Evil, Evil AI ...

Gatekeeper · July 1, 2003, 01:51

Everyone:

... if it isn't busy nuking cities that were a part of its civilization just a year before, it's sending those damnable stealth jet fighters against my howitzers, decimating their ranks. And then it's firing cruise missiles at my armored divisions and port cities!

Moral of the story, kiddos: Don't let the AI nations get too advanced or widespread unless you want to have one helluva knock-down drag-out endgame fight.

(And, above all, *don't* let the AI get huge island cities in Indonesia! Those are bears to take out ...)

Gatekeeper

War4ever · July 1, 2003, 03:50

yes the ai is like a tree, you must chop it down before it grows big and tall and thinks its proud

Gatekeeper · July 1, 2003, 04:46

Yep. I quit that particular game. I know it's just a game, but I got sick and tired of seeing city after city get nuked. Big, strong cities reduced to nuclear rubble because the AI has no other strategy. And half the time it doesn't even bother to reoccupy the nuked cities. Just plain exasperating, IMO.

Heh. My own homeland in North, Central and South America is fine, along with conquered Europe, Middle East and Africa. But Mongolia was doing a fine job of nuking everything else in Asia as I forced the AI back towards the Pacific Ocean.

BTW, has anyone bothered to mess around with the specs of the stealth jet fighter. It seems overpowered to me. (Yeah, I don't like how it can take out six or seven howitzers at once, either.)

Gatekeeper

Scouse Gits · July 1, 2003, 07:40

Try early game trading so your advances come faster. If you have to worry about the Nuclear Age you are not concentrating enough of your efforts during the Stone Age

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SG(2)

rah · July 1, 2003, 08:49

Yeah, the trick is to keep them in the stone age.

OR USE the standard bait for the AI.
A battleship covered by a few vet aegis cruisers will attract AI cruise missiles.
An SDI less city covered by SDI in a city next to it will attrack nucks.
And forward armor and howies on mountains will attract air fire.

Just sit back and watch the AI waste all it's resources.

RAH

geofelt · July 1, 2003, 09:19

If you have the rest of the world, you should have the gold to rush build SDI. Buy a temple or barracks as the first thing when you capture a city, then rush SDI. If you wait, you have to wait for unrest to subside. Most of the time, you will avoid a nuke.

Howitzers have two movement points; fire them once, then move them to safety if you fear counterattack.

rah · July 1, 2003, 11:59

Once, playing the WWII scenario I moved a battleship out covered by a few vet aegis and the AI fired over 75 cruise missles at the stack. ALL SURVIVED

Six Thousand Year Old Man · July 1, 2003, 12:58

Quote:

Originally posted by rah
Once, playing the WWII scenario I moved a battleship out covered by a few vet aegis and the AI fired over 75 cruise missles at the stack. ALL SURVIVED

All you really need for this trick is a BB (the bait), one AEGIS (the anti-fighter defense) and a bomber (the cruise missile blocker). The missiles will fly out to your BB and then 'hang' in the air around it, since they can't attack due to the stacked bomber. When your turn arrives, you can destroy all the stacked 'hanging' missiles with the BB and AEGIS.

This tactic also has worked against U-boats in the RF scenario... probably wouldn't work as well in regular Civ2, as the AI doesn't seem to cheat-build subs the way it does cruise missiles

Elephant · July 1, 2003, 14:06

Protect the howitzers: if you cannot move them, stack a few good defensive units with them, or better yet rush-build a fort where they stand. Keep some pre-charged Engineers around; with enough of them you can make a fort and a forest in the same turn, greatly increasing defensive strength.

rah · July 1, 2003, 14:39

Quote:

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
All you really need for this trick is a BB (the bait), one AEGIS (the anti-fighter defense) and a bomber (the cruise missile blocker). The missiles will fly out to your BB and then 'hang' in the air around it, since they can't attack due to the stacked bomber. When your turn arrives, you can destroy all the stacked 'hanging' missiles with the BB and AEGIS.

We were playing for records and bomber stacking wasn't allowed. But yes that will work too.

Gatekeeper · July 1, 2003, 15:09

Quote:

Originally posted by Scouse Gits
Try early game trading so your advances come faster. If you have to worry about the Nuclear Age you are not concentrating enough of your efforts during the Stone Age

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

SG(2)

I'm almost set in stone when it comes to playing style: Unless I have an aggressive nearby AI civilization, I tend to focus on building up my own cities in the Stone and Medieval ages in preparation for starship building and offensive military operations in the Industrial and Modern eras.

