Effects of 1.21f changes?

[player1]

Originally posted by Txurce
Theseus, it would be terrific if the AI were indeed using the infantry as an offensive force. Shaka never actually got attacked by them, however, and I wonder if the 1.21 AI has shaken off the coding that seems to prevent any defensive unit from attacking, no matter how much stronger its offensive rating is compared to rthe enemy? In my games, it seems that the standard defensive unit - from spearmen through mech infantry - only attack red-injured units, no matter how much stronger. A coding change in this alone would make a huge difference.

I was attacked by infantry.
And it lost badly.

[chiefpaco]

I can definitely confirm the far greater massing of force. I've never seen such great stacks of infantry & riflemen. They were so intimidating! However, 3 stacks of 30 or more passed my border cities defended by 5 riflemen & instead attack a 1-riflemen-defended city 12 squares deep into my territory (taking 15 turns to cross my lands). Then, they defended it with 1 damaged rifleman & started on a quest for another 1-rifleman defended city 6 squares away (my capital). I was able to easily retake my city & demand peace. I sort of wished they would have attacked border cities & not trekked so far. Infantry are so slow.

Another problem. I see all these units with both "offensive/defensive" flags (rifleman & infantry), but very very few of units with just the offensive flag (cavalry). That stack would have been far more dangerous with cavalry.

[Theseus]

Yeah, my guess is the military AI still needs tweaking on what to attack and what to avoid. Us humans see a big stack, or a strongly defended city, and plan accordingly. The AI just avoids it.

But still, I can tell there's an improvement in the use and massing of units.

[Harovan]

In the game I had described above, my ally France attacked Russia with HUGE stacks of infantries (overall about 60 I think), with about 20% old units mixed in. I was faster with my tanks though, leaving my ally the honour to fight the counterattacking longbowmen, while I was capturing the cities.

So I can second the information, yes the AI attacks with infantries.

[Aeson]

I finally installed 1.21f and there are a couple changes that I noticed immediately (not mentioned in the readme). 1 is that Scouts can no longer stay in AI territory indefinitely, usually a demand comes in ~10 turns. With a ROP this can be circumvented still of course.

The other, already talked about, is the AI's willingness to part with cities in peace negotiations. I couldn't get cities at all for renegotiating peace, and had a very hard time getting any cities at all even after war. I think there has been a change in how the AI views the ratio of power, and breaking a peace treaty causes them to value future peace treaties even less.

Both of these are very good changes.

[Cort Haus]

Infantry Stacks

Not only do they leave the cities they take barely defended, but (before Battlefield Medicine) the Infantry Stacks can be split up with Artillery barrages - the damaged ones turn round to limp home.

[Harovan]

As far as I can see, the willingness of the AI to part with cities on peace negotiations after war has not changed. In my test games as well as in the CF tournament game I got cities at ease. China once even parted with 2 of their remaining 3 cities, just to survive with their capital for 20 turns. With the AI being not willing to tolerate scouts indefinitely you are right, I noticed the same in the tournament game. But it's more than 10 turns, I think about 20. If you send your scout immediately back, their attitude towards you gets worse. I got England furious this way without a single war, extortion or otherwise break of treaty.

[Aeson]

There may be a valuation on a peace treaty that's affecting how many cities I can get. The first time I made peace with the Germans I got 2 cities, and immediately broke the peace treaty. After that I wasn't able to get any cities at all for peace after war.

[macaday]

sell your cities

A few people have mentioned holding onto a city to abandon it later (rather than razing) in order to heal your units, or to wait for your settler to move up, etc... If you're not going to keep the city but just want to hold it for a few turns, I suppose it would be a good idea to sell off some of the remaining improvements before your abandon the town.

--mac

[Herr David]

Now that you mention the 50+ infantry stacks... that explains a lot to me. I'm playing a game in the modern era and I just nuked the French into oblivion... Joan had this island all to herself, railroad built all over it, and form looking at the mil adv screen I could see she actually had over 150 Infantry units!!! And this with only a dozen cities... I think moving these units around made the AI turns so slow, the turn before I nuked Joan, it took the AI over three minutes to calculate her turn, and this on a Duron 800MHz with 256MB RAM. Now that my nukes have reduced her army to just 50 damaged Infantry units and I'm invading her territory, her turns take maybe ten seconds. Go figure. I've never seen those huge stacks before 1.21...

(There should be a routine that tells the AI when to park his units in one place and not move them around for no reason...)

[Fidel]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Has anyone been able to extort a city on peace renegotiation on 1.21f? I failed so far even with the weakest civs and extorting grassland cities (no resources). Methinks Soren has tweaked his AI in that matter. Oh well, it was imbalancing anyway...

i got some lesser cities occassionally

[Fidel]

Originally posted by player1


I was attacked by infantry.
And it lost badly.

but boy, do they pillage!

[Spaced Cowboy]

So am I still to understand that the AIs stategy in the late game is flawed. They still do not know how to build and use artillery, or attack strongpoints to crush the defense.

R:PM

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by RPMisCOOL
So am I still to understand that the AIs stategy in the late game is flawed. They still do not know how to build and use artillery, or attack strongpoints to crush the defense.

Of Course, it is Flawed! But according to reports of many who have played other games, it beats their AI hands down.

Of course, on occasion, OUR strategies are flawed!

[Strollen]

It is true the AI still is pretty clueless about artillery and builds very few and never uses them in a mass attack. Also I think they could use Cav a bit more.

Never the less the 20+ stacks of Infantry marching through your terrority provide a plenty of excitement. It is reasonably remarkable to watch and AI opponent spend a couple of turns gathering assembling his forces (may have been one turn, except for I never trade him coal despite the Zulus being willing to pay a bunch for it so he didn't have railroads). Than suddenly several large armies converge on a single city and other forces pillage. It took me a long time to whittle down his army with a mass artillery attack and to use my handful of tank (no Oil to build more).

All in all a pretty logical war I needed his oil and he need my coal.