Using barbarians to get AI to use artillery

[Ares de Borg]

Has anybody tried this tool yet? What files is it supposed to change?

 

[antares60]

I tried to use this workaround for Barbarian artillery in a scenario I made, and I think it causes a small problem. Twice, in two separate games, the first time around turn 40 and the second time at turn 58, the down time between turns went from about 12 - 15 seconds, to over 2 minutes. It was like turning on a switch and all of a sudden, it slowed to a crawl. I tried to get it to do it in debug, but it wouldn't do it. I can't figure out why it does it.

I created two separate barbarian units, with the basic barb being immobile w/ZOC and an A/D of 1/4. The advanced barb was a catapult. The only thing that I could think would cause this problem is that around this turn period in most games, you get a pop-up window saying there's been a massive uprising near a city. With the influx of all those barbarians, the game wants to send those advanced barbs out on a raid, but won't do it because they have no A/D values. It keeps trying to get the basic barbs to move with the advanced barbs and can't because they're immobile.

Anyone else notice this problem?

I removed both units from the scenario, and now it plays normally. I'm already at turn 123 and no sign of delay between turns at all.

 

[jjbrasington]

I my games the AI will use artillery in mass, both against invading armies and cities. I pick one unit per era that is either the strongest offensive unit or the strongest defensive unit to enslave artillery pieces of the same era. Using this method I have seen, on multiple occasions, the AI use blitzkrieg like campaigns against the other AI civs. To keep the game balanced I give my civ a unique unit for every unit type in the game: unique warrior, phalanx, horsemen, tank, etc. Their units would enslave artillery mine would not. AI also use unique artillery: one type for my player, another type for all of the AI. This prevents my civ from being able to use their artillery because their artillery is not available to me as my artillery is not available to them. With this in place it creates a new dynamic: battle fronts. The AI will fortify and bombard where ever enemy units are encountered and will not advance until the opposing units are destroyed or retreat. It also adds another dynamic: if you are custom to sitting by and watching one civilization destroy another then you are allowing one civilization to become a super power. Maintaining a balance of power between all civs becomes very important, otherwise you will face an invasion force of 30 defensive + 30 artillery + 20 offensive units in multiple stacks in your territory bombarding and pillaging all the way to your core cities with no hope of capturing their artillery.

 

[jjbrasington]

So if we could only figure out a way to have Armies (before they are loaded) to be captured, the game may fall back onto the original programming that was in vanilla when they worked!

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On another note, a fifth way to use it may be to have artillery enslave artillery with lethal land through bombard, but make it's bombard weaker so it doesn't happen en masse and become overwhelming.

If you change the settings so that the military academy does not require an army first the AI will build the academy, build armies, and invade with them as their vanguard. This still will not fix the problem of horseman, horseman, warrior being loaded in an army though.

 

[Takhisis]

I think I get what you'¡re saying, Mr. brasington, but the text's a bit too cluttered up there.

 

[Lionic]

First of all a great "thank you" to tom and everybody who experimented with a ways to get AI to use artillery properly. I would like to share some of my own observations (based on my own Cold War scenario with artillery being produced via enslavement):
- The unit should have only "Artillery" no "Artillery+Offense/Defense" flags. Otherwise AI would be more than eager to throw A/D 1/1 heavy guns (B:80 ROF:4) into skirmish;
- AI starts to use artillery only with "escort" assigned--if no escort available, AI may simply abandon the unit (on an island for example). No idea how much defenders AI tends to assign per artillery unit, but NO LESS than one per each artillery piece (I think it uses the same principle as when escorting naval transports). To be honest don't remember if AI fired artillery when the escort was killed, or evacuated it, or assigned new escorts, but I think it's the same just abandoned it;
- I had immobile defensive units "garrisons". Sometimes AI assigned them as defenders for artillery units--in that case artillery stays in the same location. Might be good idea to have "fortress unit" enslaving immobile "fortress guns";
-It seems that AI favors units with both attack/defense flags as escorts more than pure "defense" although I can't be 100 % sure;
-And the last--negative--in my scenario battle for Europe between Soviet and NATO AI's has became some sort of grotesque WWI--one huge armada of artillery units and their escorts shells enemy city turn by turn, while the same enemy armada does the same to different city somewhere to the North. Both sides don't even bother to send somebody out to capture the shelled cities, probably all available units escort the guns!

 

[Takhisis]

(…)
In a mod years ago I had all ships with some sort of ranged fire. The AI would prefer to use the ranged fire if its units were not capable of destroying the opposing unit using the regular attack value. If confronted with a more powerful foe, but had enough ships that together they could defeat the unit, they would come up next to it one at a time using ranged fire till the larger unit sank or was badly damaged. This stopped the player tactic of using a powerful ship to squash all in its path because during its turn, the AI could use this artillery tactic to knock the behemoth out with several weaker ships. It made player battleship rampages a lot more risky. Since the AI used artillery effectively at sea, I couldn't figure out why the programming failed so miserably for land artillery, or why this wasn't addressed.

This is from the Storm Over the Pacific thread, thought it might come in handy.