Matrix Games Forums

I was playing on a volcanic world and it was basically down to me and 2 majors. I declared war on the major to my south and beat him up pretty badly. He lumped all of his armor in his city, which allowed me to smash his infantry with my sole armor unit (and some walkers) and basically surround his main city completely. Then a few turns later it says my neighbor to the north is so strong won the game. But the game continues. What's going on? I'm not even at war with that neighbor.

I would check the victory report. Its possible your northern neighbor achieved 50% victory score without even attacking you.

The AI looves to recruit like Crazy, dropping it's population down to nothing.

It was propably down to your northern neighbour and your southern neighbour.
And all the losses you caused south, resulted in north winning by having the higher percentages.

Yes, AI not v. smart and shits out way more soldiers than a player would/should, although sometimes it's enough to overwhelm you nonetheless. They're sloppy at keeping models up-to-date, resulting in great masses of low-tech infantry that are easily swept aside by big armored formations with walkers sprinkled in.

However, it's easy for an AI to bloat in territory due to their amount of troops. I have "lost" games like this n large worlds because the AI Major not engaged in constant war expands to an enormous size and gets a huge amount of VPs.