Annoying Tactics of Civ 2 enemys to continue in Civ 3?

[musicman1019]

Everytime I play Civ 2, there are some AI stratagies that I found to be very immature at best, with such disregard for life and the enviroment.

For example, during the modern age, when I capture the third to the last city of an emeny, every turn that enemy launches three nukes into each of the surrounding cities, usaully blowing themselves off the map and then leaving a mess to clean up.

Question, what kind of annoying stratagies do you see the enemy (or yourself) taking that needs to be improved, or included?...

and,

Question to the developers, will these kind of drastic stratagies still be in use for Civ 3 or have the opponents benifited from some of that culture (which I think is a great improvmetn) that everyone is talking about?

[splangy]

i hate how the AI use to throw hoardes of troops at me randomly with no purpose, if there is 1 good defencive unit outside my city it should pillage or fortify, NOT attack.

[Kenobi]

Re: Annoying Tactics of Civ 2 enemys to continue in Civ 3?

Originally posted by musicman1019
For example, during the modern age, when I capture the third to the last city of an emeny, every turn that enemy launches three nukes into each of the surrounding cities, usaully blowing themselves off the map and then leaving a mess to clean up.

True, True - this thread is spot on. It is absolutely infuriating when the AI attempts to frustrate your attack by nuking their own cities after you've just taken them.

Another one is counter-attacking futilely rather than conserving its forces and defending in depth. How many times have you seen the AI build fortresses outside its own cities and then never use them defensively?

The AI tactic that really irritates (and it's cheating) is breaking a cease fire to attack, then suing for peace after capturing a city knowing you're a republic/democracy and that your dovish politicians will call yet another cease fire.

And lastly (though I'm far from finished), why does the AI always use its nukes on cities? I could have a carrier loaded to the gills with stealth bombers parked off the coast next to his capital, but the AI civ will rather attack one of my cities with a rifleman in it.

[campmajor!]

Also a stupid action of the AI is having a large fleet group around my city and sending dozens of destroyers to attack, while saving the battleships. And they shouldn't even attack, because at first attack they should notice that I have a coastal fortress with a mech infantry in it...

One thing I also noticed several times is that their cities cause a lot of pollution points, but they don't get polluted tiles...
Is this a cheat?

[campmajor!]

I have one more:

I usually send a carrier out with Aegis cruisers surrounding its neighbouring tiles

Aegis Aegis Aegis
Aegis Carrier Aegis
Aegis Aegis Aegis

So in fact, cruise missiles are useless. But the AI keeps on firing them....

The same happens with a battleship with an Aegis cruiser ecsorting him.

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by campmajor!
Also a stupid action of the AI is having a large fleet group around my city and sending dozens of destroyers to attack, while saving the battleships. And they shouldn't even attack, because at first attack they should notice that I have a coastal fortress with a mech infantry in it...

One thing I also noticed several times is that their cities cause a lot of pollution points, but they don't get polluted tiles...
Is this a cheat?

The destroyer thing was supposedly patched with an update to Civ2.

Re: the pollution - yes it is a cheat. One of the biggest drawbacks of Civ2 was that you could 'see' the computer cheat. Like their production that could be freely distributed over the enemy cities...so that the little 2 pop size coastal-3 shields producing city got to build the United Nations. I hope the AI will improve in Civ3, so that the AI is good enough without excessive cheating.

[DrFell]

The developers probably limited the AI to nuking cities to make the end game more interesting - otherwise the AI with it's ability to see all your units coming could just nuke them all, which wouldn't make for very interesting modern warfare. Basically they realised just how bad nukes were for the fun factor, and limited them appropriately (even went so far as to include a perfect defence...).

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by DrFell
The developers probably limited the AI to nuking cities to make the end game more interesting - otherwise the AI with it's ability to see all your units coming could just nuke them all, which wouldn't make for very interesting modern warfare. Basically they realised just how bad nukes were for the fun factor, and limited them appropriately (even went so far as to include a perfect defence...).

Fact or wishful thinking?

[DrFell]

No AI pollution was another 'fun factor' issue, remember the AI is bad at cleaning up pollution and doesn't care about global warming. And it's bad at controlling it's pollution levels too, all this pollution added together from 6 large AI nations would be a disaster, causing multiple global warmings very early on, spoiling the game. So it was better that the AI didn't suffer pollution although not exactly ideal.

[DrFell]

Originally posted by Grim Legacy


Fact or wishful thinking?

A bit of both - considering how stupid the AI is the thought of giving it free choice for nuke targets is a bit scary...

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by DrFell
No AI pollution was another 'fun factor' issue, remember the AI is bad at cleaning up pollution and doesn't care about global warming. And it's bad at controlling it's pollution levels too, all this pollution added together from 6 large AI nations would be a disaster, causing multiple global warmings very early on, spoiling the game. So it was better that the AI didn't suffer pollution although not exactly ideal.

I agree...though it also meant the AI never built any improvements to eliminate/lessen the mess. So upon takeover, the problem would instantaneously be huge, which was less pleasant. Add some enemy nukes and global warming was 3 turns away all of a sudden.

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by DrFell


A bit of both - considering how stupid the AI is the thought of giving it free choice for nuke targets is a bit scary...

Agreed.

[Recurve]

The thing that really gets me is the stray caravan (you always get one) which wonders around your territory for 1,000s of years – until you KILL IT! Maybe it’s on a spying mission?!?

Campmajor, just place a couple of Aegis Cruisers on the same square as your battleship, I would hate to have to move your formation around the map.

[campmajor!]

That is also possible, but it didn't work in some version of civ2. Don't remember which one though. Could be Fantastic Worlds or the original.

In that case the missile would still attack the carrier....

So therefore I use that convoy. You get used to it after a while...

[Steve Clark]

Civ2 cheats have been thoroughly documented:

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001406.html?date=23:05