What is this AI Doing?

[Eiba]

See attached picture.

The strangest thing is that I've had a stack of three privateers blockading his capital for centuries now, and he's not made one move against them yet...

OK, that was a lie; the strangest thing is that he's built 45 caravels, with only two cities, and is showing no signs of slowing down...

What gives?

 

[MrTomothy]

Uhhhhh....

He wants to be -really- sure he will be able to kill those things.


Makes me wonder though, if a stack of Privateers will scare off the AI in other, less stupid situations. This I have to try.

 

[LunaticSlave]

OMG! that happens to me a lot with the ****** colonies i create too, it sucks! I even give em 2 workers per city, defenders and even give em all techs i have everytime i research em and they usualy just build insanely amount of caravels/galleons/trasports. Even if the city has a 1 hammer production and takes like 999 turns to make the damn ship. I stoped creating colonies cause they seem useles as hell for me at least, they are dumb. I just run the overseas cities by myself.

 

[NeverMind]

lol This AI scares me!

 

[Defiant47]

That is exceptionally strange... wonder why it does it...

 

[Pikkis]

See attached picture.

The strangest thing is that I've had a stack of three privateers blockading his capital for centuries now, and he's not made one move against them yet...

OK, that was a lie; the strangest thing is that he's built 45 caravels, with only two cities, and is showing no signs of slowing down...

What gives?

Maybe he has built all available buildings in both cities and cannot make the empire larger until gets Galleons to carry Settlers overseas. Why he just makes water units, not land, I have no idea. How long have you seen what he is building?

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

And it's the Byzntines, too!

I only mention that because they did the exact same thing in my last game. Is it like a civ-specific thing?

 

[ahab_in_rehab]

I've noticed something similar, in my game the Arabians who are isolated on an island are spamming Caravels. I have two privateers blockading which have gone unmolested for ages. However some other privateers which I was getting into position were intercepted outside of their territory. I really don't understand why they aren't attacking the blockading privateers

 

[westward]

I had a similar thing happen to me. I used a couple privateers to blockade a couple of Suleiman's cities, and after a while I noticed it was taking forever inbetween turns, because I had Show Enemy Moves on and he had a navy of 30+ caravels just swarming around his capital. Never moved them to attack the privateers, despite overwhelming numbers. I turned up my espionage against him, and every port city he had was still pumping out caravels. Must have been murdering his economy, since he already wasn't that big.

 

[Quagga]

A post to the BTS Bug Reports forum along with a savegame or two should help get this problem fixed...

 

[Kranden]

He knows the moment you goto war he is going to FRIGGING PWN that clam improvement you got there

 

[IronCrown]

I've had this too. I think it' triggered when you attack them with privateers. They are so afraid of privateers, they only build ships for the rest of the game
They never use them, though. Probably because caravels are too weak against privateers

 

[MrTomothy]

I had one game where I was harassing Shaka with a few Privateers, he also built up an army of Caravels, but he actually used them to make a huge swarm on my lonely ships. It took anywhere from 4 to 8 of them to kill one Privateer, but man, he went after those things like a rabid animal.

I love them Privateers, they keep away unwanted rival settlers from the distant islands I'm in the process of claiming.

 

[Menzies]

Maybe it's a bit like the AI attacking undefending boardercities even if you have extreme amounts of units behind it.

 

[mnf]

I had this too, but it wasn't with Privateers. In fact, my Privateer was killed by Caravels once.

In the same game, I was in a war with Justinian, and my Frigate runs into his God-knows-how-many caravels. They just swarm around my Frigate like flies and don't attack. They did suicide attack and then kill my first lone Galleon, though.

I had one lone Frigate go in to pick off one Caravel at a time and pull away to heal, rinse and repeat. I killed off probably over ten Caravels like this and his fleet of Caravels never came after me.

I think maybe it's got to do with a new strength decision in BtS? Perhaps the AI is set not to waste units on a strong unit, but the threshold is set way too low.

 

[Hristo]

I have seen the Russians doing it, vs me I had one Privateer in the sea outside of Moscow. He had like 15-20 trimeers, but he never attacked me.

I guess this should be reported in as a bug.

 

[CivDude86]

AI probably goes OMG pirates, then builds strongest ship they have (caravel in this case) then goes to attack and sees the odds (3vs6.6) then backs off, and repeats this procees forever. The aggresive AIs seem to realize that a bunch of caravels can take a privateer at least.

 

[Evie]

I've had caravels mass-ambush my privateers a few times before.