The purpose of this thread is to report questionable behavior on the part of the AI.

If you have found a specific bug, that is clearly a bug, then please report it on the bug reports thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=204045).

On the other hand, if you have seen something which falls more in line with a judgement call, please report it here.

Did the AI do something which you think may be incorrect? Would you like to see more defenders? Less defenders? Did the AI declare war at a time you thought was inappropriate? Did the AI build a wonder that did not make sense? Vote inappropriately for/against a UN resolution? This is the correct place to report such things.

Please try to include screenshots or even better, save game files. You want the save before the questionable behavior occurs, if possible.

example questionable behavior report

Version: 1/16/07 build

When automating exploration, the unit went southwest, to a flat forest, rather than going west to a hill, which I think would be better.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/95686/exampleunit.jpg

Save game is enclosed, right before the move.

To duplicate, select the warrior to the east of the city, and click the explore button.

--- reserved ---

I'm in the middle of my first game with the 1/25 build. And honestly, IMO the unit spamming is still there. Here is a screenshot of a nearby Egyptian city.

There are 50(!!) units just sitting in it. And they've been there for at least the last 20 turns just sitting. Meanwhile, Egypt is running dog on tech and development....

There is just nothing good about having the AI have that many units just sitting idle. I dont believe they should be building stacks that size at all, but if you are going to make the AIs do this, then they need to do SOMETHING with them. Otherwise they are just crippling themselves to little effect. And unfortunately if the AIs are going to continue to do this then the only recourse is to change the nature of the game to something akin to 'always war' (since the only way for those insane piles to pay off is to conquer with them).

I also fought a war with the nearby Celts. And he too had 15+ units per city on the border. And with the right amount of Cannon and a few Grenadiers, I was able to take those cities with very minimal losses. I just dont believe that having piles of units like that really adds defense in proportion to the cost of building and maintaining them (or even remotely close). The collateral damage quickly renders those units ineffective. The only hope would be defending with massed siege, but even that doesnt do much unless it fully up to date (ie, the Egyptians 15 Catapults arent going to do much to a properly put together attack force of Rifles/Grens/Cannon).

I still firmly believe that the mod is moving in the wrong direction. Massed units do NOT make the AI better at all. Its weaknesses are just as exposed, but the ability to actually tech and move ahead are diminished. The AI is never going to be able to handle proper usage of collateral damage and dispersal to prevent the same on your own troops. So with the AIs having more troops and forcing the player to build more troops its actually skewing things against the AI IMO.

I would note that with the same customized difficulty settings, the 2.08 AI still seems to perform better as a whole than this build. Yes, I can conquer a neighbor on occasion with little effort, but I can still do it here with ease with the only difference being that all of us are investing more in troops than anything else. But in the end, its not really any 'harder' to take those same cities.

FWIW, I still believe that the number of units being built by the AI should be cut by at least half again. Having only 2-3 defenders is not enough, but having 10-15 (with the occasional 50+) is just a complete and total waste.

I definately appreciate the effort for the build, but the results (IMO) are not getting better as the builds go by. I think it 'peaked' somewhere around in December and has been moving away ever since.

I'm in the middle of my first game with the 1/25 build. And honestly, IMO the unit spamming is still there. Here is a screenshot of a nearby Egyptian city.

There are 50(!!) units just sitting in it. And they've been there for at least the last 20 turns just sitting. Meanwhile, Egypt is running dog on tech and development....

....

FWIW, I still believe that the number of units being built by the AI should be cut by at least half again. Having only 2-3 defenders is not enough, but having 10-15 (with the occasional 50+) is just a complete and total waste.

I definately appreciate the effort for the build, but the results (IMO) are not getting better as the builds go by. I think it 'peaked' somewhere around in December and has been moving away ever since.

totaly agree..i was implemented this into our TotalRealism mod, but from some revision (don't remember #) there is still too big stacks which do nothing, too much (or too few) defenders.... i am sorry, but i start thinking to remove this (or make this as optional DLL) because players noted this AI as very annoying

It seems as if this AI build an attack stack and when it was finished, it noticed that the potential targets had gotten to strong and aborted the attack.

How long does it take the AI to build such an attack stack? It seems like a long term project. Maybe it should reconsider the option to build an attack stack periodically. In that way it could decide that the attack stack is not going to be effective enough before it has finished it.

Agreed on the stacks. Seems like there are 2 decisions the AI needs to make:

1) Yes, let's do Dagger or Crush or whatever, so start building units instead of growth in terms of infrastructure / settlers / workers. (You can literally see this happening... last game, Ragnar is sitting there with just his capitol while other AIs have 2 or 3 cities. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what he's doing.)

2) Actually begin the attack.

It seems that somewhere between #1 and #2 the AI sometimes gets stuck. Maybe it rechecks the power graph, maybe a shared religion has spread so that relations are much better, or maybe it looks over the border and sees a bunch of spearmen or something. In any event, the net result is that the AI is left with crappy infrastructure, fewer cities, and a bunch of obsolete units.

That said, sometimes the Dagger strike works, and it's wonderful to see.

Wodan

One other thing I've noticed, on several builds. Was wondering if it would still happen with the 1/25 build but I'm seeing it this morning too.

The AI has a ton of units sitting there. Fine, we've been discussing that.

BUT at the same time, barbs are having a field day, coming in left and right. So, one possibility with all those units is to teach the AI to do a better job at fogbusting. Just a thought.

Wodan

I just played out my game for a while longer but gave up in boredom. I'm now over 1000 points ahead of the next leading AI and continuing to pull away. And again, with the exact same difficulty settings I can rarely pull that off against the 2.08 AI.

It feels like we are back to the days of being able to get an early lead and then just cruise to victory. As long as you keep up your Military Score you are fine. So its just a matter of having a few cities continually pumping the latest troops while you build up some reserve cash for an occasional upgrading of the older guys.

But the AI is never going to stage any form of comeback like it used to be able to do because it is following the same predictable pattern of trying to keep up militarily even when I have 2.5x the next highest AI's production. It seems to be 'obsessed' with building those troops but regardless of how many it builds, I can build even more and continue to move ahead with my now superior econ.

FWIW, 'Aggressive AI' is not turned on. There has been quite a bit of scrapping between some of the other AIs and Ragnar has vassalized Rome and was working on Egypt when I stopped playing. But he is hopelessly behind me in tech and his GNP and Productivity are laughable in comparison.

For the AIs, it just takes too much investment to gain militarily with these builds. Even if it wins a few wars, its still going to be backwards so in the long run those Civs become less and less of a threat. I could smash him out of hand despite having relatively close military levels. And the reason is because I have massed, modern siege weapons which will easily dispatch his ridiculous stacks with little loss. That is another legacy of these massed unit builds...giving even more power to siege weapons.

Anyways, I hope after 1.0 is released that you can perhaps find time for a 'sub mod' that simply corrects the bugs and problems with the 2.08 AI. I understand that trying to maintain multiple mods would be difficult, but perhaps just a 'patch' for 2.08 to catch the bugs rather than adding in the other routines that I feel arent really making the AI 'Better' anymore.

Again, thanks for all the effort, but I believe that the project is going farther than the I would have considered as the original scope. Gameplay IS being altered quite a bit simply by the ways the AIs behave. And the game is significantly more military focused than I think is good for the way the game is designed.

Personally I don't feel it's at the point of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

2.08 had/has some huge problems with the basic AI algorithms. So huge, and so fundamental to AI behavior, that any adjustment is without a doubt going to result in massive swings in how games play out. To my thinking, that's a matter of fact and that outcome was to be expected all along. So, I guess it seems to me that pointing to this outcome and using as a justification to backpedal is a bit gratuitous (unreasonable).

Anyway, without a doubt some huge progress has been made, with worker actions, war management, and more. Yes some more adjustment needs to be done with the huge garrison stack generation, but to me that feels minor. It will have a big effect on the way games play out, but the actual adjustment itself is minor. I'd be disappointed if that adjustment wasn't made before the BetterAI release, but Blake and Iustus will do what they think best.

I think your feedback is good, Uncle Joe, and I agree with the intent of most of it, just not with the premise of your conclusion. Just my opinion.

Wodan

I think its a bit too much military yes..It is specially because of the defensive spam, that also cripples completely the AI(what also cripples is an unused dagger, but it was 'OK' before the defensive thing), but lets not forget that Blake is only working in this because YOU guys complained about the low number of defense in cities..

I think the program definetely is improving. You must be wondering why I say it Uncle Joe? Because while they are trying to fix this spam problem, they are also making other improviments! Look at the logs of the versions! Finally Im using the automatic governament(in small cities because I prefer to look myself in big ones hehe)! Now the AI is even back to pillaging as far as my first game with the new AI goes!
And if the AI decides to use that dagger stack against you...

Well, I think I know why its hard to calculate how many defendes is needed of each type and make it balanced! Probably because the AI dont think in long term but turn by turn..
But Im sure they will find a way.

I think the problem with the economy is that the AI should build less dagger stacks, only build them when the difference in military between them and the aim will surely not drasticlly change while making the dagger up! AND disband units if they are gonig to sit in a city for 50 turns waiting a mass upgrate without any use while it!! Just build again a little before a military tech comes!
What about it guys? AI start to build dagger when they start to tech(or going to the path of it) a important military tech? Then upgrate the units that were built before it(while it was being researched) and keep building some more turns and attack!!

I think that with some smarter defensive tatics(meaning less units) and smarter use of dagger the AI will get better again in management of gold!

They are trying to 'fix' it and eventually they will. The AI didnt defend good before, probably its not defending good now also, but the objective is make it defend better than vanilla, one way or other.

'1 steps backward for 2 forward'. Or something like that :p

2.08 had/has some huge problems with the basic AI algorithms. So huge, and so fundamental to AI behavior, that any adjustment is without a doubt going to result in massive swings in how games play out. To my thinking, that's a matter of fact and that outcome was to be expected all along. So, I guess it seems to me that pointing to this outcome and using as a justification to backpedal is a bit gratuitous (unreasonable).

But at the end of the day, 2.08 WORKS. It provides a competitive and fun game (given proper handicaps). It doesnt pigeon-hole the player into following one basic militaristic strategy. And the AIs feel far more dynamic. Are they easier to conquer? Perhaps. But that isnt necessarily a BAD thing. As long as there is a cost associated for doing so (in this case, potentially letting other AIs get ahead), then I think its OK.

But overproduction of military creates cascading effects that ripple through the entire AI and game balance. This has continued through the last three builds with the stated intention of not reverting back to the 'easy to conquer' AIs. I dont believe that 'easy to conquer' was the problem per se.

I think 2.08 with bug fixes would be a lot closer to the design parameters for the game. Civilization was never meant to be a 'conquest game'. I have dozens of games I can play for that. The current trend is to emphasize military (whether defensive or offensive) over other aspects of the game play in the name of making it 'harder'. But really, it only makes it 'harder' if you intend to win by conquest. If you are trying other types of victory, its not really any harder at all...its just more tedious.

So, what I'm simply asking for is a quick-fix for the worst of the 2.08 AI bugs without all of the changes to the AI's military routines. I'm willing to accept that it will not play as 'smart' militarily because I believe that that 'smartness' comes with far too high of a price tag in terms of the way the game plays out. I would wager that I am not alone.

I think the program definetely is improving. You must be wondering why I say it Uncle Joe? Because while they are trying to fix this spam problem, they are also making other improviments! Look at the logs of the versions!

Many of the other improvements are great, but since the underlying foundation is flawed (again, IMO), they arent contributing as much as they could if they were retrofitted to 2.08 base. I would fully understand if its just too much work to do this.

Its becoming clearer to me that its not going to be possible for one AI project to 'fix' the game for all people. The warmongers want an AI that will match their military build up. The people who didnt try to overcome the AI will military force every game see this enforced military as 'annoying' or distracting or tedious.

But I dont see many middlegrounds within one AI. Either its going to build enough military to try and oppose human conquests or its not.

But at the end of the day, 2.08 WORKS. It provides a competitive and fun game (given proper handicaps).
You remember that this is a beta test of BetterAI, right?

Giving feedback is great, and why we're here. Let's not jump to prejudge the end result, though.

