France's Military Stupidity

The Bloody Baro · June 2, 2002, 09:02

Okay I was the Germans with like 4 suped up cities in the late industrial/ early modern. [I know I'm a turtler] But I had like all the resources. France [i played against 1 opponet, I was a rookie] was almost my equal in tech but had only iron and coal. So I'm buildin' up my bombers, my navy, and a force of 50 PANZERS.

So France see these forces along the border so they send in a crap load of SWORDSMEN, WARRIORS, LONGBOWMEN, AND THE OCCASONIAL HORSEMAN. Against PANZERS.

So first I bomb the h*ll out of them. Then my panzers actually gain experience against warriors. So after their " invasion " force was blown to f***in h*ll. They say " Are you ready to stop your agression? " So I respond by raizing their border cities and then offer a piece treaty[ with a crap lot of gold I might add ]. Also i got a city that the only known source of alumium in the deal. It was right next to paris.

But it is surrounded by imputent puking pink french cities.

Ahhh but Frances stupidity is not done. Okay now I discovered Stealth and the tech for modern armor. So i stick those in the alumiunm city. So my modern armors are just sittin there. Then the french attack with Knights

So there is a repeat of the last war execpt I end up nuking the retardly pink french and take all their cities.

THE END

zulu9812 · June 2, 2002, 09:39

A few points:

1. The AI rarely upgrades their units. IMO - a design flaw, when are they going to fix this?

2. What difficulty level were you playing at? I doubt you would find it this easy with 15 other civs on a Huge map, on Deity!

3. You're using nukes against the only other country in the world. Presumably you know about the consequences of using nukes. Would you be so quick with them if there were other nations about, with their own nukes?

Ben Williams · June 2, 2002, 10:21

You would think it would be a simple matter (compared to programming the game as a whole) to say to the computer "at such and such a point either upgrade your units or disband them." I feel like I'm cheating when I attack a warrior with a modern armor, but what can I do?

There is also the problem of comps delareing war when they are vastly outgunned for petty reasons (demanding luxuries). In addition to THAT, usually they focus their attack on one city,(save the occational, mostly futile bombarding of a few squares here and there) so even if you don't have a great millitary you can divert a few local defense units to that one city and repel the attack no problem. The only time a comp poses a threat is when you're REALLY behind in tech.

-ben

Lucilla · June 2, 2002, 10:41

Well, in my games the AI is much tougher than you described, Ben, and not so easily kicked off.

Did you ever have like 100 infantries attacking at the same time one city? Even if you have good railroads, it's almost impossible to get enough defending units to your city (without leaving the others undefended).
As Zulu said, it all depends very much on the level you're playing on (fyi: I mostly play regent/monarch with some minor editor tweaks to my favour...shame on me

).

Paalikles · June 2, 2002, 11:19

just for the fun of it - try using an icbm against a nation whom you already are at war with - and see what the world will be like when most other nations will go to war to "rid the world of your worthless civilization"

Jaybe · June 2, 2002, 11:28

zulu,
Which game version have you been playing with???
Given the resources (and happening upon a strategy that allows them some cash on hand), the AI usually DOES upgrade their units in my experience. If they've been at war most of the time (communist government) they probably haven't had the cashola.

Bloody Baro,
Given the resources that you allowed the French, they came at you with the best they were able. If the positions were reversed, would you have just given up the game? The AI doesn't have that choice.
Here's an idea: If you play a similar game again, trade (even GIVE) them resources/techs so they can be on par with you at some point. THEN when you whip their a$$ you will have bragging rights, though you will probably outnumber them.

(sorry for the bluntness, folks. I'm not awake yet)

JB

dexters · June 2, 2002, 12:31

Quote:

Originally posted by zulu9812
A few points:

1. The AI rarely upgrades their units. IMO - a design flaw, when are they going to fix this?

2. What difficulty level were you playing at? I doubt you would find it this easy with 15 other civs on a Huge map, on Deity!

3. You're using nukes against the only other country in the world. Presumably you know about the consequences of using nukes. Would you be so quick with them if there were other nations about, with their own nukes?

Zulu, I don't believe this is a design flaw. It is probably a prudence mechanism or something. I think the subsystems required to program an AI that can intelligently decide which units to upgrade and when to upgrade may be problematic and imply the AI civ spending large sums of gold upgrading its military. We humans have the advantage of prioritizing and upgrading as needed. I'm not saying it is impossible, but given the existing processing load on the AI, programming such a complex algorithm may slow down turns to 10 minutes on some computers.
Besides, I have horseman in several of my core cities and I'm not going to spend 40 gold a piece to upgrade to knights when I already have tanks and infantry. But the AI builds their new units fast. On higher levels, you'd be hoping they have more fodder to throw at you when you see 100 infantry units marching on your border.

Also, I'm sure you are aware that you can see the AI's treasury during negotiations. They never have more than 500 gold (from my experience anyways) so I would assume the AI prefers to spend its gold spying on your cities to probe for weakly defended ones or to rush build units.

