Who said AI doesnt use crawlers?

[SynthetGod8]

No one ever said the AI doesn't use crawlers, just that they use them mostly for SPs (as someone said above) and rarely crawls nearly useless tiles. It's surely a fluke that the AI happened to crawl a 3 Min tile.

I'm in a game right now where a Drone base has two crawlers getting one mineral each. Yeah... it doesn't happen much, but it does.

[Googlie]

One of the frustrations a CMN has when dresigning a multiplayer scenario with a beefed-up AI is that when we give them crawlers they tend to use them to explore, of all things!!!

So we can set them to mine a square, or convoy energy, and put them in "lurk mode", but lurking is only until a unit passes by, thus awakening them, then it's off exploring they go.

So now I create a lagoon somewhere at the top or bottom of the map, put a few energy specials in the lagoon, and put trawlers lurking there, convoying energy to a base or bases of the AI. Thus they are never disturbed, so fulfill their lurk quota (max is 255 years, then it rolls over, so 256 becomes 1, and so on)

Even when you play a "switch game" (use the scenario editor to change factions after 100 years, then after 75, and then 50, always choosing the weakest faction) the faction you leave to the AI in 2200, with maybe 50 or 60 crawlers, sees that number reduced to around 20 after 30 turns and often disappear completely after 50. But the AI does in the meantime manage to snare a couple of midgame SP's so at least they are using the crawlers for some benefit

[Blake]

For anyone doubtful about AI crawler usage, here is a fairly typical example. It's from my latest (SMAC, no X) game, brother Lal, my pactmate, has atleast 2 bases building crawlers, and atleast 3 crawlers on the map, heading to hurry the Living Refinery. Switch sides to Lal (Ctrl-K then shift-F3) to see what he's doing with the crawlers. Should be pretty obvious that I've been playing Morgan all game.

[Geoff the Medio]

In my last game, the Gaians mind controllled a crawler on my border, then used it to convoy minerals from a nearby unmined tile that had a minearals bonus. It stayed there for some time until, and after, I found it, even after all nearby Gaian bases were captured or destroyed.

[MoNoLitH]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
Gimme some save files.
Otherwise, you could be taking a screenie of your own base.

EDIT: Or using the Scenario editor
EDIT2: Or spying on someone in a MP game

Now why would someone go to all that trouble?


Of course AI uses crawlers. How else can you explain a cash-dry faction like Yang starting an expensive project and giving the message they have almost finished it 1-2 turns later? I know the computer doesn't outright cheat, though sometimes it seems to tip the scales in its own favor if you're kicking its ass.

[Santiago_Claus]

I've seen Domai on the edge of Mount Planet bust out SP's in 4-5 turns. It was frightening.