Silly AI

[Carver]

warlord, standard, sedentary, v1.21, 7 civs

The next time two AI civs are fighting each other you may want to do some recon flights over the battlefeild - some very silly things go on.

It's circa 1990 and the huge Russians are fighting the French. (the last two civs other than me) A Russian battleship is damaged and goes into a city for repairs. The only problem being that there are about 40 French infantry units outside the city, and the city was being defended only by 1 Russian infantry. Naturally the city gets taken by the French on the next turn and the battleship is destroyed. What was that Russian captian thinking, there were no ship in the area that could hurt him.

Also, why were the French and Russians using infantry on offense and defense. I know the Russians had motor transport for quite a while before the war, yet my spy reveals that they have only 1 tank.

[Inverse Icarus]

did russia only recently acquire oil? or something like that?

[Ironwood]

My guess on the attacking infantry thing is that the city governors tend to produce a lot of fairly random units. If the AI were to decline to use the surplus defensive units on offense, they would end up in the same situation as the novice player that allows the city governors to determine his production... lots of extra defensive units, little success in war.

Would would be better is if the "head" of the AI (the top decision making module) were more active in producing sensible military forces. Once you've got one or two defenders in each city, any extra units really should be attackers, and possibly artillery. Maybe a few extra defenders, to occupy newly captured cities and provide cover for the attackers, would be good, but nothing on the scale the AI produces.

[zulu9812]

All the units in Civ3 have 'flags', which determine how the AI uses them - I forget what the original flags are (I've modded my bic), but could it be that Infantry have the Defensive flag, and Tanks the Offensive falg?

[notyoueither]

They turned on the offensive flag for Riflemen, Infantry and Mech Infantry in 1.21

This makes the AI perform better against invasions and in other situations. They will build Cavalry and Tanks. In my current game the AI I am supporting on another continent has about 12 cities, 35 Infantry and 8 Tanks.

One reason they may not accumulate too many Fast Attackers now is because the AI will attack weakened Tanks with Infantry to kill it in wars amongst themselves.

An incident from my current game. I moved a stack of Tanks (8 Vet, 2 Elite) into Greek territory to strike at a city the following turn. A Greek Marine comes chugging along and attacks the stack. Engages the first Elite. Fortuna favoured Hellas in this case and the Marine did a number on the Tank. I thanked Mars that the Tank successfully retreated, however that had it withdraw 1 square. So then a Greek Infantry comes chugging along and finishes off the weakened Elite Tank. Curses! Yep, pretty dumb AI.

[Theseus]

Carver, agreed, silly AI... although, mmm, errr, never mind.

Ironwood, in the last patch Soren turned on both the defense and attack flags for certain units, specifically, I think, Musketmen, Musketeers, Rifleman, and Infantry. There is a play balance issue, as the AI seems to overly depend on infantry-type units as opposed to fastmovers... however, having a 150+ Infantry / Rifleman show up on your doorstep will seriously ruin your day.

[Zylka]

Yeah man the ai does some goofy stuff