AI and great leaders

[Kingreno]

I was playing a Sid game to see how the AI would use it's great leaders, both Scientific and Military. I put myself on an island far away to make sure I'd stay in the game long enough. Once I had espionage, and the AI were near the Modern age, I planted spies to see the military of my opponents. In the replay I counted no less then 18 Military Leaders for Germany, but they never had a single army!! They "could" easily build one with 30+ cities so that's not it. Other nations (all had at least 5+ Mil leaders in this slugfest) had no armies either. Come to think of it, has anyone seen armies with the AI in C3C 1.22?
The Babs had 2 sci-leaders and these were used for wonders. Germany had 2 too and used them for wonders as well. This is ok and at least a LOT better then an age of discovery, which does not work.

I am a bit annoyed by the mili leaders though. Armies are very powerful and so is the epic and the Academy...

[Kemal]

No the AI never ever creates an army with a leader in c3c. They will always use the hurry improvement feature, and that is really a shame indeed.

[Lt. Killer M]

KR, if the AI used a leader for an army - how do you think it would be filled?





















with the worst possible mix of outdated units, that's how. And that's I think why Firaxis removed the capability of using armies from the AIs.

[Kingreno]

But the alternative? Leader rushing temple or worse, that would have been build in 2 truns anyway? Even if they do not fix anything else I am sure that I prefer armies of any kind (there will be cav armies too) then leaders wasted completely.

[Kemal]

I'm not 100% sure how this works exactly, but I believe that even if you allow the AI to start with armies, there is a problem with how it fills them, I thought it had something to do with it not wanting to put in units with less or equal movement as the units that are already in it, thus ending up with armies filled with a swordsman, one knight, and one cav, and thus never for example a 3 cav army, or 3 infs.

As said I'm not 100% sure on the exact conditions for this, but there have been some threads investigating this at cfc.

[Kingreno]

quote:ending up with armies filled with a swordsman, one knight, and one cav

Beats a colosseum in a size 2 tundra town!

[Lt. Killer M]

actually it should have been simple to force the AIs to fill armies with only one kind of untit [rolleyes] @ firaxis

[Aggie]

We are waiting for a fix for a year now. Guess it won't happen anymore... But still the fact that the human army is too powerful is even worse.

[grahamiam]

quote:Originally posted by Kemal

I'm not 100% sure how this works exactly, but I believe that even if you allow the AI to start with armies, there is a problem with how it fills them, I thought it had something to do with it not wanting to put in units with less or equal movement as the units that are already in it, thus ending up with armies filled with a swordsman, one knight, and one cav, and thus never for example a 3 cav army, or 3 infs.

As said I'm not 100% sure on the exact conditions for this, but there have been some threads investigating this at cfc.

yes, i've heard from other's (doc t @ cfc, warpstorm, among others @ CFC) that it has a problem filling armies due to the increased movement point (ie, it always wants equal movement points, but gets confused because a cav army moves 4, but a cav only moves 3). however, fixing it by never building armies and rushing garbage seems equally inane.

i've also noticed, in the WWII scenario in conquests, Japan starts with a 1 tank army near the chinese border but never moves or fills the damn thing :(

[Socrates]

I'm also wondering... To my knowledge, a human player can't get another MGL if he hasn't used a first one yet (for SGLs it's OK). Am I wrong ? That means that the AI cheats : it can get useless MGLs without using them for armies !!! [lol] The AI cheats but doesn't know how to get advantage of it, ROTFL.

Question : in C3C 1.22, the AI NEVER NEVER NEVER builds an army, is that true ? But it can sometimes attack yours if enough conditions are there, it happened to me in my 1st game vs Stapel (that was the Germans), this I know.

In RoR in solo, the AI can fill its initial army. As Rome, I saw a Carthage AI come with a badly filled army, that I immediately managed to destroy. The army came from Carthage to Sicily IIRC.

[Kingreno]

In certain conquests the AI start with empty armies but they stop filling after just one unit...

[Matrix]

That's a damn shame and quite illogical to do too!

They used them to build armies in vanilla and PTW, while they could be used to rush wonders. (But that was ok.)
They don't use them to build armies in C3C, while they can't be used to rush wonders.
[crazyeye]

[the Last Conformist]

If you want the AI to use Armies in a semi-sane way in C3C, do this:

1) Reduce Army transport cap to one. This "fixes" AI's inability to fill them sensibly.
2) Given them a HP bonus. This restores the lost staying power from lessening the capacity.
3) Remove the "requires victorious army" flag from the Mil Acad.
4) Change the Mil Acad's function to spawning Armies (the AI won't build them).
5) Change the Pentagon's effectot spawning Armies (otherwise you get the filling problems back).

That's about the minimum. A fairly popular idea is to make the Palace spawn Armies at a low rate to ensure some Ancient Era AI armies. You might also want to remove the "Increased Army Strength" flag, to weaken Armies a bit. You can, of course, also fiddle with the HP bonus; personally, I feel that +5 is about right, making for a unit with twice the stamina of an Elite unit.

[Lt. Killer M]

wow, TLC, thiurd post here and already a whopper. Must give this a try [thumbsup]

[anarres]

Wow, some great suggestions! Have you tried it? Does the AI make use of them?

[the Last Conformist]

I've tried it a bit, and yes, the AI "gets" it.

(It still won't make Armies of its MGLs, of course, so the human retain an advantage there.)