field. I've used them to neutralize early game SoDs way too often, and they're the preferred forces for putting down slave revolts. I'm not sure if there is a way for those units to simply have a strong withdrawal chance and first strikes against melee units, so they are effective at sapping enemies' stronger melee units without being the core of a defensive military force. But I think the devs put a lot of thought into what is possible, and the skirmishers do lose their strength by medieval period.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

The logistics in the game actually works really well in my opinion.

It doesn't. It actually does... nothing. It does not prevent AI from creating Stacks of Doom at all. Some SoDs are 100+ units large. Even with those penalties they still can cut through defenses like through butter. In order to combat them you have to create your own SoDs and since they suffer the same penalties... it's like if they didn't exist at all. Moreover - I tried to make large SoDs completely useless by giving the max penalty of -100% strength, but it also does very little since in combat even a unit with -100% penalty is capable of damaging an enemy unit.

In short - this mechanic does not remove SoDs at all and the penalties are not strong enough to make SoDs easy to counter. If you want to play this mod you just have to be prepared to fight against one of the most hated elements of Civ IV - Stacks of Doom.

I really don't see the problem with the "stack of doom" - a bigger army should be difficult to match in the field.

But "bigger army" can be implemented in two ways. You can have 100+ units SoDs which, let's face it, are pain in the ass (it's probably universally one of the most hated elements of Civ IV from what I've read). But you can also have the same 100 units spread into, let's say, 5 stacks of 20 units per tile. And that's something completely different. You are more able to fight them with your own mini stacks of 20 units per tile. It also gives you better chance of surviving the assault with your 10 or 15 units per tile garrisons. I had the best Civ IV war experiences with 15-20upt limits. Enemies were invading not with one unrealistic 150+ SoD but with constant waves of 20upt stacks and I had to create a defensive line - a real frontline. They broke through in the less defensible terrain and I had to send reserves to close the gap... Damn, it was pretty impressive. Incomparably better than any SoD.

If I had to choose only one mod which is essential - then it'd most definitely be scalable upt limit. You can choose 1 upt there, 2, 5, 10, 30 or whatever number you want. I really can't imagine playing without it anymore.

 

[onefinneday]

Stack of doom is far preferable to 1UPT or arbitrary limitations on stacking. Unless you did away with per-unit combat entirely - and then the larger army would still be difficult to challenge outright - it's difficult to mitigate the effects of SoD.
SoD would be limited against a more capable AI, on a bigger map, where hitting multiple objectives would be important. It makes sense though that a big army would need to stay cohesive, rather than splitting the army and having it crushed.
The real issue is that the only targets really worth going after are cities, and taking down cities is too easy. Given the timescales you are dealing with, you're not playing a game where tactical micromanagement can be a major thing. But, you could (and there are in the game) incentives for splitting armies to take multiple cities, in order to conquer an enemy faster. A more capable AI would be able to exploit the human player's tendency to under-defend cities (and I have noticed RI's AI is more capable of exploiting poor garrisons, but not nearly enough). Without military objectives besides cities, it's difficult to make army splitting very viable. Realistically, cities should require garrisons and strong occupation forces, as historically holding a conquest was never the easiest thing.
Another issue is the rock-paper-scissors of units. That didn't exist in previous civ games, so a weakness in one split - say a knight sent to pillage tiles - is too easily exploited. There is also the HP system, although I think if someone is spending 3 units to kill one loose unit it's a losing proposition. The earliest Civ4 AI did send pillagers, but ironically the mechanism to limit SoDs made fielding those pillage units monetarily expensive; and since attacking and holding cities is too easy, pillaging is simply not attractive as a strategic option.

1UPT just destroys strategic play, forces design decisions which wreck the rest of the game and creates jams for an AI, and it also gave rise to the really broken things like ranged archers that replace your melee armies and affect risk-free damage. I refuse to play the later civ games until 1UPT is removed at the least (there is a lot else that is wrong, but just fixing that would make the games at least playable). It was a massive disappointment to find that there were no mods, and the game became difficult to mod, that would restore unit stacking and account for some of the bad decisions in Civ6 (6 did mitigate some of the bad civic management in 5 and gave some more interesting choices in running the civilization, but war was too ridiculously easy to win and the AI still didn't know how to fight at all).

