What are they thinking?

[mad_stork]

Has anyone seen this before?

The AI attacks me for no reason (no problem here, I do it all the time ) but I was expecting someone to attack, so I had a big army built up and I started beating the crap out of them.

Anyway, after taking all exept 4 or 5 of their cities I checked the wonder list (F7 IIRC) and they were building wonders in their 2 most productive cities! Why would they be wasting produciton building wonders when they are getting decimated They needed units in a bad way!

Anyway, they finished one before I got to the city and so I got a free wonder. But still you would think that if the AI started losing a war they would forget the wonder building and build some units!

 

[Civddict]

I see that all time. there is option under preferences to give you pop up windows when somebody is starting to build wonder.

 

[Chieftess]

Atleast in Civ2, they would usually stop the wonder if attacked.

 

[Tiamat]

In all my games, I have never seen the AI stop Wonder building when I am at war with them. What I have seen them do is switch all other building production to units. They don't seem to care that most of their units are regular or conscript level against my elites.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

I usually see the Ai start production of a wqonder when i attack them - don't know what kind of a programming screw-up that is....

 

[Civddict]

Maybe they are trying to stay competetive in all situations

 

[KaNick]

I usually continue building wonders during war. Of course thats because I can afford the loss of the units i would normally recieve.
Oh well im sure i do a lot of things that the ai thinks are stupid.

 

[Bamspeedy]

No matter what they program the AI to do with wonder-building during war, there will be an 'exploit' to counter it. The way it is now, you just wait until they start building a wonder, then attack. Since the most productive city is building a wonder, you don't have to worry of any more units being produced from that city.

If they told the AI to stop building wonders when attacked, the player would just attack every time the AI starts building 'their' wonder. Thus, a wonder would never be complete until the player felt like building it.

 

[Reboot]

Perhaps the AI can be programmed to check its losses in war. If a large percentage of its forces are lost (and unreplenished) and many of its cities are captured/razed, then it would abandon the wonder project. (unless it happens to be the Manhattan Project or Sun Tzu, maybe)

Leaving the AI as it is becomes as exploit as well. Since the AI will put its most productive cities into wonder production, then the best time to attack them would be when their cities are caught up with the wonder project since its most productive cities are handicapped.

 

[Machi]

repeat after me kids:

"The AI is ********."

 

[smallstepforman]

I keep on building wonders when losing a war.

 

[Reboot]

Originally posted by smallstepforman
I keep on building wonders when losing a war.

Even when the opponent is swarming your borders and your army is too small to withstand the attacks?

 

[mad_stork]

Originally posted by Reboot
Perhaps the AI can be programmed to check its losses in war. If a large percentage of its forces are lost (and unreplenished) and many of its cities are captured/razed, then it would abandon the wonder project.

YES! this makes much more sense then what they are doing. The AI already knows if it is losing (they won't offer a peace treaty if they are winning) so why didn't they program the AI to stop building wonders and start building defensive units when that is necessary? I assume that most human players would switch from building a wonder in their most productive cities if they were losing 1-2 cities every turn!

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
If they told the AI to stop building wonders when attacked, the player would just attack every time the AI starts building 'their' wonder. Thus, a wonder would never be complete until the player felt like building it.

If they only stopped building the wonder once they started losing the war then how would you exploit this? This solution wouldn't be that exploitable because you would have to start winning the war to get them to stop building a wonder.

 

[SirJethro]

Mad_stork: To answer your main question...they aren't "thinking". Someone just left out an IF...THEN statement.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I had to bring this thread back up after what just happened in my game. I'm China and waged war against the Americans. I had probably about 30 cities, the Americans 3. They started building the Great Library (I can't remember if they started building it just before I declared war or after, I think it was before).

I killed one of their spearman in their capital. A turn or two later I get the message "The Americans have begun building the Great Library"! I was wondering if this was a bug because they had already been building the wonder. I had seen this happen in other games. But then I saw the population of Washington had dropped from 3 to 2. So they TEMPORARILY stopped building the wonder to poprush another spearman (presumably). The problem is America should have gave up on the wonder completely!

So they do give up on wonders, albeit temporarily. Perhaps because they didn't have very many shields invested into the wonder yet? Maybe it only happens when they run short of defenders? Because it always seems like they want at least 2 defenders in a wonder building city, so since they were down to 1 they went into some sort of 'emergency' mode?!

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Bamspeedy: seen that, too - they get into emergency for two (capital=3) defenders - but do then pick up the wonder again, whether it makes sense or not....

I just had a three town civ trying to build three different wonders during a war