But overproduction of military creates cascading effects that ripple through the entire AI and game balance. This has continued through the last three builds with the stated intention of not reverting back to the 'easy to conquer' AIs. I dont believe that 'easy to conquer' was the problem per se.
One of the biggest problems IMO with 2.08 (and prior) is that the AI has a weakness in war management. High level players fully admit that rushing and such are the main/best way to win on Emperor and Deity. Basically you have to exploit the AI weakness at war in order to compensate for the insane production (etc) bonuses the AI gets on those levels.

So, you point out that BetterAI has a weakness here. That's no different from 2.08 IMO. Plus, I think that BetterAI can (and I hope will be) fixed/tweaked to stop the huge garrison stacks.

Whereas 2.08 AI is plain stupid. It can't be tweaked... it will always suck at war and the human will always be de-facto encouraged to go to war to beat it.

I think 2.08 with bug fixes would be a lot closer to the design parameters for the game. Civilization was never meant to be a 'conquest game'. I have dozens of games I can play for that. The current trend is to emphasize military (whether defensive or offensive) over other aspects of the game play in the name of making it 'harder'. But really, it only makes it 'harder' if you intend to win by conquest. If you are trying other types of victory, its not really any harder at all...its just more tedious.
Rather, I think that bumping up the AI military is to compensate for its current biggest weakness. The basic idea is that if the AI becomes harder to conquer, then human strategies other than war become more viable. This is in line with your stated goals/objectives for Civilization.

Its becoming clearer to me that its not going to be possible for one AI project to 'fix' the game for all people. The warmongers want an AI that will match their military build up. The people who didnt try to overcome the AI will military force every game see this enforced military as 'annoying' or distracting or tedious.

But I dont see many middlegrounds within one AI. Either its going to build enough military to try and oppose human conquests or its not.
The latest build decreased the odds that AI will choose Dagger. This is an improvement. Further, the BetterAI includes such improvements as rush production / whipping if invaded. Which gives the AI a suitable alternative to building a massive army to "oppose human conquests".

Wodan

You remember that this is a beta test of BetterAI, right?

Giving feedback is great, and why we're here. Let's not jump to prejudge the end result, though.

I'm going by the recent trends. With this build, my understanding was that the 'unit spamming' was to be decreased. I see no measurable difference. The AI is still swimming with units and forcing the player to do likewise.

What I'm getting at is that I accept that my perception of a 'Better AI' might be differing from yours or theirs or anyone elses. I think a lot of players enjoy the 'standard' gameplay from Civ and dont feel the need to see the military aspect accentuated.

One of the biggest problems IMO with 2.08 (and prior) is that the AI has a weakness in war management. High level players fully admit that rushing and such are the main/best way to win on Emperor and Deity. Basically you have to exploit the AI weakness at war in order to compensate for the insane production (etc) bonuses the AI gets on those levels.

That doesnt make sense to me. If the AI is 'improved' to the point where it doesnt need massive bonuses anymore (where I think we were a handful of builds ago), then the need 'rush' the AI is diminished greatly. And if you are 'rushing' and AI while the rest of the newly improved AIs are teching and not building redundant troops, you will quickly fall behind. The massive bonuses were necessary as a result of poor opimization. That is largely gone, obviating the need for those bonuses (and as adjusted in the Better Handicaps).

So whats left is that perhaps it was too easy to get a material advantage by attacking the AI early. That can be tweaked with a FEW more units. As demonstrated repeatedly, 12 Lonbows does not provide any more realistic defense than 6, but costs twice as much. There are SEVERELY diminishing returns at work here.

Rather, I think that bumping up the AI military is to compensate for its current biggest weakness. The basic idea is that if the AI becomes harder to conquer, then human strategies other than war become more viable. This is in line with your stated goals/objectives for Civilization.

But it doesnt work this way. Bumping the AI's military just results in the PLAYERS building more military. The AI is still at a disadvantage and still loses to a skilled player in warfare. All the larger militaries really do is slow the pace of the game down and ensure that constant attention is given to the military They dont make it much harder overall.

The only way it becomes truly 'harder' is if the AI continue to have more and more units than a human player can produce. And to do that, it needs massive bonuses. So perhaps going this route removes the ability to 'rush' the AIs, but the whole of the gameplay suffers to prevent a few players from 'abusing' the AI. IMO, its not a worthy tradeoff. Others will differ on that, hence my request for something that simply gives some economic opitimizations whilst leaving the rest of the 'decision-making' intact. It may be flawed, but it allows the game to progress unimpeded unlike the enforced military buildups.

The latest build decreased the odds that AI will choose Dagger. This is an improvement.

It not an improvement if the AIs are still playing as if military were the primary goal. It just means that fewer will beat themselve to death on a neighbor, but the arms race continues.

That doesnt make sense to me. If the AI is 'improved' to the point where it doesnt need massive bonuses anymore (where I think we were a handful of builds ago), then the need 'rush' the AI is diminished greatly.
You're advocating leaving the AI's military management static, while increasing its ability to do other things. This clearly leads to a situation where if you don't attack the AI, it will perform research (etc) faster and better than before.

The whole point of attacking the AI (and exploiting its weakness at warfare) is a pre-emptive strategy, not a reactive one. (That's why high-level players swear by early rushing.)

Does that make more sense?

So whats left is that perhaps it was too easy to get a material advantage by attacking the AI early. That can be tweaked with a FEW more units. As demonstrated repeatedly, 12 Lonbows does not provide any more realistic defense than 6, but costs twice as much. There are SEVERELY diminishing returns at work here.
I agree.

But it doesnt work this way. Bumping the AI's military just results in the PLAYERS building more military.
Clearly I didn't explain very well... when I was talking about "bumping" I wasn't talking about simply building more units. Rather, it's about unit management, effective movement, use of mixed unit types, having cats for counter-stack defense, etc.

Simply building more units chokes the AI and is what everyone is complaining about right now. I think most everyone is agreed that this needs to be tweaked/changed.

Wodan

You're advocating leaving the AI's military management static, while increasing its ability to do other things. This clearly leads to a situation where if you don't attack the AI, it will perform research (etc) faster and better than before.

The whole point of attacking the AI (and exploiting its weakness at warfare) is a pre-emptive strategy, not a reactive one. (That's why high-level players swear by early rushing.)

Does that make more sense?

But if the AI's bonus is reduced to a more manageable level, then the need for that 'pre-emptive strike' is obviated.

On another note, when playing multiplayer games, highly skilled players often 'rush' too. And other players arent getting any bonuses over them. Its just a preferred way to play for some people (wargame rather than builder game). Its not a bad way to play nor is it 'wrong'. But I feel that the AI is being catered to employ and counter that strategy far too much to exclusion of doing other things. My 2nd game is an indicator of that (see next post).

Clearly I didn't explain very well... when I was talking about "bumping" I wasn't talking about simply building more units. Rather, it's about unit management, effective movement, use of mixed unit types, having cats for counter-stack defense, etc.

Simply building more units chokes the AI and is what everyone is complaining about right now. I think most everyone is agreed that this needs to be tweaked/changed.

My impression was that most everyone was in agreement before this build too. And yet the same strategies are being employed. Rather than pressing people to conform to my standard of what the AI's 'should' be doing, I'd just as soon see a few simply bug fixes for the worst offenders in the original AI. Then, if the wargame style AI is to be pursued there is at least an option for players who prefer the original (and IMO intended) styles of play.

As I said above, I dont believe that its going to be possible for the AI to be all things to all people. Its either going to be optimized to fight the warmongers (and in turn become a warmonger) or else its going to follow the original path of a more varied AI with commeasurate weakness to a warmongering style of play. I dont say that in a bad way or to disparage the capabilities of the AI team at all.

1/25 build, second test game.

After losing interest in the first game, I fired up a second with all of the same parameters (modified difficulty, Epic, no Aggressive AI, everything else standard).

This time, Alexander went balls out attacking in the early game. He quickly eliminated Isabella (good riddance!) and shortly thereafter killed Hatty. Both of these conquests were completed during the early/mid Classical Age (ie, no siege weapons available).

I, as Russia (Catherine) was somewhat slowed by a pretty crummy peninsular start, but was in 2nd place behind the now-bloated Alexander. He eventually DoWs me and sends in the hordes. My military is smaller, but I am holding my own. He sends stacks and stacks and stacks. Eventually he starts to bludgeon his way through. Its hanging in the balance when Monty hits me from the other side...game over (tip of the hat to Alex).

What I observed here is that the AI is FAR better about conquest in the early game than later when their is prolific siege weapons available. The 'monster stack' is a huge liability against massed siege and the AI never reacts accordingly.

But the problem with Alexander's approach was that was all or nothing. After I conceded, I looked at his set up and he was completely stagnant in tech. He had little to no economic buildings or other improvements (outside of Barracks). Yes, he would have beaten me down, but in the end, he ruined himself to do it. If he had been beating himself against another AI rather than the only player, I would again have easily pulled ahead and eventually outteched him to the point where he would no longer be a threat with his backwards piles of units.

And that is folly I see in the strategy...its not going to possible to WIN the game that early (unless on Pangea). So mortgaging the future to win a few wars is not an effective strategy. You'll eventually run out of steam and be left in the dust.

On another note, because he was going so balls-out on the attack, about the only way to survive that would be to equally be spamming units. Its evident that Hatty and Isabella didnt do that and they were QUICKLY dispatched. So the existance of this AI strategy again compels military buildup as the only viable strategy, even in early in the game (unless you want to play with fire).

In order for this AI to work and not convert the game into a simple wargame, there is going to have to be a LOT of moderation put in here. The AIs should not commit to all-out attacks, particularly early in the game. It detrimental to gameplay and to the AI doing it even if it succeeds.

That was probably the first time I've actually lost militarily to an AI in the early game. In some ways that is a good thing. But in the future, I know to start the spamming of my own military a little earlier if there is an aggressive AI player attacking randomly like that. Which in turn starts the loop all over again...build military, military, and more military. Even if you have no intentions of 'rushing' an AI, you still have to commit to the military route because unless you do, you'll have no chance against an AI that is soley pursuing a military strategy, heedless of the longterm results.

1/25 build, second test game.

After losing interest in the first game, I fired up a second with all of the same parameters (modified difficulty, Epic, no Aggressive AI, everything else standard).



What does "modified difficulty" mean?

I ask only b/c I was positioned next to Alexander in a noble-level 1/25 game (small, techtonics, 8 civs, no aggressive AI) -- we shared a continent together. He did not attack at all...in fact, in the mid-game he actually looks like he is trying for a culture win. If anything, it looked like he hasn't been building enough units (the Mongols were able to launch an amphibious attack and burn one of his cities.)

1/25 build, second test game.

After losing interest in the first game, I fired up a second with all of the same parameters (modified difficulty, Epic, no Aggressive AI, everything else standard).

This time, Alexander went balls out attacking in the early game. He quickly eliminated Isabella (good riddance!) and shortly thereafter killed Hatty. Both of these conquests were completed during the early/mid Classical Age (ie, no siege weapons available).

I, as Russia (Catherine) was somewhat slowed by a pretty crummy peninsular start, but was in 2nd place behind the now-bloated Alexander. He eventually DoWs me and sends in the hordes. My military is smaller, but I am holding my own. He sends stacks and stacks and stacks. Eventually he starts to bludgeon his way through. Its hanging in the balance when Monty hits me from the other side...game over (tip of the hat to Alex).

What I observed here is that the AI is FAR better about conquest in the early game than later when their is prolific siege weapons available. The 'monster stack' is a huge liability against massed siege and the AI never reacts accordingly.

But the problem with Alexander's approach was that was all or nothing. After I conceded, I looked at his set up and he was completely stagnant in tech. He had little to no economic buildings or other improvements (outside of Barracks). Yes, he would have beaten me down, but in the end, he ruined himself to do it. If he had been beating himself against another AI rather than the only player, I would again have easily pulled ahead and eventually outteched him to the point where he would no longer be a threat with his backwards piles of units.
This feedback is gold. In 2.08 an AI would NEVER have been able to conquer two neighbors (at least not without massive luck) so the AI didn't have to worry about "when to stop and consolidate" - it never reached that position in the first place...

Do you happen to have any saves from this game? Particularly during Alex's wars with the other AI's (I'd like to see his economic stats).

By the way I'm thinking of tying unit training levels to aggressive AI... so aggressive AI would be militaristic AI.

In order for this AI to work and not convert the game into a simple wargame, there is going to have to be a LOT of moderation put in here. The AIs should not commit to all-out attacks, particularly early in the game. It detrimental to gameplay and to the AI doing it even if it succeeds.

