Great AI Military Blunders

[FuManchu]

The Civ3 AI seems to be pretty smart a lot of the time. Not without it's weak points though...

Here's the situation.

I'm playing as Persia and I'm fighting a war with my neighbours the Babylonians. Our countries are linked by a narrow, west-to-east strip of land with cities either side. My side of the border is fortified. The forts are garrisoned with 4 infantry and 8 artillery each. I also have 8 battleships stationed north and south of the strip. So, in terms of bombardment potential, the tiles immeadiately in front of my fortresses are not very nice places to be.

It kind of looks like this...

PF---
-F--B

P = my city
F = my fortresses
B = their city

The Babs also have a bit of a terrain advantage as the tiles on their side are hills, whereas on my side it's desert. I have to attack up-hill.

On their turn they move a huge force onto one of the hills. 15 tanks, about half a dozen marines, some infantry and a mixed army of older units. It's huge in the context of this game as, by checking with my Military Adviser, it looks like about 70-80% of their total offensive potential.

So now they're here...

PF-T-
-F--B

T = their forces

On my turn, I bombard them with all I've got. Has reasonable results, but they're on a hill and the infantry soak up most of the damage. Then I move a force of about 20 tanks supported by two infantry armies on to the hill beneath them.

So now it looks like this...

PF-T-
-F-MB

M = my forces

What happens next? Well, what I expected was that their forces would either attack mine directly, or move into their city to protect it. But what they actually did was walk right past my force and into the desert behind them! Like this...

PF---
-FTMB

Their whole attack force that was on the hill, plus some more units - without attacking my units at all. What's that all about? Next turn I bombard the crap out of them, and roll over the remains with my attack force. Turn after that, I take their city. Oh dear.

Maybe there's a flaw in the AI where they'll head for the nearest point of least resistance, to the detriment of defence. I've seen this a lot when they target "stragglers" instead of taking on a main battle group. I guess in the situation described, they were heading for the 4 infantry manned fortress, as opposed to taking on my infantry armies and tanks. Also suspect that they don't give much evaluation weight to opposing bombardment units. Or maybe once they get so far into a plan of attack they always stick to it.

Anyone else seen anything like this?

[absimiliard]

I guess I hadn't thought about it, but yes I've seen this too. Now that you have me thinking about it I would venture that the AI is designed for a good offense, but doesn't do so well on defense.

This is, in my opinion, a good game design though. I think that good offense makes for more exciting wars with the AI. Being focused on defence would tend to make wars with the AI stagnate. By putting an emphasis on attack, and also on resource denial, the AI seems to have been tuned to make an exciting oponent to fight who lacks a bit on defense.

But yeah, I've definitely seen the AI do things like walk right by my entrenched forces on it's way to a square to pillage or a target of opportunity, like a wounded unit. And I've seen it do it right next to artillery as well. So maybe you're right that it undervalues the potential of artillery.

[MarshalN]

I think this is true. In my current game (which is kinda fun but worrying) I am playing as the French on a map that's huge with continents. My luck just sucked, and landed on a medium sized island instaed of one of the main land masses. The island holds about 10-12 cities (built on everything except the big tundra block) and I finally got the lighthouse so I am able to explore beyond. The Russians are just on the other side of the coast that's closest to me, and I decided that I'd mass an army and try to capture a beachhead since all the land around me on the mainland is already taken up.

So I do that, and got two cities without much problem. Both of them only had minimal defenses and couldn't withstand my army of archers and catapults. However, once I got those and want to move on, I noticed that out of nowhere the Russians have shown up with a large force of attack units (archers, surprise surprise). At that point I decided I'd make peace instaed and life was good.

But I think it shows how geared towards attacking the AI is. The cities I got were near their border with the English, yet the defenses in the cities were slim. It's interesting how I got those easily and once their big attack force arrived, I was kinda stuck. Now I'm trying to send as many units as I can afford to the mainland and go at it again.

[FuManchu]

Originally posted by absimiliard
I guess I hadn't thought about it, but yes I've seen this too. Now that you have me thinking about it I would venture that the AI is designed for a good offense, but doesn't do so well on defense.

This is, in my opinion, a good game design though....

I agree that's certainly true overall. And it's good that it's got some holes in it otherwise, as you say, the whole thing would become very "stagnant". WWI simulator anyone? No thanks.

I was just a bit surprised at how happy it was (if that's the term) to move a very large proportion of it's military into a more vulnerable position and put one of it's cities in serious jeopardy for no immeadiate gain. It didn't stack up with the smarter things I seen it do in this game and others. I suppose if it's capable of cranking out tanks every few turns and has a lot of cities (which the Babs did), then it's maybe not so much of a sacrifice in terms of the big picture.

