Best AI I have ever seen hands down!

[Coracle]

Originally posted by XOR
More on the AI:

The AI doesn't just know where your units and cities are, it does know which units you have in your cities.

For example, it will chose to go to cities less defended and if you have a city defended with 5 offensive units (swordmen), the AI will want to attack that instead of one defended with 2 defensive units (spearmen). It's a bit silly, it counts swordmen as not being defensive even if those swordmen have the same defense as spearmen.

The AI is often "silly", and its strict splitting of units into "offensive" and "defensive" is equally simplistic.

For the Firaxis apologists who think this AI is so good, I say this. It sure helps to be able to see the entire board and know where every unit is. A lot of those AI cheats sure help make it look "smarter".

AI stupidities? Plenty.

I once attacked large China just as we got to tanks. My invasion force was not counterattacked, except a few pitiful attacks on the first turn. China did quickly develop tanks, but at no time did it attack. Why? The dumb AI considered China "defensive" and therefore didn't build
any offensive units. Result? I rolled over China. The AI does not even know the "best defense is a good offense".

The stupid AI insists on wasting settler and foot soldiers by sending them into my territory towards an open tile even while still at war with me. And it doesn't learn. They pass right by my military and I get a couple of free workers each turn. Boring.

The AI attacks in predictable ways along predictable and easily channeled invasion routes. It does not invade by two or more routes; it just bunches everything into one big stack and marches right at you, even across grassland which is great for the defender to counterattck them on, and to concentrate to defend against. Very thick-headed by the AI.

Settler Diarrhea/Rapid Early Expansion is another AI stupidity. Those crappy little towns thrown up everywhere and anywhere can never be productive and cannot be defended in war. No doubt the AI gets another cheat with freebie settler units; they could not afford to waste units like this otherwise.

The dumb AI cannot use bombardment units offensively.

And on and on. Bottom line: this AI does NOT reflect over five years of development between Civ 2 and Civ 3; it also has been sloppily programmed in various ways.

The AI?

[Coracle]

Oh yes, let me add. . .

One of the more irritating aspects of Civ 2 was building Wonders at the wrong time - such as during an invasion.

I had expected that would have been corrected in Civ 3. Nope. Some civ is facing a serious massive invasion, but promptly starts build not just a Wonder but a HAPPINESS Wonder!!

Even if they finished the Wonder it wouldn't help them militarily. But they never came close to even getting a third of the way to building it before the entire civ was conquered.

"Hey! There's two stacks each of two dozen Mounted Warriors invading us. Let's start building The Hanging Gardens!". How stupid.

Stupid AI.


As for Settler Diarrhea/Rapid Early Expansion:

It is an intensely annoying unrealistic concept, especially as practiced by the cheating AI. It is a thick-headed heavy-handed concept poorly implemented. The AI, if smarter, could have done other things to counter a human trying to do it. There could have rules changes, also.

One sad result of this nonsense is there is nothing left to explore before we even get to caravels - making the game more tedious and boring than it should be after the initial expansion. One of the best parts of Civ 2 was the amount of territory left to explore even into the Industrial era - more accurate especially when we factor in natural resources.

[Coracle]

There is a movie called "Signs" that has caused INTENSE debate in forums such as the IMDB message board or the Rotten Tomatoes forums. The debate rages between those who find the movie ILLOGICAL, STUPID, and a RIP-OFF, and those who think the others just can't understand the film and its alleged "symbolism" and "message". Interesting debates you can check out.

I FIND THEM SIMILAR TO WHAT GOES ON HERE about the AI and game in general.

There are those of us who find the AI illogical, dishonest in various ways, and generally disappointing. Most of those who feel that way have of course long ago left the forum for more pleasant pursuits.

There are also those who LOVE this turkey. They will say the rest of us "can't understand it", or we're missing something, or haven't learned it as well as they supposedly have.

Well, whatever.

