As stated in another thread i really want to do some more AI work. So i would like to collect AI Problems that need to be adressed specific problems that arise with FfH but other Problems as well. So if anyone finds that an AI is dumb in the one or other respect pleas post it here.
Things that i feel need to be adressed.
FfH specific (and most probably not beeing solved otherwise due to further development of FfH)

AI building no Unit-Prerequisit Buildings in War or in preparation of a War. - Solution in testing
Mages are not yet moved in a right way (or were not?) - Scheduled for 0.13
AI units should leave the range of spellcasters if they cannot do anything against them (ships tht are attacked by landbased mages, small groups of units massing near mage defended cities)


Vanilla Problems (These might be more problematic as some might be adressed by the Warlords expansion)

AI attacking large stacks with counter units and never killing one foe when it has much fewer units. In this situation it would be much probably mor wise to mass some more units and attack the stack in one big strike - - Solution in testing.
AI not using Airforce well
AI not using Navy well
AI not moving workers, ships, Air force and Great People out of cities that will be captured the next turn.
Division of the Worldmap into too large Areas (AI wise, only on maps with large landmasses).
Units (Hill giants leave a city after the other defenders were killed)
AI moves single troops to the front instead of greater task forces that could defend themselves. (That one is difficult with the current implementation. Of the AI)


To check

Ai not building Roads before openBorders.
Barbarians sometimes not attacking other AIs.

This thread is a fantastic idea. Even though Im hesitant to make to many AI changes right now, it will be great to have a place to gather the ideas together.

After the 19th I'll run through a few warlords games and see how the ai has changed. I suspect the ai will be largely the same so if you have vanilla civ ai issues we should gather them here for consideration.

After the 19th I'll run through a few warlords games and see how the ai has changed. I suspect the ai will be largely the same so if you have vanilla civ ai issues we should gather them here for consideration.

You already have the Warlords expanison ?:eek: Or you play as a Warlord?:blush:

You already have the Warlords expanison ?:eek: Or you play as a Warlord?:blush:

I have the expansion but Im under NDA so I cant talk about any of the specifics.

I have not heared anything from you ... but i might send you some specific requests what to test. ;) Oh and mark some of the units and buildings as "have a final art" were Warlords provides already good models. No need for us to use our time for those too if firaxis will provide them in the future.

Some early entirely unrelated. As we non priviledged have read a lot about Warlords i request that you think about the Military Great Person, the Big Wall, and how we use them and other changes for the best of FfH... And of course the GengisKahn Settlemet that we might want to reuse for the hippus..

I have not heared anything from you ... but i might send you some specific requests what to test. ;) Oh and mark some of the units and buildings as "have a final art" were Warlords provides already good models. No need for us to use our time for those too if firaxis will provide them in the future.

Some early entirely unrelated. As we non priviledged have read a lot about Warlords i request that you think about the Military Great Person, the Big Wall, and how we use them and other changes for the best of FfH... And of course the GengisKahn Settlemet that we might want to reuse for the hippus..

;) Im all over it.

Being my usual on-top-of-things self, what's Warlords?

Also, I'm at the beach this weekend so won't be able to play any Civ IV.

Being my usual on-top-of-things self, what's Warlords?


http://www.civfanatics.com/news2/comments.php?id=762
The first expansion set that is released this summer.

Is anyone fiddling with the Leaderhead XML file? I've been going through it for the SMAC mod and there is a lot of untapped potential there.

Is anyone fiddling with the Leaderhead XML file? I've been going through it for the SMAC mod and there is a lot of untapped potential there.

All of the leader settings have been review for 110f (with a ton of changes). That webpage that was linked in the thread you started that listed exactly what everything does was VERY cool. :D

All of the leader settings have been review for 110f (with a ton of changes). That webpage that was linked in the thread you started that listed exactly what everything does was VERY cool. :D

That it was. I learned a lot, but also was dismayed at how often Firaxis simply had values put in that were the same for every civ.

That it was. I learned a lot, but also was dismayed at how often Firaxis simply had values put in that were the same for every civ.

To play reasonably the values have to stay within a certain range but I love how they left everything open so you can make a completly schizo Ai leaders if you want (*cough* *cough* *perpentach* *cough*).

Yeah. I just did that with Yang. Huge fun making a psychopath!

Without looking at the files I'd say that Basium has a high DogPile number! He was my best friend until someone else declared war on me. Then the opportunistic SOB stole 2 of my cities with Merc horsemen and landed axemen near my Capital! Fantastic Fun when the AI actually attacks me. :D

After the 19th I'll run through a few warlords games and see how the ai has changed. I suspect the ai will be largely the same so if you have vanilla civ ai issues we should gather them here for consideration.You make me infintely jealous ;). I'm going to have to find out where in England you are hiding!

Seriously though, I think it's great that they have somebody who is up there in the modding community tinkering, and giving feedback before the release. It also means you can do what you did with the SDK and provide all sorts of useful info on the day of release!

Back to the AI - as you said , I can't see the AI being changed that drastically. I imagine they will add code for the Warlord unit / mobile settlers, but most of the core will probably remain unchanged.

A niggle I have with the AI is that when it blockades my ports it is quite happy to sit there and take repeated fireballs from on land until it sinks. I realise that spells are going to be problematic for the AI and I am sure that this is just one of many.

Redradish

Good point thats also treu for land units that mass near cities with fireball mages. I'll include it in the first post.

For your original question on things we notice about the ai. This might be because he doesnt build pre req buildings and so has few choices, but he seems to build an extrodinarily high number of adepts. We saw him with more of them then anything else in some cities.

I think i already have solved that Problem. I just need the newest SDK source to test my code in this Version and than submitt a lot of AI changes for Kael.

One other thing that I have noticed about AI civs is that they rarely if at all use the 1st level water spell spring to turn their deserts into plains. This is a no brainer, there is no reason to leave them as deserts (OK - Sand Lions, but that ain't why the AI leaves the desert as is) and any old adept can grab that spell from the moment you get libraries.

At the moment I don't play arid worlds because I am too heavily advantaged in this respect.

Does the AI terraform at all?

Does the AI terraform at all?

I would terraform the tile when it randomly ends a turn on it (as far as i know) but it does not specifically move their water mages to deserts to terraform them yet. Thats a thing i hope to include into one of the unitais for mages.

I'm going to jump back onto my mapscript bandwagon and say that bad starting positions contribute to the weaknesses of the AI. Human players can restart if the start doesn't match the civ they are playing, but the AI has to play with the hand they're dealt. Luchuirp in the plains, the Elves in the mountains/desert, ect are all at a disadvantage that might possibly never be overcome. Just a thought.

I'm going to jump back onto my mapscript bandwagon and say that bad starting positions contribute to the weaknesses of the AI. Human players can restart if the start doesn't match the civ they are playing, but the AI has to play with the hand they're dealt. Luchuirp in the plains, the Elves in the mountains/desert, ect are all at a disadvantage that might possibly never be overcome. Just a thought.

Players that regen are giving themselves an advantage that the AI doesn't have. Nothing wrong with that if they choose to do it, but why code against it? I bet a lot of players play with the hand they are dealt (i never regen maps) and enjoy trying to makle the best of it.

Outside of that human and ai players starting settler has a huge move and sight bonus that allows them a lot more opportunity to pick their starting location than vanilla civ has. I think that accomplishs a lot of what your looking for in regards to fair starts (and makes it into a strategic decision instead of a process).

Outside of that human and ai players starting settler has a huge move and sight bonus that allows them a lot more opportunity to pick their starting location than vanilla civ has. I think that accomplishs a lot of what your looking for in regards to fair starts (and makes it into a strategic decision instead of a process).

Thats only an advantage for the human as the AI always found its city on place when it does not have any city.
I have tested switching this "forced found" of. It works well, (mostly AIs settle in place) but sometimes they wander for several turns. The latest i had an AI built a city was about turn 15 (but that was on an very crowded map). If we want to include it in the mod its just a question of 2 lines in the SDK :)

Hmmm. Could you not make it so that civs were more likely to start in regions that they have bonuses for? Something similar TheLopez's localized starting techs, but backwards...

Actually woodelf has propsed the same yesterday or two days ago.. seems like we have to look into that but it might be rather complicated.

What do you think maybe we should keep the generated starting positions, evaluate the value for each participation civ/starting position and redistribute them so that each one starts at the most fitting position.

Sounds like a very good way of doing it. I would have suggest tweaking the starting locations after the civs have been allocated, but I much prefer your method - alot tidier.

Yay, some disciples of woodelf! Seriously, if a mapscript can be done easily you wouldn't have to use it, but I'd love to try it out. Either of those two proposed methods would work, but I think making the map, checking the civs picked, and then setting them in ideal locations would work best.

I'm not sure I like that idea. I like the complete randomness of map generation, so if this is implemented I think it should be as a toggle, if only for my sake:) . A great part of the fun of FFH comes from starting in an area ill-suited for your civ, encountering a neighbour with the perfect land, and start an epic battle to regain your lost homeland.

Mapscripts are just a map option, like Panagea, Continents, ect. Purely optional.

A comment form woodelf in an other thread made me think of something that should satsify corlindale as well.

We simply let the human player(s) where the map script places them and move only the AI players to the best fitting starting position for them. So Corlindale gets his (sometimes) crappy starting locations and the AI gets its paradise.

A good compromise, but it's still just a map type, correct? Totally optional?

at the moment it is nothing at all.

but later on...not sure. either it would be done in the map script or in the main file. but im sure one would set a kind of customization option to switch it on/off

Added the road thing to the lists of things to check, the barbarian thing, too.

