The AI surrenders?!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

This summer, while reading a history of the Ottoman Empire (The Ottoman Centuries by Lord Kinross -- a good read), I was struck by the number of times cities just surrendered to the Ottomans, and I thought, "it sure would be cool if that happened in Civ."

Then this week I'm playing a game, doing two things I don't normally do: I'm going for world conquest, and I'm primarily using a navy to do the job. Okay, so I'm bombarding a Viking costal city, but don't quite finish it off. My turn ends with my vet destroyers all seriously in the red and me wondering how long this is going to take. Then, on their turn, the Vikings load up a couple of frigates and evacuate the city! Next turn I simply put an alpine troop ashore and take it without opposition!

Does this happen often?

[drake]

I've never seen that. The AI always seem to replenish defenders whenever it can, even in a city thats a lost cause.

I would guess that this was kind of a fluke occurence.

[Blaupanzer]

I have seen them "suicide" their last unit attacking the surrounding defenders. But I don't recall them ever having ditched a city.

[Ming]

Ive seen the AI move a mobile unit out to attack a unit 2 squares from the city (sitting on a special) and leave the city empty behind it

[Rufus T. Firefly]

There was no moving out to attack; they just sailed away (well, not quite; naturally I sank the frigates ). And this actually happened twice! The one thing I don't know is what they had on the frigates; maybe it was all units with an attack of zero. Still, quite amusing.

The really bewildering thing is that it was the Vikings, of all civs. I mean, I could understand it if it were the French... [ducks and runs for cover]

[Case]

Given the intelligence of the AI, the frigates were probably setting out to invade your homeland

[ariell]

I agree. they sent out units with attacks of zero on the frigate. perhaps you were blocking his entrance to the city by land?

[Deathwalker]

Normally the AI will never abandon a city, it would rather loss all the units in the city first, it never thinks in terms of number of units. Only in number of cities held.