17-04-2004 07:44									#1
	The AI does use Cannons offensively Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

My troops were stationed on a mountain observing an American city when out comes 2 cannons taking separate routes to attack a Mayan city. Each cannon is escorted by a rifleman. I have never seen this before in Civ3 vanilla.

	17-04-2004 13:50									#2
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I've seen the AI use Artillery a couple times offensively before.

Completely mystifies me how it can use it so rarely, even though it has the capability.

	17-04-2004 21:32									#3
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It does do that occasionally now. The AI used to be more effective at bombarding units that happened to be outside a city with artillery inside it.

Recently, I put a ship outside an AI city for about 10 turns. It bombarded it with a trebuchet only on the first. It was still in the city when I took it.

	17-04-2004 22:15									#4
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In PTW, I even once saw a cannon exit a city, and bombard a nearby unit of mine!

But in C3C I did an experiment where I have the AI a stack of 16 Catapults protected by defensive units and parked a unit adjacent to them. The Catapults retreated into the nearest city without firing. Then I moved my unit adjacent to that city, and not a single catapult fired. If the AI uses bombard units, it's very rarely in C3C.

	18-04-2004 07:37									#5
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But the AI does love to move those friggin' Frigates in ad-nauseam, bombard your defending unit to redline, then move out of range.....and repeat 12 times per turn. Half the time I sign peace treaties just to put an end to the time wasting!

	18-04-2004 16:47									#6
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I don't think AI offensive bombarding will ever be a feature of Civ3, other than the occasional fluke that makes you go wtf?

I also concur if anything it's even worse in C3C.

	18-04-2004 17:21									#7
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It seems that this change was made in the 1.20 or 1.22 patch as this has never happened to me before. I like the change but the low numbers of units used makes this tactic not as effective as it could be. The AI uses large numbers of Infantry attackers, Imagine what could happen if they use mass artillery with the stacks of infantry.

Alexman:

The cats actually retreated? That is weird. I have'nt seen an AI pull off a tactical retreat in any of my games, usually they just charge ahead, oblivious to the killing field that is laid out before them.

	19-04-2004 11:45									#8
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quote: Originally posted by Mad Bomber The cats actually retreated? That is weird. I have'nt seen an AI pull off a tactical retreat in any of my games, usually they just charge ahead, oblivious to the killing field that is laid out before them.

The AI has code to make it try to "protect" artillery units at all costs (i.e. retreat), and there's occasionally a fluke with an unknown trigger where it'll actually use them. This was done primarily so that the AI didn't march out a huge stack of bombard units only so that the human could concentrate all of their units on that stack to take it out and capture all of the artillery.