Repost from another thread:

The best TBS AI I've ever seen is GalCiv2's AI. If you need inspiration, just look there.

In particular, the latest version of GalCiv2 has a system where other races start ganging up on the most powerful race, usually you. Well, they don't simply gang up on you - they just start distrusting your intentions more and are much more likely to form an alliance against you. This "checks and balances" system is desparately needed in Civ4.

The other major AI blunder is more of a tactical one. The AI seems to always streams units to the front lines. This isn't so bad, until the front line collapses, in which case the units streaming in a slaughtered one-by-one. I'm not playing a hard difficulty, so maybe the AI doesn't stream at high difficulties. Nonetheless, this is one area the AI needs to focus on.

As for making the AI use spells intelligently, I don't envy your task :) Many spells are very tactical, and AIs make pretty bad tacticians.

If you really want the AI to be good, perhaps you should follow one of GalCiv2's design mottos: "only implement features that the AI can take advantage as well", or more concisely, "if the AI can't use a feature, don't implement it".

In particular, the latest version of GalCiv2 has a system where other races start ganging up on the most powerful race, usually you. Well, they don't simply gang up on you - they just start distrusting your intentions more and are much more likely to form an alliance against you. This "checks and balances" system is desparately needed in Civ4.This sort of system makes the game feel much more like a game, and kinda ruins the immersion. At the moment the AIs don't really play to win, they play to be opponents. This sort of dogpile effect is what you get when you play against humans, but lots of people are against it as a general rule against AIs.

That why it has not gone into the list to fix. ;)

This sort of system makes the game feel much more like a game, and kinda ruins the immersion. At the moment the AIs don't really play to win, they play to be opponents. This sort of dogpile effect is what you get when you play against humans, but lots of people are against it as a general rule against AIs.

It seems like AI that acts like humans is a good thing.

And from a personal standpoint, I hate when I've gotten stronger than everyone and its all boring work of one by one absorbing other empires into mine. Equally painful is trying to bring down an AI who's dominating when no one will help you (you just become their next target).

This sort of system makes the game feel much more like a game, and kinda ruins the immersion. At the moment the AIs don't really play to win, they play to be opponents. This sort of dogpile effect is what you get when you play against humans, but lots of people are against it as a general rule against AIs.

Really? I don't see how it ruins the immersion at all - it's perfectly realistic even in fantasy settings. You see examples of it everywhere. In the Warcraft 3 campaign, humans and orcs, which are bitter enemies of each other, unite against the Burning Legion. In LoTR, elves and dwarves dissolve their distrust for each other to stand against Sauron.

I don't see the distinction betwen "not playing to win" and "just being opponents". It's all a matter of challenge, which besides the immersion is what I play game for. And as I've just pointed out above, it's perfectly immersive.

Perhaps you're misunderstanding what I mean when I say "gang up on you". I don't mean that once you reach some critical threshold they'll all start attacking you. Now that's unrealistic and just annoying. Instead they'll be far more hesitant to trade techs, start forming closer relations with others instead of you, and in general start distrusting you. Naturally, you can just do what the US does today - no matter how much the world hates the US, the US holds them by the power of trade and economy. So a nation that focuses on trade and diplomacy can avoid other nations from forming an alliance against it.

I personally want AIs to be as human-like as possible at the highest difficulties, within the bounds of the lore of course. It's much more satisfying defeating a human-like opponent than having contrived handicaps to compensate for inferior AI.

How about making it switchabe with the default beeing off. Kind of an option like Aggressive AI?

Really? I don't see how it ruins the immersion at all - it's perfectly realistic even in fantasy settings. You see examples of it everywhere. In the Warcraft 3 campaign, humans and orcs, which are bitter enemies of each other, unite against the Burning Legion. In LoTR, elves and dwarves dissolve their distrust for each other to stand against Sauron.

I don't see the distinction betwen "not playing to win" and "just being opponents". It's all a matter of challenge, which besides the immersion is what I play game for. And as I've just pointed out above, it's perfectly immersive.

Perhaps you're misunderstanding what I mean when I say "gang up on you". I don't mean that once you reach some critical threshold they'll all start attacking you. Now that's unrealistic and just annoying. Instead they'll be far more hesitant to trade techs, start forming closer relations with others instead of you, and in general start distrusting you. Naturally, you can just do what the US does today - no matter how much the world hates the US, the US holds them by the power of trade and economy. So a nation that focuses on trade and diplomacy can avoid other nations from forming an alliance against it.

I personally want AIs to be as human-like as possible at the highest difficulties, within the bounds of the lore of course. It's much more satisfying defeating a human-like opponent than having contrived handicaps to compensate for inferior AI.

The adjustments for this already exist, they are iWorseRankDifferenceAttitudeChange and iBetterRankDifferenceAttitudeChange. The are set per leader and can be adjusted with the editor. In general good leaders dont adjust their attitude based on rank, netureal leader sdo slightly (dislaking people more poerful than them) and evil leaders do greatly (and are therefor more likely to jump on high ranked players). The adjustments are very slight but you may be able to tune to your prefered level of resistence by increasing the values.

How about making it switchabe with the default beeing off. Kind of an option like Aggressive AI?

That would work for me :)

I think for the "all gang up on dominator" strategy to work requires more action than simple dislike. Even when many people dislike you, none of them will declare war when they know individually they are incapable of challenging the dominator (which makes it fairly easy to broker peace with many of them).

The thing that needs to be done for such a strategy to work is a shift in the thinking of the non-dominators as a whole. Like Maians examples, the Orcs and Humans Unite against the legion, and the Humans, Elves and Dwarves Unite against Sauron, all despite ancient grudges or hatreds, because of the greater threat.
There needs to be Uniting, maybe force/allow a permanent alliance of all non-dominators?

Like, upon one Civ reaching critical dominion (maybe 50% higher score/whatnot than next highest rival, making them the Dominator), the next highest rival (or the greatest enemy of the dominator) has the option to do a Rally against the dominator (maybe requiring using a great leader, or building a wonder, whatnot).
This could create a temporary alliance lasting X turns or until threat is reduced to not being the top (whichever is longest). Maybe have joining the alliance variable (popup window for human players), dependent on whether that civs relationship with the Dominator and the Rallier.

Some obvious problems with the AI include the fact that they dont understand the abilities of spellcasters. This will take a lot of work and frankly i dont envy you.

Also, the AI doesnt ever seem to try and build better units. I almost always see clone armies of assassins and mercenaries running around (even if they have resources to build better units). Also I'm pretty sure the AI doesnt really understand that it gets a cool archmage if it levels its mage....

In my game as the Ljosafar I was getting my ass kicked badly (barbs at start then Vampire nation attacked me). However then I built a couple of Elven assassins - they wiped the floor with Moroi blood! The AI problem is that they just kept attacking me with Moroi hordes but I kept beating them with a handful of assassins (and the world wonder Elf guy)! My assassins got very powerful of course and I burnt nearly all their cities to the ground (just left them their capital in exchange for all their techs). The AI also made hunters but that didn't help them much. Therefore the problem seems to be the AI is not responsive to the type of units I'm using. They should realise they need to build units that can combat my assassins.

Yes, I believe that the AIs' biggest problem (in this more than in vanilla Civ IV) is that they don't play to win. It's moreso a problem here because they don't have any Space Race to fall back to. I'd say that, since conquest is really the only way for a person to get a victory, the AIs should be much, much more aggressive and have some sort of script to follow to gang up on people.

They shouldn't only gang up on strong people, as I know that many players have a bad habbit of just tech'ing up in the early and mid game and only building a military to go conquesting. The AI should definitely war in the mid game more often.

Concerning the playing to win...

I have some (i think) good idears what has be done to archive this, but in FfH we want the AIs not fixed as enemies, but as other reaces living on the same words, so to speak some as frieds some as enemies. But if we get one time to the Point where we can declare FfH as nearly finished i will implement those ideas in combination with a Game_Setting to switch it on/off. I hope you won't complain then if you loose every game and have to switch back to Settler :D

i usually play so that the game reccomends techs to me, but many times it reccomends techs i have no need for (fishing in a civ with no costal or freshwater cities, the tech deception which doesn't actually grant anything yet...)

with so many choices, the ai needs to be able to make descisions-like choosing farming and mining early on if they have hills and corn in their radius.

They check for some (not all) of those things as well, the AI_value of fishing for example depends on the number of costal cities plus some other aspects.
the AI also considers techs farther down the tree as next goal (whereas the proposal for the player only chooses between the available techs).

And the question is of course when does it propose this tech. Right at the beginning, or did you already have most of the tier 2 techs?

It could be needed to adjust some of the tech Values through (right now all tier 1 techs have the same price, all tier 2 techs as well and so on. So it might be needed to do some rebalancing there (for the players good as well as for the AIs))

Concerning the playing to win...

I have some (i think) good idears what has be done to archive this, but in FfH we want the AIs not fixed as enemies, but as other reaces living on the same words, so to speak some as frieds some as enemies. But if we get one time to the Point where we can declare FfH as nearly finished i will implement those ideas in combination with a Game_Setting to switch it on/off. I hope you won't complain then if you loose every game and have to switch back to Settler

Am I to take that as a challenge? ;)

You know, vanilla Civ IV is supposed to be the same way, which is the whole reason for Diplomatic victory. Meh, maybe I'll just have to get into some multiplayer games and see how that runs...

I was playing a game as Bannor and one of the good civs (who was human) built 2 or 3 earth mana nodes (more than one of the same type is useless currently). I saw 2 of their earth mana nodes but they had 3 earth mana (I hadn't seen all of their territory).

