Most Bone-headed AI city Contest

[Sten Sture]

Okay, some of you all might be aware that the AI can be... challenged, shall we say, when trying to efficiently manage a city. I was digging into an OCC2 save to check out some stuff for my good pal from Colorado, the Honorable Mr. Clark, and I found a beauty of an AI city. Let's see if you can top this: (I am sure everyone can - the AI is limitlessly befuddled)

Rheims: Democratic French provincial city.
The French are running a 1T/5S/4L tax structure (because Lyon is in disorder from having 5 naval vessels out chasing an Aztec explorer on the south pole, but that is another story.)

Size: 8 with 5 happy and 3 content (WLTPD!!!)

Improvements: Temple & Marketplace. (perhaps an Aquaduct would be helpfull??)

Shield production: 8 with 3 fortified (nonvet) riflemen & a fighter in town, and an explorer & engineer out and about. That makes for a net of 2 shields.

City radius: 9 double irrigated squares - (6 plains and a desert included,) half have roads, and a fish special is being worked. Alas, the gold mountain is unworked. (I might recommend a supermarket if you are going to double irrigate plains)

Building: Cure for Cancer. 76 more turns to completion.

[The Mad Monk]

I have GIVEN refrigeration to AI civs so they could grow larger and be more of a challenge; the result has always been that their engineers (yes, I give those away, too) start building farmaland to the exclusion of all else, while the cities make a point of ignoring supermarkets. I've also seen the AI mine two hills while ignoring the one with WINE right next to it (and natuarally, the city ignores the existance of all three)!

It appears that there are at least two separate AIs at work here, and they never communicate...

[Scouse Gits]

Some time ago, (in an attempt to achieve a big score) I conquered the world except for one French (size 3) city. I gave them anything in the way of tech they demanded, just to keep them quiet. I was surprised one turn to hear "ding ding" - Poitiers builds spaceship structural! It probably looked good beside all those catapults.
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SG (2)

[Adam Smith]

Just saw one for the books this evening. An AI city had a roaded and irrigated tundra square, while the adjacent grassland with shield was completely unimproved. Hard to see what kind of algorithm led to that decision.

[Steve Clark]

...and some people still like to use Auto Settler (or GoTo)???

[Genghis Al]

Using the auto settler that's a no no.

Alex v4.6

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See you in court.

[KhanMan]

Well, if you try a few games of the Nomads Challenge (either the original version, or ColdWizard's version), you'll see an interesting trick: the ai hates seeing beseigers in the squares around it's city. Even if these units are vet legions, fortified, on hills, it will most of the time, attack, down to it's last unit, leaving you free to waltz in.

What's more, if it refuses, one attack (whether it succeeds or fails), will almost always provoke a suicide-counter-attack.

Used this strategy to capture top two Roman cities (Rome and Veii), as well as the entire British empire, in a Nomads game.

Hows that for stupid?

-KhanMan the LLSS

[East Street Trader]

1. Yes, Khanman. I love it when my legion arrives at the gates of a two citizen A1 city during the opening phase and the sole defender, a warrior, promptly attacks.

But they don't always, and attacking such small cities usually ends with destruction not conquest. I wonder what makes one A1 defending warrior suicidal/mad/brave but prompts the next to sit tight?

2. I've just finished a game in which one of the cities figuring in the top five list had 8 citizens, 4 happy and 4 content. The diplomacy screen said the civ was a republic but it stayed firmly at 8 citizens for turn after turn. I started to speculate that the A1 does not celebrate. The notion that the city HAD NO AQUADUCT all that time simply did not occur to me.

And I've contrived sometimes actually to lose to the A1. How, oh how, have I done it!

East Street Trader

[geofelt]

I once laid siege to an AI city with a republic government. I covered every shield producing square with a unit, depriving the city with the ability to support it's garrison, save one. One sieger was a vet alpine in a fort on a mountain. The ai surprised me, and bribed this unit. The real surprise was that supporting this new unit caused the only defender to disband, allowing me to walk in to an undefended city!

[Ming]

Now that is a classic Let's all give a round of applause to the Artificial Idiot...

[Sten Sture]

Reading geofelt's post for the second time it just hit me that the reason the alpine disbanded was not because the AI bribed the unit in a representative govt - it was because it refused to work the mountain square for the shield - prefering no doubt to get three food from a double irrigated grassland square. Yikes! LoL!

But was it trying to build a pointless wonder too??

[KhanMan]

Geofelt-That one takes the cake! Now I wonder if this would have happened, if you had been playing mp...

BTW-Have any of you guys noticed how the ai will often attack with it's weakest units, then the strongest? That way, it loses an easy battle, by sending in the tanks, THEN the howitzers.

-KhanMan the LLSS

[rah]

KM, I think you see that because the AI move based on cities, the newest one moves first all the way to the oldest. For each city the oldest unit moves first then the next oldest, etc. As a result the most obsolete unit is usually the oldest and will move first. If the algorithm says attack, the result is similar to what you pointed out.

RAH

Anybody else?

[Alexander's Horse]

Best dum ai thing I saw was I was playing a game on an earth map and I got hold of the middle east. Turned out this civ in Africa started a war and kept sending units up through Egypt. I positioned a couple of catapults at the point where the attackers turn ended (the neck out of Egypt leading to Israel). Turn after turn they sent units to that point and my catapults destroyed. Those 2 catapults must have destroyed 30 or more units. The ai never varied its attack.

[Ming]

AH... yeah, it was dumb. But that's the main form of AI attack based on the silly program. It just doesn't learn. You would think that it would be easy to program "If a unit losses over and over again... do something else"

I love when you can tie up the production of a AI city for 1000's of years as it just builds units to send out on a lost cause.