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Lucarse
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United Kingdom EX New Zealand
Sep 2002
time: 05:22
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Then again maybe not but check this out i call it my 'Soak Up' Strategy. Only to be used in when in very serious do do.
A bit of background :
Just finished messy drawn out war with egypt (started with cav ended with tanks!!) managed to take all of egypt by seletive razing and keeping cities, so i'm strung out across the pan asia continent, culture getting bashed, have 20 or so tanks left .
Focusing on the battle front forgetting the little people and my lovely civ goes into anarchy (i know careless of me).
At this point my old mate cesar decides to have a go at me BIG TIME! (i had an alliance but obvioulsy it was over by this point) i lose 90% of my tanks in the first assault, i think 'surely i blunted his attack he can't have that much left', one quick check with my spy and sure enough he has 36 tanks left! next turn they all came in at once!! (i had lost faith in the AI for not attaking properly ie en mass this restored my faith quickly).
I lose two border towns very quickly, now he encroches on one of my large producer cities, i'm in serious trouble no offensive units left,i cannot rush any units as i am in anarchy... because i have a large city base i have economised on defence 2 units in border towns everywhere else 1.
Do i lay down and die...no!! i have 30+ workers and knowing the AI goes out of its way to capture workers i set about surrounding my city with workers!!. This soaks up the AI's turns and gives me 2-3 turns breathing space!! i rush in some defensive units (i borrowed fom other cities)
Pretty soon my anarchy is up i rush about 20+ units and in a few turns I get my workers back plus 2 roman cities !!, not a bad turn around considering the massive attack i was under!.
I subsequently get modern armour(synth fibers) and take rome in about 9 turns, it cost me a bit but it was worth it!
What does everyone think?? has this been tried before? am i telling the more experianced of you to suck eggs??
 
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thorpey
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England
Jan 2002
time: 05:22
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quote:
Originally posted by Barchan
Good Lord, man, those workers have shovels! *I* certainly wouldn't want to mess with them.
Seriously, though, this strategy is easily defeated by building a Marine or two. It may be a cheap exploit to justify the need for Marines in the game in the first place, but it's easily defeated nevertheless. |
Have you seen the AI make amphibious assaults? I haven't.
Anyway, it's a strategy/exploit that I haven't used, but always good to have up your sleeve if you are really caught short with
your pants down.
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JohnM2433
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Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Jul 2002
time: 21:22
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quote:
Originally posted by Lucarse
(ok maybe the human palyer would just bypass the city) |
That's what makes it an "exploit": you're deliberately taking advantage of the AI's stupidity.
Retaking cities as jshelr described is also another type of exploit: taking advantage of the way the game works. In this case, part of Greece's treasury was essentially magically transported to the cities after they took them. Now, there's no real need for them to distribute money evenly throughout their empire, and it would be far more realistic for the city to build up its own cash reserve over time. But this is not how the game works.
AI cheats are an imprecise analog to human exploits. In each case, one player does something another cannot. The AI "cheats" when it gets to do something the game interface doesn't allow the human to do. If the AI simply pracitices better tactics than the human, however, I would not call that an exploit. The reason I regard this as fair is that I think of humans as being able to learn and change their strategies; in short, we are "free" to do whatever we choose.
Human exploits are different, because there is no clear boundry between the AI and the game itself, and thus no real distinction between stupidity and incapacity on the part of the AI. That is, there's no difference between the AI not being smart enough know what to do and simply lacking the ability to do it, because whenever the programmers design the AI to do something they give it both the knowledge and the capability required. If there is no function in the game which allows/causes the AI to imploy tactic X, does that mean the AI "can't" do X, or that it "doesn't know about it"? For the AI, there is no such distinction.
This raises some interesting thoughts in my mind. Suppose that there are some forms of reasoning so complex that the human brain is incabable of supporting them. In this case, there would be no clear distinction between stupidity (relatively speaking) and incapacity for the human, just is there is not for the AI. If a superintelligent computer were then to play a game against a human, it might then be considered an "exploit" for it to use such reasoning. After all, what is really important isn't that one player is a human and that the other is a computer, but that one is capable of doing something that the other is fundamentally incapable of doing, thus giving one of them an unfair advantage.
That got a little off topic, didn't it? 
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Bangedup
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Kentucky
Aug 2002
time: 00:22
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This is not an exploit but a legitimate tactic used througout history. One case in point is Japan's assault on China in WW2. China's population greatly outnumbered Japan, but that turned out to work against them. Japan was so brutal that it spread fear in a populace and every city they approached the population fled in a terror. As a result the Chinese Army was unable to reinforce their cities because the roads were choked with civilians.
You know who Dracula is right? His namesake is Count Drakul (spelling). The Huns were attacking his country and he knew he could not stop them. He took thousands of his own people and murdered them and impaled them on stakes on the road approaching his cities. The Huns so terrified by what this man could do to his own people refused to attack and instead retreated. Dracula: Hero or Villain?
The end result here is that using civilians to thwart an attack or defense is nothing new and certainly is not an exploit.
IMHO it was good thinking on your part and I admit to doing it myself. There is nothing wrong with using strategy or cleverness to beat the AI. It is in our nature to do so. If you believe using strategy to beat the AI is beneath you then why play at all?
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10-09-2002 13:07
.
) adaption to the circumstances that saved your bacon.
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