 

[swapoer]

We are not debating about 1UPT against SOD here. We are just suggesting to give scalable UPT limit.

Civ 5 is not that terrible. You can try the Vox Populis mod out.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

We are not debating about 1UPT against SOD here. We are just suggesting to give scalable UPT limit.

Civ 5 is not that terrible. You can try the Vox Populis mod out.

Except that it does not matter. X UPT is just as bad as 1 UPT. It's still something that does not work for a game like CIV and that the CIV4 AI can't handle even if it did.

As for the rest of your post I think you'll find that you won't find too many people who agree with you on that. The reason we all still cling to a game from 2005 is precisely because we think that the later games are NOT good enough to replace it. We don't like the way CIV5 and 6 took the franchise. And we don't like their features.

 

[swapoer]

X UPT is just as bad as 1 UPT.

I don't think so.


It's still something that does not work for a game like CIV and that the CIV4 AI can't handle even if it did.

For this, I don't know. Civ V VP mod handles 1 UPT quite decent. Many players praise the tactical AI.


As for the rest of your post I think you'll find that you won't find too many people who agree with you on that.

For that, I don't care though. I think this feature will never be implemented in RI, since that develop team have stated that RI is just as good as it is for them and they are not in active development too.

My posting here is just to express my opinions and watch ideas similar or different to mine. I can see that there are people against or agree with me. For now, I still think UPT limit is better gameplay wise. As for the number of people who agree with me, it doesn’t matter.


The reason we all still cling to a game from 2005 is precisely because we think that the later games are NOT good enough to replace it. We don't like the way CIV5 and 6 took the franchise. And we don't like their features.

I think you should think out of the box here though. I play both Civ 4 and Civ 5. Their respective SOD and 1UPT mechanics has both merits and problems and none of them is perfect. It is hard to say which one is the best, because it depends on lots of other gameplay mechanics. In term of mod, RI from Civ 4 and VP from Civ 5 are both great mod. RI offers the best immersion experience. Civ 5 excels at offering strategic challenge. I can’t say which one is better here too. RI’ civs lacks the diversified gameplay as VP. Civs in RI play more or less the same. VP have done a better job in this regard.

What I am trying to say is that it is fine that you or most people on this sub-forum do not like Civ 5, but you do not need to close the door of discussing features similar to Civ 5.


Personally, I don't like the way CIV5 and 6 took the franchise too.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Firstly, please use the quote tag. It exists for a reason. And that reason is not just to make the thread look pretty but because when you use it the forum pops out a notification to the person you are quoting so we can know someone made a response.

X UPT is just as bad as 1 UPT.

I don't think so.

Good for you. We disagree. And that's fine. But ultimately you'll find that for lot of people that is very significant in deciding why we still play CIV4 and not CIV5.

It's still something that does not work for a game like CIV and that the CIV4 AI can't handle even if it did.

For this, I don't know. Civ V VP mod handles 1 UPT quite decent. Many players praise the tactical AI.

That might well be the case. I can't confirm nor deny it as I do not personally have enough hours put into 5 to have gathered a significant enough amount of data. What I can say is that it is mostly irrelevant because you can't copy AI from one game to another. And it's doubtful (not impossible, just highly doubtful) that the CIV4 AI which was designed for the current unit system would behave functionally with a completely different one without a major rewrite. Especially since it honestly does not handle even stacks all too well.

As for the rest of your post I think you'll find that you won't find too many people who agree with you on that.

For that, I don't care though.

You really should though. Because that is the fundamental issue at hand here. This is a mod for Civilization 4. Thus it is made to suit the tastes of people who think Civilization 4 is a good and fun game to play. Flaws and all. And that means it has to retain the core gameplay features of Civilization 4 because that is what people are here for.

