 |
| |
|
|
Bereta_Eder
|
|
Almost.
I finally found ONE thing that justifies a line that Brian Reynolds has written in the end of CIV 2 manual: that the team of civ 2 «had taught» the AI some tricks that experienced players of civ 1 used.
Well, what happened was this: the japanese were trying desperetly to conquer something of my civ.
They came up with one of my favorite strategies!!!
They amased a fleet of 12 ships (battleships, cruisers, destroyers, AEGIS cruisers, transports filled with marines) and relentlesly attacked IN ONE TURN one of my coastal cities!!!!
Great job from the part of the programers I must say.
The only thing was that, well, their attentions became too apparent. When I saw that must fire power next to my city I immedieatly shifted 15 mech. infantries there(coastal fortress was already in place).
A failed but still admirable attempt.
---
For Markos, Ming and the others at Apolyton:
I am making a pitiful Civ site just for fun. If you find anything useful (I seriously doubt it) it goes without saying that you can get it. I've already sent the lists of wonders and improvements to Apolyton (I am propably the 100th to do so but still).
|
|
| |
|
|
|
rixxe
|
|
Lausanne
Dec 2000
time: 06:12
|
|
WOW, i have never seen the AI attacking the same city with more than 10 units or so,..., could you give more details ??
This is exactly one of the major problem in civII, the AI don't attack correctly,...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Rufus T. Firefly
|
 |
is one way of saying it, though I prefer "mensch"
Sep 2000
time: 07:12
|
|
Of course, this same tendency can lead to those "stupid AI tricks" we all know and love. For example, in a recent game the AI assaulted and took one of my weaker coastal cities. The next turn, I sent in a spy and bought it back. Sitting next to the city -- so that I got them, but they didn't add to the cost of bribing the AI -- were 17 (count 'em!) ships, including 4 vet battleships, an AEGIS cruiser, and a transport with several vet spies aboard! This was, as far as I can tell, the nearly whole damned Zulu navy; I never saw them float anything but destroyers and the odd caravel(!) after that. So there's AI strategy, and then there's AI strategy, I guess. 
------------------
Dig trenches, with our men being killed off like flies? There isn't time to dig trenches. We'll have to buy them ready made. Here, run out and get some trenches.
-- Rufus T. Firefly, the original rush-builder
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Edward
|
|
I agree with rixxe. The AI just doesn't have the sense to build up an assault team before attacking. If the AI were currently programmed to sometimes use this strategy, I'm sure only a little testing by the game designers would show that bumping up the frequency with which assault teams are built (i.e. more often than once every 10 games) would make for a much more effective AI.
I think the occasional AI massive attacks are caused by either
1) East Street Trader's idea of many AI cities just happening to get their units to the target on the same turn.
or
2) the AI cheating up a big assault team because the game is almost over (you've launched or are near launching your spaceship).
paiktis22 and Lefty Scaevola,
Were these massive attacks launched near when you launched your spaceships?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
cyclotron7
|
 |
Drowning in Schnitzel
Jan 2001
time: 21:12
|
|
I dunno... recently I have experienced several unexplained AI phenomenon.
Case 1: You all know the idea of stacking an artillery unit with a strong defensive one. Well, one time in the early part of my game, the Mongols come marching up with three groups of one legion and one catapult each, moving together! They were nearly more than I could handle, but I drove them off. Ironically, I was so weakened by the attack that NINE barbarian crusaders swept down immediatly afterwards and captured two of my cities. Oh well...
Case 2: I have seen the AI using distraction tactics! I had one battleship guarding a small island city I was just developing. Then... a transport comes up! Loaded! Enemy! It dashes right up to my battleship, and then flees. I catch up to it and destroy it, but another AI ship dashes past me, landing 3 marines in the city. This had a bit more happy ending, as I sunk their transport, bombarded the crap out of all their marines, and paratrooped in to take it back.
Moral: Give the AI some credit, guys!
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Bereta_Eder
|
|
The spaceship race was still some time off, Apolo wasn't built.
