ai artillery in conquests

[bigvic]

i've had conouests now for a few days, though have not played as much as i would have liked (24/7, that is), so am i right to assume the ai still can't use land artillery effectively? (SIGH) jeez - thought they'd have fixed that....

[vmxa1]

Nope.

[bvoncranium]

Originally posted by bigvic
am i right to assume the ai still can't use land artillery effectively?

Let me guess - if/when an AI Civ obtains artillery, it sticks it in a defended city, probably the capital, where it stays indefinitely. It is never used offensively.

I imagine that writing a really effective set of AI heuristics would be tricky for field artillery; you'd have to factor in movement, ranges, hit probability, vulnerability to capture given opposition movement capabilities, how to protect them once they do fire, etc., etc., for each alternative use. There's no question that field artillery in the hands of a thoughtful commander can be extremely effective!

I'm certain that a much better AI for land artillery is do-able. However, I'd bet that given the size and complexity of the job, it was low on the feature priority list in the development plan to bring Conquests (or PTW) to market.

My 2 cents, bvc

[dexters]

AI DO use it offensively. I haven't watched enough late game land battles to really see to what extent.

I've seen AI ARTYs seiging cities on the edge of my fog of war field of vision. It happens.

Maybe the beta testers played a different version. The testers at CFC alluded to the fact that 'we'd know when we see a stack of 15 artys show up in front out our borders'

I personally haven't been attacked by any artys yet. But then again, I haven't had much late game world wars. So it's hard to say objectively.

[bigvic]

hmmm... late game, eh? guess i got to either stick one out or set up a test scenario...