It just seems those who defend the AI make a point to try to convince us how clever THEY are in being able "understanding it" so well. Blah blah. (Deep O comes to mind first).

Let's face it. The AI isn't terrible, but it is flawed, has sloppy concepts, and should have been a lot better. And don't tell me I "haven't taken the time to understand it".

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Coracle


Let's face it. The AI isn't terrible, but it is flawed, has sloppy concepts, and should have been a lot better. And don't tell me I "haven't taken the time to understand it".

You don't understand it.

Your constant mindless blathering about mostly non-existent cheats is a clear indication of this. The only known cheats are the AI knowing the resources and apparently knowing the units in a city.

Also the AI is now often attacking on multiple fronts. Try the 1.29f patch. You might as well since you seem to still be playing a game you loath.

[XOR]

The AI IS great, it's just that there are still a few untied ropes about it. Like defending resources, overwhelming coastal fortresses and sams, re-planning invasions and so on.

I will give credit, however, to the fact that the AI once totally pulverized my invasion force into a continent that was entirely owned by the Zulu when they had railroads. I had 2 fortified armies in a city I took and the Zulu seem to have left each and all of their cities with barely 1 infantry as defense and sent a huge stack of like 100+ infantry (NOT EXAGERATING! IT WAS LIKE 2 FULL MINUTES OF COMBAT!). I had like 2 fortified 4-elite-infantry armies, like 10 more infantry, like a dozen cavalries and 14 artillery. It was a mess, after all that combat I lost the city and WW caused like 80% of my people to be sad, all my cities would have to starve like hell if I just gave them enetertainers, and my science was already at a slooow 30% because I give some to the luxury slider each time I go to war. In the next war later on, I bombed their unprotected oil supply and my tanks dropped them like flies while I unloaded anywhere along their coast because they could not rebulid their navy w/o oil.

[XOR]

It does not invade by two or more routes; it just bunches everything into one big stack and marches right at you, even across grassland which is great for the defender to counterattck them on, and to concentrate to defend against.

So far, I have seen it send these groups of troops:

1- A couple of defensive units to pillage, they pillage resources, I dont know if they also pillage everything they see. I havent had this done to me because I always protect my resources. (Even if I never knew the AI would try to pilage them if I left them unprotected).

2- A stack of offensive units with at least 1 defensive unit.

3- It builds a stack like the one in #2 and sends it to reinforce the #2.

4- If you have a weakly protected coastal city it will pack a ship with some units and try to send them to that city. If you have a city that is only defended by "offensive" units, that will likely be the target city.

5- When it has modern units it will send a MI and a Radar Artillery to pillage bombarding. I have only seen it done once, but it kept doing that for several turns, until the MI was destroyed and the arty capped.

6- It will send 2 or 3 separate groups of ships. One was already mentioned. Another 1/2 groups of ships (I dont know on what it depends, sometimes it will be one, sometimes 2) will try to bombard tile improvements on your coast, if you just dammage their ships a bit with cannons/arty they will go home.

Another "smart move" from the AI is that when it decides to retreat and take a defensive stance, any troops they still have on your lands will pillage their way while they leave. Since you know that's what it means when this happens, you know you already have the AI pulling out and on the defensive. At that point it wont invade you anymore, it will just try to make your conquest a bit harder by increasing their defenses and conscripting/poprushing as many units as they can.

When an AI has multiple enemies it seems to try to attack all of them, and it stays in the offensive if it still has offensive units. So to be able to witness this you will have to be the only enemy they have and wait for them to come at you. You also have to be very negligent in defenses to see them come for your undefended coastal cities, your undefended resources and all that.

[bulldog]

Civ 3 AI is good, almost very good. It is the best AI I have seen in the games I have played (although in all honesty, I don't play that many games). It is WAYYYYY better than Civ 1 & 2 and lot better than many games which claim AI to be their strength.

