# of units the AI gets after a flip

[Oerdin]

Sir Ralph and I were recently discussing how many units the Civ3 AI gets after it has culturally taken over a city. I had thought I had seen, in a v1.16 game played sometime ago, the AI recieve two riflemen in a city instead of one. Ralph has assured me that this was a mistake and that the AI only recieves one free unit after a culture flip.

My question to you is was I smoking crack or did I see what I thought I saw? I attempted to retake the city the same turn that it flipped but lost because the AI had two units in there instead of the expected one. I had two units between the city and the rest of the the AI civ and I did not see any enemy units enter the city, however, there were railroads connecting that city to the rest of the AI's Empire.

So does the AI get one or two units when a city flips over to it, is the number of free units variable under certain conditions, and lastly has the number of units the AI recieves changed at all from patch to patch? Any help would be appriciated.

P.S. This thread is meant to be a place where we can calmly and rationally exchange ideas so please do not flame or personnally insult any other posters. Thanks in advance.

[Jaybe]

Next time a city flips against you, Investigate City on it. Assuming the AI doesn't get to move between the flip and your investigation, it should be a good investment.

[Catt]

You're not smoking crack (at least I don't think you are ) and you may very well have seen 2 (or even 3!) defenders; nonetheless, Sir Ralph is correct - all at the same time! This was extensively analyzed over at CFC in a thread by Lt. Killer M. and the consensus conclusion (through breaking open saved games and other nefarious deeds) was:

The progression of "turns" in Civ3 is not exactly straightforward to the naked eye. Turns do not proceed Human Production -> Human Move -> AI Production -> AI Move.

Turns proceed as follows: Human Move -> AI Move -> Human Production -> AI Production. (I know - it seems completely counter-intuitive)

What does this mean to the question posed by the thread? Your city flips during your "production move." Before you get a chance to move units (i.e., attack the recently flipped city), the AI's production turn comes along; the AI decides to either (1) rush a defensive unit, (2) draft a defensive unit, or (3) both! So by the time you get to move, the AI could have 3 defenders in the city!

Before howls of unfair advantage to the AI erupt, note that the above progression of turns also ensures that a human player whose city gets to 1 turn from a great wonder, or uses a Great Leader to rush a wonder, will always successfully build the wonder. Imagine the howls of protest if someone burned a leader on Sistine only to immediately thereafter be informed that "The French have built the Sistine Chapel." In my book, much bigger advantage to the human player who always gets to go first!

Catt

[Oerdin]

Catt, that is a very interesting idea that comes from a direction I would never have guessed. Do you happen to have the link to the thread you spoke of? Thanks.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Catt
Turns proceed as follows: Human Move -> AI Move -> Human Production -> AI Production.

Huh?

[First off, Catt, I like that you and Zachriel participate actively both here and at CFC, so we don;t miss out]

Can you explain this turn concept more? Also, how does it relate to the mid-player-turn-mayhem/pause?

Also, is there any relation to the game start, when it seems to me that the AI civs all get to go first?

[Catt]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Catt, that is a very interesting idea that comes from a direction I would never have guessed. Do you happen to have the link to the thread you spoke of? Thanks.

I hate to link to "that other site" from here, but I think this one is worthy of a limited exception. The very long thread is HERE.

Originally posted by Theseus
Can you explain this turn concept more? Also, how does it relate to the mid-player-turn-mayhem/pause?

Also, is there any relation to the game start, when it seems to me that the AI civs all get to go first?

My terminology is probably not great, but basically, the Civ 3 program apparently runs through tasks in the following order: (1) let human player make unit moves; (2) let AI players make unit moves; (3) cycle through human "production mode" - i.e., check whether a new technology was discovered, check whether each city has completed a build project, check for stravation / WLTKD in cities, check for any culture flips, etc.; and (4) cycle through AI "production modes" (including presenting AI with newly flipped city and giving it the opportunity to draft / rush).

Please note that I have no way of verifying this myself -- I am relying on the CFC thread, the experiments detailed there, and my own observations regarding game functions. But my own observations lend credence to the solution - I have seen a "just flipped" AI city with 2 units - the units are always unfortified, and often one of them is a conscript (drafted). I have never seen (nor heard of) a player using a GL to rush a wonder -- i.e., to bring it to within 1 turn of completion -- only to be informed that someone else completed the wonder first -- this would be a distinct possibility that certainly would have occured (and been screamed across these boards) if in fact the 4-part turn components were conducted in a more intuitive fashion that didn't allow player movement (use GL to rush) and then player production (wonder completed) before AI production (which may have been at "1" turn before the human burned a GL to rush).

If by the "mid-player-turn-mayhem-pause" you mean a lag or pause during the players opportunity to move units, then I think that pause is just the processor pathfinding handling automated actions -- workers on auto, units on goto commands that are longer than 1 turn, pollution clean-ups and reassigning city tiles, etc. If you're referring to something else, well, I'm not sure what you're referring to .