The unconditional statement about committing to all out attacks is too strong. I think this after reading a large number of posts from players who wanted to see the AIs launch devastating attacks. Many players requested AIs that go to war more often. Sometimes the result is going to be a benefit to the warring party, sometimes not. Maybe more often not. However, this was what was called for by many posters.

Speaking for myself, I find totally peaceful games really boring. If the only reason AIs go to war is because I've manipulated them, that's boring too. Sometimes you need that insane leader that goes to war, even though the poor result can be predicted. This happens in real life. :(

The unconditional statement about committing to all out attacks is too strong. I think this after reading a large number of posts from players who wanted to see the AIs launch devastating attacks. Many players requested AIs that go to war more often. Sometimes the result is going to be a benefit to the warring party, sometimes not. Maybe more often not. However, this was what was called for by many posters.

Speaking for myself, I find totally peaceful games really boring. If the only reason AIs go to war is because I've manipulated them, that's boring too. Sometimes you need that insane leader that goes to war, even though the poor result can be predicted. This happens in real life

I dont think people really were looking for an AI to turn 'berserker' on them. ;)

But yes, I understand what you are saying. IMO though, its not good for the game as a whole. If the AI wants to attack a neighbor and secure some resources or some expansion room or even just to hurt a competitor, I'm all fine with that. But it was making no efforts to consolidate its gains and was running itself into the ground to sustain the attacks.

And as I said, the only way to resist such an attack is to be spamming military left and right yourself. Sure, that makes the game more difficult, but then again I could always play with 'All AIs vs the player' too and it would be even more difficult. But it dramatically changes the game from one of 'Civilization' to a simple wargame.

So to sum it up, yes, the AIs should attack (and they always have IMO), but no, they shouldnt commit 100% to the attack...even if they win, they lose in the long run. The only way the 'win' is if their target is the human player and they make the game untennable for him. Beyond that, it simply eliminating competition and weakening itself in the long run.

This happens in real life

And in real life, nations dont prepare properly for war and trust in diplomacy or luck or divine providence not to be killed off either. Yet when the AIs do the same, its criticized for being 'stupid' and 'not knowing how to defend'. Either the AIs have to be playing 'to win' or they have to be playing 'to feel like other nations'. If all of the AIs are trying to win, then you shouldnt see either of these cases because neither is beneficial in the long term (although both have happened time and again in history).

Therein is the same problem I noted above. The game cant be tweaked to play smart and play 'real' in the same build. Because in the real world, nations tend to a lot of things that aren't really smart. My fear with the current AI is that it is no longer acting as opposing nation states but instead, as simply another player looking to keep the player from winning.

Do you happen to have any saves from this game? Particularly during Alex's wars with the other AI's (I'd like to see his economic stats).

I've attached all of the autosaves I had. I dont know how far back they go or if they will show you want to see but you can take a look.

What does "modified difficulty" mean?

I've tweaked the heck out of it. :) Essentially the level is still called 'Noble', but the parameters are closer to Monarch/Emperor in terms of Inflation/Maintenance/Upkeep etc. The AI doesnt get many bonuses either (although they are close to the 'Better Handicaps' file).

What I was shooting for was a level where the economic side matches the higher difficulties but the AI bonuses were not drastic.

By the way I'm thinking of tying unit training levels to aggressive AI... so aggressive AI would be militaristic AI.

Can you elaborate on this? Do you mean on the 'Aggressive AI' setting that the AI would 'spam' units but not so much on the standard setting?

Thanks for the saves.

I've made a new thread for AI Aggression levels (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=204248), please move the discussion on this topic over to there.

Just finished (gave up) my first game on the new build (27/1).
3 continents, 6 AI
Americans and me on one continent. After a short while they went for me and would not let up. I could stop thier penertration into my lands, but had any counter attacking stacks wiped out, so fairly stalemate. (neither of us had siege weapons).
Unfortunately my tech research was slowed to a real crawl, and I checked the world builder - the 3 AI's on the big continent were so far ahead in tech it was not worth continuing (I don't normally ever give up, but the constant war grind and no hope of winning got to me)
On the third continent the Mongols had wiped out the Malinese.

Checking the power graph it was interesting to see that the Mongols had the most power up until the defeat of Mansa, and then kept thier power level the same - obviously adopting a different stratagy after winning the war.

edit: sorry - posted this in wrong area

@Uncle Joe

I gather you have never modified a large computer program.

Blake and Iustus are working at breakneck speed making many many changes to a game that sorely needs the changes.

The first set of changes - 2.08 - thats the cherry picking part of the changes. Change all the easy stuff.

The second set of changes is quite a bit tougher. Now the AI makes many more units. OK that wasn't too hard. Now the hard part is: use these units in an effective way. This is a substantially tougher project.

Yes they need to have the AIs make more siege units for collateral damage, make more offensive units etc etc etc. All the factual stuff you said... yes it all needs to be done, accounted for, and taken care of. However this is not a trivial project they are undertaking.

And yes what this means now is that sometimes the side effects of given changes will be worse for the game than the bonus the change was supposed to give to the AI. Thats part of programming too. We are not doing beta testing - more like alpha testing. They WILL make the AIs use all of this military in an effective way.

And then I guarantee that you will be forced back a difficulty level or two :) And with lower AI bonuses, there will be smaller stacks of AI units to contend with!

No one - least of all Uncle Joe - claimed that Blake and Iustus had an easy "job" or that they weren't doing their best to make it work.

That doesn't change the fact (and neither will your imaginary "guarantees") that Better AI has gone worse lately. And if we don't tell Blake and Iustus, how are they supposed to know? If they noticed themselves or knew exactly what the problem was, they surely would have changed it for the better instead of making it worse, right? There's only so much testing one or two persons can do, after all. Adopting a "it's all right, all will be fluffy and sweet sooner or later" attitude never did any good and it won't in this case either.
Especially considering Uncle Joe only brought up valid and reasonable concerns. In a polite manner, I might add. So far, I fully support his point of view.

Has anybody else noticed Barbarians being a bit more aimless than usual? In the game I'm playing (07-01-25 build), the Barbs hung around outside my property well after the usual date when they rush in. In fact, they haven't stepped into my boundaries yet and its the Medieval Era.

Just a fluke, or something that has changed...?

Or you just built the Great Wall and missed this crucial fact.

Or you just built the Great Wall and missed this crucial fact.

Hee, hee. Yes, I built it in my sleep. JK! :lol:

I could stop thier penertration into my lands, but had any counter attacking stacks wiped out, so fairly stalemate.

I lost my first 25/01 game too! (And i reloaded a couple times... :rolleyes: )

Monarch, Terra, Standard. Non aggressive AI.

I (Carthago) expanded quckly, very good start position for my early cities with plenty of production and resources. My south neighbour was Mehmet and i hit him hard in an early war and conquered his capital (with great lighthouse) and two other cities. Then I gained tech lead and adopted Hinduism to tigh myself to the most powerful civ, the French (Ludwig). Then Montezuma attacked me. Brutal. After I lost two key border cities i reloaded.

Second attempt:
I expanded quickly, and this time I made friends with Mehmet and especially Psycho-Montezuma and settled all my cities by myself. I built reasonable Military, in all cities a few Units. I didn't choose a religion (which sucks, because you can't take the 25% production bonus or great persons take longer) and have big positive modifiers with almost all Civs. Tech race is okay, the french only have five cities but are leading.

Then Stalin attacks me, the turn before he was pleased with me. :confused: Thanks to my early focus on production i manage to throw back his attack (btw: Numidian Cavalry sucks against normal horse riders) and with knights, trebuchets, pikeman and maceman i invade the russion land. Ask for peace. Stalin wants one of my cities. Slaughter medium size stacks of him. No peace. Conquer a city from him. No peace, but Mehmet declares war on me. I produce every turn knights, but Mehmet has musketman. After some time i give up, i am not losing, but war against two enemys is crippling me serious.

It was great fun! Good job on the 25/1 build :goodjob:

But i don't know what i could have done better. The other AI sucked as friends, my best friend Ludwig never helped me. Only the Mongols could be bribed to war.

Then, if you are in a long stalemate with an enemy your research is hurted. Which means you never gain enough Techs to bribe a builder Civ to war. Or get your enemys to a truce. Which sucks. Or i suck. Back to prince i think... :king:

Long story short:
It should be easier after a long war to sign for a ceasefire.

Long story short:
It should be easier after a long war to sign for a ceasefire.

Blake changed it, and for good. The reason is simple(not sure it was your case exactely), if the AI really thinks it still has more to gain in the war, it wont want peace then.

Blake changed it, and for good. The reason is simple(not sure it was your case exactely), if the AI really thinks it still has more to gain in the war, it wont want peace then.

I have to agree with this sentiment. The AI shouldn't show any mercy; you wouldn't. :mischief:

The AI shouldn't show any mercy; you wouldn't.

IMO, the AIs should act according to the way they were originally intended, not as bloodthirsty killers. 'Better' AI should be just that...better efficiency of the original intent, not changing the way the AIs operate to such point that the game of Civilization is lost in the shuffle.

Civilization was not intended to be solely a wargame or a game of military conquest. Changes like these and the unit spamming and the all-out commitments to war threaten to reduce the game to just that...a game of military conquest.

I dont want to see this turning into something that is geared simply towards a military style of play. That is not making the AI 'better', it changing the focus of the game. IMO, these types of changes are not good for the game at all.

That said, I dont believe the AI should give up in a war simply because a certain amount of time has expired etc. If it has no WW and is still making gains at reasonable cost (and not following behind in the tech and development race), then by all means it should continue the war. But if its cities are under blockade and their land is being torn up by pillaging etc then continuing to grind out even a slightly successful war is not good strategy. A human player may do it out of spite or whatever, but that doesnt make it too terribly bright.

That said, I dont believe the AI should give up in a war simply because a certain amount of time has expired etc. If it has no WW and is still making gains at reasonable cost (and not following behind in the tech and development race), then by all means it should continue the war. But if its cities are under blockade and their land is being torn up by pillaging etc then continuing to grind out even a slightly successful war is not good strategy. A human player may do it out of spite or whatever, but that doesnt make it too terribly bright.


Im guessing here but I think it's probably al ittle hard ot the AI to determine exactely when its better stop.. But in vanilla it would stop after 30 tuns(was it?) doesent matter what. That is a little dumb if you are just before the capitol of your enemy for example..
The thing is, the going for war should depend more of their personality, but after they are in a war, it should be for win or at least not lose, right?

And did you see my reply in the other thread aobut agressiviness? The AI in my continent is not agressive AT ALL, maybe because they are both 'peacefull' and as we didnt meet any other AI yet, they dont get more power cuz they think they are fine in comparation with the others that they already met..Or something like that.


Sorry if didnt make much sense, my english skills are not 100% and my keyboard skill is near 0.

I find the question "what should the AI do" quite annoying. The answer is simple:

The AI should pursue the goal which is its victory in the game (no matter what type of victory it would be). I don't think it should have only one type of victory in "mind", it should simply do its best to win.

So: should the AI show mercy or not? Lol, obviously not. It should pursue the GOAL = victory. It should end the war it is winning only if it pays. Eg., it expects some difficulties in close future (say, the enemy is about to develop a new kind of weapon that might enable it to take back a city or two). Another reason for such a cease-fire would be the need to build up more units just to continue the war after several turns. A reason could be also the size of the empire and the need to develop the new acquisitions so that they don't pull the national economy too much down.

I absolutely disagree with the argument that the game "should let the player d o X and Y, so the AI shouldn't be too aggressive towards the player". The AI should pursue victory, period.

The reason why overinvestment in military is dumb is simply that it induces general arms race. But if the arms race actually harms the other civilizations more than it hurts us, it pays to stimulate the race. If my economy can sustain 100 units and nobody else can sustain this much troops, I might go for the arms race. I might not do so if other countries have weaker economies, but they are involved in military pacts that provide enough protection to them even if each of said states can only upkeep 50 units without much harm to its economy.

I mean, the AI should analyze what is best to it and do what is best to it. If some player has problems about it, they should reduce the difficulty level.

The "AI should pursue victory" point of view is only one. It leads to SP becoming MP game with AI opponents.
The other point of view is that the AI is meant to be an obstacle to the human player, not an opponent.

