Who says AI is stupid?

[Kautilya]

Well since I didn't buy/play CTP1 I don't have the whole "Activision cheated me out of 50 bucks the first time" feeling. Judged on its own merits I like CTP2 and consider it worth my 50 bucks. But after reading a lot of comments like yours I am begining to wonder what exactly Activision spent the time/money on.

However a lot of people seem to say that the interface has also been improved a lot. I certainly find it a pleasure to use compared to Civ2/SMAC.

[colorme]

Kautilya,

On the other hand, you could have bought a cheap CTP1 . And that would probably have less bugs, more multiplayer support, and the incredibly good med mod. So, you did lose money!

But, you're right, taken by itself, CTP2 is not a bad buy. But the CTP1 -> CTP2 upgrade is a bad buy.

[Kyle]

Well, here's a vote for the AI. I just started a game, the Romans. Built two cities. Each had a single Hoplite (the other two were exploring), down comes a barbarian or two and they actually took Rome from me. They then produced wave after wave of Warriors and sent them against my other city. Weren't able to take it, but I still haven't taken Rome back yet. The only downside here is that they didn't stack the warriors, cause if they did, they'd have my other city in no time.


I set this on Easy and on the second Barbarian option (second from the top). Granted, I'm not the greatest Civ player, but I've never barbarians take one of my cities.

[CyberGnu]

Well, I just finished my second game on impossible level, and my second win. The only reason I can see is that the AI reeks.

This last game, I started out next to another civ. I agreed to his peace proposals until I had built a striker task force (6 samurai, 6 archers), then promptly went into his realm and took all his cities. Before our war started he had at least twice my population, concentrated in an equal number of cities (meaning that his cities were much bigger than mine).

It took me at least 30 turns to conquer his realm. During all this time he didn't even try to defend himself. Every single city was defended by one hoplite and one archer. If he had built as little as one single hoplite extra in each city, I doubt I would have been able to defeat him... But no...

The only aggressive move he did was to send a horse archer to the middle of my civ, but failed to use it even to plunder...

Now, my favourite AI stupidity came when I thought I had him wiped out, but got no message saying I had conquered him. Obviously had I missed a city somewhere.

I then promptly sent a diplomatic envoy, offering a cease-fire in exchange for his maps. He happily agreed and showed me where his last city was. Four turns later my taskforce wiped him out...


Now, regarding the mayors, I found them great for a while, then realized that they wasted huge amounts of time on building crap. I had one idiot mayor, governing a city right smack down in the middle of my empire, at least five cities away from teh closest border, churning out catapults... And I would disband every single one of them as soon as they were built... (OK, I admit, I did this on purpose to see whether there were any sort of feedback in the system. Apparently not). And the others happily disregarded the priorities I set them... Amusingly enough, it looks like the science priority is more warmongering than either growth or gold...


All in all, I'm very disappointed... I would have expected this AI standard from Hasbro... So it took me by surprise.



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Gnu Ex Machina - the Gnu in the Machine

[MarkG]

what kind of ai was it?
if you see personalities.txt in the aidata folder, some have a "passive" attribute.

one thing you might want to try is put all the civs on the "stalin" personality(see civilization.txt in the gamedata folder)

[marcuspeddle]

quote: Now, my favourite AI stupidity came when I thought I had him wiped out, but got no message saying I had conquered him. Obviously had I missed a city somewhere. I then promptly sent a diplomatic envoy, offering a cease-fire in exchange for his maps. He happily agreed and showed me where his last city was. Four turns later my taskforce wiped him out...

I don't think that was stupidity on the AI's part, that was a kind of trick on your part. Did your regard go down with other countries for that?
I'm playing on easy level and I'm not having much of a problem wiping out the Americans right now. I almost lost my big army trying to take Washington but what saved me was having flankers and ranged units. The city was only defended with hoplites (a lot of them) and an archer or two. I don't know how I would have fared in a harder level. Probably not well if my playing experience in Civ2 is any indication.


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A civilisation is great when old men plant trees they will not live to sit under.
[This message has been edited by Anatolia (edited November 27, 2000).]

[joey802]

quote: Originally posted by jkadabomb on 11-26-2000 03:24 PM Why dont you'll try multiplayer if you dont like AI?

I dont know if anyone buys civ game for multiplayer. I would think that multiplayer / scenarios come to be played long after you get sick of beating it on deity.

[joey802]

i hope one thing that ctp2 did was help make civ3 better because the user interface like the managers, especially the national managers are pretty useful. And another thing I have noticed is that while playing I keep finding useful little things to make playing less tedious [like managing cities from the national manager], and I wonder how great this game could have been with some ai[any that can slightly reason] and diplomacy ai.

[Karol]

About stupid AI moves:
If you remove Fog of War (cheating) You'll see stupid unit moves when there is no enemy around, right? It looks really stupid for human but maybe not for AI. AI can move 200 units in two seconds - it is not boring for AI - I mean point of view of AI (of AI algorythm programmer) may be different that human player one. Maybe just AI hopes to meet some stealth unit just by making stupid moves

[colorme]

Karol,

Point taken. But, we would not even be having this discussion if there was SOMETHING intelligent that the AI could do. As I mentioned before, the AI is an
OPPORTUNISTIC AI. It tries to luck out (meeting enemy units by chance, etc.).

Nothing smart there. If it wins, it's only because it cheats like crazy. Of course if you're playing Bloodlust off, there is some challenge in the game. But, I prefer the military challenge

[CyberGnu]

Anatolia, I know what you mean, but since I'd blatantly broke the previous peace agreement, I don't see why he should have trusted me.

If he had been smart, he would have ignored me completely and built defense for all he was worth... Especially since the game favors the defender slightly more than CivII does (AFAIK).

And I don't think my regard went down... I was talking to the Irish at the time, and he agreed to a research pact not long after...

Overall, I think that colorme's assesment is correct, the AI is just opportunistic...


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Gnu Ex Machina - the Gnu in the Machine