Does the AI mimic the human player's behavior to look 'smart'?

[Pythagoras]

Im curious about AI trickery. Sometimes It seems like the AI just starts copying my strategies instead of being wholly original. For instance I decided to go back to my old strategy of close city placement, and I noticed the AI started building their cities closer together. When I start going crazy on the units, sometimes the AI does. If Soren really wanted to make the AI awesome he could simply have the AI observe what the competent human player is doing and mimic it. Seems economical also, much cheaper than designing a complex rule-based AI.

So is there a correlation between my strategy and the AI's strategy or am I just hallucinating?

[Destroyer]

I think you are wrong, as most peoples strategy falls into one of a few catagories. These are so commonly used it only makes sense to program the AI to use these anyway.

[dunk]

I haven't noticed the AI mimicing my actions. Maybe I haven't been looking closely enough.

[Apocalypse]

The AI built their cities close together in most of my games, even if my cities were spread out. That just seems to be an AI strategy.

[Jaybe]

My perception: The AI seems to have some "strategy flags," vaguely similar to Civ2, where they choose different settling strategies. It might vary from game to game, civ to civ.

Also, isn't it amazing how sometimes WE seem to be mimicing AI strategies!
(e.g., ICS, giant stacks of invasion troops, ...)

[Spiffor]

Jaybe :
True ! I never ICSed in Civ2, and I did it from as soon as my second Civ3 game. Now, I'm even more ICSing as the AI, since I don't produce any non-settling unit in the early game.

[Informer]

I haven’t noticed the AI copying my moves, although that’s not to say the AI is uses original concepts and moves. As a matter of fact I would say that the AI lacks originality and unique thinking styles.

[Pythagoras]

I imagine I am wrong, I was just throwing another conspiracy theory out there :-D