Finally, on the human or AI civs going first - on my summary game replay, the human city is always the first built (at least if built at the start location) -- this supports the notion that the human gets to go first. And again, if AI "production portion" preceded human "production portion" of a turn, we would have seen GLs wasted in wonder rushing -- one of the interesting questions regarding this discovery (if in fact it is an accurate discovery) is how will it play out in MP? Will we see wasted GLs because two human players both rush wonders with GLs on the "same turn" and one of them builds the wonder first because of the order of turn cycles?

Catt

[Hurricane]

Nice summary, Catt. I was about to post the same link as you. That thread was one of the more interesting ones lately at CFC.

[Oerdin]

Catt, I've been looking over the thread at CFC that you left thehyper link to and I think you've summed it up nicely. These explains every thing thank you so much. I knew I wasn't imagining what I saw.

[Harovan]

Good job, Catt! I hadn't seen this thread at CFC, maybe I should have followed the discussion there with more attention. It was very active and had a lot of good threads in a time, when our Strategy forum was almost dead. This has, thank God, changed with our various tournaments and Vel's return.

Originally posted by Catt
Before howls of unfair advantage to the AI erupt...

This is not even an advantage to the AI, as the human can draft and rush as well, even though most players hesitate to do so.

[vondrack]

Great thread!
Thanks for the information, it makes several things I observed in my games clear now...

[Catt]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
This is not even an advantage to the AI, as the human can draft and rush as well, even though most players hesitate to do so.

The howls of unfair advantage could still come - because of the sequence of events within a "turn" a human could have a city flip to him and immediately draft a unit, but the AI will have an opportunity to move its troops (i.e., attack the recently flipped city) before the drafted unit appears in the city - so the player doesn't have the advantage of generating an extra defender before a counter-attack.

This phenomenon caused some hair-pulling and mild shrieking in several threads at CFC before cooler heads prevailed and I just hoped to pre-emptively minimize the same hair-pulling / shrieking here.

And yes, the strategy forum has gotten very lively and engaging over the past month or so!

Off-Topic: SR - are you really taking a long break from Civ 3? Even after your recent (overwhelming) election to high office in the demo game?

Catt

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Catt
Off-Topic: SR - are you really taking a long break from Civ 3? Even after your recent (overwhelming) election to high office in the demo game?

<shameless threadjack>
Yes, if you call 5-6 weeks a long time. But I will keep posting at 'Poly, so don't hope you're rid of me . At least till mid of August, when I will start my vacation trip. Till then, I will do my best in my minister office in the Demogame. But unlike others, I won't run for an office, if I can't make it the full term. So I will have to retire for the next term.
</shameless threadjack>

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Catt
The howls of unfair advantage could still come - because of the sequence of events within a "turn" a human could have a city flip to him and immediately draft a unit, but the AI will have an opportunity to move its troops (i.e., attack the recently flipped city) before the drafted unit appears in the city - so the player doesn't have the advantage of generating an extra defender before a counter-attack.

I don't understand, or I saw it differently in the last patch (I don't know). I thought that at the moment of draft, you get the unit in your city. You can't move it yet, but it is there.

I could be wrong though, I don't have much experience with drafting, and certainly not at the same time of a CF. Drafting after a CF is dangerous: most of the times this means there is cultural pressure on the city, and having a WLTKD is the best counter you have against CF again... so drafting and getting one extra defender, but also one unhappy citizen is not a good trade-off.

One note: it is possible to get more units in the initial turn of a CFed city, I saw this quite extensively in MT IV: AIs at war are most of the times in communism, so they get 1 unit for free, can draft 2 more, and can pop-rush another. This makes a total of 4 units in a freshly lost city possible...

DeepO

[Catt]

Originally posted by DeepO


I don't understand, or I saw it differently in the last patch (I don't know). I thought that at the moment of draft, you get the unit in your city. You can't move it yet, but it is there.

I could be wrong though, I don't have much experience with drafting, and certainly not at the same time of a CF.

You may very well be right - I seem to recall that drafting instantaneously produces a unit. I didn't test it myself, but kept "listening" to the thread during the howls of protest at a new, unfair, AI "advantage" from those who insisted that the turn order was a major, undocemented advantage due to this drafting / rushing aspect -- maybe I mispoke / misquoted the original thread and the "advantage" is only applicable to rushing units. Rather than test, I limited myself to pointing out that the "human always first" is a huge advantage as it ensures that a GL will never be wasted on a wonder rush.

Catt

[Oerdin]

I have one more question. If a city is captured by the AI during a war then, theoretically, there should be resisters. I believe the human player cannot pop rush if there are resisters yet the AI seems to still be able to pop rush and/or draft even though there are restisters.

Am I right that the AI gets to pop rush under conditions that the human cannot?

[Hurricane]

I don´t think so. I have sometimes lost some undefended city to a lone Cavalry, and when my tanks arrive one or two turns later, the only defender is still that same cavalry.

In most cases (I suppose ) the AI will re-capture their own lost cities, and these will not have any resistance, so they can immediately draft or hurry more defenders.

[Harovan]

Good point, Hurricane.

I share this experience. It happens rarely, that the AIs capture my cities, rather they temporary recapture their own, without resistance. But when they succeed to do so, and I recapture my city later, I get the message "The resistance in ... has ended". So the resistance applies to the AI too. I never saw more units in it than should be there, mostly I meet fairly injured horsemen, knights or cavalries.