Now that does not mean it has to stick to them rigidly. That is NOT what I am saying. There is certainly a lot of room for deviation. That's what modding is in the end all about. But it is something you always have to keep in the back of your mind when designing mods because ultimately modding is a fine balancing act of deviating the right amount and in the right direction from the core game so as to accentuate and enhance the core gameplay features people enjoy in new and exciting ways and thus produce new and exciting opportunities for people to enjoy those very features. This is true irregardless of if you are adding new cars and tracks to a driving games, new companions to an RPG or turning Civilization 4 into a D&D inspired fantasy game. You are taking a core game that people enjoy and

I think this feature will never be implemented in RI, since that develop team have stated that RI is just as good as it is for them and they are not in active development too.

My posting here is just to express my opinions and watch ideas similar or different to mine. I can see that there are people against or agree with me. For now, I still think UPT limit is better gameplay wise. As for the number of people who agree with me, it doesn’t matter.

Fair enough. This said, there is no need to get defensive. You are stating your opinion, we are stating ours. At the end of the day this is an intellectual discussion about gameplay features. It is, as the proverb says "all in good fun". And even if we disagree, indeed especially if we disagree, we can both enjoy the discussion.

I think you should think out of the box here though. I play both Civ 4 and Civ 5. Their respective SOD and 1UPT mechanics has both merits and problems and none of them is perfect. It is hard to say which one is the best, because it depends on lots of other gameplay mechanics. In term of mod, RI from Civ 4 and VP from Civ 5 are both great mod. RI offers the best immersion experience. Civ 5 excels at offering strategic challenge. I can’t say which one is better here too. RI’ civs lacks the diversified gameplay as VP. Civs in RI play more or less the same. VP have done a better job in this regard.

What I am trying to say is that it is fine that you or most people on this sub-forum do not like Civ 5, but you do not need to close the door of discussing features similar to Civ 5.

I understand what you are saying. And in principal I agree. There is certainly room for looking not just at other CIV games but at other games in general for feature input.The point of distinction here is that we are not talking about any old mechanic but one of the few fundamental underpinning mechanics of the game. And when it comes to those you really need to be careful about touching them because any change at all has the potential to disrupt the core gameplay that people enjoy about the game. And the more extreme the change (like going from stacks to single units) the greater that disruption.

So it's something you need to evaluate very, very carefully.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

Except that it does not matter. X UPT is just as bad as 1 UPT.

Absolutely not. It's literally the best element that mods brought to Civ IV. It literally solved once and for all the almost absolutely and universally hated SoDs. Giving penalties to units based on how many units there are on the tile does literally nothing. It's like communism - it may sound nice in theory, but in reality it simply doesn't work. It doesn't remove SoDs at all, it doesn't make SoDs noticeably weaker (so what if they had even -50% strength if there's literally 150 units there against your 20 or 30? They'll still wipe you out) and since it applies to everyone - if you want to counter enemy SoD with your own SoD - you BOTH have the same penalties, which makes those penalties useless, like if they were not in the game at all.

And it also seems you failed to notice one thing. Scalable UPT gives you the ability to... set it as high as you want. In this case you would be able to set it to, let's say, 100 or even more and still "enjoy" Stacks of Doom, and those who hate SoDs would be able to set it to 5 or 10 or 20 and enjoy the game without SoDs. That's why scalable UPT is the best thing the mods brought.

It's still something that does not work for a game like CIV and that the CIV4 AI can't handle even if it did.

That's interesting, because currently I'm playing a New Dawn mod with 15 UPT and AI handles it very well. It has armies, it invades neighbours, it captures cities. So excuse me, but I'll disagree, since I have proof you're wrong. Have you ever played A New Dawn or any other mod using it with limit set to, let's say, 15 or 20? I play like that since A New Dawn received such feature and I have to admit these are my best Civ IV war experiences ever. Powerful civs still have plenty of troops, but instead of using one ridiculous SoD with 150+ units they are spread into smaller armies of 15 (I use 15 UPT) units attacking from multiple directions, creating waves, frontlines etc.

Also saying "X does not work for a game like CIV" sounds pretty dogmatic. It works for me, it works for all those who play mods using it (and I think AND is not the only one using it), it apparently works for the developers of those mods since they included it... So why should I accept your words as truth?

