One Thing The AI Still Can't Do...

[John-SJ]

Pick Appropriate dock sites. LOL! See attached.

John

[Inverse Icarus]

first off

second off, is there any water on that map anywhere else? maybe the AI just wanted to be able to use transports in the future?

[John-SJ]

Yes, there is water, notice the unexplored south east portion of the mini-map. In fact, he has a dock there as well, just north of my border.

Hmmm, I hadn't considered the possibility of hiding troops on transports in a small pond. Does that actually work? (I haven't played any "sea" games at all.)

John

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by John-SJ
Yes, there is water, notice the unexplored south east portion of the mini-map. In fact, he has a dock there as well, just north of my border.

Hmmm, I hadn't considered the possibility of hiding troops on transports in a small pond. Does that actually work? (I haven't played any "sea" games at all.)

John

no, but all you need is 1 dock anywhere to transport anywhere. if the AI had planned to do some water transporting, he may want to have a dock in a safer location.

having troops in a pond like that wouldn't work too well.

[DarthVeda]

I shall try this pond trick in my next game

[albiedamned]

You can't "hide" troops in a pond. They may be out of range of melee units, but ranged units and artillery can still get them.

[Bridger]

How do you know that pond wasn't just a facade for his ultra stop secret weapon system a la Goldeneye?

[albiedamned]

How about this strategy: use a general to create a decoy army, then send the decoys into a pond so they can be sitting duck targets for the enemy army while your second general uses ambush to bring your real army to your true target.

Yeah, like anyone would ever bother to go to all that trouble. . .

[Kuciwalker]

Is the other water inaccessible to him? Oh, never mind, he has another harbor. Still, this could have been built earlier, if he hadn't had access to the other water at that time.

[GodSpawn]

As others have pointed out, if the AI wanted to have a safe dock, that would be the place to build it.

It's good to have a safe dock - otherwise, if you have a dock in a forward position and it gets killed, any of your units the other side of some water will be stranded. No dock = no auto-transport.

[Jaybe]

It is also good to have one of each type of installation out of the way to do research in. That way you don't have to do research where you want to be building units.

[Inverse Icarus]

out of curiousity, if my army is on the sea and i lose my dock, they don't sink, do they?

[GodSpawn]

Nope, but once they've turned back into people, they can't change back to transports.