In my Civ III Rise of Rome Conquests scn the AI used an army.

[Lancer]

The Carths dropped it in Sicily. I killed it off losing 1 Legion II in the process.

So, I thought the AI couldn't use armies?

[Aabraxan]

I think the AI can use armies, but it uses them both infrequently and poorly.

[simspacey]

As you know, armies must be "won" with an elite unite and unlike players, who can exploit this rule, i dont think the AI does that intentionally.

For example you might want to save your elite units ant use veterans first to weaken enemies and then attack with the elites to get Great Persons intentionally, but the idea of Elites (from Firaxis, i mean) was propably to get an advantage in the fights.

So maybe the AI doesnt save their elite forces like humans do ?

I dont think i have seen an enemy army either. But yesterday, i saw the Byzantines with a great person (which i luckily managed to destroy before they were able to use it). I Only played on regent (lvl 3) though, so i might have faced a byzantian army had i played on a harder difficulty.

[Quintillus]

A bunch of changes were made to armies in Conquests, and unfortunately one of the side effects was that the AI never makes armies in Conquests. They can, however, use armies if they begin a scenario with one. This is what happens in Rise of Rome - each civilization begins with one Army. Fairly often the AI's won't use them very effectively, but every so often they use them well.

The AI will still use leaders to hurry buildings and Small Wonders in Conquests (the ability to hurry Great Wonders having been removed in Conquests).

The AI can and will occasionally create armies from leaders in Vanilla and Play The World.

[vmxa1]

The ability to rush a Great Wonder is only removed for the human, not the AI. They can and do rush great wonders with MGL units. I suspect this is one of the reason I have yet to see an army in C3C.

It works like this:

Human player goes through an interface and the check is made to see if it is an MGL, if so no great wonder rushing.

The AI of course cannot use the human interface and no check was put into the code, so they can rush with either an SGL or MGL. I have verified this with saves others posted suggesting the AI rush a wonder. They were correct.

[Quintillus]

Interesting, I hadn't realized the AI could still rush Great Wonders. I suppose it's slightly more important to target their leaders in Conquests than I'd realized!

[Lancer]

Thanks all for the excellent replies!

[Theben]

You must've decided on the naked blonde, eh Lancer?

[Lancer]

Nah, I can't play with either. (Civ IV or the blonde)

[Mad Bomber]

Part of the reson that the AI does so poorly with Armies is they way that the AI constructs them. AI's only place units in armies that have the same or superior movement to that of the army. As you can imagine with +1 bonus that an army gets to speed it leads to a hdgepoge of units thrown together that a player would only do if he/she were desperate.

I play on very large maps with lots of civs so Ive seen many AI armies. Only in the industrial age do their armies make a bit of sense. Also if the Army isnt fully formed (3 units) then the army just sits in the capitol until it is, ive seen some sit there for centuries until they can build a unit with enough speed to enter the army.