[mongolhorde]

Well I played this one game where I decimated the Greeks. When I took over the last Greek city on the continent I thought it would be over for them, but it turned out that they had managed to build a tiny city on a big island dominated by the Japanese.

So picture this the Greeks with one tiny city (their only city in the world) surrounded by about eight Japanese cities and what do the Greeks do next? They declare war on the Japanese. Of course they were obliterated next turn by the Japanese.

Come to think of it, when I had the Greeks down to about 3 cities on my continent, on which I had about 15 cities, the Greeks instead of going on the defence and hunkering down behind their walled cities, kept sending out their riflemen to meet my cavalry in the open field. That is just totally counter intuitive.

Of course by going on the defence they would have just prolonged the inevitable but, it just didnt make sense to me. Was it just a last ditch effort, a suicide run? I guess its more interesting to think of it that way that as a flaw in the AI.

[FuManchu]

Originally posted by mongolhorde

So picture this the Greeks with one tiny city (their only city in the world) surrounded by about eight Japanese cities and what do the Greeks do next? They declare war on the Japanese. Of course they were obliterated next turn by the Japanese.

Come to think of it, when I had the Greeks down to about 3 cities on my continent, on which I had about 15 cities, the Greeks instead of going on the defence and hunkering down behind their walled cities, kept sending out their riflemen to meet my cavalry in the open field. That is just totally counter intuitive.

Of course by going on the defence they would have just prolonged the inevitable but, it just didnt make sense to me. Was it just a last ditch effort, a suicide run? I guess its more interesting to think of it that way that as a flaw in the AI.

Yeah. The AI never seems to develop any humility! They just seem to get angrier and angrier with every succesive defeat. I've seen entierly peaceful worlds go down the toilet in 30 or 40 turns because once they start fighting the find it very hard to stop. It's certainly exciting (if not very civilised).

Had another though about why the 4 guy fortress might have valuable enough to take the risk for. It would have opened the only land route into my country. Could be that's added into the mix as well.

[gamma]

The biggest blunder I saw in my games was unwillingness of the AI to use its artillery. Instead of concentrating it on your units before it attacks, it stores one in each of its cities as defense, and meanwhile it kills itself trying to attack your full-strength units.

[Arrian]

A couple of things I've noticed:

1) Worker Capture:

The AI will go out of its way (ignoring ALL ELSE) to capture workers. It will do this even if it needs to defend a city. It will do this even if I have a badly wounded attack unit sitting out in the open one tile away. You can use a "worker shield" while advancing into AI territory. The AI capture the workers, and you can slaughter them and recapture the workers. It's kinda silly.

2) Inability to use bombard units properly:

Like Gamma said, the AI stations artillery in its cities to aid in defense, but does not use them on the attack. Further, while it uses them better, it's use of Bombers is generally limited to destroying roads... not softening your units (should be a combo... difficult to program, I'd bet). I have yet to see them bombard a city of mine with anything. This includes ships.

3) Poor unit placement:

During the AI turn, as we have all noticed, the AI "patrols" with most of its units. This, beside being annoying to us gamers, is stupid. The AI should station many of these units on good defensive terrain along its borders. As it stands now, invading the AI is pretty easy - the hills and mountains in their territory are unoccupied. Get up on that high ground and you have the advantage.

4) Ineffective mobile defense:

This ties in with numbers 1 and 3. When I move a large, extremely dangerous attack force into AI territory, the AI should concentrate - WITH EVERYTHING IT HAS - on weakening that force. My invasion troops are the biggest threat. Instead, it shies away from attacking such a "hard target" and goes for easy victories (such as workers). I will often send a few cavalry out on either side of my main force, as screening units. The AI will attack them (often with 1-move units that hurt, but do not kill them) and ignore the main force.

All in all, if you're doing the attacking, and you know what you're doing, you're gonna win. The AI tends to be a bit better on the attack.

-Arrian

[Bill_in_PDX]

Originally posted by FuManchu
The Civ3 AI seems to be pretty smart a lot of the time. Not without it's weak points though...

Here's the situation.

Anyone else seen anything like this?

I can see some logic though to the AI's move, perhaps even a reason.

If you had massed a force as described near one of my cities, I figure I am going to lose that city.

So my choices are to stand and fight, burning 60-70% of my mobile army (as you described), or keep some initiative and look for a way to hurt you back, that just might force you to split your massive attack force.

One way to do that is to not kamakaze into your stack of tanks on the hill, and instead roll through your ZOC forts and open up your heartland to pillaging.

