Very, very effective tactic... (and man alive, I hope the AI never learns how to use this one)

[Galadrion]

I've been running my first v37 game, and am now up to the early/mid Classical Era. I have to admit, the AIs are doing a much better job of staying competitive with me - they were a little slow off the mark when it came to expanding from their first cities (I had five up and going by the time anyone else established a second city), but once they started, they came on like gangbusters and, in fact, there are currently not one but two empires out there with more cities than I have! It's been a long time since that happened, and even longer since an AI could manage to run a larger empire than mine without crashing the economy. They still aren't fully leveraging their capabilities, since I'm out in front by pretty much every measure, but it's a lot closer than it's been for some time.

I have come up with an incredibly effective - and extremely nasty - tactic, however. I've got a pack of burglars which I keep sending to the nearest opposition city, infiltrating when they arrive, which boosts the espionage points against that empire and sends the burglar back to my capital, where I promptly repeat the process. I also have multiple spies, who I've been sending to cities in that same empire (focusing on one city at a time), waiting until they've built up to their highest preparation bonus, and then spreading my culture to them. In this way, I've taken three out of Red Cloud's four cities before he got annoyed enough to declare war... and since the one city he had left was not his original capital (and in fact, was his last established city, and as a result his least developed) he is at a massive disadvantage in pursuing his war. It looks like it's going to be a toss-up whether I put together an offensive force to take Mound City or it revolts and joins my empire...

I'm fairly certain this isn't a fluke result... and I'm about to put that to the test. I've already got a second burglar pack targeting a second empire on my borders: Frederick's Germany. Yes, I'm gearing up for a second covert offensive before I've even completed my first.

In any case, I've got to congratulate the team here. This is probably the best mod I've seen for modeling some of the sneakier aspects of international competition - no other mod, in my opinion, really comes close for allowing black ops and dirty tricks. And if you guys ever manage to get the AI using tactics like this, I'm going to need to drop the difficulty until I can work out a counter. Eesh.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Thanks for the awesome feedback! StrategyOnly often wonders if the criminals have any value anymore and I keep telling him they're more badass than he can imagine if used properly. Great confirmation here.

I've noticed I forgot to change the tooltip on the infiltrate command unfortunately. That the unit doesn't get sacrificed does make it worthwhile to use now.

Another thing you may wish to consider to do even further damage, let your criminals buildup crime until they become wanted and THEN infiltrate as a means of escape as well as achieving the goal of the infiltration itself.

The biggest snipped project from v37's cycle here was the AI of which you speak. I figured I'd first see what players could really determine were some best practices before trying to teach the AI what those would be. Observations like these are awesome and yes, as the programmer of the AI, I can tell you, the AI is listening to our discussion and will eventually implement these kinds of tricks

 

[Galadrion]

Seriously badass indeed. Not only have I been using this tactic, I've also gone into the business of pretty much wholesale exportation of criminal elements - I've got dozens of assassins and bandit footpads roaming around as well, and they're sending back large numbers of military captives. (Slavery can really benefit from this sort of thing.) Although it does appear that black ops combatants have been rather nerfed from what they once were; considerable numbers of these have been KIA. I still seem to be producing them faster than they're being eliminated, though.

Allowing the criminals to build up crime could be a viable tactic, but they don't seem to need the delay to still do considerable damage in this arena. Even with my immediate infiltration routine, they still build up considerable crime in the target cities - Mound City is currently running at almost 1100 crime just from what I'm doing now. The espionage damage is by a fair margin the more dangerous part, though, in my personal opinion. I currently have a score against Red Cloud of around 110,000 (even with my spies providing a regular drain against it), as compared to his score of about 2,500 against me (and I don't think he's using much, if any, of his).

All in all, I would have to say that criminals definitely have a strong strategic value, particularly if a player is willing to use them ruthlessly. I'm almost scared when I consider that later criminal units are even more potent...

 

[Krombacher84]

I can confirm that criminals are and were always really good at taking down someone.

Sure most people think of throwing nukes later on or sending massive armies early on... but that also costs you a lot of money or you have to declare open war, which could snowball massively against you.

I learned it the hard way back then in v33 I think it was when that aztec or inca jerk next door did throw his ambusher at my civ and I had no Watchmen (was not a tech/unit back then or further down the tech tree) and I had no dawgs (dogs) to counter him... also it gets pretty fast pretty much out of hand if you have to have 6 dog squads walking up and down at your borders... and thats for 1 City!!! ^^ So if you have criminals... if you are able to get through the security measures of your enemy somewhere, you can produce a lot of havoc.

Criminals are perfect for stuff we experience today in the real world... asynchronous warfare... where you weaken your enemy out of the blue and he has mostly no real idea who is weakening him... till the day when you pull the big plug and shortly after that or maybe even at the same time start to invade... its a mighty tool, not just for big civs but especially for civs that are behind a little or smaller than the foe... or if you run risk to have a big AI alliance against you in an open war that you might not survive that good... there are so many situations where you can do a lot with criminals, even if you dont want to go to war or conquer, for example you can sponge off a lot of cash from other civs and therefor boost your own civ with their money ^^

Also a viable tactic is invisible criminal recon around the cities of your enemies or possible enemies... just place some criminals that are invisible there and keep them away from units that might spot you and you have always a good idea of what the enemy is doing... and can react accordingly... for example kill his settlers he is sending out ^^ Can cripple a civ massively if you sponge away some 2-3 settlers over a time ^^

Later on there are many more options that can make the civing on earth a living hell for another civ ^^
So yeah... I usually build lots of dogs and watchmen and catch the AI spies and criminals... this is a clean civ (at least at home, we send our rabble out to wreak havoc elsewhere)

 

[Thunderbrd]

Are y'all using Hide and Seek now with these strategies? I've been finding I'm really loving the balance this helps to bring to the table for this sort of thing.

 

[Krombacher84]

nope I did not use any Combat Options so far... just want to get one game v37 finished and then I use some more combat options... I think as next I would add Hide and Seek + Size Matters and such.

Still its pretty good to have some invisible goon killing AI settlers and his workers and weak units ^^
Also all the money and sabotage options... really nice if you can land them.

 

[Galadrion]

I am. Size Matters actually decreases the value of criminal combatants, because most of them aren't allowed to combine into larger units, and the AI quickly notices their use and bands their own units together. (I suspect this is why my bandit footpads and assassins have been getting KIA'd as much as they have.) Hide and Seek I would consider critical for black ops - most of these units have invisibility as one of their central tenets.

 

[Galadrion]

Okay, THAT was unexpected! I got Red Cloud's last city from him (it went into revolt and then I bribed the city - bam, he's out and I've got it), was moving my spies and burglars into position against Frederick's Germany...

And Frederick pledged fealty to me.

Followed by Charlemagne.

Followed by Mansa Musa.

All before I could shift my black ops targets. So now I've got half the remaining empires of the world under my control, and I suspect the only reason I don't have more is because I'm now at war with the other four empires (Catherine's Russia, Mehmed's Ottomans, Logan's Iroquois, and Yagan's Aborigines) due to me inheriting pre-existing wars. Of course, none of the four are willing to talk to me. Think I'm gonna have to beat on 'em a while before they're gonna be willing to smarten up some. Oh, gee, and look - I've got all these spies and burglars and bandit footpads and assassins... I think the endgame just started...