Most Dumb AI Contest

August 17, 2000, 21:59

This is a contest to see who has encountered the most hairbrained AI schemes. My entry is: It was in a game with large map, diety, bloodlust, 7 civs, and RH Barbs. It was 1945. The Russians were playing a fundy warmonger strategy, and had conquered every civ but mine: a peaceful 25 city democracy. They had over 50 cities, but most were at size 5 or 6, compared to my cities that were all at at least 15. Anyway, I decided it was time to use all the money I had been saving in a full scale assault on russia. My attack went smoothly, and gained momentum as it went. Eventually, I was ready for my final attack on the last 5 russian cities: Odessa, Minsk, Sevestopol, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. I first got 7 Howies ready to attack Sevestapol, and I get a message that I caught the Ruskie's transport in port. Then I find the city empty, and march in. Same thing happens with Minsk and Odessa. I decide that Lenin must be gathering his forces in his two best cities. I attack St. Petersburg, to find it defended by a freight and a frigate.

Then, finally, I attack Moscow. It has a total of 3 defenders: 2 engineers and a transport. What the...

I would like to hear your stories. Please post them.

Smash · August 18, 2000, 00:23

Well I have to go with the Romans in My fortnight OCC#15 game.

Its 2 city island with barely enough room for 2 full cities.After several map exchanges,what pops out of the Roman city?

An Explorer

Gatekeeper · August 18, 2000, 01:28

SilverDragon:

It sounds like the AI in that particular game came close to or ran head-on into the unit number barrier.

Essentially, only so many units can exist in the game. If the AI and/or human player gets close to or runs into that limit, it can mean streamlining your resources or, in the AI's case, spreading itself thin defending its holdings. Considering the Russians had over 50 cities and you had 25 ... well, that's probably what happened. The AI Russians are well-known for building massive military forces.

In the end, I think that's why you were able to take the last Russian cities — and their founding ones at that (i.e. most heavily-fortified) — so easily. The AI used up its units and couldn't replace them quick enough as you took their cities.

CYBERAmazon

Carolus Rex · August 18, 2000, 07:59

Here's a recent one.

In the WWII challenge I was at war with Hitler. He attacked Prague and knocked out every defender I had. Instead of walking in he offered a cease fire...

Carolus

Sten Sture · August 18, 2000, 14:38

CR - Now that's a Prague Spring.

I bet that what happened in Shadows game was that they switched to Republic and couldn't support all of their units. What I love to see is three random naval ships out wandering around to no apparent purpose, keeping the AI Rep city in perpetual Disorder and using up three of its four shields production in support.

I played a short game last evening and stopped around 500bc - all of the ai civs had 10-15 techs but no monarchy or rep. I need to change the rules.txt to fix their priorities...

SCG · August 18, 2000, 14:55

quote:

Originally posted by Sten Sture on 08-18-2000 02:38 PM
I played a short game last evening and stopped around 500bc - all of the ai civs had 10-15 techs but no monarchy or rep. I need to change the rules.txt to fix their priorities...

I played a long game the other day (OCC #11), where it was impossible to contact the AI before communism. In 1838 I built the UN and found this. There were 4 AI's out there. 1 was in republic (Egypt), the other 3 (Greek, Indian, Persian) were still in despotism because none of them had any other government techs... And all 4 civs had between 8 and 12 cities on a small map.

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April Cantor: Sire, in order to expand further we must first gain favor of the King

SCG: darn, I've never really got the hang of that tribute thing, guess it will be a long time until i make prince

*goes off and starts gifting gold and techs*

August 21, 2000, 15:18

Surely the AI has more dumb exploits we can add.

(Translation)
BUMP!

Six Thousand Year Old Man · August 21, 2000, 15:33

[quote]Originally posted by SilverDragon on 08-21-2000 03:18 PM
Surely the AI has more dumb exploits we can add.

Yes... I would have thought this thread would be longer!

I guess throwing cruise missiles at a battleship/AEGIS stack endlessly is pretty dumb... in earlier games I used to stack 2 AEGIS that way just to see how much resources the AI would waste trying to eliminate 160 shields worth of units.

The converse of that, of course, is the way the AI will leave a stack of warships out on the open ocean, ripe to be nuked with no pollution effects.

Gotta love those "29 units were lost" messages...

Stacking units ANYWHERE except inside a fortress or city is pretty dumb, I'd say, and the AI seems to do that a lot.

STYOM

Civ-wrecked · August 21, 2000, 15:48

How about the circling settlers ?
The AI tries to build cities in the direction of your civ, which is a good thing to do. However, if you set up a choke point then for thousands of years it will send settlers after settlers to the same choke point to stand around even though there are empty land to build new cities in any other directions. This is especially true with the perfectionist AI civs, not those which tend to send their settlers out on triremes all the time anyway.

tonic · August 22, 2000, 00:38

It was in OCC14 at the end game, when a Mongol settler built a city just 3 squares from my city. Of course there was no flag and it was no big deal to enter it, get 38 gold and a tech to boot. Now you'd think it'd have learnt its lesson but no, just 3 turns later, the process was repeated at the very same spot.
[This message has been edited by tonic (edited August 22, 2000).]

