Artillery & the AI

[Pyrodrew]

I've never seen the AI use artillery effectively & never in a clever way. Yet, when viewing the AI Armies when I have a spy planted I see they build TONS of artillery units. 1 Civ had about 1/3-1/4 of their army as artillery! Often these artillery just become trophies for me to use against them later.

So wouldn't preventing the AI from building artillery ((using the editor)) actually improve the AI?
If it's not building artillery...

it may build more buildings - Culture, Science, Factories, Wonders, etc.

it may build more military units it uses better - Riflemen, Tanks, Cavalry, Infantry, etc.

Yet, if I'm the only 1 who is able to make artillery, that seems like unfair advantage... but letting an AI waste it's production on building tons of artillery it never uses right seems worse. Perhaps turning off artillery completely would be more fair. Artillery is not as powerful as it was in Civ2, Civ3 Catapults & Civ3 Gunpowder are not the pivotal points they were in Civ2.

I am very tempted to try this, but I believe others here have probably played more games than I have. Have I just experienced some bad luck in terms of the AI's uses with artillery? Do others find the AI benefits from their artillery more than if they had another unit defending that city instead?

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

You're right, the AI does a bad job using its artillery.

They mainly build it for defensive purposes: most (older) cities will produce one or two of them. I've never seen a massed and backed up artillery offensive by the AI, though they'll sometimes have one or two artillery accompagnied by one infantry fortified for potential offensive actions later. I suppose the AI incapability of strategic warring is a general issue.

I take my advantage of it though: in modern era I have huge reserves of captured artillery. You actually don't need to build yourself.

Massed artillery is great for defensive purposes, especially if you're the only one left on your continent.
If they invade with 8/16 tanks for example, you just RR your artillery there, reduce there HP's to 1 and slaughter them afterwards. Also good for holding off enemy battleships if they approach your shores.

AJ

[randommushroom]

Yah, if Soren could teach the AI to use artillery on offense too, it would make the game much tougher, or even how to use it more effectively as a defensive tool.

But like the original post says, the AI as it uses it now is basically wasting shields, and providing me free artillery units when I invade. So perhaps turning off the production of artillery could make the AI a little stronger.

[bigvic]

Yeah, its dissapointing the way the AI ca't use such a useful unit. As it is, I take full advantage of this deficiency, especially at high levels of difficulty. I'm a big fan of combined arms, anyway. I remember one game as the Germans when, on the way to a late game conquest, I had the wonderful luck to find myself w/ absolutely no freakin rubber to build infantry. Thank God I had a load of upgraded-from-cannon artillery to compensate. Between my deadly barrages, hordes of obsolete riflemen artillery guards, further hordes of cavalry and cavalry armies, supported by ironclads when possible, I was able to, with titanic effort, defeat the rubber rich Indians and finally secure my very own precious rubber. In the process, incidentally at the same time I finally took an Indian rubber resource, I managed to open an incredibly intrusive fortified colony on the other side of the world chock full of the rush bought improvements needed to get my lovely rubber back to the fatherland. Anyway, the AI's inability to use his artillery saved my butt, as, all other factors held equal, I would have been wiped out (I had already whizzed off the rest of the world, so no trades, skippy).

As an interesting aside, I noted in this game that CivIII is probably the only place one can find the two sentences, "Ghandi is a known cheat and liar. We should deal with him carefully.", which, for some reason, I found especially hilarious at the time

[Thrawn05]

What I did is go back to what I remember from playing Civ on the SNES, and removed bombardment values from those units. I just copied the bombardment to attack and range to defense. I then removed the bombardment values.

Now the AI uses them along with other units. Making the combat better for myself, until 1.18f.

[bigvic]

Originally posted by Thrawn05
What I did is go back to what I remember from playing Civ on the SNES, and removed bombardment values from those units. I just copied the bombardment to attack and range to defense. I then removed the bombardment values.

Now the AI uses them along with other units. Making the combat better for myself, until 1.18f.

Hey, can you give units reg attack & bombard? Guess you can, since sea units do it. Seems like someone would have tried by now, though. Sounds like a game mucker upper to me.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by bigvic



Hey, can you give units reg attack & bombard? Guess you can, since sea units do it. Seems like someone would have tried by
now, though. Sounds like a game mucker upper to me.

No, just reg attack.

Example, the Radar Artillary is 16 bombard and 2 distance.

So, I did 16 attack and 2 defend. Then I deleted the bombard values. Because I won't want them being too powerful.

[Pyrodrew]

Example, the Radar Artillary is 16 bombard and 2 distance.
So, I did 16 attack and 2 defend.

