Pillaging: Viable strat or just Them vs Us?

[Blake]

Okay, when the barbs (oops, I mean AI) run in with 50 zillion units and pillage everything before finally agreeing to a peace treaty, having lost nearly every single attacking unit... is this actually a useful strat or is it just something the AI does to make it harder for the player to win? I mean I don't see what the AI's that do it get out of it, other than letting other AI's get further ahead. (bear in mind they probably lose a unit for each improvement pillaged)

It reminds me of the SMAC AI, that would pillage the forests which were providing the defensive boost keeping the unit alive, real darwin award behaivour... pillaging is a braindead and obnoxious strategy.

Instead of Pillaging everything, the AI should either attack cities enmasse, or if the cities are too well entrenched, just stay the hell out and build up a stronger force. A little spiteful pillaging is okay, but it shouldn't be at the loss of units. I think the pillaging is actually comprising the AI's ability to take cities.

Note: I think they do mass-pillage other AI's too, either that or some AI's don't believe in improving their terrain.

PS. I notice this pillaging behaivour almost exclusively on Prince+, on Noble and easier the AI only seems to attack if it smells weakness (or REALLY hates you), and then it tries to take a city. On Monarch a stronger (and friendly!) civ will spontaneously declare war, run in 20 units, completely pillage a city's radius losing nearly all of the units, then declare peace. Urgh.

[Skanky Burns]

They get income from the pillaging which helps them quite a bit. It also screws you over royally which again helps them. Finally, what else are they going to do with dozens of obsolete units? Spend their entire GPD upgrading one each turn?

[Bhruic]

It's absolutely worth it for them.

Consider: They have lost production. Period.
You have lost Production (from improvements), income, test tubes, food, and quite likely city size. That's a dramatic tilting of the scales in the AI's favour.

Bh

[-Ab-]

pillaging is definately a worthwhile strat
just losing all the units that isnt
i get alot of enjoyment out of pillaging the AIs citys
when i turn up and find they got lots of super advanced defenders i pillage everything i can
i dont think the finantial rewards make it worth while but it really screws the city your pillaging
always remember to cut its road links first that way no surprise reinforcements

pillage everything before finally agreeing to a peace treaty, having lost nearly every single attacking unit

i think the AI agrees to peace because its lost all its units
it prolly doesnt intend to waste them its just too stupid to keep them

[Bill3000]

It's called limited war. Not all wars are intended to invade and destroy a country, and pillaging improvements can ruin your economy - especially with how critical resources can be in Civ4. Not only would pillaging hamper production through the destruction of farms and mines and the like, but pillaging improvements can have bad effects - destruction of improvements that allow luxury resources, the bonus resources that add health, et cetera. It wastes time for the other side and cripples its economy.

[Blake]

I don't mind pillaging per-se, my emphasis is on braindead mass pillaging that results in losing every single pillaging unit. For example pillaging a tile next to a city is completely stupid, especially because it splits up stacks and allows individual units to be countered easily (ie knights with pikes).

They get income from the pillaging which helps them quite a bit. It also screws you over royally which again helps them. Finally, what else are they going to do with dozens of obsolete units? Spend their entire GPD upgrading one each turn?

I doubt the income would pay for a single pillaging unit, obsolete units make just fine city defenders and also city attackers, just use them to mop up the units dropped to 1.3 strength.

I'm certain the pillaging AI loses far more than I lose, but like all wars it's a lose-lose war, it's the OTHER players who win. In some cases the promotions from whack-a-pillager might end up as a net benefit to me, but thats only if I manage to keep the bastards off my towns.

Altough AI's don't have minds, they go in with the mindset of failing to capture the city, thus using a slash and burn strategy from the get-go. If they had the mindset of taking the city, they would want to preserve all the tile improvements.▄

And I've seen some wicked combined-arms attack by multiple allied AI's against me, except they are too busy splitting up and pillaging my terrain to actually attack my cities. Sure, it sets me back to allow Ghandi to win but I'd much rather AI's use a credible (for them) strategy.

Something I wonder: Is the AI's lack of cottage improvements something to do with AI vs AI playtesting where it was found cottages got pillaged too much?

[Godzilla]

I've never seen pillaging as a worthwhile strategy, after all, I'm just going to have to build up those same improvements once I take over the city...

But after reading this, and then trying it, I can see where the strategy is viable.

Thanks for expanding the game for me guys...

[Shadowlord]

I find pillaging to be an excellent strategy, but I use small stacks of units with defensive capabilities and don't put them adjacent to cities if it's too dangerous.

Once you smash their roads, they can't easily send reinforcements to other parts of their empire.
Once you smash all their other improvements, they can no longer support high city population, no longer get any strategic or luxury resources (unless they're on a coast perhaps), no longer have the production to pump out tons of units, no longer have much gold income and have to drop their science rate, etc.

Also, all my workers are bored and have nothing to do, so rebuilding the improvements after I take the cities is no big deal.

[WuphonsReach]

I've fought very limited wars in Civ4 so far. But when I went to war this past game (huge continents, late-game), I wasn't sure whether I was going to take my objective cities or not. This was my first, large-scale, aggressively expansionistic war where I'm out to take terrain.

So, I proceeded to blow up strategic resource improvements with my spies. Bomb key improvements with bombers. And my attack force systematically razed every tile they touched on the way to take my targeted cities.

Even if I didn't manage to take my target cities, I reckoned that I was doing immense damage to the AI civ that would pretty much put that civ out of the running. And if I did take my target cities, I had an army of 12+ workers on-call, ready to rebuild the transportation network and all of the tile improvements.

[marvinkosh]

It depends, I suppose, whether you need to hold more land to get a domination victory. A city with its tile improvements intact will be able to rebuild those cultural buildings a bit faster, all you have to do is keep the AI from getting close to it. In this case, you may not need to hold every city you come across, because your newly-taken cities will expand their borders to encompass those locations anyway. So it may be fine to just wipe out the improvements near those cities.