The worker bait, an example of the AI limitations

[Baron2]

The worker bait is a fairly basic tactic to weaken a city you want to assault, consisting of merely sending a worker just outside it. Usually, the defender will try to capture the worker, conveniently ignoring that next turn, you can very well use your guns to blow the capturing unit then recapture your worker (and do it repeatedly) I use it to cover the retreat of damaged units, to shield siege units against cavalry strikes, to slow ennemy reinforcements (the idea here is that the worker stop dead in it's track an ennemy unit, while being recoverable the next turn.

This example showcase that the AI...

1)Have a priority for capturing workers. Which is btw an excellent harrasment tacti with mounted units, and a very poor tactic when siege guns pound your capital.

2)The AI seem oblivious to the possibility that a unit he send against another unit might be exposed to ranged fire.

 

[FeiLing]

Sometimes however the AI can and will capture and delete a worker on the same turn. (A human player can't do that).

 

[prince_caspian]

Baiting is better than never so I agree with the strategy, but sometimes they don't fall for it if they judge that garrisoning inside the city is more practical or they feel that taking the bait means they will be exposed to city fire. Seen it happen a few times.

 

[Baron2]

Inexplicably, the AI will often delete the worker after taking it from your territory (note : when you could argue that there was a chance of bringing it back to their territory) : I think the AI is persuaded that it will keep the worker if its in on her ground.

 

[GrayingGamer]

The dismal AI is this game's Achilles heel. Exploiting it feels like you're using cheat codes - not sure why anyone gets a kick out of winning the game by such means.

 

[smallfish]

AI will not, I repeat, WILL NOT fall for this bait all the time.

Sometimes it will capture AND THEN move the unit back.

Other times it will just ignore the civilian unit outright, and continue pummeling your lines or making it a complete stalemate. Depending on this bait strategy is plain silly, the height of desperation and generally not the best way to breeze through AI silliness.

 

[Callonia]

I haven't seen worker bait work the last time I tried it long time ago just to see if it could work or not. It didn't.

 

[Pouakai]

Not really related, but I have seen several times where ruins are put next to a Barb encampment, awesome baiting

 

[smallfish]

Not really related, but I have seen several times where ruins are put next to a Barb encampment, awesome baiting

There are times when I just zip my warrior or scout to that ruin, and BAM! two or three barbs behind that fog of war.

Same thing in combat - take out one little weak unit with a horsie, for want of a break in the stalemate... only to reveal he has a lot more behind, supported by nasty ranged stuff. Horsie dies next turn.

 

[FeiLing]

You can bait barbs with workers 100% of the time though (to prevent them from pillaging).
(Only exception is when they already captured a worker and have to bring him back to their camp first - in that case however they won;'t pillage either.)

 

[Callonia]

Not really related, but I have seen several times where ruins are put next to a Barb encampment, awesome baiting

You have no idea how much I fall for that kind of bait, damn AIs. damn em all >< Lost quite a few scouting archers that way.

 

[FeiLing]

BTW. Barbarians will always attack your unit/scout, even if an AI has a much more vulnerable unit in attack range. That pisses me so off. They not only get combat bonuses against barbs and a whole lot of other bonuses. No, the barbs also chose to kill my 6-7 hp scout ALWAYS over a 1-2 HP scout from an AI.

 

[Optional]

Yes, that is something that frustrates me as well. Or see a barb spear get absolutely mauled when attacking an AI scout. The AI is invincible against barbs.
I admit went into the AIHandicapInfo file to change their crazy bonus against barbs to the same as what I get. That's the only thing I changed in there, but this reeked to unfairness, I wasn't enjoying this.

It's probably also that crazy AI bonus that leads the barb to attack your unit instead of theirs nearly all the time.

 

[apocalypse105]

stop complaining about the AI have flaws in combat every turn based combat game.

In advance wars the Ai allways atacks the infantry that is capturing a city so if you put range units and a tank next to it you can kill his advanced tanks. It olso goos after the less damaged ones withouth knowing you have other units nearby

No matter how much patches the AI gets the human player will allways find exploits

 

[Priah77]

I dunno, part of me feels like unless youre playing deity it fundamentally doesnt make sense to complain about the AI being complete crap.... just move up to a higher difficulty level.

At the same time, I get infuriated by how horrible the AI is. Im not exactly a computer programming genius but what the hell, Im pretty sure they should be able to write a little more sophisticated code for the AI to fight wars...

If we can go to the moon we can write good civ 5 ai code!

 

[joshua43214]

I've noticed that only certain civs will fall for worker bait. I can't count the number of times I've gotten an early DoW from Alex, and he just moves arround my worker to beat on my city walls. Bismark will often ignore them as well. CS's will always grab them near as I can tell.

 

[CoolLizy]

I dunno, part of me feels like unless youre playing deity it fundamentally doesnt make sense to complain about the AI being complete crap.... just move up to a higher difficulty level.

The problem I have with that, though, is that it doesn't necessarily offer any additional challenge. The computer is still just as stupid, but it has so much excess happiness and production that it can either just zerg rush me before I have a chance to get situated, or it eats up enough of the continent that I can't keep up with its technology. Yes, I can sometimes beat them even then when I put my mind to it, but then after struggling for an hour with my army to take a single 15-strength city while insta-healing enemy units keep flooding in, I step back and ask myself "Am I actually having any fun?" The answer is usually no.

So I go back down to the King level and start steamrolling the computer. At which point I get annoyed that the computer isn't strong enough and I keep mowing over its units. So I try upping the difficulty level back to where it was, and then I'm right back where I started.

'Tis a vicious cycle.

 

[Kaosprophet]

I dunno, part of me feels like unless youre playing deity it fundamentally doesnt make sense to complain about the AI being complete crap.... just move up to a higher difficulty level.

At the same time, I get infuriated by how horrible the AI is. Im not exactly a computer programming genius but what the hell, Im pretty sure they should be able to write a little more sophisticated code for the AI to fight wars...

I have some experience in coding, and I can say AI programming is a fair bit harder than many of it's critics seem to think. Especially when you have to account for different levels of player.

Though that said, a lot of the work is done before you even get down to writing the actual code. You don't *need* a programming genius to do it, just a problem solver who knows how to express himself to the actual programmers.

If we can go to the moon we can write good civ 5 ai code!

I would point out that the budget for the lunar program was a lot more robust than that afforded to any single game. Estimated 170 billion dollars in today's money (after accounting for inflation.) Not really a good comparison.

 

[prince_caspian]

It's quite fun to see a CS AI worker-baiting an empire AI. Worse still when empire falls for it. These random stuff are what makes the game hilarious at times.


Link to video.

Fun starts around 6:45