Good idea. Did you also switch the Artillery Units from being Artillery Units to Offensive Units? If not, wouldn't the AI continue to keep the Artillery in cities for the most part. A 16/2 sitting in a city doesn't help much.

Personally, I would like to keep artillery units as artillery units so I can continue improve my skills with them if/when a MP game is released. By disabling artillery for the AI it simply removes 1 weakness they have & makes me not rely on depending for those artillery trophies if/when MP comes out.

[Elucidus]

What would happen if you just change them to offense in the editor? Would the AI bring them on offenses by themselves? Would they try to attack normally instead of bombarding? I wonder.

[Coracle]

I once in Editor told the French to "build more artillery".

When they went on a campaign, circa 1700, I checked to see what they were doing. The stupid AI left from 4-6 cannon units in half a dozen cities. It brought NONE on the invasion it was launching.

Note: cannons/art/ is great for blasting enemy unts that are massing to counterattack you. I assume the AI hasn't figured that out.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Pyrodrew
Example, the Radar Artillary is 16 bombard and 2 distance.
So, I did 16 attack and 2 defend.

Good idea. Did you also switch the Artillery Units from being Artillery Units to Offensive Units? If not, wouldn't the AI continue to keep the Artillery in cities for the most part. A 16/2 sitting in a city doesn't help much.

Personally, I would like to keep artillery units as artillery units so I can continue improve my skills with them if/when a MP game is released. By disabling artillery for the AI it simply removes 1 weakness they have & makes me not rely on depending for those artillery trophies if/when MP comes out.

Yup. They offensive units only now.

Now the AI has them coming in along with other units trying to take over my civ! This is great!

[Nym]

As this thread is about artillery, I would ask if someone has noticed a quite important failure percentage in artillery bombardment.
In my current game I'm using a stack of about 15 artillery to damage my adversaries before attacking and near 90% of bombardment fail .

[BillChin]

Originally posted by Nym
As this thread is about artillery, I would ask if someone has noticed a quite important failure percentage in artillery bombardment.
In my current game I'm using a stack of about 15 artillery to damage my adversaries before attacking and near 90% of bombardment fail .

There is a change in the BIC file. The defense of buildings is quadrupled in patch 1.17f. Effectiveness vs. troops, including troops in a city are the same. Makes it far more likely to capture a city with some improvments intact. Because of this I like the change even though the percentage of misses is way up.

My guess is that the city you are attacking has a small garrison so most of the volleys go against buildings and miss. Another possibility is the city is on a hill, making for much higher defense.

As for the original topic, a simple solution is to have percentages instead of flags for each type of unit. Something like:
10% bombard
20% defensive
40% offensive
20% mobile
10% settlers
for offensive stacks. Instead of build rarely, build sometimes, build often, build sometimes, build rarely. Unfortunately, this may be tough to put into the code so late into the development cycle.

[bigvic]

Originally posted by Thrawn05


No, just reg attack.

Example, the Radar Artillary is 16 bombard and 2 distance.

So, I did 16 attack and 2 defend. Then I deleted the bombard values. Because I won't want them being too powerful.

Wait, are you sure? I mean, have you tried? I was just thinking, ships attack and bombard, and seem to do so right effectively under AI control. Even the caravels and galleons I modded to do so. I had to specify that they were both naval power and transport. Perhaps specifying multiple missions, (offensive, defensive, bombardment) would do something. Of course, if it can't do it, the whole idea is moot. If it can, I will playtest. Opens up all sorts of possibilities, like giving some basic slow units minor bombard capability to represent intrinsic artillery as opposed to massed artillery of specific bombard units.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by randommushroom
Yah, if Soren could teach the AI to use artillery on offense too, it would make the game much tougher, or even how to use it more effectively as a defensive tool.

From the last chat, Soren mentioned that he didn't program the AI to use artillery as it was 'an extreme tactic' or something like that. Sorry, been a while since I read it.

Anyway, my point is that he said he was going to look into making the AI use their artillery more.

[bigvic]

OK. So I tried to implement what I said above. Gave all bombard units a low attack factor, checked boxes offensive, defensive and bombard. Just for sh_ts & giggles, gave some foot units a minor bombard capability (intrinsic artillery, just an idea I got). It works, in that no game crash, but the AI still has no sense of how to use artillery. I gave the catapults only a 1 attack factor, actually upped bombard factor in hopes that some programming might let them function "logically", ie not as simply attack units. No dice. AI just spit 'em out & used them like they were swordsmen. Oh well, just have to wait til Soren decides to fix it, if he does.