Great AI Military Blunders

[shayovitz]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I also noticed two days ago the AI civ will pop up with a town that did not exist before after I grabbed the last known one? How it managed to get a settler out past all of my units and over to a far away tile I do not know. If they had a settler out in the land I should have seen it as I had colonies every where and workers by the scores, I am not saying it is not possible, but I was surprised. It happen with two civs in that game. The last one I had left pinned in a corner surrounded by modern armour while I researched the last tech to see the ship finish.

vmxa1, what happened to you is a kind of "reappearance" of the civ you had destroyed. They didn't move a settler past all your forces, colonies, etc., they just got one for free when they were destroyed. In the game I played, I kicked the Japanese who didn't have contact with any other civ, they were stranded on an island, so I'm sure they didn't have any other unit on the other continents. After capturing their last city, they reappeared in another continent, got friendly with the other civs, etc. I had to destroy them a second time to eliminate them completely from the game.
I remember civs respawning from civI, I kinda like this feature, gives you more cities to capture.

[Barchan]

FuManchu:

Perhaps the AI is too clever for its own good! The AI move in your example was actually strategically sound and could have been quite devastating. After all, nothing throws an invading army off course quite like isolating it from its supply source. Too bad for the AI CivIII doesn't deal with supply lines!

[xane]

They make diplomatic blunders too. I (Germany) shared a continant with the French and we got on just fine, swapping resources, tech, etc. I then decimated the nearby Zulus and reduced them down to 2 cities before I gave them peace and bribed them with a MPP (because I'm a nice guy really).

France foolishly attacked the Zulus, which brought me and the rest of the world down on them through a domino effect of MPPs, it beggars belief why they chose to attack a civilization with protection from their best neighbours and even more that they thought they could engage in a war with the entire world ?!

[vmxa1]

Xane, I am not sure of the circumstances in that game, but at some point the AI must make a move or it will be fried, so if the land was mostly settled, it may have been force to attack someone. In the late stages I see them go to war with me (unprovoked) when they have no chance, but then again they have no choice other than the timing as they will lose anyway.

[IMRugger]

The AI military is easily confused. If you destroy their roads/rails, and fake attacks with diversionary units, your main attack force often will be able to pick off objectives and enemy units at leisure. I have had a lot of sucess splitting defense forces by faking an attack with a relatively fast diversion unit (ie horseman early in the game) and running defense ubits in circles while my main attack force closes on a city.

IMRugger