Well if you ask me conquest has always paid off way more in Civilization (especially CTP, and WAY WAY more in CTP 2) than peaceful expansion. Which I don't mind becuase I like to blow stuff up.

What ticks me off about the AI though is that it still doesnt grasp some very elementary military concepts/tactics. Examples:

1) Blitzkrieg (sp?) works WAY too well against the AI - even on the deity/impossible setting you can totally whomp another CIV if you build 3 or 4 max stacks of troops and tear through your unexpting opponent at full throttle. Of course - I've played several humans who didn't know how to handle that either... }

2) Duuuhhhh....navy?....duuuuh....ships + troops?? - My impression of the AI and its grasp of naval combat -or lack there of. I love naval games so I usually play on a map with multiple large oceans and small continents and islands. I have yet to play a game where the AI launched anything but a laughable naval assault at me....no wait.....there was that one time that it landed a troop ship with 1 cavalry inside and backed it up with an aircraft carrier...without any aircraft on it.....ok, yea - it sucks

3) AI doesnt seem to realize where it needs extra protection. This seems to get a little better on VeryHard/Impossible setting but not by much. Sometime the AI will leave its border cities defended by 1 or 2 obsolete units - whats up with this? Other times the AI will put huge stacks of units in and around some random city that no one cares about and then leave a musketeer and cannon to guard the capitol..... ?

quote: Originally posted by Dom Pedro II on 12-27-2000 12:29 AM I have yet to see the AI make an offensive attack. The only time they fight back is when my troops are at their doorstep!

Sadly, since the AI "cheats" and knows exactly where your cities are and (on higher levels of difficulty) how well they are defended - the only time they will launch an offensive on you is if:

1) you are easily reachable (and I mean VERY easily)
and
2) you have a very weakly defended city

Otherwise forget about the AI ever doing anything to attack you. Another gripe I forgot to mention on the original post is the fact that the AI's will do nothing at all to stop you from rolling your legions of doom across the globe - if the AI's teamed up against you in an alliance they * MAY * be able to stop you - but this is not programmed in. It would not be too hard to do, and I think it should be in a mod or maybe Civ 3.

Other things not programmed in to the AI that could be and should be: