The Siege of Opis: Proof that the tactical AI is insane

[krc]

Insanity has been defined as "doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different outcome."

Consider the following screenshot:

I was playing as Rome. I watched Denmark trying to capture the Japanese-held city of Opis for at least twenty years (turns). Each turn, all of the artillery would fire at Opis. In most years, the artillery unit adjacent to Opis was the last to fire, after the city defense was already down to one hit point. Denmark never swapped that artillery unit for an infantry unit that could actually capture the city. They never tried an amphibious assault (which would have been guaranteed to succeed). They just kept doing the same thing -- over and over again. Proof of insanity.

No human player could fail to capture Opis in this instance. No human player would ever have gotten into this situation, since they would not have allowed an artillery unit to lead the attack against Opis.

Is there any hope that the tactical AI will ever learn the rules of this game?

 

[PhilBowles]

In my last game the AI nuked Opis (under Korean - my - control at the time)... That's Gandhi for you.

 

[Smokeybear]

Probably not. The stupidity has gone on unabated for all this time, doubtful they'll change it now. My favorite scene, is when some random barbarian ship attacks a CS, and instead of sending their crossbow or canon unit out to blast it quickly to bits, they instead usually send out a melee unit to 'rush' the ship, and then the melee unit stands there on the shore and takes the hits for the next couple of centuries, while the crossbowman sits inside the city with it's thumb up its bum doing nothing useful. Seen this so many times it's not even remotely hilarious anymore.

OH! OH! Another favorite... a CS will be getting attacked by another civ, or CS... and it has one ranged unit left garrisoning the city, all of its other units having been destroyed. Between the garrisoned ranged unit and the city bombardment, the CS manages to repeatedly hold off years worth of attacks upon it- completely surrounded by enemy units, yet it kills off the enemy's melee units just before they can capture the city, and then the enemy ranged units can just impotently bombard it but not capture it, till another melee unit happens along (and gets killed again). This goes on for a long time, and I'm thinking "yeah buddy, hang in there, you can do it!"... until, for no good reason whatsoever, the CS's garrisoned unit decides to decamp and jump out onto a vacant tile amidst all of those enemies, quickly committing gory suicide. With its ranged unit gone, the CS quickly dies. What's with that? Dumb, indeed.

 

[krc]

OH! OH! Another favorite... a CS will be getting attacked by another civ, or CS... and it has one ranged unit left garrisoning the city, all of its other units having been destroyed. Between the garrisoned ranged unit and the city bombardment, the CS manages to repeatedly hold off years worth of attacks upon it- completely surrounded by enemy units, yet it kills off the enemy's melee units just before they can capture the city, and then the enemy ranged units can just impotently bombard it but not capture it, till another melee unit happens along (and gets killed again). This goes on for a long time, and I'm thinking "yeah buddy, hang in there, you can do it!"... until, for no good reason whatsoever, the CS's garrisoned unit decides to decamp and jump out onto a vacant tile amidst all of those enemies, quickly committing gory suicide. With its ranged unit gone, the CS quickly dies. What's with that? Dumb, indeed.

+1. Absolutely.

 

[joncnunn]

Tactical AI is even worse on Archepello maps:

the turn after losing a city to an enemy force of 4 Destroyers and an Infantry that moped up;
AI decides to send 5 land units from neighboring landmasses into the sea to start swimming.
The launch point is 5 to 6 tiles away from the Destroyers a couple hexes behind that city,
the closest unit showed up on the captured city's unable to work hexes radar

Oops; the AI loses 4 units instantly; the 5th (closest to the city) barely makes a dent in the cities defenses.

 

[PhilBowles]

Well, I'm now officially worse than the AI... Scenario: on King as France. One Spearman in my army (a Warrior was killed by Barbarians), training up an archer following a very early declaration of war by the Inca. Even with the Spearman garrisoning, Paris fell to 4-5 Warriors after only killing about two. That was one of my shortest games of Civ...

 

[ense7en]

Well, I'm now officially worse than the AI... Scenario: on King as France. One Spearman in my army (a Warrior was killed by Barbarians), training up an archer following a very early declaration of war by the Inca. Even with the Spearman garrisoning, Paris fell to 4-5 Warriors after only killing about two. That was one of my shortest games of Civ...

AI can bumrush well due to pure numbers sometimes, and it's tough to hold them off if they DoW really early.
It's happened to all of us, no worries!

 

[krc]

Well, I'm now officially worse than the AI... Scenario: on King as France. One Spearman in my army (a Warrior was killed by Barbarians), training up an archer following a very early declaration of war by the Inca. Even with the Spearman garrisoning, Paris fell to 4-5 Warriors after only killing about two. That was one of my shortest games of Civ...

I believe in archers as the primary defense rather than spearman or warriors. Buy 'em if you have to. Keep moving them about behind the city and concentrate on destroying one attacker at a time.

Without archers, the (inevitable) early attacks will get you....

 

[mercury529]

Maybe the AI is actually rather brilliant and is simply farming XP .

 

[LeHam]

. . . And this is why 1UPT doesn't work.

At least, They should allow you to have 2UPT.

 

[Bandobras Took]

. . . at least if we hadn't seen equally bad stack AI programming in previous versions of Civ.

 

[qutsemnie]

If 2upt took the form of a ranged unit layer and a melee unit layer I could get behind that as just as interesting as 1upt while preserving some of its game play. (This would be the same concept as a non-combatant unit layer). It would help the AI a ton that is for sure. It can't just be a 2upt rule because the AI could still do the same bad stack quite often.

 

[PhilBowles]

I believe in archers as the primary defense rather than spearman or warriors. Buy 'em if you have to. Keep moving them about behind the city and concentrate on destroying one attacker at a time.

Without archers, the (inevitable) early attacks will get you....

Archers didn't help in my latest - Darius attacked with a lot of archers and a lot of Immortals, exactly the combination a human player at that phase in the game would likely go for.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Yeah civ Ai has always been somewhat fail at warfare, 1upt just accentuates this.