Battle Plans

[Wiglaf]

Quick Question:

When, as a pact brother/sister, you coordinate your battle plans with an ally, does this really affect anything?

I'm curious because I just played a game asking the AI to attack Sparta Command and it did nothing special.

[Sprayber]

I usually take coordinated attacks with a grain of salt. However. During one game I was pacted with the Angels and both of us were at war with the Spartans. The Spartans had driven deep in data tech territory and I decided that was not a good thing since I had at least one important base on the other side of Roze's shrinking country. What worked really well was that the continent was kind of narrow in Roze's land and expanding out as soon as you got into Spartan lands. I would attack with choppers and clean out the best troops while Roze took care of the rest and liberated her bases. I took a few just to make sure. In the end we cleansed Chiron of the Spartan threat. Of course I took Sparta Command and Santiago with an amphibious operation. It was kind of cool really. I took care of the air with choppers and jets and let Roze pound the ground with her infantry. Only once did I say attack this base. And she attacked.

[Wiglaf]

Thanks, sprayber - funny, that exact same scenario (without sparta, it was miriam) happened to me yesterday...

Guess battle plans pull their weight around, after all. I'm still convinced it was a fluke, though...

[Jasonian]

It has been my experience that if the ally has the ability, the manpower, and the will to attack the target you give him/her, he/she will.

This means that intercontinental attacks or attacks on water bases probably won't work all that well, but ya never know.

[Sprayber]

Yeah, I usually try to keep it simple for them.

[Wiglaf]

Thanks for the insight. At least it works, eh? Thought it was a bug

[Blake]

I could swear AI's co-ordinate, and I mean really co-ordinate plans between themselves. One game I played stands out, was many islands type map with all the factions in 1/3 of the map. I got cocky and pissed of the AI's by probing and suddenly the whole bloodly lot had pacted against me (seriously, two factions had pacts with all others except me), this is despite the fact it is 2200 and I was only barely highest on the power chart, and the aliens were in the game too.

The sea was crawling with AI foils and there was 3, 3r armours in circulation, but only the laser weapon, so I couldn't kill the damn ships except by sniping them. I couldn't probe for tech because the AI's sunk any probes. Then something really really cool happened, in one turn 3 foils from 3 different factions disgorged units up next to one of my bases, for a total of 6 units. I easily destroyed the attack force but it was still a rather cool co-ordinated attack. The unholy alliance contiued to stream units to the same beach but I sunk most of the transport foils before they could unload.

A little later another cool thing happened, I had cornered a datatech laser squad against one of my bases, couldn't kill it because of high armour couldn't probe it because it cost too much. It just sat there contently for about a dozen turns. Then for no apparent reason it attacks, emptying my bases single garrison unit, then out of the blue a Caretaker foil turns up and unloads a rover into the emptied base. ****e. The damn datatech unit waited for the caretaker foil to arrive, damn it. AI's aren't meant to do that!

I've seen AI's do that for there own units (accumulating huge numbers of rovers just outside base radius, then mass attacking) but very rarely for other factions units.

The weirdest thing about that game was Marr's pilot to prove his awesome piloting skills managed to land on the smalled island on the map, a size 1 tile which was entirely surronded by fungus and then Marr used up all of his (2) minerals on garrisons. Later I managed to get a pact with Marr but no-one else. Now that's weird.

The unholy alliance broke down a bit when Domai built the PTS and his pop exploded, and I guess all the AI's went back to randomly attacking each other, but it was cool while they all attacked me.

[Wiglaf]

One of SMAC's great strengths is right there, Blake - I agree, it's cool, isn't it?

That really is interesting, though - AI's coordinating with all the other AI's in an overseas mission to ground attack one of your bases? Awesome - does that happen often to you?

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The fault lies not in our SMAC, but in our stars.
~ Vanguard, February 2, 2000.

[Blake]

quote: Originally posted by SMACed on 02-01-2001 06:07 PM One of SMAC's great strengths is right there, Blake - I agree, it's cool, isn't it? That really is interesting, though - AI's coordinating with all the other AI's in an overseas mission to ground attack one of your bases? Awesome - does that happen often to you?

