Those Funny AI Settlers

[Cuervo72]

I don't know if this has been covered with settlers, but I noticed some behavior very similar to what was noticed in luring in ships with privateers...

I started out on a peninsula with a one square choke point, and expanded to the main continent to the south. In my rush to grab land, I left some unsettled space on my peninsula.

Well, after a while I start seeing settlers (with bodyguard) trudging through my land (from two other civs). Gee, wonder where they're off to. So I park a pikeman on the choke point. Immediately, the settlers start heading back home! So after a turn or two, I move my pikeman....and back they come. Hilarious! DIdn't matter how far they were from my pikeman, they knew when he was there and when he wasn't. Could set up a nice ambush situation....

What wasn't so funny was the Aztecs sending them by boat a few turns later (Doh!)

[Caligastia]

Thats pretty funny, I will have to look out for that.

[Harovan]

Keep on moving your pikeman, opening and closing the chokepoint; or else the settlers will join a galley and there's nothing you can do to stop them without a war.

[Cuervo72]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Keep on moving your pikeman, opening and closing the chokepoint; or else the settlers will join a galley and there's nothing you can do to stop them without a war.

Too late, they already have. Their city is surrounded, so I can only hope they flip. I might abandon that game though, as I haven't had a general good feeling about it....

[Harovan]

Yea, I saw your last sentence only after posting. Sorry for that. As to the reason of this behavior: I doubt the AI can "see" your pikeman at any distance. Probably there is a function in the program like ComputeLandRoute() or so, and if your pikeman is there, it returns "impossible", and else the shortest way. So the AI knows, if it can go thru or not, but it doesn't see why.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Yes, the AI rechecks its goto route every turn. This is very handy when you want to waste some AI moves!

On the marla map (world) I've made it standard procedure to park a galley near the straits of gibraltar ASAP. As soon as I see an AI galley approaching, I plug the strait. The galley turns back. A turn or two later I open it - the galley returns. After a while they give up and try going overland. Tho they eventually get to their destination, it is 20+ turns later than they'd "planned".

The same works for the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, the Baltic Sea, Indonesia (6 ships block every route short of sailing completely around Australia). On random maps I've seen fewer opportunities, but it works every time.

On land it works just as well. I've not payed too close attention to know exactly how many turns pass before they try alternate transportation, tho...

[Cuervo72]

I was thinking the same thing. Possibly related to the goto algorithm, and I'm sure it recalculates after every turn. I wonder if it does something like compare ComputeLandRoute() with ComputeSeaRoute(), or if it prefers the former and uses the latter as a fallback.

Though on the surface it does make the AI appear to "know" that something is blocking its path. Maybe the subroutine should only work within the bounds of what can be "seen"; it has a prior knowledge that the land there, and may know the region, and it calculates a theoretical path to a point, which needs to be adjusted ONLY when the unit, or other scout units, can spot an obstruction.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Marquis de Sodaq
The same works for the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, the Baltic Sea, Indonesia (6 ships block every route short of sailing completely around Australia). On random maps I've seen fewer opportunities, but it works every time.

I've did a land version at Panama. I stopped Eygpt (in mexico?) from expanding into South America. I had a few riflemen line up and create a border if you will.