Wartime: AI flaws worth fixing

[Richard III]

I'm moving steadily ahead in my first sizable modern war, across a broad front with air, sea and land units. I'm finding the combat system seems better than fair to me, but I've also found two irritating AI / game flaws that aren't quite bugs but seem awfully close:

Workers.
Someone in another thread remarked that the AI's love of attacking workers is "so overdone." Quite true - in fact, the AI seems to prefer taking a helpless worker over defending itself against massive actual invasion. Please please please firaxis fix this?


Mutual Defence Pacts.
Second time I've seen this, where:

- country "X" signs a pact with "Y"

- country "X" attacks country "Z" in a war of aggression

("x" would be me in this instance)

- "Z"'s troops counterattack against "X"'s troops - in self-defence, keep in mind - and this triggers the MDP, bringing "Y" to help "mutually defend" the aggressor against the victim.

Since the computer can distinguish between offensive and defensive wars for war weariness purposes, why can't it do so for diplomatic purposes?

R.III

 

[Malys Faisent]

I've had countries activate a mutual protection pact after I nuked some poor bastard...they were MPP with me and I just up and nuked another nation to see what would happen...they all declared war against him even though he hadn't attacked a single troop of mine yet...in fact they might have declared war before his declaration, I don't remember the exact timing, but it was near instantaneous.

Though there should be 2 types of MPP...mutual protection (defensive wars only) and mutual agression (ok you and me will divide the New World around Brazil). Historically there are much more of the former than the latter, but the latter is certainly an option.

 

[Machi]

yes, yes, very good point. these nuances are needed.

the corollory to that is that war weariness would also depend on whether you were attacked or whether first strike was yours.

 

[OIS]

its also irritating that the AI keeps starting to build wonders while loseing city after city in a war... what good will a wonder do if he got no cities? if he's loseing a war (like, I just took his capital and big cities), he should focus on building units to defend, not to build wonders...

 

[FullofHoles]

AI flaw that bothers me most is the enemy's incompetence with ships. AI will apparently ALWAYS attack overland if possible rather than use ships to attack across a bay or gulf.

Additionally, enemy will sometimes send ships very long distances skirting the edge of my islands to strike at some target that is much more distant than the more logical targets. This has allowed me to successfully defend myself with a handful of longbowmen and spearmen against invasions of cavalry. The enemy should lurk in deep waters until it has a relatively short line to its intended target because then it will have the advantage of surprise.

The enemy should also coordinate its ships so that they land attacks simultaneously.

 

[Dearmad]

Bump. Good thread.

Someone take the time to email this to firaxis soon via their comments area on their website- I've emailed them too much as it is with my suggestions, but THESE are GOOD ones and important ones I think!