Another AI advantage in Diety

[poppawoppa]

Maybe this has been covered before, but I just ran into this in my latest game. I had conquered all the civs, and left the one city so I could go to AC. While doing that, I had a spy who could investigate the city each turn. THE AI DID NOT SEEM TO SPEND ANY OF ITS GOLD TO SUPPORT THE CITY IMPROVEMENTS!!
It's city had gold income showing of 14 and a Treasury of 82 gold. The next turn, the gold in the treasury had gone up to 96, i.e. 82 + 14 = 96. That continued for turn after turn.
The particulars were that the city was in a WLTPD (Democracy) but I had Adam Smiths, so the cost should have been for all their improvements, not just ones costing over the 1 gold per turn. In this city they had
Colosseum.4 gold
Bank......3 gold
Aqueduct..2 gold
Library...1 gold
Mkt Place.1 gold
Temple....1 gold
Barracks..2 gold (maybe three?)
total....14 gold

If this was my city, I would have been showing income of 14 gold, and city improve expenses of 14, no net gain to the treasury.

So, in addition to the food bank being only 60% the size of the human player, and the shield box needing only 60% of the amount the human player needs to build something, it looked to me like the AI was able to keep up the city improvements at ?NO COST?

Since I had not seen that before, I hoped that it would be valuable information to some of the other Diety players out there. I dont know what it could be used for, but just to take into account, why the AI always seems to have bunches of GOLD to keep you away from bribing their cities or to spend to buy stuff that they need.

ANOTHER AI ADVANTAGE

The city was producing 4 shields, and used one to support its musketeer. Should leave 3 to build. One turn they would have 3 in the box, the next turn it would have filled up to the 18 it needs to build another musketeer. Now I can do that too, just buy the needed shields; however, their treasury didnt show any decrease for the "purchase of shields".
That city could crank out a new unit every 2 turns with no gold cost, and with only 3 or 4 shields extra production per turn. Very interesting.

Good Civing to you all.

[BuilderR]

Barracks cost only 1 gold.

[jpk]

poppawoppa, I have seen similar stuff. The AI cheats like mad. You, however, have one enormous advantage. You aren't a complete idiot like the AI is.

Learn the idiocies of the AI and take advantage of them. Build a forward city that has forests or hills between that city and the AI civilization, build a barracks and two quality attacking units and spend the next 2000 years draining the AI civilization of units.

[Smash]

The AIs are given an allotment of sheilds to use each turn.It doesn't actually have to build things turn by turn.

Barracks cost more gold each time they are obsoleted.3 after Mobile Warfare,2 after Gunpowder I think.
[This message has been edited by Smash (edited July 12, 2000).]

[Civ-wrecked]

That confirmed it !! I've seen size 3, size 4 AI cities that have everything including police station, cathedral and factory, and I've been wondering if the AI has been cheating since there's no way it can maintain all those improvements [by the way those cities were in forest areas and that's why they could not grow beyond size 4 and had the shields to build all those useless improvements]. Also, most AI civs don't have much roads in the city radius so that makes gold even harder to come by for them.
Barrack maintenance costs is 2 between Gunpowder and Mobil Warfare so your calculation was correct.