Edit: Keep in mind you need barracks in cities to upgrade. There are 2 significant things here. 1st, if the AI doesn't build Art of War wonder, it would mean it either had to a) build a lot of barracks to upgrade units b) move units in and out of cities and into cities with barracks, upgrade them, and cycle them back to their original posts.

Most human players who do not get Art of War will probably do b), but it might be impractical for the AI to actually pull this off, hence it wasn't programmed. The pathing required will significantly lengthen the end of turn wait. Option A)on the other hand is not really feasable, as the AI is not a human brain, and building a barracks in every city would require significant resource allocations, to the detriment of the civ's competitiveness vs the humans.

It is clear the AI does prefer quantity or quality. On easier levels, where it has handicaps, it works against them, on harder levels where there are no handicaps or advantages on either side, they can crush you with it.

The Bloody Baro · June 2, 2002, 18:11

Yeah I know i was playing like an idiot, and being unfair, but this was my first game. I remebered it now beacasue of the theads about how retarted the Ai was. So yeah I was an idiot. However I have played in a 16 civ game and I Nuked the hell out of all of them at the same time [so they were all against me] and I still won. Again that was my first game, but I agree I was an idiot.

Coracle · June 2, 2002, 19:32

Quote:

Originally posted by zulu9812
A few points:

1. The AI rarely upgrades their units. IMO - a design flaw, when are they going to fix this? . . .

3. You're using nukes against the only other country in the world. Presumably you know about the consequences of using nukes. Would you be so quick with them if there were other nations about, with their own nukes?

I have often sunk AI galleys with my battleships. I have seen civs with a dozen spearmen. . . and eighteen mechanized infantry.

ANOTHER "design flaw" deals with nukes. Without a Quick Response to a Nuclear First Strike I won't use nukes and turn the MP into an Internet Wonder.

Theseus · June 2, 2002, 22:30

It's the money.

The standard settings, and, it seems, the typical variants, do NOT usually produce a wide spectrum of AI civ success (I'm not talking about jungle civs). And thus, with all the AI civs just "keeping up with the Joneses," they maintain approximate parity, and thus spend every cent they have.

If you play with the settings, which I'm still learning how to do to good effect, several of the AI civs become behemoths... it's scary. As true world powers, they start to accrue benefits in a self-reinforcing way, across tech, resources, luxuries, money, etc. Imagine Japan with that kind of power, oh, say just about when Chivalry gets discovered.

Their military / diplo behavior changes as well. Since 1.21f, a lot of people have been reporting biiig stacks of Infantry... trust me, that's just stage one.

A powerful AI civ, with enough money, will have a fully upgraded, vet (!) military, including fastmover attackers; they will show up in force; they will pull in the rest of the world against you, they will enter into trade embargoes with all the civs that won't go to war; and they will come at you with 10-40 (!) Ironclads, followed by Battleships.

I am finding that games take on these characteristics with the following settings:
Continents
60% ocean
Wet
3 billion years
Warm

I suspect that large continents with drastically different conditions, and the clustering of resources, are the drivers.

dexters · June 2, 2002, 23:53

theseus, don't scare people!

Jesus f'ing christ. This is freaky.

Do you have an old saved game (from the autosave) that you can share with us?

p.s. I'm not doubting you. i just want to see for myself since I haven't seen an AI this freaky.

pps. when you say play with the settings, do you mean the editor settings or the "world set-up settings" before you start a game?

Theseus · June 3, 2002, 00:13

I definitely have a save... I'm going to bed though, so I'll find it and put it up tomorrow.

I'm referring to world settings. I haven't gotten to playing with the editor yet.

I'm building up to a post on this whole subject... a discussion with Vel (of course) and a losing game started to crystallize the issue for me.

The standard settings SUCK for good players. The approach to difficulty levels is amateur, in that it's really just setting "against the odds" play.

The trick is create meaningfully competitive AI civs, that can't be stopped or curtailed through the basic strategies that have been discussed here (yes, I mean that, so far we only have basic strategies: I think the hidden depth in the game is like Fremen in the Great Desert, and we haven;t even gotten to MP).

Preempting the negative types, I think Firaxis should have figured this out, and presented it on a platter to the customers. So be it, however; technology innovation, which is what Civ3 is in a way, often results in surprises in a way.

Sorry for the philosophising... I've been thinking about the impact of settings a lot in the last couple of weeks, and I'm tired, so I just rambled this out. Hint, for those who've read it: "Guns, Germs, and Steel."

Jaybe · June 3, 2002, 03:24

Well, I was in my 1.17 game as a democracy, at peace with everybody. Germany blew away 2 of my new towns (the only ones on their continent) that provided me with luxuries I didn't have to pay through the nose for. BTW, they attacked in the year 1940.