In my last game, I was unpleasantly surprised when Egypt, who I had an ROP with (and who was the biggest dog around) sent 7 or 8 pikeman though my territory, eventually they almost surrounded my capital (which was near the Egyptian border). They then declared war and proceeded to pillage all my roads bar one that I had just built, i.e. they were practising Capital Isolation.

I freaked out and rushed every knight I had to the capital to destroy the pikeman. Those remaining, retreated to a mountain just outside my capital which the Egyptians then tried to use as a fortress to lay siege to my capital. I am holding steady but I've just seen the arrival of some Egyptian cavalry so it's going to be a tough battle to get through.

I don't care whether the CIV 3 AI is a "true" AI or a rules based engine, but it definitely gives me a greater challange than any of its predecessors.

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by XOR


So far, I have seen it send these groups of troops:

1- A couple of defensive units to pillage, they pillage resources, I dont know if they also pillage everything they see. I havent had this done to me because I always protect my resources. (Even if I never knew the AI would try to pilage them if I left them unprotected).

2- A stack of offensive units with at least 1 defensive unit.

3- It builds a stack like the one in #2 and sends it to reinforce the #2.

4- If you have a weakly protected coastal city it will pack a ship with some units and try to send them to that city. If you have a city that is only defended by "offensive" units, that will likely be the target city.

5- When it has modern units it will send a MI and a Radar Artillery to pillage bombarding. I have only seen it done once, but it kept doing that for several turns, until the MI was destroyed and the arty capped.

6- It will send 2 or 3 separate groups of ships. One was already mentioned. Another 1/2 groups of ships (I dont know on what it depends, sometimes it will be one, sometimes 2) will try to bombard tile improvements on your coast, if you just dammage their ships a bit with cannons/arty they will go home.

Another "smart move" from the AI is that when it decides to retreat and take a defensive stance, any troops they still have on your lands will pillage their way while they leave. Since you know that's what it means when this happens, you know you already have the AI pulling out and on the defensive. At that point it wont invade you anymore, it will just try to make your conquest a bit harder by increasing their defenses and conscripting/poprushing as many units as they can.

When an AI has multiple enemies it seems to try to attack all of them, and it stays in the offensive if it still has offensive units. So to be able to witness this you will have to be the only enemy they have and wait for them to come at you. You also have to be very negligent in defenses to see them come for your undefended coastal cities, your undefended resources and all that.

Good post.

[XOR]

To see some of the things in my post I had to go to a war on an alliance with another AI against another AI. When I fight against the AI I will usually crush it's units too fast (from the moment I see them) to see what they do with them for the next 10 turns, either that or they destroy my units and I lose "visual" of their units after that, but when I have an ally the units of my allies dont get crushed so fast, so I get to see what they do for several turns.

[problem_child]

^bump

[TheBenjamins]

I don't think enough has been made of the importance of diplomacy. I have come to find that, on the harder levels, a good diplomatic strategy is the key to survival and ultimate victory.
For instance, if two civs form an alliance against you, unless you're a dominating force in the world, you'd better find yourself some allies! Even if if means paying them ridiculous amounts of money, it will pay off tenfold in the long run. I have survived many a game by paying off other civs to go to war with my enemies.
This serves two purposes:
1. Opens another front in the war, keeping your enemies off your back.
2. Creating good will with other civs and keeping them on your side. This keeps them from declaring war on you as well.
It is the nature of the AI to all gang up on one civilization. Don't let it be you!
In the game I'm playing now, at first most of the world was allied against me, and for no good reason. By bribing other civs to become my allies, I have turned things around completely, and now we are all ganging up on the Persians, who were once the strongest civ by far.
I have done this enough times now to know it works. Remember, don't be afraid to bribe other civs to come to your rescue. The money you spend will be pocket change compared to what you stand to lose.

[Theseus]

And if you don't get those alliances, the AI enemy will!

