Why the runaround? :)

[JimW]

I'm still very much a beginner at this game, but I like it.

I have a question, though. I notice that when the AI is left with a unit facing one of mine, grassland as far as the eye can see, instead of siimply attacking from that place in the next round, he runs around and attacks from one of the other sides, seemingly the direct opposite from where he started.

Why is that? Does it confer some advantage? Should I be doing the same thing in my turn?

JimW

[scott]

I have noticed this in AI multiplayer games. Sometimes the AI moves off a village and attacks you from grassland. I have no clue why it does this, but as advice to you, there are probably only 4 reasons you need to move:

1. attack from better terrain
2. make room for other attackers who may not be able to reach hexes on the far side
3. set up a backstab
4. get between the enemy and a wounded unit, protecting it with your zone of control

[JimW]

I have noticed this in AI multiplayer games. Sometimes the AI moves off a village and attacks you from grassland. I have no clue why it does this, but as advice to you, there are probably only 4 reasons you need to move:

1. attack from better terrain
2. make room for other attackers who may not be able to reach hexes on the far side
3. set up a backstab
4. get between the enemy and a wounded unit, protecting it with your zone of control

Yeah. A good number of the instances are where it's a one on one, no other units within movement range.

So it doesn't get me any advantage if I pull that knight off a village and run him around behind the skeleton?

I've done that, once or twice, figuring that there must be some advantage to it, only to have the skeleton, with 4 HP remaining, jump into the village in its move.

[Dave]

I have a question, though. I notice that when the AI is left with a unit facing one of mine, grassland as far as the eye can see, instead of siimply attacking from that place in the next round, he runs around and attacks from one of the other sides, seemingly the direct opposite from where he started.

Why is that? Does it confer some advantage? Should I be doing the same thing in my turn?

The AI does this because of the way an AI is programmed. The AI sees all possible attack options as being of equal value, so it makes an arbitrary choice. This is reasonable since in the situation described it confers neither an advantage or disadvantage on the AI.

It would be possible to make the AI weight not moving and attacking as being better than moving and attacking, if the options are otherwise seen as equally valuable. This would make the game move slightly faster and in a less confusing manner in a few circumstances, however it wouldn't make the AI any more effective.

David

[turin]

Dave:

Sometimes the AI moves off a village and attacks you from grassland.

Did you not read this? In situations like this, moving as opposed to not moving confers an obvious and rather important disadvantage. And yet the AI still does it... I've seen it move a unit from a village (60% defence) to swamp (30% defence) to attack a unit that was adjacent to the village...

[Sapient]

I think this is related to an AI bug that rusty recently fixed. (The AI would not attack from the location where it started, because it considered the space "occupied").This fix will be in the next release.

[zookeeper]

I think this is related to an AI bug that rusty recently fixed. (The AI would not attack from the location where it started, because it considered the space "occupied").This fix will be in the next release.

Yeah, I think this is it too. The bug, IIRC, caused the AI to not consider attacks which involved no movement at all, and thus it would commonly move out of a village or castle to attack the same unit from worse terrain.

[Dave]

Dave:

Sometimes the AI moves off a village and attacks you from grassland.

Did you not read this?

Sure I read this, but I was answering the OP's question, not Scott's comment.

However this would be an AI bug....I haven't seen this back when I programmed the AI, but if it occurs now then someone should file a bug report with a save as an example. However, Sapient seems to indicate it is a known bug which has been resolved.

David