I get 2 other 'superpowers' that are on Germany's continent to join me in the war, but the war weariness is swift: 15-20% of unhappiness is war related the very next turn. As the mighty Iroquois, I soon switch to Republic, but WW still climbs, to the mid 40% range. I never expected such WW since I was attacked, and all I did for several turns is destroy their numerous invasion fleets.

Then I did something I have NEVER done before, in Civ3 or even Civ2. I decide "better Red than revolting." Not bad, other than the economics, but all the major powers were still in anarchy (they aren't religious

) while also switching to Communism. So while my science goes from 50-60% to 10-20%, I still do pretty well, and corruption is only 15-25% across the board allowing much better production in my outlying cities (70+ cities, with optimal cities set to 48 in the editor).

Enough rambling background, now to the point:

Swordsmen, at a cost of 30 shields, serves just as well for Military Police as Mech Infantry which costs 110 shields.

Harovan · June 3, 2002, 05:14

As Theseus said, the AI eagerly upgrades its units, if it has the money. Often they have more modern defenders than I. But units like Swordsmen, Longbowmen and Cavalry they can't upgrade, at least with the standard rules, which most people use. The reason why the AI's have these units till modern times are, that they never disband units. And they must have had a long time peace, or else these units would have died on the battlefield. Wars are the only opportunity for the AI to get rid of obsolete units. It would be a good addition to the AI if it would learn to disband old units, as paying upkeep for outdated units (ironically the same for Warriors and Modern Armor) obviously hinders them to build new ones.

dexters · June 5, 2002, 02:41

bump

Theseus, you said you're building up for a post? I hope I understood you correctly, but I'm interested in hearing more about this killer AI and your thoughts on it.

Arrian · June 5, 2002, 10:55

Yeah, the AI runs into problems where there are dead ends in the upgrade path:

Swordsmen
Longbowmen
Cavalry
Frigates
Ironclads

You will see many of these units around far past their age of usefulness. But any other lack of upgrading is all about the lack of cash. The AI will spend as much as it can afford to trade for resources, luxuries, and tech, while researching as well. The result is often that they have no available cash reserve. This limits their ability to upgrade, and is why you will often find AI cities defended by 1 top-notch defender, with one or more outdated ones underneath.

------------------------------

Bloody Baro,

I assume from your post that you were playing on a low difficulty setting, perhaps without the most recent patch (v. 1.21). You may find that the AI can put up a much better fight once the odds are even (Regent), or tilted in the AI's favor (Monarch, Emperor, Diety). It's not that it is coded to be "smarter" on those levels, it's that it operates with penalties to commerce and production on chieftain and warlord, and that limits what it can do.

-Arrian

Navyman · June 5, 2002, 11:31

In my current game, (monarch, 8 civs - 6 remaining, and everyone huddled onto one pangea-like continent) the French are putting the hurting on most people. They are the second largest area wise with me being first. Between the two of us, we dominate 75% of the continent. I have seen the French stack upto 60 units while passing through my land to attack a hapless civ. 50% of the stack was Infantry and the rest a hodgepodge of Swordsmen, Riflemen, and Longbowmen. They also have about 5K gold to boot. That really put the heebie-jeebies into me. They are about 3-4 tech away from Synthetic Fibers (Mod. Arm.) but I am researching it currently. They were in the tech lead for a good long while but slowly I overtook them when my empire reached a certain critical mass late in the Ind. Era.

My plan is to get to MA first and upgrade my 30-40 tanks and blitz the French and take about 6-10 of their top cities really quickly (4-5 turns) and knock them down a peg or two.

Panag · June 5, 2002, 11:34

Quote:

Originally posted by The Bloody Baro
Okay I was the Germans with like 4 suped up cities in the late industrial/ early modern. [I know I'm a turtler] But I had like all the resources. France [i played against 1 opponet, I was a rookie] was almost my equal in tech but had only iron and coal. So I'm buildin' up my bombers, my navy, and a force of 50 PANZERS.

So France see these forces along the border so they send in a crap load of SWORDSMEN, WARRIORS, LONGBOWMEN, AND THE OCCASONIAL HORSEMAN. Against PANZERS.

So first I bomb the h*ll out of them. Then my panzers actually gain experience against warriors. So after their " invasion " force was blown to f***in h*ll. They say " Are you ready to stop your agression? " So I respond by raizing their border cities and then offer a piece treaty[ with a crap lot of gold I might add ]. Also i got a city that the only known source of alumium in the deal. It was right next to paris.

But it is surrounded by imputent puking pink french cities.

Ahhh but Frances stupidity is not done. Okay now I discovered Stealth and the tech for modern armor. So i stick those in the alumiunm city. So my modern armors are just sittin there. Then the french attack with Knights

So there is a repeat of the last war execpt I end up nuking the retardly pink french and take all their cities.

THE END

hi ,

look's like a replay from WW2 , .........

could be do to the fact that they have no rescources , or the road's to them blocked , or the tech that they dont have , it could be many things , ....

have you tried to replay , and give them the techs or so , ....

have a nice day

dexters · June 5, 2002, 20:27

bump