Would it really be all that difficult to make the AI better at conducting wars?

[Strategist83]

As we all know the AI has serious problems standing up to a human player when it comes to conducting wars. As I see it, its main problem is that it has problems dealing with stacks of units. Would it really be all that difficult to make the AI use siege weapons more against stacks? Also, I think the AI is too reluctant to leave cities when under attack. Not wanting to leave an opening near a neutral country is understandable, but clearing the country of immediate threats should have a higher priority.

Thoughts?

[Solver]

Heh... the performance that the AI is capable of is actually quite an achievement. It doesn't play a brain-dead game like it did in previous games...

When the SDK is out, you take it and try making the AI better, let's then see if you still think it would be easy .

[Strategist83]

Well... I just cannot imagine it would be very difficult to make the AI 1) prioritize siege weapons higher) and 2) use siege weapons rather than normal units against stacks.

[GeoModder]

Sofar, a full quarter to a third of AI stacks entering my territory were siege weapons. And they can use them quite well at the most inconvenient time for me.

[Solver]

Originally posted by Strategist83
Well... I just cannot imagine it would be very difficult to make the AI 1) prioritize siege weapons higher) and 2) use siege weapons rather than normal units against stacks.

In my experience the AI hammers your stacks quite a bit with siege weapons before attacking directly. And the AI priority for siege weapons is high in 1.52.

But AIs are tricky. You can't tell them to build more siege weapons, or whatever. Then you can just easily screw it up and have each AI city build two Catapults before starting on a Granary or a Library... disaster. It'sreal tricky .

[MasterDave]

On Monarch level, I find that a stack of AI units will often launch attacks in a non-optimal order. For example, many times recently I have seen the AI attack with high-value assets such as cavalries and grenadiers, and then after they were dead they would fire off five or six catapults or cannon. Had they used their siege units first, chances are that the collateral damage would have rendered my defenders weak enough for the former units to beat. They also do not use bombard as often as they should, and sometimes, it appears that they attack first and bombard second, although that could just be the way the animation is displayed to the player.

However, I will say that the AI in general is far superior to what I have seen before in the many TBS games I have played over the years. On Monarch level, the AI often has such a numerical advantage that it still poses a serious challenge even with a few dubious tactics.

[Solver]

AIs don't attack first and bombard second, that's animaiton.

They may well attack with Cavalry instead of Catapults though... the reason is that Catapults are very weak by then and have a zero odds of winning the attack, which might be why the AI chooses to attack with something else. This is, in part, a problem due to the lack of a medieval-time siege unit.