This splits your force up, and also will slow down or halt reinforcement to the attack group. It denies you resources if they do breakthrough, and through dividing your attention, it gives each of the defending cities a better shot at surviving.

Brings the war home to you. I like the strategy.

The CIVIII model is not a military simulator per se, but to me it is a much smarter model. No more just stacking up invincible forces and waiting for inevitable.

[nato]

I want to preface this by saying I am really pleased and impressed with the AI's competance compared to past AI efforts.

That said, here is my AI blunder. After lots of fighting the Russian AI got a Leader, which it used to make a 3 unit Army.

At first I was pretty impressed when I saw the Veteran Cossack on top of the Army (Cavalry was the best unit available yet).

I was less impressed when I saw the now-never-upgradeable Regular Knight underneath.

But I was really sad when I saw the CONSCRIPT RIFLEMAN comprising the third unit. In an Army!

The whole thing died attacking my fortified Musketman on a mountain ... that's not so bad, but ruining that Army with a 2 hit point, 1 movement point defense unit was not bright.

[rah]

I have sacrificed a few workers to slow down an AI rush before railroads to give me a chance to reinforce critical cities. You get caught with your pants down and a few workers save you

Another favorite bait trick is when you have one ai on one side of you starting a war with the ai on the other side of you. Instead of asking him to remove his troops every turn when they move troops through to get to the other side, let him move through. He'll string out his whole attack force like pretty maids all in a row. Let them get about half their troops through to the other AI, then declare war and just knock off the rest. All that got through will fight the other AI, hopefully weakening both. Now both civs have been hurt and are usually very easy to take advantage of dipolomatically. Or using troops, whatever you desire.

RAH
I have no problem breaking treaties with civs that I share a continent with, because I plan to eliminate them in the near future anyway. I'm a lot more concerned with my rep with civ's on other continents because I like to milk them a little longer.

[vmxa1]

I too have seen the AI go for workers and put its troops in great jeapordy. It will send out one or two units to grab worker(s) while I have a ton of calv or tanks near them, certain death and I get the workers back anyway.
I also noticed two days ago the AI civ will pop up with a town that did not exist before after I grabbed the last known one? How it managed to get a settler out past all of my units and over to a far away tile I do not know. If they had a settler out in the land I should have seen it as I had colonies every where and workers by the scores, I am not saying it is not possible, but I was surprised. It happen with two civs in that game. The last one I had left pinned in a corner surrounded by modern armour while I researched the last tech to see the ship finish.

[sophist]

I too have seen the AI completely ignore my invaders and walk past. As the Romans attacking the Russians, I had a stack of Legionaries, Horsemen, and Catapults moving in on one of their cities (Tbilsi). A couple of Russian Swordsmen moved into Tbilsi from behind and then onto a tile right next to my invading force. I'd read this thread earlier so I decided not to attack the swords to see what would happen. They kept on going to attack the Greeks 4 tiles away who were no threat at all. The next turn I took Tbilsi. This is clearly an error in AI programming.

[Aeson]

The AI ignores the largest threat, and combined with their willingness to make peace after losing a city or cities, makes their offensive force completely negligible. Often when I approach a town, the AI will evacuate all but 2 defensive units out of the city, and head whatever offensive units out into the field. AI should have the capability to keep offensive units IN their city for counterattacks, or in the case of high movement AI troops vs low movement player troops, they should have them out in front to attack and then withdraw into the protection of the city. As it is, my offensive army can take city after city, and by making peace every couple of cities taken, their offensive force never see's any action.

On the other hand, I would like to offer the 2 (yes, only 2) times that the AI has done something resembling intellegence. Once, I had a catapult unescorted coming to join my main force along a road. An AI horseman captured the catapult, and then the catapult was deleted! I was positioned in such a way that I could attack the horseman, and retake the catapult no matter where they moved it. Out of the 30 or 40 catapults and workers that I have lost in similar situations though, this was the only time I wasnt able to recapture what was taken from me the next turn. This should be something they do much more often, if not every time.

Another time, while attacking an AI city, I had 2 stacks of units. One was 5 spearmen defending 10 catapults, across a river from the town, on a forest. Another was 5 spearmen defending 10 Archers (no Iron or horses for me yet, why I was taking said town!) who were a non-river side of the city. The AI sent 10 horses to attack the catapult stack, the first horseman CROSSED the river and then attacked (and wasn't adjacent to my archer stack). That horseman killed a spearman. I though that was a pretty nifty move, as I had purposely been using the river as a defense. The other 9 horsemen (who had enough movement left to do the same thing) all opted to attack across the river, only killing 1 more spearman. If all the horsemen had followed the first one, I probably would have lost my catapult stack, and they might have held onto the city. As it was, my catapults got the city down to size 5, injured the Impi's defending, and allowed my archers to take out the city the next turn. I'm just wondering why they do act "smart" once in a great while, but can't reproduce those actions in similar situations?

