The AI can just be so... sad

[ltccone]

In my Siamese game, I'm on a continent with Morocco and Venice. A few hundred years ago Morocco declared war on Venice and quickly captured Venice itself. I'm playing marathon, so it takes a while to build units.

Venice had puppeted Vancouver, their only remaining city. That city is right next to one of mine, so I had a ring side seat. For a long time Morocco left it alone, but then attacked during the Medieval era. Vancouver is on a hilltop on a river, initially with walls, then a castle, defended by a composite bowman.

They attacked first with triremes, who quickly died. Morocco then sent in their longswordsmen with no missile support, who promptly died attacking. Then horsemen and knights, who also died. By then Vancouver's defense was almost gone, but Morocco had apparently lost all of their melee units.

NOW Morocco sends in six crossbowmen. Each turn they would reduce the strength of Vancouver to zero, and the city/composite bowman would fire back. Eventually all of the crossbowman died.

A few turns later, the melee units showed up. But Vancouver's defense had recovered by then, so they just died with no missile support.

THEN more crossbowman arrived, and they died.

Now there is an interregnum and Vancouver's defense has fully recovered.

I just wonder what the experience level of the Venetian composite bowman is; I bet it has killed 20 units or more.

 

[tezster]

You want sad?

In an attempt to fight a war by proxy, I gifted Morocco several units of level 4/5 Lancers and Musketmen (against Greek Knights and swordsman). Witnessing the 'war' was just a sad, sad experience.

Greece had clear numerical superiority, but what Morocco did with their gifted units was just idiotic. He would send in units one by one with no support, within range of city bombardment. When the unit's HP was low, he would waste his promotion on healing, pull back the damaged unit, replacing it with a healthy one in its place. The new unit would get bombarded, which he would pull back, then put back the previously damaged unit which hadn't fully healed, who would get killed the next turn. Basically, most of the units I gifted him were wasted in this fashion.

With clearly superior units, they would die at an approximate 1:1 ratio compared to the enemy, both a tactical and strategic loss. No waiting for units in the rear to catch up, nor staying outside of the enemy's bombardment range. None of his units even attacked any of Rome's cities once. They just parked the unit right beside the city to get obliterated.

 

[Spiral]

Yep, just played a game where Assyria tried to defend a slow rifle/artillery push with cavalry..... in a huge jungle.

Turns out mobility doesn't count for much in a jungle.

I do wonder why the AI can't do simple things like keep ranged behind melee and send them in together, or not embark in front of ranged units.

 

[RedFuneral]

The only time I've seen any smart tactics on the AIs part with military was on a jungle map I played a few months ago using the CCTP mod(not sure if it changes the military AI at all)

The Germans wanted to march on the Russians(4 player amazon map, Germans were in the SW, Russians in the NE) To get there they had to go between myself and the Indians, the Russians had also forward settled a city in the center of the map. They moved in a formation like this:
,= warrior
.= archer

,,,,,
...
,...,
,,

The units were a tad spread out but they were guarding their archers very well from not only the front; but the sides and back as well. I can't recall if they won the war but they were plowing through barb camps without losing any archers.

 

[bison21]

I do wonder why the AI can't do simple things like keep ranged behind melee and send them in together, or not embark in front of ranged units.

Because many humans can't do it either. I'm not gonna lie about it, I suck at it too. I know the logic, but I always find the terrain determines how I have to place my units. I lose so many units due to improper movement, I feel eye-to-eye with the AI (exceptions are air forces!).

It actually takes a lot of experience to puzzle together movement points, terrain penalty, improvements, unique abilities and combat strength. Believe it or not! Only in my last two games have I basically quick-saved before every movement because I felt I could NOT predict, based on my level knowledge, what the result would be.

Emperor, btw.

 

[Anarchist]

Because many humans can't do it either. I'm not gonna lie about it, I suck at it too. I know the logic, but I always find the terrain determines how I have to place my units. I lose so many units due to improper movement, I feel eye-to-eye with the AI (exceptions are air forces!).

It actually takes a lot of experience to puzzle together movement points, terrain penalty, improvements, unique abilities and combat strength. Believe it or not! Only in my last two games have I basically quick-saved before every movement because I felt I could NOT predict, based on my level knowledge, what the result would be.

Emperor, btw.

It is definitely something you have to stick at to learn, but it becomes second-nature very quickly. One trick to use is to drag from a unit to see where the blue area (where it can move to this turn) extends. This allows me to figure out what can go where before committing.

It is like a game of chess, though, and that is what makes it satisfying over the stack of doom we used to use. I actually find it more fun now, although moving any number of units long distances is a complete PITA.

 

[ltccone]

Vancouver finally fell. After the loss of half a dozen or so units. Then it was burned to the ground.

Morocco then attacked me; didn't work out well for them.

 

[Shimmler]

Ok ok ok, here's my cool story.
I discovered a new continent and found two civs on it - Germany and Zulus. Both warmongers were atw ar for thousands of years, and both still were in stone age! So I decided to "puppet" one of them to get most votes in World Congress by helping them out, so I picked Zulus. They had a fleet of of triremes not far from coastal Dresden, so I decided it will be good to bomb it with my frigates. After two turns, it's defenses reduced to zero. What Shaka does? Out of all his fleet he sends 1 (!) trireme, which dies in atempt to capture the ciy (Germany has it's turn before Shaka, so they manage to hit trireme once and restore part of city's defenses). I ahve no idea why Shaka couldn't send at least three boats.

