I ran into something interesting in my last game as Sumeria. I shared the northern half of my home continent with Rome, China and Greece. After an apocalyptic battle between their respective UUs, Mao vassalised Augustus and the map looked a bit like this: CCCCCC CCCCCC RRGGGG RRGGGG SSSSSS SSSSSS Next, Mao declared war on me. His vassal was wiped out in 10 turns or so, and I managed to conquer China itself as well although that was a long and costly process. Realising I'd probably achieve Domination if I conquered Greece (advanced but lacking some key military techs), I went for it, attacking from three directions at once. Pericles never did anything. His stack kept moving about, apparently unsure where to defend, and not even trying a counterattack as I've seen the AI do before if defense is doomed. In the end, I wiped him out with 2/3 of his forces never having seen battle. Is this normal, is this dependent on the leader... and could this be reproduced? This would definitely make me rethink my strategies (war allies might become more useful even if they don't actually do anything themselves...) If anyone has experienced something similar, I would like to hear some comments.
I've seen it too but never been able to reliably reproduce it...instead settling on and the like (Enemy SoD is on other side of its empire, having taken another civ's city, then you hit). Even there, the stack comes back after me sometimes. Tough call.
If you are overwhelming enough, the best they can do is try to delay you. Throwing all their forces at you merely gets them killed and then you march on. So it's better to hole up in a few good cities and hope you're only trying to vassalize them, or that you decide they're not worth the effort. You'll lose a lot more troops throwing Cannons against cities than you would if they attacked you, so WW may be a factor too. But if you've planned well enough and have overwhelming force, what really are they going to do to hurt you, but hole up and hope you leave something they can smash and run from?
That's the thing that was puzzling me... the main Greek stack neither attacked nor withdrew to a prize city to weather the storm. It camped in the middle of nowhere toasting marshmallows while I took the cities, and Greece ceased to exist with about two dozen up-to-date units twiddling their thumbs.
I'd guess the AI was confused as to where the biggest threat was. Either that, or it was commiting suicide because it knew the war was futile.
That's just the northern half of the continent... south of me I just had Justinian who wasn't relevant to the situation at hand.
I do love it when the Ai goes to war halfway across the map. Downside is when the Ai is actually leading power on map. Smetimes they wont make peace without a trribute such as a city. Refuse that then you risk a 60-70 unit stack ending up on your doorstep. Ackkkk. It can happen. I think there is a logic in sharing the strongest AI religion to avoid these such wars.
nah, the solution is to have a stack of 60-70 units yourself. i always have 2-3 cities building nothing but units all game long.