SCG · August 22, 2000, 08:01

I'm not sure quite how to classify this, but i wouldn't exactly call it smart

I just finished OCC 7, where my starting point was a tundra on the polar icecap, and where other than a whale, I had no food tile of more than 1, and most 0. The English, who I was at war with decided to cross the 10 or so tile ocean to get to the pole with a caravel full of settlers. First it attacked my city (and nearly died against my sentried caravan), then it unloaded all its settlers, made peace and proceded to to wander the entire length of the pole, 1 glacier at a time

There was all sorts of unused ariable land, all over the place (the designer made sure of that), just absolutely nothing were he placed our settlers

There must be something in the AI coding that says build towards the human, reguardless

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April Cantor: Sire, in order to expand further we must first gain favor of the King

SCG: darn, I've never really got the hang of that tribute thing, guess it will be a long time until i make prince

*goes off and starts gifting gold and techs*

SandMonkey · September 5, 2000, 20:55

I dunno if this is the dumbest thing I have ever seen the AI do, but here it is...

I was playing ToT last night on the world.mp, original game. I am mopping up the Zulus, and I have them down to their last two cities in S. Africa. They had a walled city, and I wasn't about to start sending my knights to their death, so I just decided to wait it out around the outskirts of the city on some good defensive ground (swamp w/ river and some mountains). I moved a phalanx (one that I bribed) within a couple squares of the city, so the Zulus moved a catapult out to combat my Phalanx. Not wanting to get my perfectly good phalanx wasted for nothing, I pulled him back into a fortress with a couple Knights, for safety in nu,bers reasons (plus there was no road/river connection from the catapult to any of my units). I figured that the Zulus would pull the catty away, since they can see everyhting and would have seen all of my units. Well, no of course they didn't, they moved right up next to all of my guys! Needless to say, I blew it away with a vet catty, but still, why would you move a unit into certain death like that?

jpk · September 6, 2000, 09:51

Once I had one city on an AI continent. A coastal AI city was about 5 squares from my city. Turn after turn the AI tried to send an overland diplomat to my city. Turn after turn I destroyed the diplomat. It never occurred to the AI to put a diplomat on a boat. Since I was not patroling the ocean and there was coastal grassland adjacent to my city so the AI could have landed the diplomat and done whatever it wanted to do with no difficulty.

September 6, 2000, 15:08

I can't remember dumb AI moves as well as successful conquests probably due to dumb AI moves, but my most recent game DID have a dumb AI move.
I was fighting the Spanish (my classical enemy) in the early era. I had Chariots, Elephants, and Catapults. It was an impressive army, I had gotten 3 units from every city and moved across an ithsmus (which of course the AI did not take hold of...) and I moved out into a large plain. The vanguard of my army was ripe for the picking, but they made no attempt to attack. I used Catapults to clear their original defenses and they did not attack the catties.
I managed to capture Seville (i think) and I signed a cease fire. (I had only a attack units and I needed time to prepare since their roads were horrible). And then I began taking up positions in their abandoned forts. I kept prodding them towards war, but Queen Isabella never declared war, and she moved in huge quantities of troops that could have at least heavily damaged the invasion force. Finally, I got her and attacked first. It was over after that. I just kept moving toward Madrid.
One of the cities was way off in the boonducks and every small army I sent to take it out was annihilated by some unseen force. So I finally just put a Knight a few spaces from the city to wait for the mysterious unit to appear... instead they built a city 1 square away from my Knight with no support!!!
There was another time when I put my catapults in the forests around Madrid, and there had been a Chariot that was attacking my forces and was currently in Madrid. I bribed a Phalanx and positioned him at the doorstep to Madrid... instead of attacking the Catapults, the Chariot took the bait and took on the fortified Phalanx. That was it, an army of diplomats followed until the city walls were down and the Catapults did the rest.

Qualicide · September 6, 2000, 17:43

how about taking a caravan that cant get past my fortresses and moving it back and forth on a railroad about 40 times a turn? or how about going about 10 spaces past my first city and building right near my 3 biggest cities?

this is why i play multi player

Dienstag · September 8, 2000, 00:33

This has happened more times that is reasonable:

Say you have a border with another civ (say, the French), and you amass a huge invasion force and park it right outside their closest city. Often to avoid the reputation penalty of a war of aggression I send an envoy and ask them to remove the units that are probably meandering around in my territory. And with a wave of death poised to crash about them should their response not thrill me, what do they say? "Blah, blah, blah...THIS MEANS WAR!" Well, they asked for it.

