[licker]

There's nothing wrong with several smaller armies running around causing havoc generally...

The problem arises when these smaller armies are faced with a few different obsticales. The most obvious is when they hit a choke point, at that point they need to aggregate to take it, or find something else to do. Its also a problem when they suffer casualties becasue they are not large enough to overwhelm their weaker enemies, thats a matter of attrition. Even though they win, they get weakened, while the larger concentrated force loses less. Eventually this is a big problem.


Speculating here... but if the AI is going for a rapid conquest of neighbors (indies mostly in the first 20 turns) but loses more than it gains back in terms of income and production advantage from conquering more provinces quickly, then when it runs up against the human who did a slower expansion with more concnetrated forces, it will lose, as even if it has more income and production, it does not have the time to use them to recoup its initial losses. This of course is something that is difficult to account for from an AI perspective, but it could be an element in why some players are seeing AIs with smaller unit totals when they meet. On a bigger map with fewer AIs the rapid expansion should be more viable, on a cramped map, the concentration of units to minimize battle losses should be more viable.

I've got no idea how the AI handles different situations, or if it really does try different things for different situations. Some of these problems can probably be mitigated by the start up selections (as noted in other places) but maybe some more attention to how the AI responds to different starting conditions is appropriate.

There is also nothing really wrong with an AI having some single mindedness, like I'm gonna pull all my units into one army and charge your capital. Either it makes it or it doesn't (game over for someone), but at least it gives the apperance of making a bold move. From the demo I'd imagine its impossible to tell if the AI does resort to this tactic as there isn't enough time to make enough units to make it appealing (probably).