I would think it would be relatively easy to make ai only build their preference mana for the 1st one and then work out (or even random) which second mana type they want. When multiple mana of the same type becomes useful it might be good but the ai would need to calculate whether they can still use multiple mana of the same type.

The code is already in but commented out at the moment. it'll be activated in 0.15 probably.

I was watching the AI and Basium started building Basium right away. Built a worker when the city reached size 2 but then it was back to building Basium. By the time he was built they had lost everything the worker built but one piece of road to barbarians. As a result of spending so much time building him they were behind the other civs in every other way.

Also the AI doesn't know how to defend agains barbarians (or even that it needs to do so). They will send out units to explore and keep other units home to defend the cities, but they have no units to defend the border or improvements... resulting in many lost improvements and workers sitting idle in cities waiting for the nearby barbarian to be killed.

When it comes to warring I see two major flaws in what the AI does. It leaves too many defenders in their cities, allowing the enemy to come to them, and it doesn't bombard city defense enough. This leaves them with too few units attacking well defended cities having high defensive bonus' from culture... no wonder the AI have trouble taking cities middle/late game. Early they are much better at it, before culture defense and number of defenders are too high for them to deal with. I *think* FfH is better than vanilla here, problably thanks to heroes, but there's still a long way to go before the AI is as good as a human is with this.

Also the AI doesn't know how to defend agains barbarians (or even that it needs to do so). They will send out units to explore and keep other units home to defend the cities, but they have no units to defend the border or improvements... resulting in many lost improvements and workers sitting idle in cities waiting for the nearby barbarian to be killed.



Excellent point, snarko!

I think this affects you in your game, especially if you are playing raging barbs. What happens is the the AI civs are gradually wiped out until there are just a few left. If you have the misfortune to be with AI civs with the BAR trait, then you are in deep kimchi. This is because all of the barbs on the map come after you. Stacks of double digit barbs are very common.

Strengthening the AI of civs against the barbs will help spread out the barbs more evenly (unless the AI cheats by going after the human player with more barbs :p ) and make it easier to survive and let your civ grow.

Now, I am pinned down in one city fighting like mad just to defend my improvements - forget about settling another city. Also, the barbs have conveniently set up cities along my borders.

Good points but really difficult. The AI does at the moment not defend any Improvements, abd that usually with good reason. If the Ai will be allowed to defend the Borders and such it might spred out its units to far. That is good agains Barbariand that come in small number, but if it has spread out its units to defend its improvement when the player comes with a big stack they are easy to pick up and kill.

So deciding when to allow the Ai to defend Boarders and when not is not an easy task.

I let the AI play 1000 turns while I slept and here's some observations for when I came back (large map, 17 ai civs, pangea, raging barbarians).

Barbarians won't pass through the territory of someone with barb trait to get to someone they can attack. This late in the game there are few plots which are still neutral and a whole pack of barbarians stuck there because the land is surrounded by an AI with barb trait and ice.

Inflation hurt the AI late game. They are paying more for inflation than everything else combined. I guess it would be the same for a human, but a human would try to do something about it (ie win) instead of sit there waiting for it to increase even more, slowly being forced to go closer to 100% tax...
Also all the AIs are paying more for their military than their cities, but they don't use the military for anything.

The AI have run out of things to build, including units (they don't want more). With the exception of one civ (there are 9 left alive) they are building wealth in most of their cities. Some of these civs should easily be able to conquer one of their neighbours, but they don't. Not even if they don't like them. It's not because of defensive pacts either, there's only one such pact in the game. They're all pretty much doing nothing...


The kuriotates doesn't know that it should grow it's cities large. They have 40+ happiness but their cities are only size 9, 9 and 23. 23 because it's near a fish resource and three ancient forests on grassland. Using serfdom doesn't help them with this either, but they would not get the hammers back from switching to something else, so the main problem is not building more farms.

I let the AI play 1000 turns while I slept and here's some observations for when I came back (large map, 17 ai civs, pangea, raging barbarians).

Barbarians won't pass through the territory of someone with barb trait to get to someone they can attack. This late in the game there are few plots which are still neutral and a whole pack of barbarians stuck there because the land is surrounded by an AI with barb trait and ice.

This is changed in 0.14.

Inflation hurt the AI late game. They are paying more for inflation than everything else combined. I guess it would be the same for a human, but a human would try to do something about it (ie win) instead of sit there waiting for it to increase even more, slowly being forced to go closer to 100% tax...
Also all the AIs are paying more for their military than their cities, but they don't use the military for anything.

The AI have run out of things to build, including units (they don't want more). With the exception of one civ (there are 9 left alive) they are building wealth in most of their cities. Some of these civs should easily be able to conquer one of their neighbours, but they don't. Not even if they don't like them. It's not because of defensive pacts either, there's only one such pact in the game. They're all pretty much doing nothing...

I suspect this is vanilla behavior. But regardless I think we need to define our own process to help some wars happen. It will probably occur in "Fire" as we start to deal more closely with the endgame.


The kuriotates doesn't know that it should grow it's cities large. They have 40+ happiness but their cities are only size 9, 9 and 23. 23 because it's near a fish resource and three ancient forests on grassland. Using serfdom doesn't help them with this either, but they would not get the hammers back from switching to something else, so the main problem is not building more farms.

Thats a great point, I'll boost Cardiths chances of building farms in 0.14.

I've been playing a 3 vs. 3 team game of neutral/goods in automatic constant war with evils, and I've been noticing that the AI's on my team don't know how to deal with the raging barbs or the enemy teams (the enemies were doing pretty well since one had the barb trait and it was on deity which i think handicapps human players teams).

One of my allies (Amurites) was nearly wiped out and only had 1 city left, and they were only saved because I managed to get some werewolves to them and take over two cities and gave them them. With these werewolves she soon scoured the countryside and managed to stave off the barbs (less fog of war with so many units patrolling) and expand quickly.

My other ally (Bannor) did alright against the raging barbs due to sea "walls" that made them less accessible to most barbarians (lizardmen got through but thats still manageable), and by chance they built a city or two on hills (cities built on hills are a great early advantage for archers).
But, once they expanded they started making weak defense cities and stretched themselves too thin (most cities had 1 or 2 units) and got bowled over by the other team.
I had to go in and build cities then hand them over to them so they had defensible cities, plus I gave them werewolves.

I think their strategy is good for non raging barbarians, but given how much more difficult raging barbs is in FfH compared to Vanilla civ, I think they need to understand its "red alert" when raging barbs is on (and also when permanent war is on, as there are some powerful offensive civ units) and that their building, scouting, and improving need changes that reflect this.

During these "red alert" scenarios (or even temporary wars) I figure some guidelines are necessary:
-only build in highly defensible areas (on hills and tiles with high concentrations of impassible tiles as adjacent tiles, with greater weight on directly above or beside as opposed to diagonal)
-send out settlers in moderately calm spells
-send out stronger entourages with settlers
-recon units remaining near borders (not going out far, which usually just gets them killed; instead adding a buffer around borders in which barbs can't appear)
-possible entourages with recon units and ending turns in defensible tiles (like forests or hill forests, and tiles with lots of impassible tiles nearby)
Most importantly, extreme production of defensive units. In a previous game the Lanun were capable of making archers but kept outputting tons of adepts, and the hippus (also capable of making archers) were making warriors, while both were losing cities every turn (they kept tryin to make new ones often too).

I'm not sure if the AI for all that can be changed, but currently AI civs seem incapable of managing defense with raging barbarians or constant war (both sides in my current game wipe out each others cities regularly - but its constant war and raging barbs, but I've managed to keep all mine with no reloading... lost all my heroes though lol).

Good points - building on defensive tiles and having stronger entourages seems fairly easy to code surely?

Nope not as easy as it sounds. The problem is it would need differents AI and switch them dependend of the game setting. As you now know that Ai can't handle those settings you'll have to avoid them either or live with the not so good AI.

The main focus on teh AI will be laid at the "normal" settings for the time beeing. If that Ai works in a acceptable way one can think about specially adapted AIs.

I've been playing a 3 vs. 3 team game of neutral/goods in automatic constant war with evils, and I've been noticing that the AI's on my team don't know how to deal with the raging barbs or the enemy teams (the enemies were doing pretty well since one had the barb trait and it was on deity which i think handicapps human players teams).

=snipped=



Some excellent points here Sureshot.

I have never tried playing with teams - sounds, like fun. But, I play with raging barbs on (lower setting Prince or Noble) most of the time.

I think you are correct that raging barbs in FFh is more difficult than in the vanilla CIV. This makes it difficult for the human player, BUT also manageable if you persevere.

I mentioned my current game where I was getting smoked. Down to two other AI civs and I and both (Jonas and Charadon) have the BAR trait. They also both declared war on me so I had raging barbs and two civs attacking me. I was able to fend them off and acquire some obscene XP in my units 200+ from battling Jonas and Charadon.

You mentioned one sure fire way to change the balance of the game - the Baron and his werewolves. This has become my goal in every game. I watch as the AI builds up their techs and I go for Animal Mastery and Feral Bond. It takes forever (especially with only 1-2 cities), but it is a gamebreaker IMO.

Now, I have a army of powerful Greater werewolves able to handle anything the barbs or AI civs throw at me. I just wiped out Jonas and Charadon is next.

But, I think the main point to make is that still raging barbs is tough in FFh and this toughness takes its toll on the AI civs more than yours. You can deal with it and overcome, however, for now, I think if you play with FFh with raging barbs, most of the time the AI (without the BAR trait) will get wiped out.