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by TheBenjamins
I don't think enough has been made of the importance of diplomacy. I have come to find that, on the harder levels, a good diplomatic strategy is the key to survival and ultimate victory.
For instance, if two civs form an alliance against you, unless you're a dominating force in the world, you'd better find yourself some allies! Even if if means paying them ridiculous amounts of money, it will pay off tenfold in the long run. I have survived many a game by paying off other civs to go to war with my enemies.
This serves two purposes:
1. Opens another front in the war, keeping your enemies off your back.
2. Creating good will with other civs and keeping them on your side. This keeps them from declaring war on you as well.
It is the nature of the AI to all gang up on one civilization. Don't let it be you!
In the game I'm playing now, at first most of the world was allied against me, and for no good reason. By bribing other civs to become my allies, I have turned things around completely, and now we are all ganging up on the Persians, who were once the strongest civ by far.
I have done this enough times now to know it works. Remember, don't be afraid to bribe other civs to come to your rescue. The money you spend will be pocket change compared to what you stand to lose.

I love this aspect of the game. My favorite part of the game is when I am at war and have a buffer state inbetween the warring civs. I like to flip the buffer to my side when the enemy has a thin trail of units in the buffer, making for easy consumption by the 3rd state. then I sweep in a few turns later, using the ROP, and I can attack without fear or retaliation. pretty sweet. And Both my enemy and "ally" are weakened and ready for the kill.

OTOH, its a real ***** when the buffer won't agree, and I have to find an alternate way of attacking, ships, etc. because they will declare war on me if I go trapsing through their territory.

I love the game within the game.

[0rb]

Culture-Flipping has been an ongoing event in much of history.

All the examples listed above are the obvious ones, similar to the way Civ3 presents it. But the vast majority of culture-flipping is done gradually over a period of years. Examples of that can be found anywhere large numbers of people exist.

The most obvious current example would be how many countries complain of "american cultural values eroding their own". I've no interest in debating the validity of this, but the effect of it goes far beyond what Civ3 denotes as 'trade'.

For this reason, Culture-flipping is quite valid. To be "accurate" however, it should probably be reflected in a shift of peoples nationality in a city over a period of time. Again, I have no interest in figuring out the logistics of how that would be accomplished without tearing apart the whole city/nation concepts Civ3 has in place.

The problem culture-flipping has at present is it's "dramatic" nature. 9 times out of 10, this happens in a subtle way.

Many would argue Canada is US-North. There are geopolitical distinctions, but the difference in cultural values are minor... (I hasten to add that I'm taking a world-view here. From a north america perspective the differences are noticeable; tho less than some would make it imho)

I could on. Matter of fact, I will...

Nations who can "relate" to one another are likely to be interested in acquiring the same things, have similar beliefs, etc, etc, etc. This is osmotic-culture-flipping.

In the real world is something called "brain-drain", where many people move to a richer country to gain a better standard of living. This is also a form of culture-flipping.

Actually, I better stop. I got stuff to do.

My point tho, is that culture-flipping, tho somewhat primitive, adds to the game a VERY REAL event that is ongoing. It's problem is that in Civ3 it is presented as clear-decisive-moment, when it most commonly occurs slowly over a long period of time, and without most people even noticing that it's happening.

later
0rb

ps ~ the comment about China kicking out the Mongols does not invalidate culture-flipping. The Mongols DELIBERATELY tried to avoid being assimilated by the Chinese and went to great lengths. They were obviously very familiar with culture-flipping. And even then, they failed. Kubilai broke away from the Mongol tradition; the results of which were described by Marco Polo. Granted the revolts in the mid fourteenth century certainly ended with the Mongols being ousted, it was not due to fear on the part of the Chinese that they would be absorbed into a Mongol culture.

[dexters]

^bumpage

[dexters]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I will with hold my admiration for the AI. Last night Hammie sent 28 Calv to one square and 26 INf/Rifle to another square in the same city. No one was fighting at the time so I suspected I was in trouble. I only had about 60 units total. Hammie had another 75 or so Inf in reserve. I asked him to remove and what do you think, he decalres war. I was worried, but not much as I knew he would not send those reserves all at once.