The particular attack seemed (no) WAS coordinated (programmed or lucky). I admit I have played civ countless times and that may have been pure coinsidence but:
1. All ships ended there turn on the SAME sea square next to my city (I think it was the only sea square for my city). No ship attacked before meaning that either all 12 ships had ended all their movement points in EXACTLY that particular square which can happen but it's very odd.
2. NO ship wondered off afterwards they all attacked on the same turn plus the marines were there to capture the city if it had fallen.
On the other hand, in one of the other coastal cities I had like 5 or 6 wonders and THAT city was guarded by four aegis cruisers and 1 battleship. It was not very near but still...
Instead the attack was executed in a no-wonder city although with large population.
Thjere have been times of coordinated attacks by tanks in the way EST described but never yet a naval coordinated assault.
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
cyclotron7
|
|
Drowning in Schnitzel
Jan 2001
time: 21:12
|
|
Yes, General Grant from the American Civil War. Became one of our presidents, too.
Case 3: (this was brought to mind after you described bribing units on mountain squares) You guys must all know the WWII scenario that comes with CivII, right? You must also remember that the Alps (switzerland) is inhabited by two alpine troops in fortressess, on mountains. Talk about defense! Anyway, usually waht happens is France ends up bribing them and spiriting them away to their other cities, leaving Hitler a good mountain fortress to use. When I was the French, however, I let the Germans get to them first. They bribed the alpine troops too, but then moved a howitzer into one of the squares that overlooked a newly built road of mine. Remarkably, they kept the howitzer there, stopping my engineers trying to build a railroad and totally destroying my chances of a sucessful land invasion of Italy. I had to settle for Berlin.
Ming, your point is valid. Of course the AI is not the smartest one on the block, and certainly it does not share in even a sliver of your mental prowess. I do think, however, that the AI does have some ability that you don't give it credit for. After my intitial thrill of CivII and playing many games, I was dissapointed by this same AI and devoted my games afterwards to trying to see how the AI reacted to various tacics and how it worked in various unusual circumstances. Although most of these field studies of mine bore no fruit and reeked of stupidity, I dare say there are a few diamonds in the rough that you may be overlooking.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Blaupanzer
|
 |
Fairfax, VA
Oct 2000
time: 00:12
|
|
Ming, just because much of the combat programming is primitive, doesn't mean it all is. I, too, have seen naval assaults that looked coordinated. Not often, but once every four or five games. It is also at sea, as I noted earlier that I saw the AI use nukes against one of my fleets, something it never seems to do against land units. Seems to me the programmer for naval warfare routines may have been a little more together, or had a lower number of branching options, or some such. The AI can be (should have been) programmed better than it has been, but not every single case is idiotic.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ming
|
|
Blaupanzer... again, I'm not an expert, and I didn't write the code, or am I qualified enough to look at it and determine the capabilities of the AI...
However, I would still chalk up any seemingly coordinated attack as dumb luck. The AI floods an area with units, and they attack. That's seems to be the limit of their strategic thought process. Early in the game, when it doesn't have enough units on the board, the idiotic sucidial attacks are laughable at best.
Later, AND ONLY because they have built enough units, does it appear like they actually know what it's doing.
The programming seems simple enough to me. Build units and attack. When they are lucky enough to many units in the same area...
Maybe that's the best they could do with the programming. If I designed it, and knew that it would be limited in what strategy you could give the ai, I would probably do it the same way. Just keep building units and hope you can overwelm the opposition. I have seen nothing in my many games to think otherwise.
But, I have been wrong in the past
I would really love to hear from an expert who can take a look at the code and tell us just what "strategy" the AI uses... Until then, I'll continue to subscribe to the dumb luck answer 
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Wiglaf
|
 |
Cambridge
Dec 2000
time: 23:12
|
|
quote:
However, I would still chalk up any seemingly coordinated attack as dumb luck.
|
I don't see why. You mentioned the AI doesn't take in to account hit points in its attacks, but I fail to see how this would affect its ability to wage coordinated warfare.