One final point on the raging barbs that I mentioned before:

I think the creation of orcs and lizardmen for barbs in the early game was brilliant. However, later game really needs work. I mean the mounted units like chariots (I still think they come too early yr 250 for me), Royal Guard and Mercenaries are bizarre. I mean you might as well throw in a couple of F-16s and Abrams tanks as well. :D The worg riders are good too. Also, the orc macemen don't make much sense, but lizard assassins and rangers are a fine challenge and make sense.

I know all of this is being worked on, but that doesn't stop my annoyance when Royal Guards take out my improvements. Barbarians Royal???:confused:

I've never seen the Royal guards, but the chariots always seemed out of place.

A neat thing to do once you have werewolves is to let barbarians take all your cities so you don't have to pay upkeep and can let them increase in numbers without bankrupting yourself (need Complete Kills option checked).
Edit: That actually doesn't work I just found out, though without cities and units defending them I seem to be making way more from pillaging and razing than I lose from upkeep.

not sure if this has been mentioned. Im a builder type and i know that many have mentioned the endings before sio ill not go into that. The thing ive noticed the most is that many time if i dont attack people or i stay away from others and stick to myself the rest of the world wont go to war with each other. i think is odd that others should go to war even if im not attacking them they should fight amoung themselfs.

not sure if this has been mentioned. Im a builder type and i know that many have mentioned the endings before sio ill not go into that. The thing ive noticed the most is that many time if i dont attack people or i stay away from others and stick to myself the rest of the world wont go to war with each other. i think is odd that others should go to war even if im not attacking them they should fight amoung themselfs.

Yeah, we will be looking at scripting some wars in specific circumstances.

Seems to me that the animosity between good and evil doesn't come to anything more than trade embargos. Yes, yes, I know you guys must be working on it, and are most certainly aware of it, but I guess I'm just dissatisfied about there being all these awesome units doing nothing at all! I always turn on Agressive AI and Raging Barbs, by the way, but I think that these should be the default settings and there should be an option to make them even more extreme.

Perhaps the good and neutral, neutral and evil, and maybe even the good and evil Civs should be more likely to trade even with bad diplomacy, but also be much more likely to go to war? It's not so fun when you only have one or two trading partners...

I besieged a city with a queen of the line filled with 3 eaters of dreams and 3 archmages all with fire III and twincast.

There were so many defenders that it took many turns to take it down (+120% city defense). Inside the city were about 5 queen of the lines.

The problem is that the ai didn't recognise that it could easiely destroy my best units with just sacrifing one of his ships.

Maybe the queens just need to be marked as offensive units because they are the most powerful ships in the game.

Thats a bit of a problem. The higher level AI does not change the UNIT_AI aftre it has been built. So it built those QoLs as transporters and won't change them to attack when needed. Unfortunateley its not easy to decide when to change a AI, but the general problem is known and listed in the first post.

Unfortunately that was one AI problem present in Civ3 that didn't get fixed. Exact same thing happened there and was complained about there.

Then maybe go with the flow, and make two ships, one a transport with less strength and maybe higher defense, and the other with more strength and no transport ability?

A pure attacker ship might be a nice idea.

I aim for the AI change some time in the future. It will be needed for Mages (so that they build nodes, terraform and enchant in peace and go offensive/defensive in war), so it can be implemented for ships as well. Just a matter of hard thinking when to change the AI of the ships and to which degree.
(possibly it gets easier when i slip in another layer into the war AI - as i plan - that coordinates the now independendly operating selection groups)

I had mentioned this in the Bugs thread and then noticed this thread: the AI does not recognise water-born threats for protecting its workers. I plopped a water-walking land unit next to a barb worker, and it kept working the next turn (http://niilo.ca/temp/no-threat.JPG).

Another problem I noticed with the AI that I don't see in this thread: logical choices for unit promotions. I've seen some fairly silly choices made by the AI, and it would be nice if, for example, the AI started choosing Elf Slaying if it was at war with an elven civ.

- Niilo

Another problem I noticed with the AI that I don't see in this thread: logical choices for unit promotions. I've seen some fairly silly choices made by the AI, and it would be nice if, for example, the AI started choosing Elf Slaying if it was at war with an elven civ.

- Niilo

Actually we have code that does exactly do this, elf slaying when at war against elves, shock when you have a lot of melee units and so on. But we did not check it in yet as we try to check in one big Change in the SDK at a time. That makes it easier to track bugs. Probably the code will go into 0.15 were some AI changed are sheduled.

Sweetness! :goodjob:

Two other things:

The AI doesn't seem to understand the usefulness of units with the Medic promotions. Perhaps this is simply part of the AI's reluctance to mass troops together, but it seems like I've had a lot of lone prophets and such thrown at my borders.

Playing as the Ljosolfar, I used to think that the ancient forests / treant thing was pretty cool. Now that I'm invading a Fellowship empire with many ancient forests, I realise it isn't that big of a deal to weave your way around them. I'm pretty sure the AI doesn't realise it can do the same thing to avoid the possibility of creating treant adversaries.

- Niilo

The second point is actually a real Problem and as things stand i would even remove the Ancient forest treant spwaning for the AI. Why? The AI always chooses that path that provides the best defensive Positions for the final plot (where it comes to rest each turn). The problem with that is that the pathfinding algorithm is within the .exe and so not accessible for us.

Ok there could be one way that emulates the behaviour you are doing. Give a negative Defensive Bonus to the ancient forest and include a new SDK routine that removes that one and adds a positive defensive bonus. This way one could trick the pathfinding routine (hopefully) into avoiding ancient forests, but as you can see for yourself its a very dirty workaround. Furthermore that workaround would negatively influence the AI when fighting a defensive war as it would avoid its own Ancient forests, too. So no real solution here.

ABout the medics. Yes vanilla AI does not understand how to use them - it accidentially moves them with the troops as its medics are mostly UNITAI_ATTACK units. But there is a new UnitAI (UNITAI_MAGE_BUFF in Worldbuilder) that is designed for Medics and Buff Mages, but it is not yet performing optimal and therefor i dealt it out very rarely.

Chalid, could you make it so that the ancient forests only give defense bonuses to the people that own them, and then use the SDK to give the same bonus to everyone else? Seems like that might make the AI use their own ancient forests more properly, but I'm not sure if it's possible.

Or, how about taking an easier route - Ancient Forests give no defensive bonus (or even a negative defensive bonus, if that's possible) by default, and Elven/Fellowship units get a promotion that boosts their defense in them? The trees are old... and sentient... and wary of visitors. It might be easier to defend yourself from other humanoids in the forest, but that won't help you when you'll spend most of your time fighting off the forest itself.

That still wouldn't solve the problem of an Elven AI taking its units to Ancient Forests, but maybe those units could be set not to trigger Treant spawning? The trees will fight to oppose those who would hurt them, but will not touch those who they know to be their friends - no matter the internal squabbles their friends might have.

Thoughts? That would both be flavorful and solve the problem neatly, without resorting to dirty (and maybe resource-intensive) SDK-tampering.

That still wouldn't solve the problem of an Elven AI taking its units to Ancient Forests, but maybe those units could be set not to trigger Treant spawning? The trees will fight to oppose those who would hurt them, but will not touch those who they know to be their friends - no matter the internal squabbles their friends might have.
I like that idea.

- Niilo

In my current game, I noticed the following :

The Balseraph had built Loki (good), but kept him in their capitol all the time (bad), probably for the Gipsy Wagon-like culture effect or maybe to have a permanent Inspiration spell in their capitol. Anyway, it doesn't seem correct to lock their civ-only hero for tasks a couple of low cost units can do as well, and deprive themselves for Loki's unique skills.


The Malakim have trouble expanding, but they hardly make any effort. As of year 300, they still only have their capitol and are packing LARGE amounts of units (90% archers, with a couple of warriors and workers) inside without ever thinking of building a single settler. Their starting pos is near toundra, so I guess they had trouble in the beginning and lost land to their neighbours (they are currently surrounded by the Dovellio and another civ although I don't remember which one exactly), but still they have a perfectly good location for settling inside their own boundaries (a Gold resource, along with another one I can't remember, possibly rice or reagents).

My guess is that they still didn't get Mining so they can't exploit the gold resource yet and just dont go for it because they don't yet have a city that could use anything the Mining tech grants :crazyeye: Another possibility is that they don't want to settle right there because it's right against the Dovellio borders, which they have been at war with for the last ~100 turns (the war is not even likely to end soon : it will take centuries for the Dovellio to kill the ~12-15 archers in the Malakim capitol, and the Malakim don't look to have the tech and prod required to force their way through the land). I should also mention that I have supplied the Malakim with free sheep and horses almost since the war began since they were small and extremely far away from me while the Dovellio were already large and spreading like crazy. Anyhow, the Malakim STILL don't have a single mounted unit and won't get out of their city to grab whatever land/resources are still available to them.

Anyway, after 300 turns they really should have got the tech (if not alrdeay) and the gold resource : it's only 4 squares away from their palace, and there are 2 perfectly settable tiles that would grant them both the gold and the other resource. I think the AI just didn't choose its priorities well enough and ended up locking itself into a full-defense strategy it has no chance of escaping from. I guess "Something" (yeah, that's not very precise) could be done to force the AI out of this behaviour... making it avoid the situation might be really hard, but doing something as simple as forcing it to produce offensive units from time to time seems necessary.

In my current game, I noticed the following :

The Balseraph had built Loki (good), but kept him in their capitol all the time (bad), probably for the Gipsy Wagon-like culture effect or maybe to have a permanent Inspiration spell in their capitol. Anyway, it doesn't seem correct to lock their civ-only hero for tasks a couple of low cost units can do as well, and deprive themselves for Loki's unique skills.

