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It appears some of the changes in the recent patches may have unintentionally lessened the ability of the AI to wage war in a coherent fashion. Here's something I ran into recently in a Monarch game, playing as the Egyptians going up against the Greeks. They have:
150 Rifleman
10 Longbowman
I have:
60 Tank
50 Infantry
25 Cavalry
The game is at the end of the Middle Ages, and the Greeks are in a 12 city block next to me, with the same techs as I and a decent amount of cash. They have the Art of War and all their cities are linked via railroad, so there's definitely the possibility of them making an incursion difficult. I spy them out and see that they have resources to build better units at any time, and decide to take them before they do so. I capture Corinth and clean out a number of riflemen sitting outside the city, taking them down to around 130 of that unit. I also move 10 tanks towards the next city, Byzantium, in preparations to take it the next turn. I move a decent amount of tanks and cavalry into Corinth at the end of the turn and hold my breath, waiting to see how it responds.
First, the AI uses about half a dozen riflemen & longbowmen to try to take down some of my lone tanks, and does actually get one. Then, amazingly, it moves over 70 riflemen next to Corinth, which I just took from it. To do this, it has to go by my tanks, so about 1/3 of its units are damaged once they get next to the city. Since these units all have one movement point, they can't actually hit me that turn, of course. It also dumps a few riflemen into the threatened Byzantium, but certainly not many given that it's the only city I can take on the next turn.
So, I naturally pull all the tanks I can muster into Corinth and (using their 2 attacks each) manage to damage or kill all 70 of the units it conveniently placed next to the city. I also take Byzantium, which wasn't adequetely protected even though the AI still had over 50 other units it could have put into the city. The next turn it tries the very same thing; moving about 35 units next to Corinth, and I make short work of those, too. At this point, the Greek's once large force has suicided down to almost nothing, and I can walk through and clean up the rest of the cities.
Has this been a common way that the AI is working in combat? I didn't remember seeing this when the game was first released, and it seems like it might have to do with the fact that traditionally defensive units will now act offensively if there aren't any other options around. It seems the AI would work better if it did a few other checks regarding war, including:
1) If money is available, upgrade at least a certain percentage of the units to the highest defensive unit available, especially during war when going up against an opponent with a much higher attack ability (tank vs. rifleman is a joke, even when the rifleman is defending 25+ population cities).
2) Don't attack with single-move "defensive" units in a scenario where you could lose more cities by doing so. It seems that keeping the cities you have should always be a higher priority than attempting to take back one, unless a Civ is so weak it's just doing an annoyance suicide attack. If the AI had moved 20 of its riflemen into the few cities near my border and upgraded 5 in each city to Infantry, it would have been much harder to take it. Instead, it wasted them by trying to overwhelm in numbers, when the units involved didn't have enough moves to even do an attack on that turn.
3) Produce offensive units, instead of more of the same defensive one. I've seen this in a lot of games recently, where the AI for many civs just keeps cranking out defense (even in peace) instead of making enough offense to be a serious counter-threat to an attack. Again, this seems to be tied to the fact that it views all units as potentially offensive, but of course some units are much more offensive than others. In this particular scenario, the Greeks never upgraded their units until they got "Computers" just before I finished them off, and cranked out a few Mech Infantry. By that point it was far too late to do them any good, of course.
Is there any way to fiddle with the editor and raise the likelyhood of the AI doing any of this? I haven't played with that much, since I normally just stick with the default game rules and try playing at a higher level to help balance it out. Anything beyond Monarch just seems to move into the AI cranking out more of everything, though, not doing it more intelligently. Unfortunately, I don't have a saved game from this, as it was a week back; but I thought I'd toss this out to see if the community has been seeing the same in these last few patches.
150 Rifleman
10 Longbowman
I have:
60 Tank
50 Infantry
25 Cavalry
The game is at the end of the Middle Ages, and the Greeks are in a 12 city block next to me, with the same techs as I and a decent amount of cash. They have the Art of War and all their cities are linked via railroad, so there's definitely the possibility of them making an incursion difficult. I spy them out and see that they have resources to build better units at any time, and decide to take them before they do so. I capture Corinth and clean out a number of riflemen sitting outside the city, taking them down to around 130 of that unit. I also move 10 tanks towards the next city, Byzantium, in preparations to take it the next turn. I move a decent amount of tanks and cavalry into Corinth at the end of the turn and hold my breath, waiting to see how it responds.
First, the AI uses about half a dozen riflemen & longbowmen to try to take down some of my lone tanks, and does actually get one. Then, amazingly, it moves over 70 riflemen next to Corinth, which I just took from it. To do this, it has to go by my tanks, so about 1/3 of its units are damaged once they get next to the city. Since these units all have one movement point, they can't actually hit me that turn, of course. It also dumps a few riflemen into the threatened Byzantium, but certainly not many given that it's the only city I can take on the next turn.
So, I naturally pull all the tanks I can muster into Corinth and (using their 2 attacks each) manage to damage or kill all 70 of the units it conveniently placed next to the city. I also take Byzantium, which wasn't adequetely protected even though the AI still had over 50 other units it could have put into the city. The next turn it tries the very same thing; moving about 35 units next to Corinth, and I make short work of those, too. At this point, the Greek's once large force has suicided down to almost nothing, and I can walk through and clean up the rest of the cities.
Has this been a common way that the AI is working in combat? I didn't remember seeing this when the game was first released, and it seems like it might have to do with the fact that traditionally defensive units will now act offensively if there aren't any other options around. It seems the AI would work better if it did a few other checks regarding war, including:
1) If money is available, upgrade at least a certain percentage of the units to the highest defensive unit available, especially during war when going up against an opponent with a much higher attack ability (tank vs. rifleman is a joke, even when the rifleman is defending 25+ population cities).
2) Don't attack with single-move "defensive" units in a scenario where you could lose more cities by doing so. It seems that keeping the cities you have should always be a higher priority than attempting to take back one, unless a Civ is so weak it's just doing an annoyance suicide attack. If the AI had moved 20 of its riflemen into the few cities near my border and upgraded 5 in each city to Infantry, it would have been much harder to take it. Instead, it wasted them by trying to overwhelm in numbers, when the units involved didn't have enough moves to even do an attack on that turn.
3) Produce offensive units, instead of more of the same defensive one. I've seen this in a lot of games recently, where the AI for many civs just keeps cranking out defense (even in peace) instead of making enough offense to be a serious counter-threat to an attack. Again, this seems to be tied to the fact that it views all units as potentially offensive, but of course some units are much more offensive than others. In this particular scenario, the Greeks never upgraded their units until they got "Computers" just before I finished them off, and cranked out a few Mech Infantry. By that point it was far too late to do them any good, of course.
Is there any way to fiddle with the editor and raise the likelyhood of the AI doing any of this? I haven't played with that much, since I normally just stick with the default game rules and try playing at a higher level to help balance it out. Anything beyond Monarch just seems to move into the AI cranking out more of everything, though, not doing it more intelligently. Unfortunately, I don't have a saved game from this, as it was a week back; but I thought I'd toss this out to see if the community has been seeing the same in these last few patches.
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