He is why I am not so sure the AI has a clue. .

The AI's chief weakness currently is its difficulty in handling 3 movement units. Those Cavalryies could have parked in their borders, perhaps even out of sight.

After the Declaration of War they will then move in and attack your cities. If it is successful, cultural border exapands and it can then move in their 1 movement units and hopefully close enough to defend their offensive forces. Once they have a city under their control, their 2 to 3 movement units will then use it as a base of operations. cavalry will move out, attack, and retreat back to a defensive position either in a city, on a mountain and always behind A STACK (not one) but A STACK of the best defensive units they have.

As mentioned before, the AI needs to switch strategies. If the multiple SoD moving at a snails pace and getting slaughtered because they park 1 tile from you city inviting the human player to destroy it, it may stay 3 tiles away next time and use its multiple movement units to attack, and retreat back to a fortified position.

That's their chief weakness offensively.

The 2nd weakness is the AI's general risk aversion. It will keep a minimum # of units in their cities at all times. These units are the non offensive tagged units. Whereas humans will tend to shuffle their units around to meet emerging threats, frontline AI cities tend to become helpless islands that can be cut off and destroyed one by one after you've destroyed the AI's mobile OFFENSIVE force.

While I think it was imaginative and efficient to divide AI units into offensive and defensively tagged units, there is something to be said about giving the defensively tagged units special instructions on how to move and react in times of invasion, so that fronline cities can receive some semblance of a co-ordinated "relief" force from the back-line cities, instead of the common phenomena of the 1 offensive unit the Civ managed to produce that turn doing that attacking and the moving, while all the non offensive units simply sit in their cities twiddling their thumbs.

With RR and multiple movement units on roads, the AI offensive units like to end the turn in an exposed position. Cavalry can usually move from city to city (even on roads) and have enough movement left for an attack, and then move back to a city to hide. The AI has trouble doing this. The strategy is only used when A) pure chance B) The unit is damaged and runs to a city to heal.

If Soren fixs this for the next PTW PATch OR perhaps adds it as a bonus for Conquests XP, I'd be very happy. Although there are always other things I like to see improved, such as AI's use of navies. But I'm speaking hypothetically of course. I'm pratical here and understand that Soren can only fix so many issues given time constraints and his involvement in other projects.

Bottom line though, if we're expected to pay another $40 this Fall, improved AI is a must.

[vmxa1]

What you say is correct. I don't know when I posted that, but if it was before 1.14F for PTW, then the AI a bit better in at least managing it empire.

[dexters]

This thread is far too interesting to let die. I hope no one minds my attempt at reviving it.

That said, I paid pretty much release price for PTW mostly for the AI. The new units are nice. New civs and buildings add variety. But it's the AI, and I'm more or less please with the improvements.

What worries me is that Soren was not involved very much in PTW. Granted it was supposed to be about multiplayer.

With Conquests XP the fixed alliance thing is really making me excited about the diplomacy possibilities. That would imply some major AI work in the diplo area. I just hope Soren and whoever is helping him also get around to AI defense/offense stance, and add some more strategies into its repertoire. CAPTIAL Isolaiton was a nice surprise. AI leans

[Daz]

Where did this thread come from?

Anyway... shouldnt we wait till conquests is out? Are there any AI improvments in Conquests?

[Virdrago]

I'd like to see some, though I can't think of any right now except for how the AI defends it's homeland...

[Gen.Dragolen]

I can think of one major change to the diplomatic model: reduce the previlence of RoP agreements between AI Civs. This would do wonders for the AI´s offensives.

I have been trying to think of a way to make it a little more realistic when you tell an AI Civ to take a long walk off a short pier when they try to extort a tech and a map. The more militaristic civs like the Romans or Japaneseare bad for this. They will be on the other end of same continent, 3 civs over from your ´pathetic little civilization´ which only happens to be about 100 points more powerful, and they will march 15-20 units, almost all of their forces through the heart of the other civs.