Yeah we will need special ai for loki and the wagons. Rioght now the ai isn't to good with them.

The Malakim have trouble expanding, but they hardly make any effort. As of year 300, they still only have their capitol and are packing LARGE amounts of units (90% archers, with a couple of warriors and workers) inside without ever thinking of building a single settler. Their starting pos is near toundra, so I guess they had trouble in the beginning and lost land to their neighbours (they are currently surrounded by the Dovellio and another civ although I don't remember which one exactly), but still they have a perfectly good location for settling inside their own boundaries (a Gold resource, along with another one I can't remember, possibly rice or reagents).

My guess is that they still didn't get Mining so they can't exploit the gold resource yet and just dont go for it because they don't yet have a city that could use anything the Mining tech grants :crazyeye: Another possibility is that they don't want to settle right there because it's right against the Dovellio borders, which they have been at war with for the last ~100 turns (the war is not even likely to end soon : it will take centuries for the Dovellio to kill the ~12-15 archers in the Malakim capitol, and the Malakim don't look to have the tech and prod required to force their way through the land). I should also mention that I have supplied the Malakim with free sheep and horses almost since the war began since they were small and extremely far away from me while the Dovellio were already large and spreading like crazy. Anyhow, the Malakim STILL don't have a single mounted unit and won't get out of their city to grab whatever land/resources are still available to them.

At a high level the playerai is deciding that its on the losing end of a war so its putting all of its resources into defence (hence the stacks of archers). Which, although it may not be a good strategy in a specific situation is a decent strategy overall. You certainly wouldnt want to push the ai to make settlers which it was in difficult wars.

Anyway, after 300 turns they really should have got the tech (if not alrdeay) and the gold resource : it's only 4 squares away from their palace, and there are 2 perfectly settable tiles that would grant them both the gold and the other resource. I think the AI just didn't choose its priorities well enough and ended up locking itself into a full-defense strategy it has no chance of escaping from. I guess "Something" (yeah, that's not very precise) could be done to force the AI out of this behaviour... making it avoid the situation might be really hard, but doing something as simple as forcing it to produce offensive units from time to time seems necessary.

If the Malakim are more powerful than the Doviello than it would be appropriate to produce offensive troops. But if it is trying to outlast the war it is doing the correct thing (in general).

I globally agree with your comments regarding the Malakim, it's just that in that particular situation it feels wrong to me. That said, I'll try to have a look in the worldbuilder and the game log... maybe they already lost a couple of cities, or the Dovellio have a lot more units nearby than what I can see now (zero... but all I see is from religion-spying so it's not very accurate), and that alone would justify sitting on their rock till the end of the game.

Another Vanilla AI problem:

The AI is very happy to destroy improvements and roads within an enemy's borders. One problem with this is that they sometimes do it at the expense of attacking the nearby city, something that I've used to my benefit in the past (e.g., building roads and cottages on tiles that I can't even work, since it'll take two turns to pillage it).

Another problem is that those improvements can be quite useful when you've taken over a city, especially the roads which give nothing when you pillage them. Perhaps a quick check by the AI to see if they are 'confident' that victory over the city units is assured?

One final thing is that it is quite useful to pillage roads in 'wild' areas sometimes, especially those roads in tiles adjacent to your borders. Anyone can use those roads, and that typically means the enemies of said empire will be using them to zoom into the city radius. As well, in my most recent game I took the dragon hoard which was far away from my empire (hey, we dwarves need our gems!). I wanted to keep a route to the city so I selected one that went through a jungle/hill and pillaged the rest. That way any barbarians coming from that direction either had to try to oust my fortified units (not much chance of that) or try to sneak past off the road - and I had some mobile units on the hill to pick off those ones.

- Niilo

Noticed this last night - AI leaders with the BAR trait still dispatch units to barbarian cities, then sit them outside not doing anything until the city is taken or razed by another player.

AI never knew how to choose right promotions for it's mages, and it's still not quite good, so why not incerting the good(checked by people) development strategies for adepts/mages/etc? I post this because I see very often AI's Archmages/Summoners with only combat and some other unusefull with good spells promotions, it is really rare when I see AI's mage which promotions is looking ok, another thing, maybe mages and heroes dont attack when having low odds, but they still move to dangerous enemy lands without enought escort, risking to be killed. For example, Basium is always going allmost alone to the enemy lands, it's suicide even if he wont attack with low odds... AI get his mages and heroes killed very fast, while almost never killing my, I can't imagine human player doing such a things...

And something else: I noticed that AI when declares war looking only on diplomatic relations between our states and on our military count, so I made an expiriment, I started game and from the first turn of it built my capital in the very north of the map, surrounded with ice, and with only 1 tile to access to it(used the editor), built 7-10 immortals in this city and gived AI teams much time to grow, after some of this time theyr teams started to declare war on me, my only city was comletely unusefull, they couldn't take it so easyly because of immortals, but they declared war anyway..

I thing that before starting a war AI should realize first what it possibly can gain by it, second is what is his odds to win(not talking about numer of troops), by WIN i mean capture at least 1 usefull city or if enemy is tecnicaly more advanced and will win the game someday, it should realize how big the chance to break enemy empire

Recently, I was the Malakim, and Morgoth was my neighbor. I converted him to the Order, but for some reason he was still annoyed with me...

The diplomacy screen showed that he should have a net +5 relation with me, but this doesn't seem to be the case. Is there something wrong with the way that religions/alignment effect diplomacy?

I posted this in the "bugs" thread, but the more i think on it the more i believe it's an issue with the AI

Farms:

These are only ever built on the periphery of my territory, and i cant tell if this is because of the allowance of the Kuriotates to access the third tier of city radious. But the only place farms get built (by automated workers) is in that third radii. All other territory is built up with cottages, workshops (if appropriate) and windmills/etc. Farms are always neglected. Mines are also neglected, and i have a lot of naked hills until i can build windmills. Normally i would believe that my workers are merely on "priority" however, i've noticed that they will "finish" working and go hide in my cities instead of putting something up on my naked hills OR changing landscape into farms (even if i dont yet have education) but DO have agriculture.

I'm not sure if the AI is behaving differently because of the 3rd teir mentality, but to test this theory, i had two cities built pretty far away from each other, say 7 or 8 squares. The two immediate rings around these cities were filled with cottages, the 3rd ring of each was filled with farms. I then placed a city exactly inbetween them. After everything had been built......this was in order to take advantage of all those farms built, my workers then IMMEDIATELY destroyed the farms and put up cottages. This anti-farm mentality my workers have, make it virtually impossible to build farms if i EVER want any automatic workers. This also means that i'll never really use Aristocrasy......as I have cottages, which produce MORE gold anyway, plus i dont have any farms in city radii anyway, so it doesnt matter.

Now I've played the Boy-kings empire enough to apprecaite the awesome capabilities of that culture, but for other civs it seems like farms are still necessary (or at least should be acceptable to workers). All my strategies have had to alter to "im not getting much food, but ill have more gold." My cities grow slower, consequently, and this is FINE......but it takes away one whole PURPOSE to an entire improvement-type.

This may just be an AI bug, but i suspect it has to do with the ai thinking about towns being near the city, and farms being on the edge. I am thinking that the AI doesnt differentiate between the Kuriotates and everyone else, so it puts "farms" on the periphery (3rd tier) of every city, regardless of faction. All "inner" squres get town. This is a great idea, except that not everyone can access that 3rd teir, and farms should be on the 2nd. NOt sure how to fix this.

-Qes

That is a problem of the tech tree. The ai selects which improvements it wants to have built even if it cannot built them so it keeps some tiles unimproved until it has the planned improvement available.

The farms are built next to cities to spread irrigation.
unfortunateley the AI has most of the time improvements available that are better than farms (in its view) and plannes those inside the cities. Right now i also know why (did not think about it until wrinting this...) The reason is the seafaring tech. When planning improvements the AI considers all available techs. With the -1 food for seafaring farms are no valid improvement to be built inside city radii for the AI.

It will be solved in 0.15.

That is a problem of the tech tree. The ai selects which improvements it wants to have built even if it cannot built them so it keeps some tiles unimproved until it has the planned improvement available.

The farms are built next to cities to spread irrigation.
unfortunateley the AI has most of the time improvements available that are better than farms (in its view) and plannes those inside the cities. Right now i also know why (did not think about it until wrinting this...) The reason is the seafaring tech. When planning improvements the AI considers all available techs. With the -1 food for seafaring farms are no valid improvement to be built inside city radii for the AI.

It will be solved in 0.15.

I'm glad it'll be solved, how (because im curious) do you plan on fixing it to keep the tech tree generally as is (or if your not thats interesting too), while also keeping the AI on being prioritzational?
-Qes

In turn 353 (normal game speed!!) garimm gyr still defends all of his cities with warriors. He was completle defensless and crushed after a few turns. The Problen: he was ahead tech wise and had a far bigger empire than me.

Recently, I was the Malakim, and Morgoth was my neighbor. I converted him to the Order, but for some reason he was still annoyed with me...

The diplomacy screen showed that he should have a net +5 relation with me, but this doesn't seem to be the case. Is there something wrong with the way that religions/alignment effect diplomacy?
Net diplomacy modifier does not absolutely determine AI mood. I noticed this when I installed the advanced foreign advisor mod for vanilla civ, which showed everyone's net diplo modifier in relation to everyone else in the game. I found it interesting how some would be Friendly at +5 yet just pleased at +8 for someone else.