I think the Aggressive AI behaviour is a good change. Maybe in time that little checkbox will be what separates MP-type AI from SP-type AI - one that is going for a win and also prevention of victory by someone else, the other a more docile version.

The "AI should pursue victory" point of view is only one. It leads to SP becoming MP game with AI opponents.
The other point of view is that the AI is meant to be an obstacle to the human player, not an opponent.

I think the Aggressive AI behaviour is a good change. Maybe in time that little checkbox will be what separates MP-type AI from SP-type AI - one that is going for a win and also prevention of victory by someone else, the other a more docile version.

Im my opnion(MINE), that is just stupid.

Anyway if the AI is winnig too much over somebody, that person clearly needs to go a level down.

The objective of this as far as I know is to make AI better. One of things is to make it also able to win, hence the Cultural victory.

Now if somebody want the AI only as an 'obstacle', well, maybe its not the right project for them?

And because of that Im 99% sure Firaxis wont introduce much of it in the game anymore. So who dont like a 'better'(still needs improviment, but I mean an AI actually trying to win and not only being an annoyance and doing nothing good) AI, well...

Thread:What is Better AI . (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=204041)

A little part of it:

"Better AI improves the AI's decision making, enabling the AI to put up a stronger game with less reliance on handicaps and ultimately to play a balanced game more like a human."

The AI should pursue victory, period.

OK, so by that rationale, why bother to have 'relations' with the AI? Why bother trying to develop good relations or share a religion or anything of the sort because if the AI is playing only to 'win', then none of that would matter a whit. If it 'thinks' it can get something out of a war with you, then it should attack regardless of previous dealings? After all, human players would never care about 'favorite civics' or 'years of peace' or anything else. So you are saying all of that should be thrown out for the AIs too?? (because thats exactly where this is leading).

Sure, that might make the AIs 'better' in some ways, but its throwing out crucial concepts of the game of CIVILIZATION. All of those modifiers and attitudes and whatnot are there for a REASON....to give the illusion that you are dealing with rival nation states and NOT just another random player out there trying to 'win the game'.

And this is EXACTLY why I proposed branching the product between those who want the AI to try to win at any cost and those who still want to play Civilization, but without the bugs and poorly optimized AI economic routines.

Dont get me wrong, I CAN play a militaristic style of game and I CAN win when the AIs are building piles of units and trying only to win the game. But its no longer the SAME GAME as Civ4. My impression was that the Better AI was not going to change fundamental elements of the game, but making the AIs play solely to 'win' regardless of other circumstance is COMPLETELY throwing the core concepts of Civilization out in favor a game of conquest.

OK, so by that rationale, why bother to have 'relations' with the AI? Why bother trying to develop good relations or share a religion or anything of the sort because if the AI is playing only to 'win', then none of that would matter a whit. If it 'thinks' it can get something out of a war with you, then it should attack regardless of previous dealings? After all, human players would never care about 'favorite civics' or 'years of peace' or anything else. So you are saying all of that should be thrown out for the AIs too?? (because thats exactly where this is leading).

Sure, that might make the AIs 'better' in some ways, but its throwing out crucial concepts of the game of CIVILIZATION. All of those modifiers and attitudes and whatnot are there for a REASON....to give the illusion that you are dealing with rival nation states and NOT just another random player out there trying to 'win the game'.

And this is EXACTLY why I proposed branching the product between those who want the AI to try to win at any cost and those who still want to play Civilization, but without the bugs and poorly optimized AI economic routines.

Dont get me wrong, I CAN play a militaristic style of game and I CAN win when the AIs are building piles of units and trying only to win the game. But its no longer the SAME GAME as Civ4. My impression was that the Better AI was not going to change fundamental elements of the game, but making the AIs play solely to 'win' regardless of other circumstance is COMPLETELY throwing the core concepts of Civilization out in favor a game of conquest.

I probably didnt make myself clear enough as I was afraid.
Here is one of my phrases:
"The thing is, the going for war should depend more of their personality, but after they are in a war, it should be for win or at least not lose, right?"

I meant that, the AI shouldent go in a war against their personality or against a friend(unless the AI has a backstabber personality). But if the AIis in a war at the moment, doesent matter the reason of the war, then YES it should get as much as it can, after all its in a war anyway no? If its in a war, the AI decided to attack according with its personallity and relationships, or got attacked. Either way its against an enemy and should try to win.


Did I make myself clear now?

I probably didnt make myself clear enough as I was afraid.

and

I meant that, the AI shouldent go in a war against their personality or against a friend(unless the AI has a backstabber personality).

You are quite clear, dont worry. ;) But what you are saying is not what some seem to be wanting and that is that the AI should play like a human player and disregard all the same things a human player might with the sole goal of victory.

I freely accept that there are players out there who desire this and think it would make for a better game. I just disagree. I believe it would make a different game, but not necessarily a better game. What drew me to the mod was the fact that gameplay was not going to be altered. But making radical changes to AI behavior (including rampant unit spamming) IS altering the gameplay quite a bit.

Look at it this way. Going from Warlords 1.0 to Warlords 2.08, there is marked improvement in the AI. The 2.08 AI runs its econ better and manages teching and production etc better than 1.0. But the gameplay is completely UNCHANGED.

Going from 2.08 to the 1/25 build, the game does not play even remotely closely. Military production HAS TO BE your main focus. Otherwise you will be crushed. There is no other way around it. You either 'keep up with the Joneses' or you lose. And just like the AI, if you are going to build a huge military, then there is a need to get some payoff from it. And that means that I'm far more likely to warmonger in 1/25 than in 2.08 (but I'm sure not everyone feels that way).

What I would like to see is the logical progression from 1.0 to 2.08 to the next build where the AI is better optimized, but the entire way the game must be played is not so radically different (ie military stressed above everything else).

And having the AI's behavior changed to 'win at any cost' is going even that much further off the baselines of the game established in Civ Vanilla, Warlords 1.0, and 2.08. In all of those upgrades and changes, the core gameplay did not radically change as it has between 2.08 and the last couple of builds. I, personally, do not want to see it to continue moving even farther off. At the same time, I recognize that apparently others DO want to see that. Hence again, my simple proposition for a more optimized 2.08.

I think the game shouldent go againt their personality, BUT they should be able to win in some situations even when they personality is quite hum..Ah well you got my meaning I hope.


Man, in vanilla I ALWAYS had the worse power graph and NEVER got dogpilled for example. Nor any near of get wiped out. That is kinda dull even if no agg. AI is on.

I always hated the fact that AI only tried Space Ship victories, and not even all of them.


And so on..For me that is the meaning of this project.

Maybe right now its not 100%, but it will get there eventually in my opnion :)

IMO, the AIs should act according to the way they were originally intended, not as bloodthirsty killers. 'Better' AI should be just that...better efficiency of the original intent, not changing the way the AIs operate to such point that the game of Civilization is lost in the shuffle.


Hey Joe,

I did not mean to imply that I thought that the game should be converted into an all-out slugfest. What I *did* mean, however, was that in the appropriate context, the AI should follow through with an effective war plan. In this case, it sounded as though the player was caught up in a bad situation -- but it also sounded as though the AI behaved exactly the way Firaxis intended. Stalin declaring war when relations were "pleased". (That's what I expect out of him -- I would only 'trust' Stalin if I knew he was completely in love with me or utterly terrified of me....and even then, I'd keep an extra defensive unit for each city on the Russian border, just in case). Monty doing a rush with his UUs (that's what I expect out of him.) Mehmet joining in on a dogpile just when his UU comes on line. (I don't have any expectations for Mehmet, but whatever, that sounds like a good idea.) Coupled with the fact that the OP was on Monarch level, this sounds like a not-unreasonable outcome.

I'm not saying that the AI should always DoW you just because you happen to be the weakest kid on the block (no -- that's what the 'relationship' dynamic is all about.) The AI should, however, act in accordance with its personality AND with what is appropriate given the overall game situation as it sees it. If Ghandi's #1 on the power graph and you're #10, but 'pleased' I'd be shocked if he DoW's you. Stalin or Monty not so much.

Going from 2.08 to the 1/25 build, the game does not play even remotely closely. Military production HAS TO BE your main focus. Otherwise you will be crushed. There is no other way around it. You either 'keep up with the Joneses' or you lose. And just like the AI, if you are going to build a huge military, then there is a need to get some payoff from it. And that means that I'm far more likely to warmonger in 1/25 than in 2.08 (but I'm sure not everyone feels that way).



I have to confess, I am not seeing this to the extent that you are. Again, I have only been playing on straight Noble level, but I have gotten away with not doing a complete military crush in many of my games on Better AI.

Are you only playing it on your modified difficulty level, or have you tried some of the 'standard' levels? I ask only b/c I'm not sure what your mods are doing (and, btw, I would love to have a crack at them if you're interested in sharing....)

I agree that abandoning diplomatic relations would be "just too much", but there is something wrong about Civ IV not punishing the human player for backstabbing a close friend. This is not in the scope of this project, but I think that backstabbing a friend should cause more unrest home or something of this sort. Diplomatic relations DO work in both directions, though. How? What discourages us from attacking a civ that we have good relations with is the fact that they are our friend and it is better to do harm to enemies than to friends. I don't think anyone here will claim that they don't care about the diplomatic relations status when picking a target for invasion. And this is how having good relations with us actually gives the AI some certainty that they won't be backstabbed. Unexpected attacks from our close friends should sometimes happen, though.

So I don't mean that any aspect of Civ IV should be abandoned, I mean that the AI should pursue a goal and not just fill in the empty space (because it would be boring to win the game without civs around). Builders hate the fact that there are warmongers around that might do them harm, but this is what we call life.

Personality does indeed limit the AI to some extent and I would prefer it to be a hidden, random feature about the AI Civs than some overt fact (like now). It is a bit unfair that you do know what to expect from Isabella, but she doesn't really know what to expect from you. This is where I would alter the gameplay, also because this is a new aspect in Civilization and nobody should claim it is something that we should not ever question. I know it is "cool" to know that the Leadeheads Have Personalities, but I would find it cooler if I didn't know what's in their Leaderheads.

And personality should not cause the AI to do stupid things, like in my last 2.08 game where Isabella would keep declaring war on me even though I had twice more power than she did. So: no Suicide in the name of Personality. Let's not move that far. Militaristic should mean that you prefer to use military to pursue victory, scientific - that you prefer scientific solution. But victory is the same goal for everyone, not just being there and moving units around.

What Blake and Iustus are doing here is impressive, because they seem to be able to teach the AI to be much more effective in their attempts to win the game. It seems they can teach the AI to get the cultural victory - this is what we should head for. And I think AI should be able to make use of every feature of the game that we are able to use - like the new Warlords forts.

PS Wouldn't it be possible to give the player an option to randomize AI personalities? Or is it already possible and I'm just not paying enough attention.

PS Wouldn't it be possible to give the player an option to randomize AI personalities? Or is it already possible and I'm just not paying enough attention.

ROFL Ishon. That was an option avalable in the standard civilization game when it was first released.

It's in the game options... good luck :P


Also, you guys are getting nowhere. Uncle Joe and arguers, Blake has already said this about half a dozen times. the Aggressive AI will become an option for people who are like the people arguing with Joe. (sorry guys, just too many people to list) If you want to play like Joe does, Don't turn on Aggressive AI. Also, for the defender spam, I think Blake and Iustus now realize that it needs more fine tuning after reading it a dozen times. Wait until the next build, if there still is a problem, let Blake or Iustus know.

The M'Hael

Also, you guys are getting nowhere. Uncle Joe and arguers, Blake has already said this about half a dozen times. the Aggressive AI will become an option for people who are like the people arguing with Joe. (sorry guys, just too many people to list) If you want to play like Joe does, Don't turn on Aggressive AI. Also, for the defender spam, I think Blake and Iustus now realize that it needs more fine tuning after reading it a dozen times. Wait until the next build, if there still is a problem, let Blake or Iustus know.

The M'Hael

I agree. There have been really no new arguments in the last few days, so I don't see a reason to continue it but stubbornness. But then again, stubbornness is the reason for many endless arguments. ;)

Edit: I can sometimes be a stubborn guy too by the way. :)

I agree. There have been really no new arguments in the last few days, so I don't see a reason to continue it but stubbornness. But then again, stubbornness is the reason for many endless arguments. ;)

Edit: I can sometimes be a stubborn guy too by the way. :)

Well, winning an argument on the Internets is important.


By the way, I did spot some questionable AI behavior....Wang Kong overreliance on collaterial units...looks like that's all he has in two cities. Check Pyongyang (which has traded hands a couple of times between Korea, Carthage, and Greece,) and another outpost city off to the west. Please don't laugh at how badly I'm sucking in the game.

Please?
:goodjob:

Well, winning an argument on the Internets is important.

:lol: :lol:

Look at it this way. Going from Warlords 1.0 to Warlords 2.08, there is marked improvement in the AI. The 2.08 AI runs its econ better and manages teching and production etc better than 1.0. But the gameplay is completely UNCHANGED.

It's not that simple.
2.08 AI is better than 1.00 at teching but worse at war.
2.08 is even worse at self-defense. 2.08 AI's usually have around 4 defenders in mature cities (which is a :lol:) while 1.00 usually had around twice as much or more and were tougher at offense too.

By the way..Ah well, probably this can be left alone at least for a while, but IMHO Catherine is not as nice going to Cultural victory as being a bitc..

Why? We all know Catherine asks a lot and demands a lot, and if you refuse too much she send a stack of cossacks to deal with you. But when she is going for cultural victory(note that i think that it makes sense she going for it.), she can ask as much as she wants and I dont need to care because I know she doesent have an offensive military..


OK Im probably being idiot(:crazyeye: ) or so(more likely retarded), but I think it takes off a bit of her 'hot' personality..What about, when you have time and if you want, put her probability of go for Cultural victories a little lower? Unless its already too less leaders gonig to it(I actually dont know)..


Just think about it :lol:

In addition to each individual's personal preferences, we all observe only the very limited sample of games we each play. Given all of the various options each map, map type, and number and variety of opponents in each game, any person's individual experience is of very little value in isolation.

Example--My current game is huge lakes, 11 civs, normal aggression, latest AI build. In the middle ages, the Incans are cruising to a cultural victory, I'm Persia, sandwiched by Tokugawa and Gengis Khan and in a recent war with both but hanging on. Roosevelt is about to be wiped out by Alexander in a war that has been going on and off from 1000BC. This game has no defender spam, very good logic by the AI (pillaging, attack stacks---I even saw the AI wait when I sent defender stacks to my border to augment their attack stack before proceeding, something I've never seen before). The Incans are cruising to a cultural victory because they are surrounded by friendly civs, while Roosevelt and I struggle because our neighbors are aggressive/psychotic in their behavior. The game plays better, and the leaders seem to still react logically to their personalities and situations.

This game in isolation proves nothing, but it does suggest that the current build does not always produce constant warmongering (my first war was in 1200AD despite my two neighbors), defender spam or other behavior that ruins the Civ flavor.

In addition to each individual's personal preferences, we all observe only the very limited sample of games we each play. Given all of the various options each map, map type, and number and variety of opponents in each game, any person's individual experience is of very little value in isolation.

Example--My current game is huge lakes, 11 civs, normal aggression, latest AI build. In the middle ages, the Incans are cruising to a cultural victory, I'm Persia, sandwiched by Tokugawa and Gengis Khan and in a recent war with both but hanging on. Roosevelt is about to be wiped out by Alexander in a war that has been going on and off from 1000BC. This game has no defender spam, very good logic by the AI (pillaging, attack stacks---I even saw the AI wait when I sent defender stacks to my border to augment their attack stack before proceeding, something I've never seen before). The Incans are cruising to a cultural victory because they are surrounded by friendly civs, while Roosevelt and I struggle because our neighbors are aggressive/psychotic in their behavior. The game plays better, and the leaders seem to still react logically to their personalities and situations.

This game in isolation proves nothing, but it does suggest that the current build does not always produce constant warmongering (my first war was in 1200AD despite my two neighbors), defender spam or other behavior that ruins the Civ flavor.

Well, in my recent game(played only 2 hours, need ot study) with the last version, also I got no defender spam from the 2 CIVs I saw(still in axeman-horse archer era, and its 3 continents) when I declared war on t5hem.

Cathy was real easy to kill, with only 1 chariot in one city and a warrior in other(!!).

Ramses was a little harder but also no difficulty. He did only one archer extra before I destoryed his 3 cities. One had a warrior only, other 1 archer and the other 2 archers. There was also an archer defending a cow that didnt do much..

I shall report more about unit spamming when I actually see the other 6 AIs..

But if the AI's bonus is reduced to a more manageable level, then the need for that 'pre-emptive strike' is obviated.
Sorry for the delay in responding. Had a weekend trip. :)

Anyway, I think we're still not quite on the same page. By "AI bonus" (above) I think you're talking about the handicaps. Which, for those who install the Better Handicaps (separate mod, available on SourceForge along with the BetterAI mod), will cut back on AI production and AI economic bonuses on higher levels.

But, look at what we're talking about here. You're saying basically "throw out all the improvements made since 2.08 except for bug fixes". (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Such improvements include better citizen management, better unit movement / tactics, etc. These have nothing to do with the handicap bonuses and definitely have an effect upon the AI research rate etc.

So, to repeat my assertion.... This clearly is a situation where the AI will perform research (etc) faster and better than before. Therefore, if you don't attack, then you are leaving the AI to its strength, and it will do better than it would have with the previous algorithms.

The whole point of attacking the AI (and exploiting its weakness at warfare) is a pre-emptive strategy, not a reactive one. (That's why high-level players swear by early rushing.)

Therefore, I maintain that improving the AI military management MUST remain a goal. If the biggest weakess of the AI is military, then ALL players are de facto encouraged to adopt a military strategy, because that is the surest and best way to succeed and do well in the game.

I'll also repeat my caveat... I think the current BetterAI doesn't quite meet this goal. The huge garrison stacks aren't what we want and need to improve Civ's gameplay. So, I agree with you, Uncle Joe.

Is your suggestion better (go back to 2.08 AI with bugfixes only)? Beats me. However, I personally would prefer to throw my vote for the BetterAI team to spend their limited time fixing the deficiencies, rather than "punting", "going back to square one", "throwing the baby out with the bathwater", or whatever idiom floats your boat. ;)

And that is folly I see in the strategy...its not going to possible to WIN the game that early (unless on Pangea). So mortgaging the future to win a few wars is not an effective strategy. You'll eventually run out of steam and be left in the dust.

In order for this AI to work and not convert the game into a simple wargame, there is going to have to be a LOT of moderation put in here. The AIs should not commit to all-out attacks, particularly early in the game. It detrimental to gameplay and to the AI doing it even if it succeeds.
I think there other options available than the only one you present.

Let's look at what humans do. They might adopt an early all-out attack, sure. They often do. However, a human is smart enough to know when to stop. Go for it, cripple your opponent, take a few cities, but don't waste time butting heads against the enemy capitol (with its cultural defense), and definitely don't grab too many cities. Sue for peace and start building infrastructure. The goal was met... the enemy was set back a few rungs, you have bigger territory and a larger empire, etc. Time to stop and consolidate.

The bigger question here is whether it is preferable to teach the AI to act like humans do, or to teach the AI to act in such a way that it makes for an entertaining game for the human. Getting pwned isn't usually entertaining. So, if that is the goal, then I agree, AIs should never go all out.

However, I'm not sure that's the goal. Personally, I would like the AI to act like humans do, and that includes the knowledge of when to stop throwing bad money after the good.

This is a good question, though, I think, and worth discussing. It's good to know the goal before we start arguing about how to get there. :D

OK, so by that rationale, why bother to have 'relations' with the AI? Why bother trying to develop good relations or share a religion or anything of the sort because if the AI is playing only to 'win', then none of that would matter a whit. ...making the AIs play solely to 'win' regardless of other circumstance is COMPLETELY throwing the core concepts of Civilization out in favor a game of conquest.
I disagree, both with the premise and with the conclusion.

Here's an analogy. Every play the board game Diplomacy? Seven human players, each with a country (on an Europe map), and each with the blatant goal of conquering 3/4 of the map. It's in your face. So, we have to ask, how in the world is this simply not a wargame? Simple: the game mechanics allow players to support each other. So, if two players gang up on a third, then they will have an advantage. Seems obvious, but there it is.

So, in Civ, "why bother trying to develop good relations"? Because the game mechanics give you a benefit for doing so. You get economic benefits by trade routes. You can get military benefits by both attacking a third player. You can trade techs. etc.

Yet, despite all this, the human, and the AIs too, each have a goal of "winning" the game. And that's how it should be. This doesn't change the fact that one way to get an advantage to win is by making a tacit alliance with another player/AI. Call this a Catch-22, or a dichotomy, or a paradox. At some point, there may be a backstab or change of alliances, and that's fine too. All part of the game.

Wodan

The bigger question here is whether it is preferable to teach the AI to act like humans do, or to teach the AI to act in such a way that it makes for an entertaining game for the human. Getting pwned isn't usually entertaining. So, if that is the goal, then I agree, AIs should never go all out.The goal seems to be as stated "ultimately to play a balanced game more like a human". Blake wrote an interesting post at the end of the 2nd page in the AI aggression level thread regarding the design goal.

I tend to share the views of Uncle_Joe and Elandal on this so I'm interested to hear what you think.

My personal preference is towards entertainment, I play primarily for fun. Though it's nice to have a challenge once in a while, I don't look for it every game. That being said I quite liked Elandal's post re: the AI being an obstacle not an opponent.

It's tough to strike a balance that pleases everyone. Hopefully a combination of the Aggressive AI option and difficulty levels will allow for variation in AI playing styles.

You're saying basically "throw out all the improvements made since 2.08 except for bug fixes". (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Not precisely. What I'm saying is the the 'military buildup or die' every game is extremely 'unfun' IMO. And in fact, its so 'unfun', that I would be willing to throw out the rest of the improvements to avoid it. By the same token, I know that the 2.08 AI is a bit too soft. I know that the Better AI team doesnt want to bother with tons of parallel mods and all of the versioning headaches that would involve.

So, if the heavy military emphasis is going to continue as part of Better AI (for whatever reason), then I was hoping for a one-time 'sub mod' that doesnt develop further that simply catches the worst of the problems of the 2.08 bugs. I can always tweak the handicaps to season to taste for difficulty, but the gameplay is what I believe CIVILIZATION should be.

Since then, Blake has mentioned potentially controlling the military aspects via the Aggressive AI setting. It remains to be seen how that works out and if it provides what I'm looking for. If not, then again I would ask for an update to 2.08 which I know already has the gameplay I'm looking for but unfortunately with the AIs neglecting defense a little too much. My hope is that such a 'quick fix' wouldnt be a ton of work since most the bug fixes would already be known quantities.

Here's an analogy. Every play the board game Diplomacy? Seven human players, each with a country (on an Europe map), and each with the blatant goal of conquering 3/4 of the map. It's in your face. So, we have to ask, how in the world is this simply not a wargame? Simple: the game mechanics allow players to support each other. So, if two players gang up on a third, then they will have an advantage. Seems obvious, but there it is.

Yep, I've played Diplomacy numerous times (as well as tons of multiplayer strategy games). But that is not even the same ball park as trying to program an AI. You can get a 'read' on people and you can leverage betrayals as currency with the other players. Some times it might be 'tactically' sound to backstab someone, but if that means others dont trust you then perhaps in the long run its not worthwhile. Trying to get an AI to duplicate the nuances of multiplayer diplomacy is not realistic (until we get self aware AIs and then we have that whole Skynet thing or the Cylons turning on their masters etc etc ;) ).

Given that, the only thing we have is the diplomatic modifiers. In many cases these arent even 'in game' events. But they give the illusion of nation-states as opponents. But trying to base actual diplomacy off of them is folly. How can you convince another AI that double-teaming the leader is a good thing even though all of you are 'friends'. You'll get the 'We couldnt betray our good friends' response regards of how beneficial it is. And there is nothing you can do. That is only the barest hint of the limits on diplomacy between humans and AIs.

To me, trying to go down that particular path is a waste of time and effort. Its not going to work within the framework of Civ4. So again, that leads me back to square one. If that is going to be the focus of the mod from this point, then its something I can personally do without. Trying to make the AIs behave like humans is just going to suck the suspension of disbelief out of the game IMO. On the other hand, there are so many improvements made to the way the AI handles things such as expansion or the way it distributes its econ. I hate to miss out on those too. Which is why I'm asking for a 'quick fix' if the situation cant be compromised with the Aggresive AI setting toggle. I dont intend to say that the project should 'punt' or 'fold' or whatnot, but simply that the direction that the mod is heading makes the game LESS fun for me, not more...unlike the original improvements that were added with the first versions of Better AI.

I realize that the mod cant be all things to all players. And obviously Blake and company are doing this 'on their own time with their own dime' so they can shape the project however they please. If they want AIs that try to play as humans always going for the win, then thats fine since its their hard work going into it. But along the way, if they can throw a bone to those of us who would prefer the AIs to play closer to 'roleplaying' than as 100% direct competitors, I think it would be greatly appreciated by those fans. I'm hoping the current compromise with the Aggressive AI does just that, but I fear it may start the whole diverging of the project that they were trying to avoid by not developing concurrent mods.

Interesting though this discussion is, can i suggest that Uncle Joe, Wodan etc. move it to a new thread within this forum so that it doesn't overwhelm this thread.

I think the agressiviness thread and this one are talking abotu the same things :lol:

Anyway, what I understood of the Blake's replies, is that others AIs beside the economy-based ones can and will win the game in their own way. Being it by spaceship building(the only way to AI win in vanilla arghh, I hate it), by Cultural victories, by diplomacy headed game, by dogpilling, or by 'all or nothing' in the military aspect. I like that, I actually love that as long as their main personality remain, for example Isabella should aim only for Civs out of their religion, or Toku should never make much dipllomatic deals and attack ASAP. Monty should hardly like somebody(mind you, I never saw Monty as a backstabber if somebody gets to be his friend) or Alex backstabbing the heck out of it or Gandhi NEVER attacknig somebody, and etc. If they can win respecting their own personality, then oh my, that is the project!

Did you ever see military AIs trying to win in the Vanilla? Getting out at least 2 AIs? I didnt..

Before we move the discussion to another thresd let me pitch in with my comments.

I am coming to the same conclusion as Uncle Joe.

I am now on game 4 with the 25/1 build.
all games 3 continents, 6 AI, standard aggression, no tech trading, the first 2 games on prince, the second 2 on noble, and with my own custom speed mod.

My custom speed slows tech down to marathon, has most other things on slow, except unit building on normal and culture just a bit under marathon. (this does tend to lead to unit spam in early game and some financial problems, but this has been fine up until this build).

The first 3 games had me sharing 1 continent with 1 other AI. Each game they went for me in an all out attack soon after they got bronze working, even if they were previously friendly towards me (I had spread an early religion in one game).
In one game I could of held out, but I was aware by the wonders being built that the rest of the world was out teching me badly. (I also never had copper in any of these games - not the better AI's fault but annoying). One of the games it was Roosevelt who went for me - I was surprised.

In my current game I started on a big land mass with 4 other AI, chinese, greek, korean, spanish.
The spanish were going for religions, the Koreans for wonders and the other 2 for military build up.
Greeks slaughtered the spanish, Chinese slaughtered the Koreans (just after bronze working). I had been concentrating on keeping a large military this time.
Greeks then attacked the Chinese, and the Germans from another continent found the main land mass, adopted the same religion as me, traded some goods with me and then next go declared war on me.

It is almost as if there is a bit of code that says 'if have bronze working and military is greater then neighbour then attack'

This is not fun.

In my current game the 2 AI's that were adopting a peaceful stratagy died too easy, and as a builder player (only being aggresive if I have to be) I get attacked too frequently, even when I am fostering good relations with the people near me.

This level of aggresion has only appeared in the new build. I would expect a war at some point in earlier builds, but not the genocidal tendancies I am seeing from the AI now.

Could it please be toned back a bit.



edit: (Arlborn posted while I was composing this)

QUOTE:
Anyway, what I understood of the Blake's replies, is that others AIs beside the economy-based ones can and will win the game in their own way. Being it by spaceship building(the only way to AI win in vanilla arghh, I hate it), by Cultural victories, by diplomacy headed game, by dogpilling, or by 'all or nothing' in the military aspect. I like that, I actually love that as long as their main personality remain, for example Isabella should aim only for Civs out of their religion, or Toku should never make much dipllomatic deals and attack ASAP. Monty should hardly like somebody(mind you, I never saw Monty as a backstabber if somebody gets to be his friend) or Alex backstabbing the heck out of it or Gandhi NEVER attacknig somebody, and etc. If they can win respecting their own personality, then oh my, that is the project!

Exactly! What I am seeing is the military AI's having the upper hand too much. They need to be toned back a bit. I was surprised to be attacked by Roosevelt, and even more surprised by Frederick attacking me when we shared a religion, were trading goods and had no negative relations at all.

I think the agressiviness thread and this one are talking abotu the same things :lol:

Anyway, what I understood of the Blake's replies, is that others AIs beside the economy-based ones can and will win the game in their own way. Being it by spaceship building(the only way to AI win in vanilla arghh, I hate it), by Cultural victories, by diplomacy headed game, by dogpilling, or by 'all or nothing' in the military aspect. I like that, I actually love that as long as their main personality remain, for example Isabella should aim only for Civs out of their religion, or Toku should never make much dipllomatic deals and attack ASAP. Monty should hardly like somebody(mind you, I never saw Monty as a backstabber if somebody gets to be his friend) or Alex backstabbing the heck out of it or Gandhi NEVER attacknig somebody, and etc. If they can win respecting their own personality, then oh my, that is the project!

Did you ever see military AIs trying to win in the Vanilla? Getting out at least 2 AIs? I didnt..

My thougts exactly. :)

I don't have any problem moving to a new thread. Though, I think I'll just move my response here over to the Aggression one.

Wodan

(from bug reports thread)
Assert Failed

File: .\CvPlayer.cpp
Line: 11483
Expression: isHuman() || isBarbarian() || ((getGold() + iGoldChange) >= 0)
Message:

----------------------------------------------------------

This is the second time I got this. I didn;t have frequent enough auto-saves last time, so I'm just posting this one.

It always appears between turns (while the AI is presumably moving). It's non-recreatable unfortunately.

Here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/96162/Brian-Fractal.CivWarlordsSave) is a save before the assert failure.

I made my moves the first time and hit enter and it froze between turns. (I had to minimize the window to see the assert.)

The second time (trying to recreate it) I just loaded the save and hit enter. It didn't get the assert.

The third time, I loaded the save, duplicated my original moves, and hit enter. Again I didn't get the assert.

The moves I made were:
-Promote all cannons outside istanbul to CR2
-Launch all the non-critically-injured cannons into Istanbul
-Then attack with all the Infantry on the same tile.
-Using the bombers in Alexandria, attack Edrine, then the unused ones into the Mehmed's other city (can't remember name.)
-Set all infantry in Alexandria to heal (for one turn).
-Then move all the other bombers into Alexandria
-Then hit enter.

It should be noted that both repeat attempts, on the new turn, Frederick offered me 830 gold for Democracy. That didn't happen the original time I got the assert. I don't know if that's significant or not.

Julius Caesar managed to get himself in quite a financial hole in this one. He is at 100% to gold, and still negative, and this is not the first turn he has been so. I am happy to see that too many units is not the cause for his financial hole.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/95686/jcfinancialpickle.jpg

It seems it lost Rome to Wang Kon, but took all his other cities and then vassalized him (Rome is Wang Kon's only city).

Being at war with Washington isnt helping JC, but it isnt hurting him that much, it looks like he just took Washington's capital, that gold influx probably helped some.

The real problem is he is paying high maint cost because his capital is now in a poor place, and he has not built any courthouses or even his UB market.

This may be a case where he has been using wars to finance himself, but that is causing him to fail to build enough buildings, keeping the war effort going.

-Iustus

For some reason AI especially Japan i think is neglecting a place to settle which i consider would be quite a good resource outpost.
1 sheep for food so not a totally crippled city and also 2 furs and 1 whale worth an outpost city in my calculations without doubt even more for someone so close as Japan.

AI (Korea) is training a settler in an 1 pop 'city' Cheju while there's nowhere to settle.

Coastal cities are almost undefended (1 defender or 2) which is not right IMO.
It's ok the AI is not that great at invasions right now but that's just too much gamble. And I can attack from the sea hard enough and can also amphibious ! so they'd better care for their people more. Not to mention i'm sure AI's invasion/amphibious skills will also be improved in the close future.

I don't see unit overspam at noble* at all so if we gonna turn them down it has to be tested very throughly to not leave civs defenseless.
At least a fast-response defensive stack or 2 would be necessary to defend the otherwise quite open cities.

I think barbarian intruders should be attacked by the defenders with more courage.
Maybe inner cities are considered under low-threat so much they won't train anti-pillagers. This should be dealt with somehow. (like fast response antipillagers)
Also this could maybe to avoid luring out defenders. In such a case if victory is sure and there are no enemies nearby defender could move out for a kill nonetheless.
Maybe barbarian cities hold out longer than they should. AI's might do some kind of limited military buildup to take barb cities considered worthy.
Because of the new handicaps (bigger threat) AI's should consider escorting settlers with more units not just 1.

All this with betterai handicaps 1.00

For some reason AI especially Japan i think is neglecting a place to settle which i consider would be quite a good resource outpost.
1 sheep for food so not a totally crippled city and also 2 furs and 1 whale worth an outpost city in my calculations without doubt even more for someone so close as Japan.

Do you have this save?

I'm looking into coastal defenses, especially post-astronomy.

Do you have this save?

I'm looking into coastal defenses, especially post-astronomy.

All my recent observations are from this game.
I now have got astronomy. Probably others don't have it.
This might be a factor i didn't think of.

Coastal cities are almost undefended (1 defender or 2) which is not right IMO.
It's ok the AI is not that great at invasions right now but that's just too much gamble. And I can attack from the sea hard enough and can also amphibious ! so they'd better care for their people more. Not to mention i'm sure AI's invasion/amphibious skills will also be improved in the close future.

There seems to be a difference between the number of defenders on the left below the spy and the number of defenders shown vaguely visible next to the spy on the bottom of the screen. Is the information from 2 different spies?

There seems to be a difference between the number of defenders on the left below the spy and the number of defenders shown vaguely visible next to the spy on the bottom of the screen. Is the information from 2 different spies?

Yes i think the icons show the stack beside the spy that's moving (i've placed spy to every AI cities to observe 'unit overspam' which i didn't find)

And the text list at left-bottom shows the city on the screen because the pointer was hovering over these cities when the shots were taken.

Sorry for a bit of confusion.

Always look at the text list.

(from bug reports thread)


Julius Caesar managed to get himself in quite a financial hole in this one. He is at 100% to gold, and still negative, and this is not the first turn he has been so. I am happy to see that too many units is not the cause for his financial hole.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/95686/jcfinancialpickle.jpg

It seems it lost Rome to Wang Kon, but took all his other cities and then vassalized him (Rome is Wang Kon's only city).

Being at war with Washington isnt helping JC, but it isnt hurting him that much, it looks like he just took Washington's capital, that gold influx probably helped some.

The real problem is he is paying high maint cost because his capital is now in a poor place, and he has not built any courthouses or even his UB market.

This may be a case where he has been using wars to finance himself, but that is causing him to fail to build enough buildings, keeping the war effort going.

-Iustus

Well, this was a weird game. What happened was that Wang Kon launched an attack against Ceasar, took Rome, and eventually Vassalised him. (Wang Kon and Ceasar were not adjacent civilisations, Wang Kon was near me, Ceasar was on the far side of the pangea.) A little while after that, Wang Kon then abruptly attacked me (and thus his vassal Ceasar had to declare too). After fending off the initial wave, I launched a viscous counter attack (as you do) against Wang Kon. Ceasar didn't get involved in any of the fighting because as I said, he was far away on the pangea.

My counter attack captured and razed all of Wang Kon's main cities, leaving him with only the captured Rome. This freed Ceasar as a vassal as Wang Kon's population had plummeted. Rome was meanwhile under trememdous cultural pressure from Ceasar's surrounding cities. And not too long after I ended the war, Wang Kon now became Ceasar's vassal as the slave became the master!

Ceasar also gained I think Shaka as his vassal a while later and ended up back on top in score, and quickly entered a war with Washington shortly after all this as well.

Testing the newest build.

