15-11-2001 00:18									#1
	Battle AI considers only unit amount, not type? Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Greetings.

I've been hearing several independent comments regarding the possibility that the AI doesn't take into consideration the type and values of military units as much as simply their amount as it weighs the possible outcome of a battle, or the military power of another civ in general.

One example of it goes like this. One player had not many units at his command, but all were sophisticated, including battleships, submarines, tactical nukes and ICBMs. He threatened an AI with war unless he was turned over one city. The AI, with a medieval tech level and a large number of (weak in comparison) units, refused since the players should "get something to back up his threats".

Even if the example above (and especially the response text) can be attributed to simple scripting, a random fluke or simply a thick-skulled AI personality, other things similar to this have been reported, regarding actual combat situations and a sub-optimal performance by the AI in selecting targets, which has indeed been characterized by avoiding large forces in number, not in strength.

This sounds hard to believe, and certainly would be an extreme turn-off if it was true. I'd like to hear about your experiences, either corroborating or refuting these allegations. Also, has this possible bug been brought up in other threads/forums?