Glorious AI suicides

[MightyTiny]

Sometimes AI opponents do really, really, REALLY dumb things, which lead to their hasty demise - I just recently had a game where I had a few prime examples of this occur, and thought I'd start a thread about those wacky suicidal AI's.

I played a tiny lakes map with 9 opponents, OCC, and had Monty start near me to the north - he had a really bad starting position, and I had a very good one. I of course knew that Monty would attack me, it was just a matter of when - it turned out to be VERY early. Just as I'd gotten my copper resource hooked up, and had already produced one axman, and just about to get my second, monty declares war and comes at me with a horde of.... two warriors.

I quickly assembled an army of axmen with the help of some chopping, and took Monty, who still had only warriors to protect his lone city, out of the game. That's one headache less.

Americans soon followed suite, commiting suicide on me, and this was really strange: I had a not-so small army of axmen by then, and the power graph showed that I was still barely average strength, with Americans being a fair bit stronger.... but they only had archers. A lot of them, sure, but still... archers against axmen. He was walled up in well protected cities, but I roamed his territory and pillaged everything, including the only strategic resource he seemed to have: horses. He probably had just hooked them up before I pilaged it, because I never saw charriots.

Peter eventually joined the war, and wiped the Americans out (I had no iron, and so couldn't build swordsmen to take the cities with acceptable losses).

But the absolute best, most glorious, most insane AI suicide I've ever seen came towards the very end of the game, when I was half way through building the space ship....

Brennus, my neighbour to the north-west, declared war on me, coming at me with his mighty knights!

By that time I was the strongest military power, had infantry, bombers and was just upgrading my cavalry to helicopters.... Brennus was WAAYY below me in the power graph. AND I had a defence pact with russia, the #2 military power.... plus Brennus had a precarious situation with Germans with which he shared a long border: the Germans were just waiting for an opportunity. So... Brennus declared war on me, and Russia and Germany declared war on Brennus - HUGE technologically superior armies flowed across his border from all sides, and I felt like my participation wouldn't have even been needed. I did a few cursory bombing runs with my fleet of 10 bombers, and sent some helicopters to make an appearance, mostly just to see the action.

I think it took like 5 or 6 years for Brennus to be wiped off the map - he had 5 or 6 cities. That's truly going down in a blaze of.... um... stupidity!

[CrONoS]

Which level are you playing?

[MightyTiny]

That was on noble - was kinda in the mood for a quick easy game, and decided to experiment with OCC on a small crowded map. T'was fun.

I'll have to try the same setup with higher difficulty - at noble, the opponents weren't much more than a minor nuisance and a source of light entertainment!

[Adagio]

The most stupid AI suicide I have seen was when I was playing on noble against Russia (IIRC). I was going for a cultural victory, and so was Russia, unfortunately for me Russia had lots of religions, while I only had one for most of the game. At the end of the game Russia was close winning the game, she had 4 cities, where 3 of them were almost legendary. At this point I really wanted to attack her, but with my small military it would become difficult, and she had a defense pact with the strongest civ in the game (Arabia who's located on an nearby island)
He could have taken me out without any problems, so going to war was not an option

Lucky for me Russia attacked America, who also had a defense pack with Arabia. I quickly joined the war, destroyed one city and Arabia took another city, so with 2 cities left Russia was out of the cultural war (the one Arabia took wasn't close to be able to become legendary, even if Russia managed to take the city back)

Had Russia not declared war, she would have won the game

[Brutus66]

Yeah, there's no doubt about it, the AI lacks discretion when it comes to deciding to declare war, at least at the difficulty I play at (marathon/noble).
I think some of it has to do with how the game calculates military power. For example, an AI might have a lot more units than me, and maybe they are a little more advanced, so the game calculates that they have a military superiority. But if, say, I have a dozen nukes and they don't have SDI they are not going to get far.
This happened three times in my last game. One AI after another thought I was weak and attempted to invade.
A few bombers quickly stalled their big stacks and my ICBMs reduced their cities to ruin. Being dumb AI leaders, they never learn by example, and Peter and Tokugawa felt compelled to repeat the mistake of the Americans, and I ended with a domination win.

[Arrian]

I haven't seen a manifestly stupid AI attack in a while.

Usually, when I get attacked, the AI is (fairly intelligently, I feel) taking a shot at me before I get too strong. They tend to hit me while my military is still weak but my economy is strong. Typically I'm able to leverage that economy into a stronger military fast enough to stop the attack and turn it back. But that is often about tactics. The AI's tactics are... let's say unimpressive (though it seems Blake's improved AI may be another story - I've yet to try it).

-Arrian

[gdijedi7]

I was the Americans in Warlords. I was Roosevelt, because Washington isn't as good as he once was. China and Mali willingly became my vassals, and Isabella was my vassal because I thumped her really good in a couple of wars. The only other civ on my continent was England, who wasn't' my vassal, but likes me.

The other continent was entirely Hindu (mine was largely Christian), and I had already won a Space Race. Catherine had already earned my ire by attacking me, but I hadn't been able to respond before we called the war off after I routed her invasion and navy. I was the undisputed military and technological leader, and my vassals enjoyed complete security.

Then, Isabella must have really ticked off the Incans, because they declared war. This quickly resulted in the total destruction of their invasion force by my invincible armies, and I quickly launched an assault, gutting their country, and giving me both their Aluminum supplies and a border with Russia with which to eventually crush them. Eventually, the Inca agreed to my demand that they capitulate and give me their entire income.

Oh yeah, they nuked Philadelphia, which is once again a prosperous city, and I nuked two of their cities.

[samspock]

One behavor that I can't figure out is the ai likes to move a large portion of a defending army out of a threatened city and move it to one farther away, even if it leaves their capital under defended! I will move a stack capabale of taking out the 10 defenders in the capital only to find that all but three have left before I get there!

Weird.

[gdijedi7]

Force Preservation at the expense of survival...