Afraid not, it's only ever happened in one game, BUT it was also the only game when so many AI's formed pacts against me (and therfore probably co-ordinated there battle plans against me), I'm sure they all went for the same city, the timing was probably by chance.

In a usual game the AI's would probably co-ordinate battle plans, but because every AI has vendettas with atleast two other factions they wouldn't ever co-ordinate against the same faction. The other factor which allowed the AI's to attack me was there positions on the map, no troublesome navigation and they sorta formed a semi-circle around my island.

I might make UBC 2 one day (on a random map or "dry" map of planet) and set up the AI's so they do a better job of assualting the human, the default AI often uses rather bad STRATEGY options and there personalities are not optimal either.
I'm sure the human player would have little chance against allied optimised AI's, and would have to rely on every trick in the book to win.

[Wiglaf]

Wow, I never thought the little buggers coordinated battle plans - a little experimenting should figure it out for good.

Wouldn't that be interesting if that attack was intentional?

*cowers in a corner*

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The fault lies not in our SMAC, but in our stars.
~ Vanguard, February 2, 2000.

[uptons]

Once I had this interesting game going on with me as the University on the Isle of Deianira, Yang occupying the entire Monsoon jungle continent,my pactmate Lal occupying the Crater continent and Miriam holding the whole Freshwater Sea continent.
Despite being limited to only a dozen bases for most of the time, I managed to stay on top of the tech race, but got in a ruck with Yang.
I called on Lal and convinced him to help fight the Hive. At first he did nothing I could notice except launching a few conv. missiles at Yang. Then I (in a spirit of joke, mostly) suggested that he assault one of Yang's bases that was built in the Jungle (he had about a dozen such size +12 bases there, with only a single square between them, should be the easiest thing in the world to defend).
But against all common sense, Lal immediately launches 15-20 copters over, with hordes of drop shard infantry following behind, and within 3 turns he had captured the original target base in addition to two other bases elsewhere in the Hive empire. This threw Yang's defenses into disarray and left several large bases of his undefended. Then I, despite being engaged in the construction af the Ascent to Transcendence, decided to grab a piece of this, just for fun. As I had Gravi-theory (and the Space Elevator before it) I dropped everything else in my core bases and started mass-producing drop singularity troops, giving me about 6-8 of them per turn. These I started raining into Yang's territories, sometimes airlifting into completely empty bases.
In the end, before I finished the Ascent, there must have been around 50 of the drop troops running around, breaking down centuries of Hive buildup from every direction and on every front. I ended up with 2/3 of Yang's bases, as Lal's initial casualties must have hindered his ability to follow up the first victories. Thus I gained majority in Council votes and succeded to get Lal to elect me a Supreme Leader in addition to Ascending to Transcendence! A happy ending.

[Wiglaf]

Wait, you got elected to supreme leader and built the Ascent ?

It's nice to know that the AI can use this feature with other AIs and with you, all along I thought it was a bug and the whole thing never worked.

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The fault lies not in our SMAC, but in our stars.
~ Vanguard, February 2, 2000.

[The Commodore]

How does one get Surpreme Leader AND Transendnce???

How is it that you let Miriam live? She's soooooooooo fun to take out...easy,too.

[DilithiumDad]

Twice in MULTIPLAYER I have had the AI coordinate attacks on me! In Bing Challenge Puppetmaster, Miriam and Dee landed troops simultaneously. Dee had mind worms and I was running Free Market as Peacekeepers! I was # in might, of course, and they had ganged up on me (so did the human players, but too late!).

Another time was in Roleplay2 where I had all but eradicated Santiago and then Dierdre showed up to block my access to Santiago's last two bases and to reinforce her bases. Of course, this was the moment my human opponent Styx chose to attack me --and he beautifully coordinated with the two AI factions!


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Creator of the Ultimate Builder Map, based on the Huge Map of Planet

[Wiglaf]

If you're right, and smac does coordinate attacks, imagine civ3....