- Niilo

another thing, maybe mages and heroes dont attack when having low odds, but they still move to dangerous enemy lands without enought escort, risking to be killed. For example, Basium is always going allmost alone to the enemy lands, it's suicide even if he wont attack with low odds... AI get his mages and heroes killed very fast, while almost never killing my, I can't imagine human player doing such a things...
I agree with this problem. AI heroes don't concern me because they'll eventually be left alone.

A similar problem is the protection of injured regular units, especially when they just won a battle (and XP). A prime example of this in my last game was when a lowly Lizard Ranger (if I remember correctly) managed to kill my first Order hero (Valin?) - I was so pissed the computer chose to have him defend my city instead of the freakin' Heavy Crossbowman, but that's an unecessary aside. Anyway, I couldn't resist and I checked the AI unit's XP total with the World Editor. It had gotten ~50 XP from the battle. Yet the stack of AI units next to it didn't bother to protect their new 'hero' and I killed the sucker before he could gain his 5-6 levels.

- Niilo

Yes each AI Stack operates completely independend of the other stacks thats really a shame and thats teh reason why you often see lone units wandering around. I have a concept in mind to change that but after implementing it it will need very very much testing.

Is there a mechanic to change the AI costs of specific buildings? I know (obviously) that the AI at higher levels has 'discounts' on required hammers, but if the AI archery range was 1/2 cost maybe it would make some instead of defending cities with Warriors and Hunters for so long.

I know in the end this is just more 'cheating' to give the AI balance that many Civ players dislike, but I think it's a reasonable way to produce a better AI.

Is there a mechanic to change the AI costs of specific buildings? I know (obviously) that the AI at higher levels has 'discounts' on required hammers, but if the AI archery range was 1/2 cost maybe it would make some instead of defending cities with Warriors and Hunters for so long.

I know in the end this is just more 'cheating' to give the AI balance that many Civ players dislike, but I think it's a reasonable way to produce a better AI.

The consequence of AI cheating, other than feeling cheap, is that it is the AI's insistances that create the issue.

For example. If the ai, instead of building an archery range, decides to build 5 or six warriors. If you gave them a cheap archery range, would have 3-4 archers.

Now if im facing them, and i upgrade, then i may have 1 or 2 archers facging their 5-6 warriors. If they cheat, then they may have those 3-4 archers faceing my 1-2 archers. This is directly a problem, since i no longer have the technological edge. As it is, i've not really run into a computer player having mostly warriors. In fact, often enough they've more and higherly advanced units than i do. But I maintain a very small army, usually. Anyway, If there is a "warrior" surplus, on the part of the AI, it would be my guess that there are other considerations at hand. For example, its productive cities are building wonders, and buildings instead of units (which may be able to be upgraded versions), and its periphery cities, that cannot produce as much are in charge of units, which means warriors, since the cost of buildling archery ranges is a little high for non-productive cities.

I'm not really sure how this issue can be remedied without creating an inate discomfort in the mouths of players facing those enemies. As it wouldnt "balance" it, but instead balance it in the opposite direction.
-Qes

Personally im like the AI sometimes, and don't want to bother building things like Archery ranges, because they do nothing except allow building a unit i may not build many of there (usually i have one city with an archery range and send troops to places).
This would be fixed if all unit-allowing buildings gave some bonuses (like Hunters Lodge, which has +1 health for deer and +1 happiness for furs, which is likely why the AI's build them).

Personally im like the AI sometimes, and don't want to bother building things like Archery ranges, because they do nothing except allow building a unit i may not build many of there (usually i have one city with an archery range and send troops to places).
This would be fixed if all unit-allowing buildings gave some bonuses (like Hunters Lodge, which has +1 health for deer and +1 happiness for furs, which is likely why the AI's build them).

Yeah, I wouldn't mind that at all. I guess the only problem is trying to figure out how to make it believable. What would allow both archery units, and give a city bonus at the same time?

Maybe defense bonus? Or increased military production? +1 happiness for Military state civic?

Yeah, but it would still be a military bonus, so I don't know if the AI would build it. Do they often build palisades and such? The +1 happiness for military state might work, but it might also be too specific.

The new buildings schould give Bonusses that the AI recognizes (at least some of them give +1 XP for some unit. So they should be built more often in 0.14 than they where built in 0.13).

Yeah, but it would still be a military bonus, so I don't know if the AI would build it. Do they often build palisades and such? The +1 happiness for military state might work, but it might also be too specific.
I often see palisades in barbarian cities that have been around awhile.

- Niilo

I often see palisades in barbarian cities that have been around awhile.

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that the barbarians give a much bigger weight to military buildings than the normal AI does. We'd probably need some sort of non-military bonus to go with each one. Maybe bonuses could be added, but then taken away with the SDK so that the AI is fooled into thinking that it's building an economic structure but is actually setting itself up to build some better units? Sounds messy, but hasn't it been done before?

Actually There is some code that checks if the AI can built a good unit in the town and if it can not it checks if it can built a better one with some building. Its just not yet included as we hope it works out with those small boni. If it does not then that code will get into some AI Patch for 0.15.

Ok two things I noticed in my last game:

- The AI build a work boat in a coastal city that was complete surrounded by ice. Maybe a check if boats can ever leave the city should be applied here.

- Automated workers should see new forests as forest, so that they don't take it down instantly after bloom (they did this while "automated workers leave forests" is on"

In my current game tasuke always summons law bringers and attacks me with them. As I am playing Bannor with the Order they always withdraw.

Maybe the Ai should check for their opponents aliegnment before they summon anything.

I thought I saw some quality AI behavior yesterday. Doviello declared on Banor (me) and that was not strategically brilliant, as I had a nice cadre of crack Guardsmen and Doviello was invading with Warriors and Hunters. So the war did not go exactly according to Doviello High Command plan. As I was consolodating and healing my army outside the walls of my last war objective, a nice fat rich 75% defense city sited on what was obviously Bannor soil, the clever AI behavior happened.

The scond half of the evil duo lying to me west, Svartalf - tied with Khazad for high score, only* non-adherent of Leaves on the continent (OO) and furious with Bannnor - jumped into the war. They backstabbed Doviello, yeah! Doviello had been bled white trying to defend that last city. The Black Elves didn't make the obvious move: attack the Good empire. They are trying to absorb the rump Doviello. Cunning Elves!

When I sued for peace, Doviello offered me one of their three memaining cities! It's garrison had been knocked down to 3 Warriors by sending reinforcements to my new city, so I guess the AI concluded (correctly) it could not hld te city against the Svart's Drown. I've had the AI agree to give up a city before, but rarely, I cannot recall them OFFERING the city in the opening negotiation, and always the city was some piece of junk in the hinterlands. But this was a prime city, stuffed full of buildings. So this was a bit out of my normal Civ experience, too.

I thought both events were great. One robust realm is a more intresting opponent than one robust realm + an Achillies' Heel of an ally. I thought I picked up in some thread that this sort of behavior is a goal of the AI coders. Doviellos city offer was unusual, and ratehr shrewd. Soo, I figured a :goodjob: confirmation post was in order. ;)

[Edit: I tell a lie...Khazad follows Runes. ]

Does the AI know how to fight a defensive war? For instance, does it keep its units home when attacked by a much more powerful empire, or (and this is my suspicion) does it send out extra units to be squashed?

It would be a nice touch if the AI would also help defend allies in war, though I doubt this would be easy to code. For instance, A and B is at war with C, but B is in between A and C. It would be useful for the alliance for A to shore up some of B's defenses along the A/B border with extra units.

Right now there is a diplomacy option to ask your war ally to concentrate attacks on a certain city. I don't even know if this does anything (haven't yet seen any obvious effect), but perhaps this can also be a request to help defend a city that is being targetted by the enemy (especially since the AI seems to have tunnel-vision when it comes to conquest).

- Niilo

Ok, I don't know if I can classify this is an AI problem, but it is a cheese strategy anyway, and it happens in vanilla too.

I'm the Tech leader on the game, A military force A declares war on me, arriving with full force on my borders, ready to crush my brilliant civ. I go and bribe, using techs, one of A neighbours to declare war to A. A then, withdraw completely from my borders to protect the other, opening for my invasion.

I think the AI should break the army in 2, not go full on one of the bordes.

I agree, though I feel this falls under the problem with fighting defensive wars. A declares war on B when A is superior. B gets C to join in the war, making A inferior. A should pull back troops to defend territory, waiting for a decent opportunity to strike into B's or C's lands (if ever). As it is, I think the AI will either continue with its invasion, send its invading troops to attack the new enemy, or a combination of the two - effectively depleting its army when it should be turtling.

- Niilo

the ai understands promotions somewhat on the offensive but not on defense(without the % odds to show effectiveness)
ie:the ai puts guerrila 1 comb 1 in cities not in hills, while keeping the city defense 1 archers in the hill cities.
can the ai be made to micromanage it's defense?
or at least put gerruilla archers on hills...

the ai understands promotions somewhat on the offensive but not on defense(without the % odds to show effectiveness)
ie:the ai puts guerrila 1 comb 1 in cities not in hills, while keeping the city defense 1 archers in the hill cities.
can the ai be made to micromanage it's defense?
or at least put gerruilla archers on hills...


The units we see in game, may in fact just be in transit to some place the computer thinks is necessary to garrison. If your on the verge of capturing a city, and there are units that receive bonuses in hills or forest squares in that city, it might be simply becuase its trying to garrison ANY units it can in that city. Units outside the city that are more for "city defense" might be going to or from another city, and you caught them in transit. Hard to know what the computer is doing when your not directly influencing the situation.

-Qes

EDIT: Eerr, i just now noticed you've Sheepzor in your signature. Good. I'm proud o' ya boy!