Scouse Gits · September 8, 2000, 07:26

The Chinese found themselves at war with me after they had stolen a tech. I grabbed a couple of their cities, and next turn decided to check intelligence. Nine of their cities were building Sun Tzu's Academy - in wartime not a bad move - except that they forgot that my spaceship was now half way to AC!
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SG(2)

September 8, 2000, 17:51

Were you playing a no-wonder challenge?

Scouse Gits · September 8, 2000, 19:45

No - nobody had built Sun Tzu. I didn't want it as I was aiming for a spaceship.
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SG (2)

September 8, 2000, 20:21

Yeah, but you still should have vet units to guard your capital.

Epik · September 8, 2000, 20:55

The Artificial Ignorance does seem to a nack for the big blunder...

I had a fortress built on a forrest that was 2 squares from an enemy city that I was preparing to assault. I was in the process of building up my forces and had 3 riflemen and an assortment of calvary and dragroons there (I think it was 8 total). The forest was on the shoreline....

Then an enemy fleet of destroyers, cruisers and one sub (7 total I think) shows up. Every one of them attacked my fortress... The result 7 ships sunk. Only minor damage to my troops.

I have no clue why the AI even tried that maneuver.

Scouse Gits · September 9, 2000, 02:20

SD - I was far ahead of any competition. The best offensive units available to the AI were Crusaders and Ironclads.

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SG (2)

September 9, 2000, 14:34

But you do know that AI vet ironclads have had a history of beating riflemen, don't you?

AsSmAn · September 11, 2000, 13:03

I once fought a enemy that had 19!!!! Nukes in 1!! city, guarded by 1!!!! riflemen!(AND HE WASN'T EVEN VETERAN!)

Scouse Gits · September 11, 2000, 20:42

SD - Vet Ironclads can deal with non-vet riflemen. However, the vet stealth fighters just may have had a small say in the matter!

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SG (2)

September 13, 2000, 18:37

How did you get stealth fighters before you had launched your ship? I never get stealth very quickly, b/c i make a bbeeline for SF and Superconductor.

SCG · September 14, 2000, 08:51

quote:

Originally posted by SilverDragon on 09-13-2000 06:37 PM
How did you get stealth fighters before you had launched your ship? I never get stealth very quickly, b/c i make a bbeeline for SF and Superconductor.

Stealth is often the first thing i research after fusion power in OCC. Depending on how quickly you get your ship built, it is quite easy to have stealth before launch. (i've had it shortly after the Apollo Program was built in some of the OCC games (non-senarios), leaving quite a few turns before launch). Since SG2 seems to have a multi-city empire, it would seem most prudent to build a stealth fighter in a city or 2 while other cities finish up the spaceship, as he probably isn't especially concerned about breaking Arii's launch record in this game

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April Cantor: Sire, in order to expand further we must first gain favor of the King

SCG: darn, I've never really got the hang of that tribute thing, guess it will be a long time until i make prince

*goes off and starts gifting gold and techs*

Murgatroyd · September 15, 2000, 00:00

This one happens to me in almost every game:
(please note: One of my goals for every game is a spotless reputation)
I am far ahead of everyone else in technology. I have an overwhelming military advantage. I discover Space Flight. Suddenly, all of the pathetic AI civs I have been tolerating send out their diplomats (or occasionally spies) to steal it. Now, I'm usually a nice guy, but this is intolerable. Of course, I declare war (after all, they were asking for it).I usually wipe out a couple of civilizations right then.
Then, when I discover the other two spaceship technologies, they do it again!

Murgatroyd

Scouse Gits · September 15, 2000, 00:29

SD - My stealth fighters were built after launch - but even before that, there was no way anything was going to successfully attack my capital (city walls/coastal fortress). In addition, prior to launch, a vet battleship was on patrol.

SCG - It was a nice game. I play mainly on large random maps. This time I landed in 1573.

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SG (2)

Longfistking · September 15, 2000, 09:24

(Even though I'm new to this forum I've played Civ II for years. Finally got up the courage . . . )
Diplomats keep coming up here, and I think the AI is dumbest in this regard. I've seen an AI civ send diplo after diplo to steal techs even though I'm maxed to the hilt in techs and military power, and I've nearly wiped their civs out. Once a civ-the Egyptians, I think it was-had one measly city on one pathetic island and they were begging and begging for me to trade for techs. Sure enough, they sent a diplo over and tried to steal something. Well, sir, I had a lot of cruise missles to unload then . . .
Another dumb trick the AI plays-it tries to figure out where your biggest shipyard is and send destroyer after destroyer to blast it, even though you've just sent most of your navy to their side of the map at the same time to blow them to smithereens. The AI could be a little more intuitive, I think.
[This message has been edited by Longfistking (edited September 15, 2000).]