The German scout ignored a barb village, which enables me to take it in the next turn. I enclose two savegames + a screenshot.

http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/8280/civ4screenshot0000dz9.jpg

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/89703/AutoSave_BC-3835.CivWarlordsSave
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/89703/AutoSave_BC-3820.CivWarlordsSave

I'm looking into coastal defenses, especially post-astronomy.

How does the AI handle colonisation post-astronomy?

Terra, standard, monarch, non-aggressive, 01/25 build:

http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/2752/newworldkb4.th.jpg (http://img181.imageshack.us/my.php?image=newworldkb4.jpg)

Saladin beat me to the circum-navigation (something around 1200 AD), so in frustration I didn't concentrate on the new world. But later in 1750 the barbarian continent is still pristine like a virgin! I conquered without effort the northern half of the continent (infantry vs barbarian macemen). Till 1900 no other Civ settles in the southern part, so i can grab that too.

The game itself was good. There were many wars and powershifts among Victoria vs Napoleon vs Isabella. Saladin managed for the most part to stay out of war and could keep up (almost) in tech with me, but was backstabbed by Isabella.

No defender spam (or unit spam in general), but the wars, especially those the AI lost to me, were costly for the other Civs.

How does the AI handle colonisation post-astronomy?


I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that Terra's "old world" is a sort of "mini-Pangaea", meaning that the AI civs tend to go into land warfare mode to the exclusion of interest in overseas colonization? (All the more so since you were steamrollering them!)

I noticed in my recent Tectonics map game, a variety of land masses were generated, and the AI not only colonized some, but also fought wars over those colonies, too. (The civs starting locations were spread out over two or three continents, but there were also one or two empty island continents worth settling; I didn't try to grab them myself b/c I was focused on a culture strategy....)

Testing the newest build.

The German scout ignored a barb village, which enables me to take it in the next turn. I enclose two savegames + a screenshot.

http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/8280/civ4screenshot0000dz9.jpg

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/89703/AutoSave_BC-3835.CivWarlordsSave
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/89703/AutoSave_BC-3820.CivWarlordsSave

Hmm. This is an interesting case. I am not sure if it makes sense to 'fix' this or not.

Basically what happened here is that the AI decided where to move before he saw the hut. I know I have done the same thing on accident.

It is pretty easy to change it so that explore units only move one plot at a time, but that will slow down the turn times more, as scouts will make twice as many decisions.

If you did not take the hut that turn, he would definitely grab it the next one.

Anyone have any thoughts? Is it alright for the AI to make some 'mistakes' or should it act perfect every time?

-Iustus

Hmm. This is an interesting case. I am not sure if it makes sense to 'fix' this or not.

Basically what happened here is that the AI decided where to move before he saw the hut. I know I have done the same thing on accident.

It is pretty easy to change it so that explore units only move one plot at a time, but that will slow down the turn times more, as scouts will make twice as many decisions.

If you did not take the hut that turn, he would definitely grab it the next one.

Anyone have any thoughts? Is it alright for the AI to make some 'mistakes' or should it act perfect every time?

-Iustus

if it slowdown times i think things should stay as they are now.Missing a hut the first time is not an huge mistake and the AI can compensate for its error a turn later.
I think this is also common among expert humans to use the scout moving 2 movement for time.
If the slowdown is unnoticeable why not improving this aspect otherwise, this "mistake" is not worth a slowdown

I vote we leave it as is.... It balances out all the errant keystrokes that I make during a game.

I vote for perfect movement. I never move 2 tiles at a time through unexplored territory. Far to risky. You never know where you're going.

Does this really make turn times that much longer? It's just one of the many things the AI does in its turn. Or is the movement aspect that important for turn times. It's also only while exploring unexplored terrain with 2 move explorers where this specific error can happen.

If the slowdown is about 1 second or more(I think you cant tell it, can you?) then nah, not big importance over slowdown...

I vote for perfect movement. I never move 2 tiles at a time through unexplored territory. Far to risky. You never know where you're going.

Does this really make turn times that much longer? It's just one of the many things the AI does in its turn. Or is the movement aspect that important for turn times. It's also only while exploring unexplored terrain with 2 move explorers where this specific error can happen.
I would hazard to guess that this would also happen with any two move unit when dealing with fogged terrain. Such as pillaging horse units. They move two and get whomped by your pike. Or, they move one, see the pike, and then run away.

Wodan

I also vote for perfect movement, as I also never move 2 tiles at one time while exploring - this could be costly if you have bad luck. If an AI scout moves 1 tile and then finds out it's facing a dangerous animal/barbarian, it should pull back to some 50%/75% defense tile and not commit suicide.

If Wodan is right and this is just a natural feature of units that are capable of moving more than 1 tile/turn, I think this becomes a very serious issue. But I don't know how much this would make the game work slower. If it's 10-25% slower, I think it's acceptable. If it's more than 50%, let's think twice.

I would hazard to guess that this would also happen with any two move unit when dealing with fogged terrain. Such as pillaging horse units. They move two and get whomped by your pike. Or, they move one, see the pike, and then run away.

Wodan

Which is another reason why I'm skeptical of making the change -- at least, not at this juncture. If the AI is designed to function this way, I'm inclined to let that process stand for now. (At least, not for the 1.0 build). Goes under the "ain't broke/don't fix it" heading.

(Look at me! Talking as though I'm the one who has to do the work on this project! :cool:)

I would hazard to guess that this would also happen with any two move unit when dealing with fogged terrain. Such as pillaging horse units. They move two and get whomped by your pike. Or, they move one, see the pike, and then run away.

Wodan

That would be a similar issue and even worse. It would be extremely stupid if they would just attack a pikeman with a knight just because they didn't take the time to look. Such a thing has never happened to me before since playing civ (and that is since civ1).

That would surely not be an acceptable error from the AI. However, I must say that I haven't seen this type of crazy 2 move attack behaviour from the AI, so maybe they don't do this.

That would be a similar issue and even worse. It would be extremely stupid if they would just attack a pikeman with a knight just because they didn't take the time to look. Such a thing has never happened to me before since playing civ (and that is since civ1).

That would surely not be an acceptable error from the AI. However, I must say that I haven't seen this type of crazy 2 move attack behaviour from the AI, so maybe they don't do this.

Oh -- I thought he meant that they move two, end up next to your pike, then get whomped when you attack the next turn. (Which is, sometimes, an acceptable loss, especially if you are scouting....)

Oh -- I thought he meant that they move two, end up next to your pike, then get whomped when you attack the next turn. (Which is, sometimes, an acceptable loss, especially if you are scouting....)

In that case, the knight probably couldn't have seen the pikeman after 1 move and I don't see how stopping and looking again could have helped the knight. If the knight can see the pikeman after 1 move (standing on a hill for instance), then I don't think it should move next to the pikeman.

Yes, that's what I meant... move two, and then you attack with the pike on your turn.

As for the "haven't seen this type of crazy 2 move"... what about the old move-onto-a-hidden-sub-and-cause-declaration-of-war?

Wodan

Yes, that's what I meant... move two, and then you attack with the pike on your turn.

As for the "haven't seen this type of crazy 2 move"... what about the old move-onto-a-hidden-sub-and-cause-declaration-of-war?

Wodan

Yes, that was an ugly bug in civ3. The human player would get a warning that the move would cause a war, but the AI would just attack completely oblivious to the fact that the move would declare a war. It's slightly different again as what you were describing above.

It could surely be true that the AI will just attack the pikeman with the knight. But it is also clear that this is not a good AI decision and thus should be avoided if the betterAI team can program the AI better.

Tried 1/30 MP game and got an OOS early on. Neither computer had a file called MPLog.txt that Blake mentioned, even though we turned on logging in the INI that was recommended. The game and all files in the log folder from each of the 2 PC's are attached.

Basically what happened here is that the AI decided where to move before he saw the hut.

It is pretty easy to change it so that explore units only move one plot at a time, but that will slow down the turn times more, as scouts will make twice as many decisions.

Anyone have any thoughts? Is it alright for the AI to make some 'mistakes' or should it act perfect every time?

This seems like a good non-quantitative difference of bahaviour for the various difficulty levels: Let the higher AI levels play smarter by thinking more (or more often, as in this case).

1-30 asserts build, Monarch level.

Maybe this particular goof is due to the AI's inability to recognize UU's. But anyway, I had 2 Immortals parked at Berlin's doorstep after doing some pillaging. Suddenly a Settler from Germany's only other city shows up one tile away from my Immortals, on a flat plains tile, escorted by a single archer! Needless to say I won easily with > 99% odds.

Just for kicks, I left a scout to guard the captured worker to see if Berlin's LONE DEFENDER, a Garrison I archer, would seek vengeance. (Frederick had been sending his other defenders, of which there were as many as 3, who-knows-where every time I would go pillage something and lose sight of Berlin for a turn.)

Lo and behold, the Garrison I archer DOES attack the scout on the next turn, and of course is plucked easily by one of my Immortals. I don't know why he did that, since the AI doesn't get to keep captured workers. Now Berlin is left with a newly popped, unpromoted archer with no fortify bonus. It's not even on a hill, although it is on the other side of a stream from my Immortals.

FYI, Frederick had spent the first 100 turns or so founding Judaism and building the Temple of Artemis in Berlin. His only other city was in a really poor location. He should have known better with Alexander next door (who is the AI who brought me into the war in the first place).

Kudos to Alexander though for waging a very organized war! He ended up unlucky though. I decided not to risk my injured Immortals on Berlin, and Alexander showed up a few turns later with a Stack of Doom. After he battered down the new wave of Berlin's defending archers (obtained I assume thru slavery), I just picked off the last two injured ones and got Berlin for myself.

Incidentally, I suppose that's a much more advanced issue to address, but I have noticed that the AI can sometimes make the dumb mistake of leaving a big prize to an ally like that.

I'll try to get you some screenshots and savegames soon. I saved every turn during this bizarreness.

1-30 asserts build:

I was Russia, prince level, in a long term war with my only direct neighbour - Ramses. While I surrounded his capital with axes, and he had another city SW, another W, and another SE - but I was sitting on his only metal... whenever I left a gap he'd send out a settler with a couple of units (archer/archer or archer/warrior) to the north toward me, which I'd kill off within a turn or two. Happened 2 or 3 times. Not the best prioritization, if you ask me.

I also had Toku declare war on me from the other continent when I'm pretty sure he only had caravels. Then Izzy vassalized him, and later sent her first galleons to attack me, just as my first Cossacks rode up to slaughter her attackers. :D

Other than those slight oddities, its been a great game - I finally stomped Ramses after a while, but my new southern neighbour is Roosevelt and he has Mansa as a vassal, and he's doing really really well - and starting the naval assault on Brennus on the other continent. I'm curious to see how that goes - and whether Izzy comes up with any better ways to come at me navally in the future. I'm thinking I'll probably have to try for a space race - using my UU to help it go quickly... because militarily I don't think I can ever rival Roosevelt with Mansa as his in-house tech-whore. :(

1-30 asserts build, Monarch level.

Maybe this particular goof is due to the AI's inability to recognize UU's. But anyway, I had 2 Immortals parked at Berlin's doorstep after doing some pillaging. Suddenly a Settler from Germany's only other city shows up one tile away from my Immortals, on a flat plains tile, escorted by a single archer! Needless to say I won easily with > 99% odds.

Just for kicks, I left a scout to guard the captured worker to see if Berlin's LONE DEFENDER, a Garrison I archer, would seek vengeance. (Frederick had been sending his other defenders, of which there were as many as 3, who-knows-where every time I would go pillage something and lose sight of Berlin for a turn.)

Lo and behold, the Garrison I archer DOES attack the scout on the next turn, and of course is plucked easily by one of my Immortals. I don't know why he did that, since the AI doesn't get to keep captured workers. Now Berlin is left with a newly popped, unpromoted archer with no fortify bonus. It's not even on a hill, although it is on the other side of a stream from my Immortals.

FYI, Frederick had spent the first 100 turns or so founding Judaism and building the Temple of Artemis in Berlin. His only other city was in a really poor location. He should have known better with Alexander next door (who is the AI who brought me into the war in the first place).

Kudos to Alexander though for waging a very organized war! He ended up unlucky though. I decided not to risk my injured Immortals on Berlin, and Alexander showed up a few turns later with a Stack of Doom. After he battered down the new wave of Berlin's defending archers (obtained I assume thru slavery), I just picked off the last two injured ones and got Berlin for myself.

Incidentally, I suppose that's a much more advanced issue to address, but I have noticed that the AI can sometimes make the dumb mistake of leaving a big prize to an ally like that.

