AI brought tears to me eyes

[Ribannah]

Rah, occasionally the human player gets info on city locations that aren't in explored territory as well.
This is the case when these cities have built a wonder, but sometimes it also happens when they demand a trade commodity you are supplying.

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[Simpson II]

Roman,

Read my post a little more carefully. If the AI has exactly 20 ships, *with 20 equally likely destinations*, then 20^19 is correct. The first ship goes to a random city, we don't care which one. The second has one chance in 20 of going to the same city. For the second and third ships to go to the same city, the probability is (1/20)*(1/20) = 1 in 20^2. And so on until we reach 1 in 20^19 for the 20th ship. I'm reasonably certain of this as my first degree was in astrophysics & maths, so I have an above-average grasp of probability.

Of course this is a simpified model of what would happen in the game, but it gives an idea of the scale of the unlikelihood.

Ribannah,

I believe Rah's correct, the AI gets to look at the entire map; there's no fog of war at all for it.

quote: However, in some cases they will all arrive together, for instance when the AI had just broken an alliance that made all its units return to the capital. This may look impressive, but it's merely a co-incidence.

I really can't think of a case where 20-40 ships can arrive together over a reasonable distance of ocean without ludicrous amounts of luck. They don't have to start in the same square, they have to start precisely graded according to speed. For it to happen in as many cases as have been reported here is incredibly unlikely, IMO.

[Ribannah]

quote: Originally posted by Simpson II on 02-12-2001 10:43 AM If the AI has exactly 20 ships, *with 20 equally likely destinations*, then 20^19 is correct. The first ship goes to a random city, ...

Yes, but that's just it. Cities aren't chosen at random. Meanwhile ....

quote: ... And so on until we reach 1 in 20^19 for the 20th ship. I'm reasonably certain of this as my first degree was in astrophysics & maths, so I have an above-average grasp of probability.

And now suppose the AI has 21 ships instead of 20, let's see if you really deserved that degree!

quote: I believe Rah's correct, the AI gets to look at the entire map; there's no fog of war at all for it. I really can't think of a case where 20-40 ships can arrive together over a reasonable distance of ocean without ludicrous amounts of luck. They don't have to start in the same square, they have to start precisely graded according to speed. For it to happen in as many cases as have been reported here is incredibly unlikely, IMO.

Well, there haven't been THAT many cases, considering the number of games we play , but still, your thoughts here are proof that the AI - at least normally - does NOT know the entire map. Frankly, in my games I've never enountered anything that could even remotely let me believe it does.

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

I think AI tend to stack his ships to a same square if he thinks they need protection.. I just sank 10 English ships in one square protected by battleship with my battleship.

[Edward]

quote: Originally posted by Marko_Polo on 02-14-2001 08:33 AM I think AI tend to stack his ships to a same square if he thinks they need protection.. I just sank 10 English ships in one square protected by battleship with my battleship.

Strange but true. The AI seems to stack ships - leading to little benefit but offering easy pickings. Conversely, the AI doesn't consciously stack land units (notably catapults and other big hitters run around unescorted) - thus losing the benefit of having defenders and attackers working together (and again making easy targets).

Also the AI has a strange habit of choosing one coastal city as a target and, year after year, sending attacking ships just to that city - even after you build a coastal fortress there and even though other coastal cities are known to it. This fact combined with the AI's ship stacking might make these naval assaults more probable.

[Roman]

quote: Originally posted by Simpson II on 02-12-2001 10:43 AM If the AI has exactly 20 ships, *with 20 equally likely destinations*, then 20^19 is correct. The first ship goes to a random city, we don't care which one. The second has one chance in 20 of going to the same city. For the second and third ships to go to the same city, the probability is (1/20)*(1/20) = 1 in 20^2. And so on until we reach 1 in 20^19 for the 20th ship.

Ok, I have to explain why this does not work.

Let us assume the AI chooses enemy cities where to send its ships completely at random.

Further assumptions for purposes of simplicity:

All ships go to some enemy city.
All ships arrive at their destination at the same time.
The AI has 20 ships to send.
The AI knows the position of all enemy cities.
The enemy has 30 cities on the coast.

As you said, we do not care about the first ship. The other ships have a 1/30 chance each of arriving at the same destination as the first ship.

The combined probability is therefore (1/30)^19 since there are 19 ships left to arrive at the same destination. The probability turns out to be:

1/(1.162261467*10^28)

Now that is obviously not the end of the story, as the ships are not sent to random enemy cities on the coast, but to the closest cities instead, which coupled with the fact that AI has much more than 20 ships (of which only say 20 arrive at the city) markedly changes the probability equation.