I knew the AI took liberties, but ...

[Boco]

Okay, take a look at the screenshot. Legend:

• Blue corduroy is ocean or uncharted terrain.
• Gold is land shown from the German point of view.
• Ships are airbases.
• Beige diamonds are impassable terrain units (air, mf=0), belonging to a civ allied to the Germans (sorry about the mess of unit keys, but this is an alpha test ).
• The German plane is a air missile unit, not a paratrooper or fighter.
• The red diamond is an unspotted square containing an enemy city.

On the AI's turn, the plane passes through the impassable terrain units to attack the undiscovered enemy city. That's a new one for me! I knew the AI took some liberties with cruise missiles, but...

Take away the missile flag, and the German plane stays on the airbases.

[Harry Tuttle]

Try it with another ring of impassable terrain. The AI might be able to move once out of the airbase and then once again to get to passable terrain. The properties of the airbase probably have soemthing to do with it.

[techumseh]

Air units do not respect impassible terrain. And 'unexplored' only applies to the human player. Nothing new there.

(edit) Impassible UNITS. That is news.

[Boco]

Oops! I'm not so clear on the nomenclature. The civ name is 'Impassable'. The unit is called 'Terrain'. Looks like the outline of a square, but it's a unit.

Impassible UNITS. That is news.

Certainly was news to me!

My solution is to use a nonmissile fighter unit in this position.

The whole idea is to have a fighter more or less permanently in position to intercept airport-airport transfers. It's a means to simulate U-Boat interdiction of sea-lanes (airport = port of transit). Ideally, the human should never see the air unit. Instead, @ENEMYFIGHTERS & @SHOTDOWN show the U-Boat icon, but it's the fighter that actually does the dirty deed.

Interestingly, the missile fighter always attacks the red diamond square from the NE. From what angle do paras capture a city?

Can't really afford to have a cordon two units thick in this case.

And 'unexplored' only applies to the human player.

I just keep learning new things with this game.

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by techumseh
Impassible UNITS. That is news.

You may want to check out Harry Tuttle's highly original Gold Gulch. Impassable units (mountains), wandering gold nuggets, rustlers who can try to make a living by rustling cattle, snakes, bears, shady characters galore not to mention scalp hungry Indians. There are also some very active ladies of the night.

[techumseh]

Misunderstanding, AGRICOLA. Impassible units have around since Harlan's Mongols. It's the AI passing units through other units that is surprising.

[our_man]

I remember encountering this in the Microprose WW79 scenario - I established a shield of units between London and Paris to avoid getting them nuked, only to be extremely surprised when a nuke popped up in the English channel!

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by our_man
I remember encountering this in the Microprose WW79 scenario - I established a shield of units between London and Paris to avoid getting them nuked, only to be extremely surprised when a nuke popped up in the English channel!

nukes do not have to travel to attack. As long as any target city is within range of any city (or subs?) belong to the attacker irrespective of where the nuke is, the AI can do a nuclear strike.

[:) Smiley]

Maybe this applies for all air missile units?

[techumseh]

I can confirm that nukes do not have to be physically present at a launch site to strike. For example, if the AI civ has a submarine within 16 squares of it's target city, and the actual nuke is in another city farther away, the AI will use it.

[Henrik]

In my experience AI missile units will teleport to location if it's in range, this is true for cruise missilies as well as nukes.

[Elok]

I can't think of how right now, but that could probably be taken advantage of in various ways. Does it check to see if the attack is executable before teleporting? I.e., is the AI dumb-smart enough to get through blockades with zero-attack missiles, only to realize, "crap, maybe not"? That doesn't sound likely, but you never know with that wacky civ2 AI.

[Exile]

My experience agrees with Henrik. The AI can throw missles and nukes anywhere. I don't think range is an issue. It simply chooses a target and the attack occurs.

[Case]

Given the AI's uncanny ability to shoot missiles at only the most valuable targets, no matter where they are,* it does have a lot to teach the US military

Incidently, making the things the AI is shooting missiles at cheaper than the missiles could be another solution to this problem. I imagine that the AI wouldn't do anything with really expensive missiles.

* I'm still smarting over the time in 1997 when the AI nuked my massive counter-attack force in Munich in the Microprose WW3 scenario.

[Timor_Leste]

I'd read somewhere that the AI only uses cruise missiles on the highest costing sea units in the game. I can't remember *where* the link was, but the reporter found that if they changed the unit cost of either the battleship or carrier, the AI wouldn't send missiles against it. Could you manipulate this to fulfill your needs?