To be honest I'm surprised by the apparent aversion of RI developers to include this scalable limit. As the name says - it's scalable. You could set the upper limit to, let's say, 500. It means all those who like the current RI experience could still enjoy it. And those who hate SoDs would be able to limit the number of units and still enjoy it. It's a pretty win-win scenario.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

15 isn't 1 though. In fact it is about the size of your average stack. So obviously the AI won't mind that.

Seriously, some days I think I am not playing the same game you people are because I got this game in the week it came out and have since not once seen a stack of 100 or even 50 units outside of one single occasion in a FFH scenario where scripting was at play. Typically it is 5 - 15.

Try 1 or 3 and you'll see the issues.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

And I remember playing RI some time ago (because it has features I really like) with all those options for reducing unit spam turned ON (this one which makes units cost more hammers to build the more you have them etc) and everything was fine, until one turn my neighbour attacked me with one SoD. It literally had more than 150 units. And it was the moment I quit RI and never returned since.

Every few months I came here lurking for the new version or maybe a submod having the scalable UPT but nothing more. For someone who played with this feature - Civ IV without it is literally unplayable at this moment. I couldn't enjoy it while expecting another 100+ stack arriving out of nowhere at my doorstep.

I don't mind tough wars. Not so long ago I had a war with much powerful Egyptians in AND. They were declaring war on me every time truce ended, so after third such war I became tired of it and decided to wipe them out once and for all. There were two problems though - they had much more troops than me and they were on a distant continent they almost completely conquered. I had the tech advantage though. So I prepared few stacks of 15 units (since, as I mentioned, I play on 15 UPT) and sent them there. First was wiped out on the beach. Second managed to defend for some time before it was overwhelmed by egyptian numbers. Third had troubles as well. But in the same time I sent another two stacks to their port city (which was too heavily defended earlier but now became less defended since they were attacking me on the beach 10 tiles away) and captured it while they were decimating me at the beach somewhere else. And when I had the port captured - I sent all my stacks there to land safely and create a perimeter. From there I had a long war full of 15 UPT stacks clashing. I took defensive positions on wooden hills and let their waves just hit me, sending reserves where they managed to significantly weaken my line. Such static war took many turns, because they really had the numbers and were sending new stacks one after another and I was unable to make a breakthrough anywhere. Fortunately they were unable to do it as well. So after about 30 turns - their numbers started to dwindle and they stopped sending units, begging for peace instead. I survived the storm, and then pushed inside their territory conquering almost entire their empire.

This war was AMAZING. Both sides had plenty of troops, no one had any SoD and yet we had a long war full of strategic thinking, since neither of us could create just a lazy SoD and steamroll through the enemy land.

15 isn't 1 though.

No one here is asking for 1 UPT. While I like Civ V for some new features (I love the graphics, the best in any Civ game, I love hexes, I love archeology, I like the way religion works, I like leaders speaking native languages in diplomacy and so on...) - I don't like 1 UPT. It's generally a good idea, because it removes SoD and I hate SoD the most, but the limit should be higher. That's why I play on 15 UPT in the Civ IV mod, which seems to be a good balance. Not too big, not too small.

Edit: I've just came with a new idea. I once tried to make SoDs in RI useless by giving those units -100% strength penalty on the highest level, but it didn't work since a unit with -100% penalty can still damage another unit, so even with -100% SoD are not powerless. But maybe I could tweak the feature responsible for making units more expensive the more you have - to make it much more severe. Maybe that would drastically reduce SoD in my games, since devs are not eager to include scalable UPT limit. I may look into it as long as it's relatively easy to mod, because I have experience with XML modding, but nothing more than that.

Edit2: well, I can't find it anywhere in the XML files.

 

[onefinneday]

15 isn't 1 though. In fact it is about the size of your average stack. So obviously the AI won't mind that.

Seriously, some days I think I am not playing the same game you people are because I got this game in the week it came out and have since not once seen a stack of 100 or even 50 units outside of one single occasion in a FFH scenario where scripting was at play. Typically it is 5 - 15.

Try 1 or 3 and you'll see the issues.

On higher difficulties the AI can put together some really huge sized stacks. One of the greatest problems is that the "anti-stack" mechanism in Civ4, siege units, wound up favoring stacks as defenders. RI does a decent job of remedying that, while siege units gain ranged bombardment in a way that isn't too gamebreaking.