I do try to mix things up now and then, but early warfare takes quite a bit of time. It's exhilarating to use AI rail networks to wipe out the heart of an AI civ in a single turn, and this is usually possible by the Industrial Age.

Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper · July 1, 2003, 15:14

Quote:

Originally posted by rah
Yeah, the trick is to keep them in the stone age.

OR USE the standard bait for the AI.
A battleship covered by a few vet aegis cruisers will attract AI cruise missiles.
An SDI less city covered by SDI in a city next to it will attrack nucks.
And forward armor and howies on mountains will attract air fire.

Just sit back and watch the AI waste all it's resources.

RAH

I do all of that, but when I attack, I attack massively and it's hard to cover all my troops in that manner. So when I complain about losing six to 10 divisions in an AI attack, I usually have another 30 to 70 divisions nearby. Just to put a little perspective on my losses.

One thing about the AI in the Mac version: It automatically fires cruise missiles at transports, even if they're shielded by battleships and AEGIS cruisers. Even if I try to use "decoy" convoys, the darn thing "knows" which convoys have transports w/i them, and attacks accordingly. Most of the time the convoys survive, but one time I had three AEGIS cruisers stacked over two fully-loaded transports, and the entire convoy (with its battleship) was blown out of the water by, oh, 60 or so Zulu cruise missiles.

Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper · July 1, 2003, 15:18

Quote:

Originally posted by geofelt
If you have the rest of the world, you should have the gold to rush build SDI. Buy a temple or barracks as the first thing when you capture a city, then rush SDI. If you wait, you have to wait for unrest to subside. Most of the time, you will avoid a nuke.

Actually, that's the first thing I do when taking an AI city: If it doesn't have an SDI Defense, I automatically spend 800 gold to buy it. Unfortunately, the AI has a nasty habit of nuking said city just before my next turn. So, providing the city isn't occupied, I get the SDI Defense, but the dang city is half the size it once was!

Quote:

Howitzers have two movement points; fire them once, then move them to safety if you fear counterattack.

I do this more often than not, but sometimes terrain keeps me from being able to spread them out or stack 'em in fortresses. That and sometimes I'm just keen on taking the AI city and keep pounding at it, even with troops that aren't up to full strength or full movement points. So I'm my own worst tactician sometimes.

Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper · July 1, 2003, 15:22

Quote:

Originally posted by Elephant
Protect the howitzers: if you cannot move them, stack a few good defensive units with them, or better yet rush-build a fort where they stand. Keep some pre-charged Engineers around; with enough of them you can make a fort and a forest in the same turn, greatly increasing defensive strength.

Heh. I've reprogrammed my RULES.TXT file so that the AI now targets land divisions with cruise missiles more liberally than it ever did in the past. A lot of the time now, I just try to stack my howitzers in fortresses, because if I put, say, an armor division (or two or three) with them, the AI fires cruise missiles at the stack. Same holds true if I stack shock troops (custom unit) or spies with the howies — guaranteed AI target for cruise missiles.

I do make use of multiple engineers and insta-forts, but have yet to create forests.

Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper · July 1, 2003, 15:24

Everyone:

Maybe this is old news, but I think I found a way to keep the AI from hitting one of its immediate former cities with nuclear weapons: Namely, when you take the city, make sure to let one or two AI partisan units that pop up right next to the city survive, instead of destroying them all. From what I can tell, the AI will *not* sacrifice its own troops to nuke a city.

Gatekeeper

rah · July 1, 2003, 17:27

Or the more simplistic approach. Take out the entire civ in one turn. That used to work best with me, And the first AI that complained got it next.

La Fayette · July 1, 2003, 18:53

Quote:

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
From what I can tell, the AI will *not* sacrifice its own troops to nuke a city.

Gatekeeper

Believe me, it does

I remember trying to let partisans alive in the ww79 scenario. Poor guys, the AI nuked them mercilessly

Straybow · July 1, 2003, 19:29

LaFayette, I would think MGE would be more aggressive than 2.42 with nukes, and the ww79 scen has the war flag set.

GateKeeper, what change in rules.txt spurs the AI to make heavy use of Cruise Missiles against land targets? Change them from 0 (Attack) to 1 (defend)?

At least it isn't SMAC, where the nuke creates a 3-tile-radius crater!

