Hey Soren!

[FrantzX]

Any luck on making the AI use artilery more effectively?

[dexters]

I posted this on another thread, but i think it is relevant to this one so I'll post it again. I'd really like Firaxis to comment on this
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While a option to considerably alter AI may be out of our reach, I hope we can see a more modest AI editing, if not from the fans, at least from Firaxis.

For the record, I find the AI to be quite competent and satisfactory, although as mentioned above, AI's should be capable of multiple invasion strategies.

In most games, if attached on land, AI merely moves it forces over land, and occasionally drops the the surprise attack (usually a small force) behind your lines.
Of course, the AI is known to sign ROPS and attack you where you think you're safe. Good thing.

In Island wars, where enemy AI is on a different island/continent, AI appears to land in random points, usually 1 force landing in one location, while another force lands in another area in a surprise landing.

What could be improved is a set variation on this strategy.

For island wars, AI may or maynot land in two areas. They may land a combined army in one spot. Or they may land in two or three. We don't know, and we're sort of faced with what the germans faced trying to defend the beaches of France. While the number of alternatives are estimatable, defending against all probabilities could be costly, and thus adds challenge.

As far as I've observed, most wars usually have the odd unit destroying an improvement here or there, or maybe a road to a resource. They may send artillery and ships to passively bombard, but there is no active strategy on an invasion force whose sole purpose is to make the player commit forces to fight the invasion.

The AI should be randomized so that they may attack you with the intent of causing maximum damage to your infrastructure, which means, a force going on a rampage destroying improvements. Currently, the AI landings, often defeat themselves by attacking well fortified cities -- and their lust for workers, often lead then into deadly traps. This makes it rather easy for players to either bait the AI, or sit out the assault, and in both cases, the player is in control, they wear down the AI army then send their own "main force" to mop up. If the AI is programmed to sometimes attack with the intent of destroying imporvements, and they refuse to take cities and instead sit around cities destroying improvements and starving the population, the player have no choice but to attack, not only making the game more challenging, with the player attacking fortified and fresh units, it makes for a more intricate war.

Even more interesting is to have an invasion with both strategies going. One invasion attacking cities, another invasion force destroying improvements. And in both cases, AI should have some sort of a switch that allows them to adap and change their strategy on the fly. A rampaging army destroying improvements may try to take weakly defended cities once the player has send his reserve defensive units out of the cities to fight the invasion. Or the army originally set to attack cities may switch to destroying the improvements around the city first, in a siege, then switch back to attacking the city.

Any thoughts on this? Soren, is this possible / reasonable modificaiton for a patch ? :P