The units we see in game, may in fact just be in transit to some place the computer thinks is necessary to garrison. If your on the verge of capturing a city, and there are units that receive bonuses in hills or forest squares in that city, it might be simply becuase its trying to garrison ANY units it can in that city. Units outside the city that are more for "city defense" might be going to or from another city, and you caught them in transit. Hard to know what the computer is doing when your not directly influencing the situation.

-Qes

EDIT: Eerr, i just now noticed you've Sheepzor in your signature. Good. I'm proud o' ya boy!
but having guerrilla 1 andcomb 1 on a hill and city def 1 in the flatlands city makes more sense...

Sheepzor o.O

but having guerrilla 1 andcomb 1 on a hill and city def 1 in the flatlands city makes more sense...

Eh, True. This is very true. Well I'll just hope that Chalid is doing well. Under his wants and wishes, the AI will crush players on "walk in the park" difficulty settings. So on my level of prince, I think chalid would only be content of the AI reached out of the screen and punched me.

I trust that this amung many issues will be resolved.
-Qes

Sorry if this has been mentioned.

But the AIs that hate Entropy mana should red-line it to aviod you gifting it to them. I did this once to make two AIs not as friendly towards each other.

Or just provide a penality for actually using the entropy mana, not just having access to it (e.g. giving spell casters the entropy promotion).

One of my recent games had an adept belonging to Sheaim cast Enchantment on my troops that were beseiging the Infernals. I'm assuming that right now the AI will just cast stuff when it's able to ("Oooh, look! The button is enabled, yay!"), but I'm sure that a true friend would not aid enemies in such a way (on a strict, Civ-tactical level and not a role-play level, of course).

- Niilo

With the new modifiers to desert (-25% def, 2MP cost) the AI seems to send adepts in desert tiles even less than before, which means that it basically fails to improve its desert areas even if it gets water magic. It looks like the AI is pretty crippled now when it starts in desert areas, even more than before :(

With the new modifiers to desert (-25% def, 2MP cost) the AI seems to send adepts in desert tiles even less than before, which means that it basically fails to improve its desert areas even if it gets water magic. It looks like the AI is pretty crippled now when it starts in desert areas, even more than before :(
i'm hoping that the dev team will finish the auto option that makes magic users automate node creation as well as spring and vitalize for 1.6

deserts aren't always bad to have, i like them because you can really kill an enemy stack easily while they've approaching your city through deserts.

deserts aren't always bad to have, i like them because you can really kill an enemy stack easily while they've approaching your city through deserts.
then scortch them back up : O

Here's something that probably qualifies...

I'm playing the Hippus right now, and am at war with the Infernals.

For whatever odd reason, I keep seeing Imp rushes... Hyborem is mass producing the Imps, giving them combat promotions, and sending them into battle. There will be a few Infernal Spearmen and Prophets hanging around, and (more recently) the occaisional Hellhound, but the bulk of his offensive forces are Imps. Hyborem seems to be completely avoiding giving any sort of magic to his Imps whatsoever.

I've noticed that the AI when playing Malakim takes into account the movement bonus of deserts, but not the defensive bonus they get. So they'll pass through one, but try not to end their turn in one. It's a minor point, but it's related to that topic.

I have noticed the issue with the imps as well. It seems like as often as not the AI's adepts only have the magic promotions that they started with because they have multiple mana of one type.

Just wanted to point this out (dunno if its been mentioned, probably but no time to read whole thread, heh)

Earlier, i was playing a game as the Amurites, of course. My closest competitor, that ingrate from Bannor, up and decided to declare war on me... despite the fact that I had let him shield my peninsula from barbarians and angry Infernals the whole game (not to mention the huge list of green modifiers I had double-dealed to get!) But anyways, he was actually summoning units to attack me with, which was cool. What wasn't so cool was that he was summoning them all the way back in his territory, then sending them my way. Of course, they never quite made it far enough to actually attack...

Is there any way to constrain/compel the AI to use those spells ONLY when they are close to one of your cities/stacks?

Ok, I dont have any hard details here. I'm just posting this because I think it might possibly, maybe, help with making the AI semi competent (without the cheats it gets on Diety :P)

So I was playing a game earlier on Monarch to try out the Cabalim. I got so far ahead of the AI's that I felt bad, and decided to cheat and rush their build orders for a turn or two to help them out a bit, in the hopes they would catch up to me somewhat (I had like 7 cities, some AIs still only had one.) This was on the Faerun map, DLable somewhere on this site. (incidentally that map is awful, I had to edit it quite a bit in WorldBuilder to make it even possible for some AI civs to survive at all.. Elves in a huge swath of jungle, etc etc)

Anyways, as I went around the world instabuilding for the AI's, I noticed that their choices of building were pretty strange. I ended up doing this for at least 40 turns or so, just to see what they would produce.

Here are some of the stranger things that came up.

- Bannor insisted on buildng a Hunting Lodge in every new city, right after the first warrior. The problem? 80+ turns to finish it. Then a Hunter to defend each city, for 50+ turns, then they wanted an herbalist for another 80, the next time I came by after that. The herbalists were all in cities that were quite healthy. The Bannor capital was exuding sickness, but they would not build one there, for some reason, until right before I quit goofing around.

- Once Sheiam got the tech for Gambling Houses, they had to have one in every city, no matter how small. One that I saw was due to finish in only 189 turns or so.

-The Infernals also insisted on building Herbalists in every city, for 80+ turns in the colonies that I helped them start. Now, none of these cities had any unhealthiness issues at all, being from 8 health > 2 sickness in one city to 12health > 2 sickness in another. This was the case with almost all civs, actually, to save myself some typing. Why do they love herbalists so much??

Well. You get the idea. It seems that despite the loadscreen tip that says "make sure you need every building you create," the AI quite often chooses buildings that it has no need for whatsever, and would take a very long time to finish to boot. I dont know if there is any way to make it only pick buildings/units will be done in a reasonable amount of time, but I thought I would post that there could be an issue with it, nonetheless. It could well have just been the map I was playing on, which was awful, as I said - I literally had the only good spot. Which is why I'm gonna do another run through just to see if I can get something more substantive to post :)

I don't know if this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=185926) effects you at all.

I don't know if this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=185926) effects you at all.

You should really jump around in front of kael with this - waving it before his face ;)


Would be great if this is fixed for ffh.

Agreed. There should be some sort of fireworks display pointing to that, and hopefully a potential fix.
-Qes

well, maybe this might encourage the dev team to rethink their no-warlords port stance. as it might be quite nice. maybe the next phase might allow for a "easier" switch ?

well, maybe this might encourage the dev team to rethink their no-warlords port stance. as it might be quite nice. maybe the next phase might allow for a "easier" switch ?

Well, one of the good things about FfH is that it is an option to Warlords. Why buy warlords when you are only playing FfH?

Re the AI picking combat instead of mana promotions for their magic users:

How about each magic promotion giving a combat bonus? Then they'll probably appear more juicy to the AI. Base strength of all magic users should probably be reduced then to compensate.

That sounds cool... I tend to agree.

They should be minor, potpourri-type bonuses... that may come into use in unusual situations.

For example...

Chaos could give +20% City Attack per level, perhaps increased for Chaos 3.

Death could give +20% attack vs Undead per level, perhaps increased for Death 3.

Dimensional could give a fairly substantial withdrawal chance... say 30% (per level?).

Earth could give +20% Hills Defense per level, and eventually ignore Hills movement cost.

Entropy could give +20% attack vs Demons per level, perhaps increased for Entropy 3.

Fire could give +20% Desert Defense per level, and eventually ignore Desert movement cost.

Law could give +20% City Defense per level, perhaps increased for Law 3.

Life could give a low-level Medic effect... say, 5% per level, and eventually grant adjacent-tile medic.

Nature could give +20% Forest/Jungle Defense per level, and eventually ignore Forest/Jungle movement cost.

Spirit could give +20% vs Disciple units per level, perhaps increased for Spirit 3.

Water could give +20% defense on seas and rivers, and eventually grant Amphibious.

well, maybe this might encourage the dev team to rethink their no-warlords port stance. as it might be quite nice. maybe the next phase might allow for a "easier" switch ?It wouldn't be too hard to change the offending lines of code to work out the odds more accurately.

I don't know if this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=185926) effects you at all.

Im sure it does. Awesome work TGA! Im adding it into FfH right now and I'll do some playtesting on it.

It wouldn't be too hard to change the offending lines of code to work out the odds more accurately.

Yeah, fortunatly the Warlords function doesn't use any calls that don't exist in vanilla Civ so it can be dropped in without changes. Testing is looking promossing too, with the AI more likely to attack with good odds and less likely to attack with bad ones.

I will be interested to see what the feedback is on it after 0.16 releases (no ETA).

you mean I wont be able to sneak my semi-xp'd warriors past Hill Giants anymore? :( :( :(

Some strange things in my game as the Khazad on Immortal (Arturus leader). Tessa is right next to me. I thought: cool, she's a defensive type, I can build while she does and hopefully have open borders for trade. But our incompatible religions (Runes and Fellowship) gave her a -6 modifier to relations and so she's been attacking me pretty much the whole game.

First some flavor issues:
So I think it would make sense for the neutral religions to not provoke so much hostility. Similarly, I think the builder civs should not be so provoked into fighting. Especially the Elves, who aren't good at taking territory.

On the fighting issue, I'm not sure that the AI realizes it doesn't have seige engines. I have killed a lot of elves. I mean, at least 20 for each of mine that have died. Tessa just sends in dozen after dozen of units, which die at my walls, giving my units more experience... Also, she did build the Pact of Nilhorn, which is the loophole that gives bombarding to the elves early on. But she never brought them in to bombard my cities.