Six battleships bombarding two riflemen that would otherwise block the path of four tanks that would pillage a railroad is beyond the AI, but this does not rule out a simple coordinated assault. A few ships, a few marines, and the AI can take a base - while not much, that is more than a computer that randomly tosses units around, as you seemed to imply. And if it's luck, it happens a whole lot, and at the perfect time.
Do you believe the AI does use some strategies players used from civ1 or would potentially use in civ2, as the manual suggests?
------------------
The fault lies not in our SMAC, but in our stars.
~ Vanguard, February 2, 2000.
[This message has been edited by SMACed (edited February 02, 2001).]
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Simpson II
|
 |
varies
Jul 2000
time: 05:12
|
|
quote:
It's like the infinite # of monkeys syndrome. Given enough time eventually they'll write Sheakespeare. Given thousands upon thousands of attacks by the AI vs. hundreds of civ players, you'll get a couple dozen example of what seems to be coordination on the part of the AI. You're just rationalizing random outcomes.
|
Doubtful. The AI would be unlikely to have more than about 20 ships, so these attacks presumably encompass it's entire navy. Say there are 20 targets it could attack with any given ship from a group of 20. The odds of them all going for the same target are ~1 in 20^19=1 in 5242880000000000000000000. That's ignoring the fact they may not arrive at the same time - even if there's only a 3-turn possible window for some strange reason, the odds go to something like 1 in 60^19 = 1 in 6093597400104960000000000000000000. I have played somewhat less than 6093597400104960000000000000000000 games of Civ,  but I've seen this happen once. The AI turned up with 42 (!) ships. Shame they didn't have any AEGIS cruisers, though it still took 3 cruise missiles to get a kill...
The probable reason that many people haven't seen this is that they play a more effective game than others. I mean, Ming, how often can you remember seeing the AI build a battleship? Let alone 20 of them. You have to have a slow tech-rate so that the AI has time to build all those units (probably at random) and yet not be attacking them to avoid triggering off the infinite-riflemen code.
Btw, the Smac AI is perfectly capable of this sort of coordinated assault. The best I ever saw was a feint of one front with ~10 units which withdrew, quickly followed by another 20 at another point. It doesn't change much defence-wise, because it's still messed up in other areas.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ribannah
|
 |
The Netherlands, Embassy of the Iroquois Confederacy
Aug 2000
time: 06:12
|
|
The AI doesn't play totally randomly. Defensive units are always put in a city or a fortress. In wartime, all attacking units get a target assigned to them. This is partly based on the available information, and partly random.
As a consequence, if the AI only knows the location of one city of your empire, or the route to only one of your cities, it will send lots of units to that city. They simply start out from where they are, so normally you can expect them to arrive one at a time.
However, in some cases they will all arrive together, for instance when the AI had just broken an alliance that made all its units return to the capital. This may look impressive, but it's merely a co-incidence.
------------------
If you have no feet, don't walk on fire
|
|
| |
|
|
|
rah
|
|
Apolyton Prince of Moderators, Master of Reason
|
 |
Lord of the Ferrets
Jan 1970
time: 23:12
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Ribannah on 02-09-2001 08:21 AM
As a consequence, if the AI only knows the location of one city of your empire, or the route to only one of your cities, it will send lots of units to that city. They simply start out from where they are, so normally you can expect them to arrive one at a time.
|
While I agree that the AI is just luckly if it looks coordinated. (will appear more often if their empire is linked by railroad allowing the units to arive at the same time....
The AI knows where your cites are even if it hasn't discovered them yet. When I was testing the AI, I would often go into cheat mode and look at their goto commands on units. They can target cities that if you check out the map from their view, they can't see.
In fact for one test, I checked goto commands, went back a turn and created a new city without defenders and checked the cheat menu and "low and behold" most of the units had been retargeted to the new city. Considering that there were no units within 10 squares of the new city, They must have found out about it by magic 
So feel free to trade your map to the AI, get something for something they already have.
RAH
If anyone else has any other explanation for this type of behaviour, please feel free to post it so it can be tested.
|
|
| |
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:12.
Apolyton Time is 00:12. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
31-01-2001 03:16
|