Now if they were all allies, I could see it. However, the usual rule of thumb in state craft is that any foreign troops on your soil is unacceptable. The threat of them taking up residence is just too great. Logistically it used to lead to the starvation of the people along the march´s route.

I would like to see the AI consider any foreign troop movements through its land to be an invasion and treated as such. Only allies that have declared war together should be able to have their allies move through their lands, and only in the direction of their stated enemy.

As for its offensive strategies, yes, it still hits piecemeal and without supporting units. If the AI brought up some artillery and attacked with more than just 5-6 units when going after a city, it would be as devastating as a human player. Though I have seen some wonderfully agressive attacks using cavalry to its full potential.

But the success of these attacks have always been rather dubious: they still need to redo the combat system. I have seen cavalry wear down mechanized infantry in the strongest positions. Imagine seeing 8 cavalry attack a mech inf. unit fortified on a mountain. Only 1 cavalry unit died in the attack. And this happens all the time. I have read all the postings about how the system is trully random and is designed to give technologically inferior troops a chance, but that tears at the heart of the technology race. The whole point to research is to find ways to improve your units so they can destroy the enemy. And if the last action in Iraq isn´t enought to demonstrate this, the previous one was.

It still galls me to see units like cavalry or knights knock off modern units. The game designers should have paid more attention to the impact that one technology has had on war: the machine gun. The main change from the US Civil War to WW I was the machine gun. Any civil war infantry unit going up against any WW I unit would have been slaughtered to a man. Same with Cavalry. Just like an Ironclad would slaughter any wooden ship. ANd just like any destroyer would slaughter an Ironclad.

Technology progresses at an exponential rate in the world, where what is bleeding edge today is on the junk pile next year. Canada is finally getting around to updating the technologies on our fleet of CF-18´s. The were purchased in the 1980´s and are two generations of avionics out of date.

This may only be a game, but reality really is a break neck ride. From our wandering off the savannah´s in central Africa 40000 years ago to just making it through traffic to get to work. We need a sophistacted game to provide some diversion from that reality.

D.

[dexters]

The combat system is not a problem. If you've got succifient troops its more or less the same as having average performance since the streaks tend to cancel each out and the majority of the time, you get expected performance. We just hear a lot of *****ing because of the human nature to remember the outliers.

If you've got a few units however, and you ask yourself if you could afford to go attack A or B, then it is a kind of gamble. But you know, war is a gamble. Bad things happen and the RNG simulates uncertainty well.

In anycase, the problem with the AI is not the combat system but how it handles its units. The combat algorithms appear to have been perfected during development with basic 1 movement units from the ancient era. The AI do relatively well with them, but go beyond these one movement units and to more modern units, they start to run into trouble.

One thing they absolutely must fix is the city production system. The AI is unable to check in on their cities during mid production and re-evaluate a build. In some of my test games, I would give an AI building the Great Library Education Tech, but the AI would continue for another 30 turns, seemingly not knowing that Education makes the GL useless. This is a great disadvantage to the AI. If there's a concern over computing time required, I would suggest the basic idea of management by exception. If a city is taking 120 turns to build something, the AI would go in and have a look. Usually the problem is because the AI's Civ traits force it to build A library in a corrupt city instead of going Courthouse first, reduce corruption and then build the rest of the infrastructure faster.

That said, there's a lot of things the AI do very well. There are times when I was almost sure the AI would do A, but they surprised me and did B. I think there's a lot of things under the hood, either programmed or created implicitly by the AI subsystems interating with each other that we don't know about and that is making decisions that can still keep veterans of the game guessing.