Scouse Gits · July 1, 2003, 21:53

Quote:

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
I'm almost set in stone when it comes to playing style: Unless I have an aggressive nearby AI civilization, I tend to focus on building up my own cities in the Stone and Medieval ages in preparation for starship building and offensive military operations in the Industrial and Modern eras.

Why wait that long? Just think of a vet Elephant as an early form of howitzer.

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SG(2)

Gatekeeper · July 2, 2003, 02:25

Quote:

Originally posted by Straybow

GateKeeper, what change in rules.txt spurs the AI to make heavy use of Cruise Missiles against land targets? Change them from 0 (Attack) to 1 (defend)?

I just dropped the cost of the missiles from 50 or 60 shields to 40 shields. After that, the AI stopped storing the missiles and began using them on my port cities, armored divisions, shock troops (custom unit) and spies, in addition to the usual targeting of ships.

Before I made the change, it was not unusual for the AI to store six to 10 missiles in each of its cities for exclusive use against naval targets. Now it uses them almost right away and never stores more than two missiles per city (fewer missiles stored because it's actually using them).

Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper · July 2, 2003, 02:28

Quote:

Originally posted by Scouse Gits

Why wait that long? Just think of a vet Elephant as an early form of howitzer.

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SG(2)

Hmm ... well, maybe I can put the howie sound file in place of the elephant one to at least keep up part of the illusion.

"FIRE!" **thump, thump**

"What's this? Howies that produce dung?!"

Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper · July 2, 2003, 02:31

Quote:

Originally posted by La Fayette
Believe me, it does

I remember trying to let partisans alive in the ww79 scenario. Poor guys, the AI nuked them mercilessly

Huh. Well, I'll experiment a bit more then and see what happens. I hope my hypothesis holds water, though, 'cause it'd be an el cheapo way to keep cities from getting hammered by nukes. We shall have to see how forward-looking the Civ II programmers were back in the mid-1990s.

Gatekeeper

rah · July 2, 2003, 09:04

Some things seem to be different when scenerios are used. We'll see what you find in a normal game.

RAH

Elephant · July 2, 2003, 11:32

Quote:

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
Hmm ... well, maybe I can put the howie sound file in place of the elephant one to at least keep up part of the illusion.
"FIRE!" **thump, thump**
"What's this? Howies that produce dung?!"

Think of it as another form of ammunition:

"Sir, the catapults are out of rocks!
Run over to the pachyderm lager and gather all the pachy paddies you can find!"

Gatekeeper · July 2, 2003, 13:14

Quote:

Originally posted by rah
Some things seem to be different when scenerios are used. We'll see what you find in a normal game.

RAH

My theory was literally blown out of the water last night.

I left two AI partisans next to a just-conquered city and the AI attempted to sacrifice them when it fired *four* nuclear missiles at the city. Fortunate for me, at least one square of the city's environs was w/i the SDI Defense shield of another city, so the nukes didn't get through.

Gatekeeper

rah · July 2, 2003, 13:22

Yep. When people first started making scenarios, there was a lot of discussion about the differences.

Gatekeeper · July 2, 2003, 15:46

Heh. I finally won after using a mixture of amphibious shock troop assaults and barrages of cruise missiles on Mongolia's Indonesian provinces/cities. Even a city defended by SDI Defense and anti-missile batteries has to give way under a repeated cruise missile attack, followed up by invasion from the sea.

Too bad the year was 2183.

Gatekeeper

rah · July 3, 2003, 08:17

2183

Lesson learned for the future.

Six Thousand Year Old Man · July 3, 2003, 10:39

Quote:

Originally posted by Gatekeeper

Too bad the year was 2183.

2183!

How do you manage to finish those games? I confess that once I have a big lead, and it's a sure thing that I'm going to win, I lose interest. On gigamaps, I don't reach that point as quickly as on smaller maps (that's why I play on them) - but I usually stop playing and start a new game anywhere from about 1750 to 1950. What do you do to keep the micromanaging, the moving 100s of units at a time, from becoming tedious?

Serious question, btw - I've always wanted to find ways to make the endgames less of a chore.

Scouse Gits · July 3, 2003, 14:12

Quote:

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
Serious question, btw - I've always wanted to find ways to make the endgames less of a chore.

With MPGE do what needs to be done then Ctrl + N. Place cities out of the front line into Capitalisation.

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SG(2)