 

[ltccone]

Ok ok ok, here's my cool story.
I discovered a new continent and found two civs on it - Germany and Zulus. Both warmongers were atw ar for thousands of years, and both still were in stone age! So I decided to "puppet" one of them to get most votes in World Congress by helping them out, so I picked Zulus. They had a fleet of of triremes not far from coastal Dresden, so I decided it will be good to bomb it with my frigates. After two turns, it's defenses reduced to zero. What Shaka does? Out of all his fleet he sends 1 (!) trireme, which dies in atempt to capture the ciy (Germany has it's turn before Shaka, so they manage to hit trireme once and restore part of city's defenses). I ahve no idea why Shaka couldn't send at least three boats.

Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain.

 

[hest]

Vancouver finally fell. After the loss of half a dozen or so units. Then it was burned to the ground.

Morocco then attacked me; didn't work out well for them.

You can burn down City States? :O

 

[ltccone]

You can burn down City States? :O

You can after Venice puppets them. When that happens, they are no longer a 'city state.'

 

[blackcatatonic]

Just watching something similar in my current game - Pachacuti trying to take Lhasa with three Artillery, two Gatling Guns and one Caravel (which was injured to begin with). The Caraval died in the first turn of the assault. Now the city has been at 0 health for ages but he's still not bringing up a melee unit or ship. D'oh.

 

[ltccone]

Just watching something similar in my current game - Pachacuti trying to take Lhasa with three Artillery, two Gatling Guns and one Caravel (which was injured to begin with). The Caraval died in the first turn of the assault. Now the city has been at 0 health for ages but he's still not bringing up a melee unit or ship. D'oh.

Exactly. It is just sad...

 

[rexman07]

Edit: apparently you CAN raze Venice's puppeted city-states

 

[Browd]

Yes, because CSs that Venice acquires with a Merchant of Venice are no longer city states -- they have foregone City State status to join the glorious Venetian empire.

Note, however, that any CS that Venice conquers the old-fashioned way remains a CS that can be liberated.

 

[ahawk]

The OP is describing the #1 problem I feel afflicts Air-Unit AI as of late:

10 GWBombers in an AI city attack a puppet I just took from this same AI. Some fraction of the 10 GWBombers all bomb the puppet-ed city every turn despite my still having land units in the area and even despite the fact that the AI in this case has no melee units left to take the city owing to the fact that they all died in the original defense of it as I took it over. Just insane stuff.

 

[MarshalN]

I am reminded of a recent war where there was a one tile lake close to one of my enemy's cities. While I was waiting to bring up the rest of my troops (I just finished taking city A and was moving on to city B) my artillery was in range of the lake. I must've killed about 8 units that embarked on that lake, for no reason. You'd think the AI learns after the first two.

 

[ahawk]

I am reminded of a recent war where there was a one tile lake close to one of my enemy's cities. While I was waiting to bring up the rest of my troops (I just finished taking city A and was moving on to city B) my artillery was in range of the lake. I must've killed about 8 units that embarked on that lake, for no reason. You'd think the AI learns after the first two.

The AI doesn't learn, and that's the whole problem. Humans learn; AI's are just program routines and sets of code that can account for a great number of variables but must be programmed by a human to do so. Part of the issue with Civ's AI is that the more variables it is programmed to consider, the more the turn-waits lengthen. And those turn-waits already get to be quite long on Huge and even Large for some folks (depending on the PC and the processing power).

Essentially, the only 'learning' the AI does is via patches and mods released to address issues that an actual human programmer learned about.

Ultimately, the AI embarking units into the reach of my ranged-units, as well as the pond-fish issue (AI building 3 melee naval units in a land-locked 3-tile lake adjacent to one of their cities) and a host of other issues regarding the military AI seems to me like a calculated measure: Firaxis wants to be able to release the game to a large number of people, which means making it capable of being released to a range of hardware systems. If the AI calculates too many factors and makes too many checks of tiles, units, etc., it bogs the game down too much in general, and may make people on the lower end of the range abandon the game (and it's expansions). On the other hand, the AI still has to be acceptable enough to challenge people. The compromise is that at higher levels, the AI doesn't make more calculations, but rather is simply given bonuses that allow it to have more units. This is actually a good compromise for Firaxis, because the military AI remains stream-lined enough to not bog the game down beyond what it already does, as the bonuses themselves are relatively tiny calculations compared to having to make the AI incorporate a whole 'nother universe of tile, unit, and unit-status calculations. Bonuses that allow the AI to just build more units means there's a decent challenge, albeit not quite a fair one, without actually making the AI perform more operations and move slower.

 

[blackcatatonic]

The OP is describing the #1 problem I feel afflicts Air-Unit AI as of late:

10 GWBombers in an AI city attack a puppet I just took from this same AI. Some fraction of the 10 GWBombers all bomb the puppet-ed city every turn despite my still having land units in the area and even despite the fact that the AI in this case has no melee units left to take the city owing to the fact that they all died in the original defense of it as I took it over. Just insane stuff.

The AI is also fond of rush-buying Great War Bombers and Triplanes and suiciding them against your troops. I have 3 Fighters and a Mobile SAM defending my front lines, but every turn Pachacuti kills all his planes trying to attack my units... but that's OK, because there are always more next turn... so stupid.

 

[Xyuta]

On AI stupidity,

Last game, poland went full piety, with no religion, how stupid is that ?
Is it really hard to code the policy purchase of the AI so it doesn't take something useless in a given situation ?