Why does the AI NEVER annex a city?

[bcaiko]

In a recent game, I was on a sizable continent with the Iroquois, Babylon, France, England, Spain, India and Greece. Greece, France and I quickly became the power players on the continent and soon after the Iroquois, Babylon, India and Spain were no more.

After some initial scuffles, France and I became friends and I let Greece and France conquer neighboring Civs in the north. Once they had, I swept in behind them and easily took their native cities, leaving them only with puppets. It's now the modern era.

France forced my hand because he was well on his way to a Science victory, and Greece would easily have a good hand for a diplomatic victory if I hadn't forced Alex into an all puppet empire long ago. With the cash Alex has on hand, I'm not sure I could stop him from winning if he built the UN.

But he can't. Because he won't unpuppet a single city. He has all of India and most of Spain to annex, and he just won't.

Why does the AI seemingly not have this capacity? IMHO, it can't be that hard to write some code to allow the AI to make this decision properly. Even if only in the extreme situation described in the above. I'm just wondering what the thinking is here, because the long-term detrements of pupetting for the AI (Alex can't build units anymore and can't build wonders) certainly outweigh the short-term happiness issues (that don't really affect the AI).

Thoughts?

 

[Martin Alvito]

Why should it annex under ordinary circumstances? The AI is making the production decisions either way. If we assume that the AI's core cities pump out sufficient units, there is no reason to annex.

You're correct that the AI should annex if reduced below a certain threshold of "core cities" so that it can build units/Wonders, but it's easy to see how such a rare condition would result in an oversight by the developer.

Enough annexation would tank the AI's in a hurry. Since the designers were presumably unaware of the persistent Courthouse 'bug' when they wrote the code, it makes sense that they programmed the AI to not annex.

 

[fmlizard2]

If I had the bottomless pit of that the AI gets, I would never annex (and courthouse) either.

 

[vexing]

i'd guess developer oversight. even when an AI is reduced to nothing but puppets they don't annex.

 

[JamesCivFan]

Not annexing under normal circumstances is acceptable. But when I see an AI with a puppet capital, having that as its only city left after losing a war, well then that's far from acceptable.

It's probably a bug, because since the AI is playing with the same rules as the player, then that means that this city cannot produce units. So they're doomed to being without units for the rest of the game if that happens.

 

[hung_h]

If you play the game on higher than Prince, You'll notice the AI doesn't really care about happiness because they have at least a dozen extra evn though they haven't built much.

 

[Rpger29]

What is truly baffling is to see an AI lose its capital, regain it, and leave it as a puppet.

 

[smallfish]

What is truly baffling is to see an AI lose its capital, regain it, and leave it as a puppet.

Truly the mark of a genius!

 

[filli_noctus]

I rarely see cities reconquered but I'm pretty sure that a conquered city that is regained by its founder does not become a puppet, even after thousands of years.

 

[Becomedeath]

Perhaps the AI is quite happy to let the puppet AI make decisions for it while it uses it's own settled cities to produce units...

Other than unit\wonder production, the AI doesn't have a need to take personal control of cities, it has it anyway! So the question becomes, why isn't the computer taking control of the computer controlled cities?

Seriously though, while there obviously is a different system for puppet management, it's entirely possible that the AI just doesn't get the same value out of annexed cities from a strategic point.

Generally, I'll only annex a city when I need it to do something that it won't do as a puppet, i.e. if it's my only coastal city or if I've got a wide empire and need some unit production closer to the front lines. The AI might not be capable of making such determinations or it might just not consider them worth the hassle of annexing a city over, perhaps it doesn't occur to it that it can annex and then rush buy a courthouse.

While I don't really consider the courthouse "bug" to be the sky-falling-in issue than many others do, I'd hate to think what the AI would do with it if it made use of what's generally a wide empire happiness quick fix.

 

[The_Quasar]

The short answer to "Why does the AI never annex anything?" is simple, because that's how it's coded.

But why? Because the main difference between an Annexed city and a puppet is that the player has control of the building etc in an annexed city, and the AI has control in a puppeted city. As the AI will have control anyway when it's an AI civ, I suspect it was seen as no advantage for the AI to annex.

