Bombers attacking the farms...

[Handel]

Juts found this topic on another forum and this reminded me I wanted to rant about this AI weirdness too. Because I found this extremely stupid - the AI declares war and sents several units to my border city. But instead of attacking the city and possible capturing it, the AI starts to pillage, this giving me enough time to produce troops and to transfer them from the interior city. Surely, the border city is in slight trouble and it couple of citizens can starve, but who cares?

[dearmad]

Yeah the AI isn't aggressive enough in taking cities.

[quinalla]

Eh, if your cities are weak, they will usually try to take them. If they are fortified pretty well, they often send some troops in to try to cut off your production and especially your military resources. It is more efficient to attack the infrastructure if your opponent has no good way to stop it then throw your units away to against heavily fortified cities. I had a civ really wreck my production doing this because I had no good counter units built to attack marauders, only to defend my cities.

It may need tweaked, but attacking infrastructure is the correct decision in some cases. Maybe not in the case you presented, but if the AI only had a couple units ready, it is pretty much a waste to attack a city without a good chance of taking it or at least killing units there.

[clarkcd]

Since you get money for pillaging they could be using that cash (not sure how much you get since I try and capture the city whole) to buy more troops.

[Handel]

You get few golds. Not enough to buy an army.

[pauli]

but the game designers seem convinced that it's a lot of money and totally worth it, based on the hints - so the ai may think the same thing, as well.

[Handel]

You need about 250 golds just to make a middle-range upgrade. Guess how much you need to buy the whole unit. And you will lose much more units to counter-attacks when beating the windmills.
But it seems unlike in the older Civs the AI doesn't counter-attack from the cities.

[Addled Platypus]

bleeding a civ dry...its a good thing

Gandhi pillaged my tiles, roads and mines..I think my 10 machine gunners made him think twice before trying to capture

Just wait your turn till an AI bomb bards you with naval units..(yes plural)