Two observations

[Pinstar]

1. Charlemagne looks like the Burger King


2. The last game I played, I had a very strong location on a long penisula. Most of my cities were both costal and had access to some high production tiles. I decided to try my hand at privateers and built about a dozen. I'd camp them and blockade next to AI costal cities. I saw one odd behavior time and again. The AI would build caravels. TONS of caravels. They would station them all around my privateer in pairs. I saw them group 8, somtimes 10 around just one privateer. They would wait for about 10 turns before they'd finally go and attack the privateer. Of course they won, but they could have killed my privateer easily with half the forces they brought.

It was kind of funny, when I later went to conquor Isabella, one of her cities had about maybe 4-5 normal land defenders, and at least 24 caravels all docked in the city. Is this an AI bug?

 

[Enigma256]

2. it is kind of a feature.
freeing their cities from privateers is their top priority, and they stop everything else in the coastal cities.

the 10 turn wait seems like a bug.

 

[azzaman333]

Privateers drive the AI into Caravel frenzies, so I don't use them

 

[Diamondeye]

Privateers drive the AI into Caravel frenzies, so I don't use them

The AI is always in Caravel Frenzy, Privateering just makes it worse...

 

[azzaman333]

It still feels like an exploit to me to make them build even more useless units.

 

[Bushface]

I've seen few cases of caravelitis but many more of triremophilia, with AIs churning out triremes even though there were no galleys to attack, no more coastline they could explore, and caravels were available.

 

[Ethric]

I don't really mind that they build caravels to knock of privateers, if caravels is the best they got. But as the OP says, they often don't actually use them against the privateers. I have seen swarms of 50++ caravels hover around a friend of mines stack of privateers (8-10), they never attacked. Eventually I came by with destroyers and cleaned up (and told my friend to bugger of his privateers ). Probably they have some sort of "if there are X privateers harassing me I need Y caravels to take them all out", when it should just send them in when they have enough to kill one privateer (so 2-3, 4 at most caravels.). No point waiting til lthey can get them all, if that's what they are doing. Or just not use so much resources on caravels if the blockade don't have too serious reprecussions. Something is amiss somewhere in the formula, that's for sure.

And get the Ai to use privateers. I have seen a total of one AI privateer, stumbling into my destroyer. Sure, in such late times, privateers aren't too helpful, but in my even games they don't seem to build them either.

 

[Pinstar]

It almost sounds as if the AI might be stuck in a loop.
1. "My City is being plundered by a privateer, i must make navel units to defend it quickly."
2. "Caravels are the best unit the city can produce quickly, produce caravels"
3. "I will not send Caravels against Privateers, they do not have a high enough chance of victory"
<repeat to 1>

Can anyone look at the guts of the AI code to see how it responds to Caravels?

 

[CivFan87]

Yeah there is a definite bug because you do not need 15 or 10 or even 6 caravls to take down a single privateer(unless you have tremondously bad luck)

 

[Ethric]

It almost sounds as if the AI might be stuck in a loop.
1. "My City is being plundered by a privateer, i must make navel units to defend it quickly."
2. "Caravels are the best unit the city can produce quickly, produce caravels"
3. "I will not send Caravels against Privateers, they do not have a high enough chance of victory"
<repeat to 1>

Actually I have seen them go after privateers with caravels. This was right after i got BtS, and I foolislhy sent lone privateers to plunder the more backwards civs on the map. Caravels would come pound them in suicide rusn till they were dead. Then I figured, stacks man, stacks. And with that tactic they just build the swarms of caravles. And sometimes they don't build any noticeable mass of caravels, which is just as well if they aren't going to use them.

 

[L4zXX0r]

Privateers drive the AI into Caravel frenzies, so I don't use them

Wouldn't this be a good strategy to tie down your opponents from building land units? You could wage a very successful land war against coastal civs, just by haivng them waste resources on caravels.

 

[L4zXX0r]

It still feels like an exploit to me to make them build even more useless units.

But still a good strategy. I mean, I play against the computer with out ruth. (or ruthlessly), they'd do the same thing to you if they knew it would work. Then again, they're AI and we're not...

OR ARE WE?

 

[azzaman333]

But still a good strategy. I mean, I play against the computer with out ruth. (or ruthlessly), they'd do the same thing to you if they knew it would work. Then again, they're AI and we're not...

OR ARE WE?

Intentionally triggering a bug in the AI's code is not fun for me personally.

 

[L4zXX0r]

Intentionally triggering a bug in the AI's code is not fun for me personally.

I suppose. The question one must ask is, "is this really a bug?" Do the developers consider it a bug? If not, anything that does not involve worldbuilder or cheat codes is fair game to me. But then, I tend to power game my way through must games I play. Efficiency is excellene. Hell, I didn't even know about this, and now I plan to use this particular gem of strata...

 

[azzaman333]

I suppose. The question one must ask is, "is this really a bug?" Do the developers consider it a bug? If not, anything that does not involve worldbuilder or cheat codes is fair game to me. But then, I tend to power game my way through must games I play. Efficiency is excellene. Hell, I didn't even know about this, and now I plan to use this particular gem of strata...

The brilliance of Civ is that just about everyone can play the game in a different way and still have fun!

 

[L4zXX0r]

exactly. Shoot, I still find new ways to play the game. This site really has given me a lot of insights. Too bad I can hardly beat noble.