[Glostakarov]

Generally speaking the AI seems to do pretty well, but I have a story of a surreal situation that occurred in my last game. I was tech leader and occupying the bottom branch of the main continent, which was shaped basically like a Y with the top tines close together. On top of one was the Greeks, on top of the other was the Egyptians, and the English and I shared the intersection, like this:

GGGWEEE
GGGWEEE
PGGWEEB
PPGWWEBB
PPPWBBBB
PPPBBBBB
PPPPBBB
WPPBB

G = Greeks
E = Egyptians
B = British
P = Persians (me)
W = Water

I was massing tanks to go flooding into English territory, waiting only for my workers to finish a little preparatory road and fortification building when I noticed that the Greeks and Egyptians declared war on each other. I didn't think much of it, and sent my tanks rolling into Dover. The English counterattacked intelligently and in numbers, sacking Leipzig. We were just settling down to a nice knock-down drag-out brawl when the first Egyptian and Greek troops appeared on the map.

I stared at it for several minutes. I scrolled up and selected my transport, and moved it into the channel. No sign of transports from either side, despite the fact that I had seen both of them using them earlier. I continued brawling it out with the English as the Egyptians and Greeks crawled down the coasts of the channel and finally started hashing it out... in Leipzig's city radius, where England and I were still having a throwdown.

The number of troops they funneled into the battle was staggering, but not nearly as astounding that the fact that they were wasting several turns by walking. The channel was only 1-2 tiles wide in most places! For a good 20 turns we had a four sided battle going on. The Greeks and the Egyptians were fighting each other, but at peace with me. I was fighting the English, who had a right of passage agreement with the Egyptians and eventually they declared war on the Greeks, but by then I was moving them away from the fight. I actually got a couple extra English cities because they were moving units around me to attack Greek reinforcements.

The Greeks eventually lost, a few turns after I had taken the English cities I was after, secured peace, and repositioned my tanks. They rumbled into Greek territory and started grabbing cities as the Egyptians finished cleaning up, protecting my cities in the process.

[shayovitz]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I also noticed two days ago the AI civ will pop up with a town that did not exist before after I grabbed the last known one? How it managed to get a settler out past all of my units and over to a far away tile I do not know. If they had a settler out in the land I should have seen it as I had colonies every where and workers by the scores, I am not saying it is not possible, but I was surprised. It happen with two civs in that game. The last one I had left pinned in a corner surrounded by modern armour while I researched the last tech to see the ship finish.

vmxa1, what happened to you is a kind of "reappearance" of the civ you had destroyed. They didn't move a settler past all your forces, colonies, etc., they just got one for free when they were destroyed. In the game I played, I kicked the Japanese who didn't have contact with any other civ, they were stranded on an island, so I'm sure they didn't have any other unit on the other continents. After capturing their last city, they reappeared in another continent, got friendly with the other civs, etc. I had to destroy them a second time to eliminate them completely from the game.
I remember civs respawning from civI, I kinda like this feature, gives you more cities to capture.

[Barchan]

FuManchu:

Perhaps the AI is too clever for its own good! The AI move in your example was actually strategically sound and could have been quite devastating. After all, nothing throws an invading army off course quite like isolating it from its supply source. Too bad for the AI CivIII doesn't deal with supply lines!

[xane]

They make diplomatic blunders too. I (Germany) shared a continant with the French and we got on just fine, swapping resources, tech, etc. I then decimated the nearby Zulus and reduced them down to 2 cities before I gave them peace and bribed them with a MPP (because I'm a nice guy really).

France foolishly attacked the Zulus, which brought me and the rest of the world down on them through a domino effect of MPPs, it beggars belief why they chose to attack a civilization with protection from their best neighbours and even more that they thought they could engage in a war with the entire world ?!

[vmxa1]

Xane, I am not sure of the circumstances in that game, but at some point the AI must make a move or it will be fried, so if the land was mostly settled, it may have been force to attack someone. In the late stages I see them go to war with me (unprovoked) when they have no chance, but then again they have no choice other than the timing as they will lose anyway.

[IMRugger]

The AI military is easily confused. If you destroy their roads/rails, and fake attacks with diversionary units, your main attack force often will be able to pick off objectives and enemy units at leisure. I have had a lot of sucess splitting defense forces by faking an attack with a relatively fast diversion unit (ie horseman early in the game) and running defense ubits in circles while my main attack force closes on a city.

IMRugger