Stupid AI Tricks

madhatter160 · January 10, 2002, 12:38

Does anyone have any stories about something dumb/funny the AI did?

In my current game, I am the French and have a decent size empire. I have the Forbidden Palace and most of the Wonders so far. I wanted to take over a neighboring civ so I started building Knights (it was the beginning of the Middle Ages) like crazy. Just in case the war went bad, I also upgraded all my Spearmen to Knights.

I had almost all my units in place when the Aztecs (another neighbor) declared war on me. I couldn't believe it - the Aztecs had a warrior patrolling my territory watching me build up my forces and the most powerful unit they had was Spearmen. Next thing a I know about 5 Jaguar Warriors start attacking my border cities (thankfully I had Pikemen garrisoned there). So I get other neighboring civs to declare war on the Aztecs. I pull my Knights from one border and send them charging across my land to the Aztec border. My Knights repelled the attack and took about 4 Aztec cities. Two things saved the Aztecs 1) my Knights arrived 1 or 2 at a time so a concentrated effort could not be made and 2) I am new at waging war and had little experience with tactics.

Eventually the AI wanted peace so I extracted huge reparations. What's more not only did they lose 4 cities, but I also took over their only source of iron. If they would have waited a few more turns, I would have had Military Tradition and would have mowed over their entire civ with my Cavalry.

Lessons learned:
- The AI is dumb
- The Aztecs are aggressive
- Don't build your border cities adjacent to mountains when the mountains are on the other side of the border

Questions:
- I had Sun Tzu's War Academy and I think that when I captured a city and connected it to my civ via roads on the next turn I had a barracks. Does this seem right?

Arrian · January 10, 2002, 13:07

Quote:

Originally posted by madhatter160
Just in case the war went bad, I also upgraded all my Spearmen to Knights.

-SNIP-

Questions:
- I had Sun Tzu's War Academy and I think that when I captured a city and connected it to my civ via roads on the next turn I had a barracks. Does this seem right?

Spearmen don't upgrade to Knights... you mean pikemen, yes?

Sun Tzu gives you a barracks in every city you control on the same continent as the wonder, so yes, that's right.

-Arrian

madhatter160 · January 10, 2002, 14:20

Oops...yeah, I meant I upgraded my Spearmen to Pikemen. At any rate I have learned my lesson. I now have at least 2 of the best units of that upgrade line in my cities that border the Aztecs and the like.

Grumbold · January 10, 2002, 14:23

Later on when the AI has had a chance to accumulate more units, you'd better think about increasing that again. You can buy lots of valuable time if the AI invades but decides to ignore your nearest cities in favour of ones further away (the AI doesn't seem to need spies to know whats in your cities).