Why didnt the AI do this?

[Snotty]

I made a mistake in a game I was playing earlier. Near the start I moved my capital warrior out to explore the area near my city, as he was only my second warrior to be built. I moved him se,s,s and to my suprise I saw an arab warrior sw of me. During his turn he moved north. Although he cant see my undefended capital he is still only 2 moves from it, and he knows its there because he is stood in the corner of the culture cross. My question is why didnt he run into my land in the hope that I had left my capital undefended?

I could have attacked him with my warrior as soon as he moved passed me, and that would have been my only chance. But I knew I didnt need to because it was the AI.

I do this all the time in MP and SP when it is that early in the game and I have met someone. If you are lucky then you can, at best get another city, or at worst mess him up for a while. He would then be easy pickings.

I know the AI has an 'undefended city' 6th sense, but in this case it would have been logical for a player to move into the land.

So why didnt he attack?

[Theseus]

To not totally f*ck up new players... I think there's a lot of early game AI behavior that is, hmmm, sub-optimal for this reason.

[stonewall]

@ Theseus - That makes sense for sub-Regent levels, but at Regent and above, the AI should take advantage of situations presented to it.

[vmxa1]

AFAIK the AI only has one level and uses it for all games. This means it will not behave one for Regent and another for Deity.
Takiing advantage of situations requires more than a tree of things to consider. The AI has a finite amount of things to consider, it just cannot take all possible situations into account.

[Jaybe]

In the very early game, the AI is more interested in REX than in getting into a war. Would the AI have known it was your ONLY city?

... and he knows its there because he is stood in the corner of the culture cross.

I would wager that the AI is not programmed to realize a city's location based on the configuration of a border.

[Kuciwalker]

Considering he's talking about only a few turns into the game, yes, it would HAVE to be his only city.

[Snotty]

Rex or no rex, the chance to crush your nearest rival and so have twice the space to then rex into shouldnt be passed up.

Even if it wasnt my only city, grabbing the enemy capital will give you another city to start churning warriors out of. Its just like the boost you get when you get a free city from a hut.

Both the doubled land and the extra city mean you can out rex anything. Ive won many an MP game by crushing my nearest rival because he left his capital undefended.

As for the border thing, It probably is too much trouble to code it, for minimal gain. But still it irks me that there is this hole in the AIs knowledge.

[alexman]

Actually, the AI sometimes does attack your undefended capital at the beginning of the game, especially high-aggression civs like the Germans.

But the reason the AI doesn't always do that, is that on higher levels it has such a unit advantage that they could basically wipe you out every time if they wanted to.

The AI free units are given so that it can expand faster and provide more of a challenge later in the game. If they wiped you out with brute force in the first few turns of every game, it probably wouldn't be too much fun, not to mention that the game would turn into a warmongering contest from the very beginning, something many players dislike.

[Harovan]

Yes, it does. I had a game as Iroquois, and after building 3 scouts and 1 warrior and 2 or 3 turns before completing my 1st settler I was finished by a single German elite archer. My capital wasn't even undefended. It was the shortest game I ever lost.

[Jaguar]

The AI often gives you a break early. As the AI doesn't change on different difficulty levels, it is trained to be nice at the start. It probably helps to not alienate the new players.

[Arrian]

I've been nailed ~3000bc several times by solo German warriors, though my capitol was actually defended (their regular warrior attacks and defeats my regular warrior). I almost never leave my capitol totally undefended with AI units roaming around... I've done it, but I've sweated it, because I know they might very well go for it.

-Arrian

[Rhothaerill]

I've had that happen early on too, though by the Koreans! On an emperor game I'd just settled my second city and didn't have a chance to get some defense into it yet. A couple of Korean warriors beelined straight for it. They were even polite before backstabbing me.

[Arrian]

In my experience, it's always the polite ones. Bastards

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Yes, it does. I had a game as Iroquois, and after building 3 scouts and 1 warrior and 2 or 3 turns before completing my 1st settler I was finished by a single German elite archer. My capital wasn't even undefended. It was the shortest game I ever lost.

Could you tell if the Archer generated a GL? (my computer hiccups for a second)



Wouldn't that be a beeyatch.

[Harovan]

Yea, that would have rounded it up.

No leader, as far as I remember (or could see, for that matter). I reloaded the autosave afterwards and looked if I could have survived if I had attacked the archer with my regular warrior instead of having him to attack me. No effin' chance. At this point, the game was already doomed, no matter what I did.