Tessa also sends in about 8 units every couple of turns (against my 4 in the city), when if she had waited 10 turns she clearly could have beaten me (in fact, I thought I was done for, with a bad start, but have survived the waves of attacks).

She built Gilden fairly late. Bambor already was over 100 experience. Then she brought him right up to battle line undefended. Bambor killed him at a 100% chance (he also has Orthus' Axe). She should have gone for her hero sooner and then had him hang back for a while to gain some basic XP. I can see that it would be hard for the AI to understand hero's potential, but given how great it is...

I will say that the elves are really good at spreading their religion. Almost too good: Fellowship has dominated in all the games I've played. But maybe that's just luck of the draw. Anyway, good for the elves -- try to get the AI to do the same with the other religions.

Some strange things in my game as the Khazad on Immortal (Arturus leader). Tessa is right next to me. I thought: cool, she's a defensive type, I can build while she does and hopefully have open borders for trade. But our incompatible religions (Runes and Fellowship) gave her a -6 modifier to relations and so she's been attacking me pretty much the whole game.

First some flavor issues:
So I think it would make sense for the neutral religions to not provoke so much hostility. Similarly, I think the builder civs should not be so provoked into fighting. Especially the Elves, who aren't good at taking territory.

On the fighting issue, I'm not sure that the AI realizes it doesn't have seige engines. I have killed a lot of elves. I mean, at least 20 for each of mine that have died. Tessa just sends in dozen after dozen of units, which die at my walls, giving my units more experience... Also, she did build the Pact of Nilhorn, which is the loophole that gives bombarding to the elves early on. But she never brought them in to bombard my cities.

Tessa also sends in about 8 units every couple of turns (against my 4 in the city), when if she had waited 10 turns she clearly could have beaten me (in fact, I thought I was done for, with a bad start, but have survived the waves of attacks).

She built Gilden fairly late. Bambor already was over 100 experience. Then she brought him right up to battle line undefended. Bambor killed him at a 100% chance (he also has Orthus' Axe). She should have gone for her hero sooner and then had him hang back for a while to gain some basic XP. I can see that it would be hard for the AI to understand hero's potential, but given how great it is...

I will say that the elves are really good at spreading their religion. Almost too good: Fellowship has dominated in all the games I've played. But maybe that's just luck of the draw. Anyway, good for the elves -- try to get the AI to do the same with the other religions.

I've noticed this as well. The elves' high hammer output means that their power graph always has a very high value, which makes them think they can take out anyone they want to. I'd suggest making their leaders much less warlike to compensate.

I've noticed this as well. The elves' high hammer output means that their power graph always has a very high value, which makes them think they can take out anyone they want to. I'd suggest making their leaders much less warlike to compensate.

In 0.16 the Odds Calculator for the AI will be more correct though, so they wont throw their units away to losing odds that often. Still I agree about the above. Amelanchier should be pretty aggressive IF he is attacked though. (Since he is a Defensive Raider)

The AI seems to like moving its units around in stacks for protection. This is good. The AI also seems to like stacking two-move units with one-move units. This is bad. If the AI can be convinced to only stack hunters with mobility warriors and warriors with other one-move units, they'd get a lot better milage out of their units. Just a minor issue, but I thought I saw something about you guys working on making the AI stack their units, so I decided to bring this up.

just an easy-to-fix problem I noticed:

The AI doesn't realize that your alignment effects lawbringers. Watching 5 lawbringers all withdraw in a row was amusing, but all those conjurers should have been summoning something else!

I read that the Warlords AI seems to be smarter when it comes to military. Is this AI being used in this mod yet? Here's the thread that I found this out in:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=179470

I read that the Warlords AI seems to be smarter when it comes to military. Is this AI being used in this mod yet? Here's the thread that I found this out in:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=179470

From the changelog:


54. Switched to the AI_attackOdds function that is used on Warlords (recommended by TGA).

I don't believe that AI_attackOdds was the only thing that changed from Warlords. I'm talking about the AI sending an effective seiging machine back at the player, using navy more effectively, attacking other AI more often, and using multiple stacks that make the player actually need to respond to defend their cities after the first assault.

Cassiel attacked me with a unupgraded sidhelle in my last game. At least he moved her about with one of his attaking stacks and so she die'd as an adventurer.

The AI doesn't understand how to use units with hidden nationality. Playing with a barb trait leade the animals never attacked my goblin.

I beg to differ. I had Moe,Larry and Curly with the hidden antionality tarit with Charadon. And there were neing attacked every other turn by Barbarian skeletons,goblins,and orc spearman as well as AI Civs units that were close enough to do so, later game saw Khazad sending a chariot into my lands(open borders) every three turns or so to attack my giants. Hey free experience for them.

The AI doesn't understand how to use units with hidden nationality. Playing with a barb trait leade the animals never attacked my goblin.
Animals still won't attack you as barb, but you can attack them for xp or subdueing.

I have seen the barbs use mercs offensively when not at war, but not too commonly.

Animals still won't attack you as barb, but you can attack them for xp or subdueing.

I have seen the barbs use mercs offensively when not at war, but not too commonly.

Well I think the animals should attack you: It's one thing for orcs and goblins deciding that you are friends, but why should a giant spider refuse the eat tasty goblins and such...

AI does not seem to like building fishing boats and the AI considers ancient temples resource worthless (found that by asking an AI what he wants for it and he literally offered it for nothing).

You gave an AI something for a temple resource? Why would you do that?

- Niilo

It's free combat I promotion for adepts built while you control one, at the moment.

AI does not seem to like building fishing boats and the AI considers ancient temples resource worthless (found that by asking an AI what he wants for it and he literally offered it for nothing).

I noticed this as well in the recent move to 0.16. The AI ignores its ocean resources with a dedicated passions; the Sailor's Dirge enjoys my territory the most as a result. Haven't tried that with Ancient Temples yet as I've yet to play a game where anybody with an Ancient Temple resource gets to keep that city for long enough to extract it...

Someone at the Apolyton (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=157780&perpage=30&pagenumber=1) is making an improvement for the basic AI of the game. Could be worth looking into.

I've tried a couple of "Total War" games (all civs at war with all others).

You get a few turns of fighting, but, the AI's bog down totally - they don't get much beyond Hunters, which renders crushing them rather trivial. (An archmage will just empty a city...

I like forts as a concept.
Forts in the game as implemented suck. (they should be at least +50% def)
The AI does not normally use forts as they are now.

There are at least 2 aspects to the AI use of forts:
1. The AI must build forts competently
2. The AI must man the forts once they are built

The first part can be accomplished with some simple XML changes.
The AI builds everything based upon yields, and thus giving Forts a yield, particularly a food yeild, will encourage the AI to use them. To discourage fort spam even further, the bonus given for a fort should be lower than that of other improvements except under certain cercumstances.
Limiting forts to hills, allowing forts in forrests, and giving a commerce bonus next to rivers all encourage good fort placement.
With a couple of civics or techs that grant a +1 food or +1 Production modifier, the AI will happily build forts on marginal hills like desert, and tundra, and sometimes even plains and grassland depending on the needs of the AI, but only when the AI is running the appropriate civics. I've used Conquest and military state myself, and found that the civs that favor those civics will build a couple of forts here and there, and civs that don't like those civics won't tend to build forts at all.

The Ai also loves to get tradable resources, and if one places sentry towers on the map, and/or has sentry towers appear with high probability in fort improvments, then the AI will happily build forts to harvest this bonus. The AI loves happiness and health bonuses the most.

With some a yeild as small as +1 F and the other settings I've mentioned, the AI will like to build forts on hills, particularly forrested hills next to rivers, which also happen to give the forts the best defensive chances.

So, as far as the first part of using forts goes, I think it's not too hard to get reasonable results from the AI.

The second part, getting the AI to man the forts, is more difficult.

Once you have a fort built, there is no AI mission to man a fort, UNLESS the fort also harvests a BONUS resource. Then you can use the AI_GUARDBONUS mission.

As Sureshot, and likely others know, if you give +1happy to sentry towers and allow forts to harvest sentry tower bonuses, then the AI will man forts to protect the sentry tower.

With 1 or 2 minor edits to the SDK, it would be possible to do something better:
First, a new mission AI_GUARD_FORT mission could be added and given an appropriate weight. this is probably the best and cleanest way to go.

Or...a simple change to the AI_BonusValue method would allow fort improvements, reguardless of the presence of BONUSES or not to be given a good chance of being chosesn when the AI is selecting a plot to guard.

One last thing you need to consider for such an AI change is that the AI makes fairly limited amounts of RESERVE troops, exept for mages and priests. Only Reserve troops can be given the GUARD mission as things stand now, and unless leaderhead XML is edited to encourage more RESERVE troops, then forts (and other bonuses in general) can have a tendancy to be guarded by mages and priests.

I'd be happy to make these changes myself, but I have a hunch that the required methods have been edited from the standard SDK.

The proper use of forts would be more exciting in conjunction with Blake's improved economies and worker functionality...as they result in better cities, and larger, more advance armies from the AI.

I'd like to try to experiment with the AI a bit so I was wondering what changes you've made to the AI in the SDK. Have you inserted a new mission type for enchantment type spells or is it implemented like choosing a promotion?

I've done some basic AI programming before, like heuristic searches, min-max algorithms and simple neural nets, so I hope I'll be able to make something happen. I'd like to try to get the AI to target spells like Rust and Fireball so if you could give me a hint on where to start, I'd be very grateful.

I'd like to try t