Anyways, It would be nice if they would keep patching the AI indefinately. It's the only way I think to make the ultimate learning AI. I recently loaded up my first full game of Civ III and was surprised by the sloppy AI. was Poor expansion, keeping tons and tons of legacy units around, poor map exploration and that are just the stuff I could see because the patches doesn't correct mistakes made by the AI in the past. It underscores how far the AI has come as it has been tweaked, adjusted and I'm sure new lines of code added to help it cope with various situations, strategies and conditions that wasn't envisioned during the design phase.

[Gen.Dragolen]

dexters,

I agree the AI has progressed massively since the first version of CivIII was released.

And there are alot of things that it should be doing, like re-evaluating it´s production each turn, but we will see shortly (well in a few months) how they have modified the programming to take even more details into account.

However, I still think they haven´t captured the essence of the tech race: in my latest round of testing, I have managed to get to Military Tradition about 40 turns ahead of the rest of the continent I´m on. That has left me at least 4-6 techs behind everyone else, but it allowed me to finish off one smaller civ and do some serious damage to another. I won´t comment on the casualty rates for cavalry attacking longbowmen in open ground, but needless to say, the AI should have been either trying to steal Military Tradition or buy if off me, just to keep pace in the arms race. Instead, they were demanding it from me or offering a World Map and 1 gold.

Now I don´t know if this is due to the personalities the AI Civs assume or to circumstances in random maps, but there is still some work to be done. One thing I really miss from Civ II is the Diplomat unit. It was annoy as all h&*l to have units bought off just before you were about to launch them into a city, among other things. The capacity to investigate cities from the one interface was a welcome change, but it is still too hard to execute spy missions, both in terms of cost and the chances for success.

I have yet to see the AI employ spies in any game I have played. When I have done looking for their spies, and the witch hunt fails to turn up anything, all I have afterwards is a war with however´s spy I tried to find. Same thing with setting up spies. Using execute safely has only succeeded a couple of times, but has started most of my mid-game wars. And no one else in the games at the time had Espionage. Again the advantage of having a tech before anyone else has been erased or hobbled. And having Espionage restricted until late game takes away much of the possible intrigue from the mid-game. There have been official spies in use since the Ancient Egyptians. Court intrigue relied on prying eyes and sticky hands. Granted the AI knows where evey one of our units are, there should be some penalties and benefits to employing agents.

Well, at this rate, we may wind up making an AI Civ that will be classified as a state secret and used by the Pentagon...


D.

[DaveMcW]

The AI does use spies if they have waaaay too much money.

[dexters]

Abstracting espionage is the best decision Firaxis has done. I know some people hate not having spies around, but like the trade system, in Civ III these two aspects were moved UP to the macro level. In Civ III trade is done so that you approach it from the perspective of a leader dealing with foreign nationals and it takes the principle of "if you want it, it is done for you" instead of "if you want it, spend 20 turns moving that camel from your cities to the rival capital" The foreign trade system in CivII was so tedious that I just gave up after a while. The same goes for espionage.

On that topic of spying, is remains a mystery how the AI benefits from it since some of its decision making subroutines do have access to information like where all the units are. Part of the reason why human players use espionage is therefore somewhat defeated. That said, the AI do use the spy mission when it has a lot of gold. But usually, if it has a lot of gold, it is maxing out its science, rush building improvements and trading like mad. Catt has a nice collection of screenshots showing AI espionage attempts in one of his games. If i manage to find the thread I'll link it here.

On the technology front, the AI does value different techs differently and are know to gun for certain high value techs. I'm not sure what can be done, other than tweaking their preferences to make it more comeptitive techwise.

I would be nice if each AI civ were given a tech goal, that is, the AI decides to get to a certain tech and builds a strategy around it, stealing the techs along the way if neccessary.

The one thing that the AI clearly lacks is foresight. Granted computers can't really think, but I'm saying it in terms of a programmed routine that looks beyound the current state of its existence. It does this during a surprise attack. It will move its units into position several turns ahead of time. But if would be interesting if the AI was given a goal on the macro level as well. An AI will for example strategize against another Civ, and use proxy wars, direct aid and other tricks to get their goal.