 

[LegionSteve]

The short answer to "Why does the AI never annex anything?" is simple, because that's how it's coded.

But why? Because the main difference between an Annexed city and a puppet is that the player has control of the building etc in an annexed city, and the AI has control in a puppeted city. As the AI will have control anyway when it's an AI civ, I suspect it was seen as no advantage for the AI to annex.

It's no advantage for the AI to be able to build military units? Sadly that's probably true

 

[builer680]

Standard answer here seems to be "It doesn't matter because the AI controls it anyway."

That's not a good answer. Puppeted cities focus gold and they don't make units. That handicaps production, population growth, and offense/defense. Not to mention, it skews build priorities for buildings. It does matter. The AI should annex if it needs those things, especially if it has the money to easily afford a Courthouse.

Also, I've never seen the AI regain its own capital and leave it as a puppet (someone made this statement earlier). I could be wrong, but I think regained cities aren't considered occupied and are annexed automatically. Therefore regaining your own capital and leaving it as a puppet would be impossible. Feel free to correct me if this isn't right though.

 

[The_Quasar]

Puppeted cities focus gold and they don't make units.

While this is true of player-owned puppets, but is it true of AI controlled puppets? I don't think it is, at least not all the time anyway.

 

[bcaiko]

Standard answer here seems to be "It doesn't matter because the AI controls it anyway."

That's not a good answer. Puppeted cities focus gold and they don't make units. That handicaps production, population growth, and offense/defense. Not to mention, it skews build priorities for buildings. It does matter. The AI should annex if it needs those things, especially if it has the money to easily afford a Courthouse.

This. Not to mention if the AI has any kind of victory goal in mind, it ought to be pursuing certain Wonders, which it can't do if it's cities are all puppets.

I realize the AI has no real use for happiness, but not being able to produce Wonders or military units is an unmistakable dooming handicap. From what I've seen, an all puppet AI will not produce units (I never saw new units from Greece, from the original example, only upgrades of the measly units I left them with). Even warmongering AIs should occassionally be annexing a city on the frontlines, if only to be quickly resupplying units to the frontline.

And, knowing this about the AI creates an unrealistic and unreasonable exploit for human players. I really think it ought to be corrected.

 

[Jaybe]

Why does the AI NEVER annex a city?

It DOESN'T.
The AI will occasionally ANNEX cities. Sometimes (yes, by no means always) an AI will go on a conquering spree and eventually annex several of them.

Large/continents/epic/prince.

 

[builer680]

Why does the AI NEVER annex a city?

It DOESN'T.
The AI will occasionally ANNEX cities. Sometimes (yes, by no means always) an AI will go on a conquering spree and eventually annex several of them.

Large/continents/epic/prince.

I've never (literally never) seen them do so.

However, if the AI does know how to do it, it should do it more often. Whatever conditions it must meet to annex are currently too stringent.

 

[Jaybe]

Sometimes (yes, by no means always) an AI will ...

Instead of 'by no means always' I should have written 'once in a while.'

If you continue to look for AI cities with 'wrong' city names (don't forget to look on those other continents in late game), you might be in for a surprise.

No promises, of course; but worth looking for.

 

[bcaiko]

Why does the AI NEVER annex a city?

It DOESN'T.
The AI will occasionally ANNEX cities. Sometimes (yes, by no means always) an AI will go on a conquering spree and eventually annex several of them.

Large/continents/epic/prince.

I've never (literally never) seen them do so.

However, if the AI does know how to do it, it should do it more often. Whatever conditions it must meet to annex are currently too stringent.

I too find this claim dubious. I've seen plenty of AI-conquered cities, also never - not once - seen one annexed. If you have a screenshot of an AI annexing a city, it would serve to ease my doubts.

In any event, the fact that a player can reduce an AI to all puppet cities in permanacy, even a puppet capital, speaks ill of the current coding governing the AI's annexing decision-making.

 

[binhthuy71]

Why does the AI NEVER annex a city?

Because it doesn't have to?