A pillaging strategy can be effective in Civ4, but for a lot of reasons, it was not well explored because the AI isn't particularly good at allocating its units for the task. RI's AI does utilize some pillaging strategies, particularly concerning strategic resources, but nothing like original vanilla which would spread out its mobile units to pillage all your improvements. So, I'm not convinced SoD is the big problem, but rather it is the least risky strategy - which makes a lot of sense, you wouldn't want to break up your big army.

With how lightly the human player typically garrisons cities, I could see an AI utilizing "hit and grab" tactics, razing the city you spent hundreds of turns building up in an instant, then getting their army out of dodge. An AI that can effectively calculate this strategy though would be a considerable task, probably rebuilding it from the ground up. I don't know how AI modding in Civ4 works exactly but you're talking about something quite sophisticated to pull off. Civ4's AI as it is is pretty robust compared to most games of the type.

The two-pronged attack against an AI can be reasonably effective. Just capping one city early can save a lot of difficulty later. As far as I know, the AI doesn't really know how to link up two armies that were in motion. It just knows to reinforce its stack and move towards target.

Playing a genuine, turn-based multiplayer match would show the failures of a "stack of doom" strategy taken religiously. Obviously you would want to favor a bigger army beating a smaller army, and that's always going to be a concern, but having playing many multiplayer strategy games with unit stacking, you're not going to get anywhere relying solely on one big stack when you have to capture hundreds of "cities" and risk attacks on multiple fronts, against alliances, etc.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

It seems I tweaked RI to my liking (very slow speed) and therefore fixed the SoD problem. I'll write it here in case I'll forget after some time how I did it

First I significantly increased unit production cost, so together with this mechanic where the more units you have - the longer it takes to build new of the same type - it's really difficult to create SoD. AI still seems to have decent armies but nowhere near the 150+ SoD of old times. This created new problems though - I had to make barbarians spawn a bit less to compensate for smaller AI armies and I also had to change unit upgrade costs since in later eras it reached absurdly high levels (1200 gold to upgrade just one unit). Since even the lowest value of "upgrade cost per production" was not enough - I had to change it into a flat rate of 100 gold per unit with no additional "per production" bonus.

And that's it. So far so good. I only wish AI was a bit less aggressive, it's industrial era and AI already wiped out 5 civs.

 

[Snowygerry]

(..)
With how lightly the human player typically garrisons cities, I could see an AI utilizing "hit and grab" tactics, razing the city you spent hundreds of turns building up in an instant, then getting their army out of dodge. An AI that can effectively calculate this strategy though would be a considerable task, probably rebuilding it from the ground up. I don't know how AI modding in Civ4 works exactly but you're talking about something quite sophisticated to pull off. Civ4's AI as it is is pretty robust compared to most games of the type.

I've seen AIs do just that - albeit to other AIs, not the player who will usually be able to defend his cities.

But given the opportunity they will launch oversea invasions to distant opponents and march from city to city burning them each down in turn - I've seen AIs completely wiped out in this manner...

 

[Hafenguy]

I don't mind tough wars. Not so long ago I had a war with much powerful Egyptians in AND. They were declaring war on me every time truce ended, so after third such war I became tired of it and decided to wipe them out once and for all. There were two problems though - they had much more troops than me and they were on a distant continent they almost completely conquered. I had the tech advantage though.

Sounds great!

I have two questions on that:
1.@Aquila SPQR when this Xupt Feature worked so well, why did you come back to RI

2@all: Can any one confirm Aquilas experience, that the XUPT Feature worked so well in AND and the AI can handle it?

 

[Aquila SPQR]

1.@Aquila SPQR when this Xupt Feature worked so well, why did you come back to RI

2@all: Can any one confirm Aquilas experience, that the XUPT Feature worked so well in AND and the AI can handle it?

Because RI has some features I like which AND doesn't have. I like that every Civ in RI is really unique, I like great works and diseases. To be honest the XUPT is the only feature that, so far, makes AND more suited to my taste. With XUPT in RI - I don't think I would return to AND anytime soon.

And regarding point number 2 - why don't you download AND and try it yourself? It'd be the easiest way to find it out.