Are there any strategy game AIs that don't suck?
Old World. It's a Soren Johnson game, like Civ IV (the Civ with the best AI in the series), so it isn't terribly surprising.
Currently I am fighting Kush in another war, this time of their choosing, and they are once again delivering a beatdown. This is after Babylon declared war on me (because that gave me a two front war with Kush), and the Hittites declared war on Babylon (because that gave Babylon a two front war with me) - Kush then declared on me so I once again had a two front war. I'd been giving them 83 training per turn as tribute, which they'd been using to upgrade their military capabilities, and they said we either had to install a grand vizier of their choosing, which would let them choose the production in all of our cities, allowing them to optimize for our destruction, or they would invade again. Themistocles of Athens is nothing if not honorable, so we chose doom over subjugation.
Although I was able to deal with their advance scouts within a couple of turns, they quickly destroyed my first wave of troops with their first wave of non-scout troops. I didn't even know what had hit me until I realized they had advanced mangonels raining down destruction on us from the sky, a technology Greece has not mastered. Their troops are almost all more advanced than ours - last war it was archers to slings, this war it's longbows to archers, pikemen to spearmen. My initial plan of fighting a stalemate just our side of the edge of the desert evaporated as we were pushed back, and Kush took few losses.
Gortyn was our nearest city, and we rallied our next wave of troops to it while the survivors of the first wave straggled back. The new plan was to have Gortyn and Sparta (the other nearest city, and our wealthiest) to form a wide front in which Kush could funnel troops and we could counter-attack. This was somewhat less unsuccessful, and I hadn't been a total fool during the Babylonian war, I had been working to improve my military infrastructure, so my rate of reinforcements was better than it had been - though Kush's troops were still much better trained. Kush didn't give our truce proposals a consideration, and began advancing, but we finally were fighting close to 50:50. They were gradually bringing up one of those blasted mangonels, however, and we knew that if it got within range of Gortyn, we were doomed.
Thus, we sent forth our first Pikeman and some Archers and Horsemen and destroyed it, behind their front line of pikemen and archers. A momentary abatement. But what did we find but not one, not two, but
four more mangonels ensuring that any attempt of ours to advance to try to take their city would result in total annihilation. A masterclass in the use of terrain to form a defensive chokepoint. Even if we were doing well on the defensive, I haven't a clue how I could get around that obstacle.
When I played it a couple years ago, I had some near-run battles and wars, and I fondly remember an extended war in my Babylon game where Rome very nearly overcame my key defensive city - if I hadn't learned how to fight better over time I would have lost that game. I'm not as sharp at
Old World after a two year hiatus, but the developers have also continued to improve the AI during that time, so even if I remembered everything as I played it in 2022, I would be doing worse.
As a result I occasionally need breaks from my Old World struggles to give my brain a chance to replenish. Which is rare with other games.
Didn't GalCiv2 learn off human players?
I believe it at least claimed to in the manuals, yes. It hinted at having some memory of what strategies you used across games that worked against it, and what it tried and failed, and adjusting based on that.