I'll try to get you some screenshots and savegames soon. I saved every turn during this bizarreness.

Okay, here's a packet of 7 savegame files for you that I think tells as much of the story as possible in 600kb. Let me know if you want more... I have 164 saves encompassing almost every turn.

You'll need to make an empty mod called "jrayUGH" for this to work (or, you can download jrayUGH from the link in my sig). It's unaltered gameplay, and I expect the savegame compatiblity will be fine.

EDIT: I was using the Better AI Handicaps, in case that's relevant.

As far as I know, if you set a unit on go to about say 4 or 5 squares away, but on the third move it encounters an unfriendly unit (barb or war enemy), then the automated movement is cancelled. I assume that's the same for AI moving? So this really only applies to huts. And vote to keep it as is. It's not that big a deal, and it's a fairly human mistake, which isn't always a bad way for the AI to be.

A random observation from my current game based on revision 336.

The run away tech leader (Incans) failed to pick up liberalism despite getting to education way before me. A free tech is to good to pass up.

Strange behavior noted with 01-30 build: Neighbors with Open Borders park units in my territory.

I had a couple Alexander units just sitting in one of my border tiles for many, many turns. In fact, one unit was upgraded or exchanged for a maceman, so it doesn't seem accidental. Then I noticed that one of my other neighbors (Saladin, I think) started doing the same thing (this time a warrior). Just sits there on one of my border tiles.

Using the Jan 30th build, I think the unit spam situation is much improved, but it seems that one or two civs don't seem to want to build defenders at all. I started a new game as one of those Khan bastards and had Hannibal next door to me.

Even after I'd built 6 horse-thingy UUs, he still had just a single archer in each of his 4 cities. He didn't have access to copper or iron, but had had horses for a while but didn't build a chariot or his own UU. I dispatched him with ease, since he didn't seem to perceive me as a threat. Could the fact that we both had the same religion have been a factor?

Strange behavior noted with 01-30 build: Neighbors with Open Borders park units in my territory.

I had a couple Alexander units just sitting in one of my border tiles for many, many turns. In fact, one unit was upgraded or exchanged for a maceman, so it doesn't seem accidental. Then I noticed that one of my other neighbors (Saladin, I think) started doing the same thing (this time a warrior). Just sits there on one of my border tiles.

This is their fogbusting behavior. They prefer to fogbust unowned territory, but they will still fogbust their borders with other civs if they have no nearby unowned territory.

I would be curious to hear more feedback about the AI fogbusting. Either on land or at sea (or by air).

-Iustus

1-30 asserts build, Monarch level.

Maybe this particular goof is due to the AI's inability to recognize UU's. But anyway, I had 2 Immortals parked at Berlin's doorstep after doing some pillaging. Suddenly a Settler from Germany's only other city shows up one tile away from my Immortals, on a flat plains tile, escorted by a single archer! Needless to say I won easily with > 99% odds.

Just for kicks, I left a scout to guard the captured worker to see if Berlin's LONE DEFENDER, a Garrison I archer, would seek vengeance. (Frederick had been sending his other defenders, of which there were as many as 3, who-knows-where every time I would go pillage something and lose sight of Berlin for a turn.)

Lo and behold, the Garrison I archer DOES attack the scout on the next turn, and of course is plucked easily by one of my Immortals. I don't know why he did that, since the AI doesn't get to keep captured workers. Now Berlin is left with a newly popped, unpromoted archer with no fortify bonus. It's not even on a hill, although it is on the other side of a stream from my Immortals.

FYI, Frederick had spent the first 100 turns or so founding Judaism and building the Temple of Artemis in Berlin. His only other city was in a really poor location. He should have known better with Alexander next door (who is the AI who brought me into the war in the first place).

Kudos to Alexander though for waging a very organized war! He ended up unlucky though. I decided not to risk my injured Immortals on Berlin, and Alexander showed up a few turns later with a Stack of Doom. After he battered down the new wave of Berlin's defending archers (obtained I assume thru slavery), I just picked off the last two injured ones and got Berlin for myself.

Incidentally, I suppose that's a much more advanced issue to address, but I have noticed that the AI can sometimes make the dumb mistake of leaving a big prize to an ally like that.

I'll try to get you some screenshots and savegames soon. I saved every turn during this bizarreness.

Maybe the AI had a good chance to take that city on that turn that's why it attacked. You say all the archers was damaged so this might have been the case just the dice didn't favor him.
This is a hard case.
In a mixed ally attack on an enemy city everyone should attack they can't wait for each other if neither one has superiority otherwise the city won't be taken by anyone of them.
This anomaly could only be solved by simultaneous movement (not possible) or a mechanism where all the attacks on the city are logged and when it falls then it randomly goes to one of the allies weighted by their attack intensity on the city (maybe possible).

Antipillaging anomaly could be corrected easier.
The defender should check whether it has an antipillager unit in city or in attack range with the same or less experience than a rushed new one.
In this case it should use the existing one and rush a new one. When there are more units of similar kind then use the one with the smallest fortify value.
When all units are more experienced then rush an anipillager and throw it at the pillaging unit next turn.

Using the Jan 30th build, I think the unit spam situation is much improved, but it seems that one or two civs don't seem to want to build defenders at all. I started a new game as one of those Khan bastards and had Hannibal next door to me.

Even after I'd built 6 horse-thingy UUs, he still had just a single archer in each of his 4 cities. He didn't have access to copper or iron, but had had horses for a while but didn't build a chariot or his own UU. I dispatched him with ease, since he didn't seem to perceive me as a threat. Could the fact that we both had the same religion have been a factor?

Maybe human players should be considered a high threat always :)

Jan 30 build, noting some underdefended cities. Relatively early in the game, only one Archer, which I've never seen before, the AI almost always puts out at least two as soon as possible. Also, AI failed to "whip" an Archer when a large city came under attack.

I realize that's vague and I don't have a save file, I'll work on getting a save where this is happening.

Also, AI failed to "whip" an Archer when a large city came under attack.
Maybe he wasn't running Slavery and wasn't Spiritual.

Wodan

Here's a screenshot of questionable behavior on the part of Hatshepsut. I just captured the nearby city from Washington. H is his vassal. Note the preponderance of MGs. One or two for stack protection I can believe, but this seems a bit much.

1/30 build, noble level:

I don't know what Mansa Musa was planning here, but it did net me a quadruple holy city:
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/7426/civ4screenshot0003pf8.th.jpg (http://img180.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0003pf8.jpg)

He totally neglected expansion (I settled four cities, while he settled none) and just sat there researching religions, neglecting his military so that he wasn't able to put up much resistance when Napoleon and me came to "liberate" this super-holy city. Maybe he was trying to prepare for a cultural victory, but somebody should have told him that you need three cities for that...

1/30 build, noble level:

I don't know what Mansa Musa was planning here, but it did net me a quadruple holy city:
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/7426/civ4screenshot0003pf8.th.jpg (http://img180.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0003pf8.jpg)

He totally neglected expansion (I settled four cities, while he settled none) and just sat there researching religions, neglecting his military so that he wasn't able to put up much resistance when Napoleon and me came to "liberate" this super-holy city. Maybe he was trying to prepare for a cultural victory, but somebody should have told him that you need three cities for that...

What you've never seen a human do that? :lol:

Something that memorable shouldn't be fixed :lol:.

I do however have no idea why he wouldn't expand since the settler training code has nothing to do with founding religions (he should be able to do both). It mighta been a string of funny dice rolls...
I am going to be a bit more forceful about making them expand from just a capital (assuming it's their original capital).

I've seen a few of them start building semi-valuable wonders right off the bat, resulting in a similar situation. But that was before you de-emphasized wonders (with 1/29 I think it was).

Wodan

I'm one turn from launching a space ship. Been watching the victory conditions screen, as Cathy has been working her culture quite well. She's only 40-50 turns from cultural victory.
Mansa, however, has a problem. Yes, Timbuktu will be the first city to reach legendary status. But he doesn't have more culturally superb cities. And he's running Culture4 strategy - which indicates he thinks he can win that way.. Now he got UN built, and I'm not sure if that's worth his troubles considering he's Cathy's vassall. Can vassall win diplomatic victory?

Save (http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/102906/elandal_AD-1929_-_1_turn_to_launch.CivWarlordsSave)

I'm seeing the same problem with the AI settling only a few cities when they could settle several more.

Wang Kon founded only 2 cities on this landmass. The year is 1589 AD. If I was stuck on it alone, I would have founded 5 more cities, I can dotmap them if need be. I enabled Chipotle cheat code to see if I could figure out what is going on. He appears to be pursuing the Peace strategy. The only thing I can say is it is not limited to him. Catherine founded only 2 cities as well. She shared a continent with me and Hatty who founded 4 cities. Perhaps it has something to do with the map type? I did shuffle and it appears that I ended up with an Archipelago game.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/167/378245094_a814dee898.jpg

SAVE GAME:http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/62555/unsettled_land.CivWarlordsSave

I've seen this a few times recently. The AI seems to build a settler but it just sits there.

With 1/25, like Wodan, I've seen the AI build buildings or wonders and not expand for some time. They tend to have a settler but only 1 or 2 units and so not enough to escort it. As warriors and archers are a little cheaper than settlers, this doesn't seem like a good idea.

With the 1/30 build, I've seen the AI building research in a Capital with a settler sitting there! So they think they have enough units. I don't know if the escort is the problem or not.

Mehmed had his city under siege by my big praetorian stack, but sent two defenders (an axeman and a spearman) out to protect the already scorted settler.

Of course I took the city and then killed the scort and the settler.

147183

I'm seeing the same problem with the AI settling only a few cities when they could settle several more.

Wang Kon founded only 2 cities on this landmass. The year is 1589 AD. If I was stuck on it alone, I would have founded 5 more cities, I can dotmap them if need be. I enabled Chipotle cheat code to see if I could figure out what is going on. He appears to be pursuing the Peace strategy. The only thing I can say is it is not limited to him. Catherine founded only 2 cities as well. She shared a continent with me and Hatty who founded 4 cities. Perhaps it has something to do with the map type? I did shuffle and it appears that I ended up with an Archipelago game.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/167/378245094_a814dee898.jpg

SAVE GAME:http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/62555/unsettled_land.CivWarlordsSave

Thanks for the save!
It's obvious what is going on from looking at it, Wang Kon has loaded his settler onto a galley and is waiting to do something with it - but isn't doing anything with it. This appears to be because he wont load a garrison unit onto it.

There's some other flakiness with settling too - the AI seems to always prefer sending out settlers on boats over land settling targets - regardless of respective quality. This certainly explains some of the AI settling problems.

edit: I've fixed these issues, and more. The AI now must pass a sanity check before actually loading the settler onto a galley, it will also always be able to load a garrison unit onto the galley.

1/30 Follow-up Report:

OK, I've played a few more games using 1/30 with my usual settings (Fractal, Normal size, 7 players, Epic, Custom Handicaps). Here are few more observations:

1) Finding your closest rival and knocking them out in the Classical Age seems to (still?) be the best way to go. Whether its a peaceful builder whom you can exploit and take over or a warmonger whom you dont want to let live long enough to become a problem, its still looking like a very viable way to go (dare I say 'optimal'?). Indeed the more military emphasis of the latest builds really encourage nipping nearby AIs in the bud so you dont have to risk attacks by hordes of units and/or an attendent arms race.

I dont know exactly what can be done unless the AIs have 'scouting' routines that can be enhanced to see when a neighbor is beginning to amass troops. Simply having the AIs build more troops early on isnt really an ideal solution IMO since in many cases its just slowing them down. But its also pretty obvious that they dont stand much chance if the player (or any neighbor for that matter) builds up 10-12 Axemen/Swordsmen and goes in to kill them. Early game mobility tends to be too low to allow for a 'zone' defense and its not practical to assume that any particular city (even the capital) should be able to withstand that.

Of course part of that is more of a 'Civ4 problem' than a 'Better AI problem'. This same thing happens time and again in MP games...if someone decides to 'axeman rush' and the other person isnt aware of it (and prepared for it), they are likely dead. Again, I dont know exactly what to do for the AIs except perhaps keep an eye on the military ratings of their neighbor? If it starts to spike, perhaps build a few more troops? Even that is an imperfect solution as it can encourage arms races even if a particular AI is not 'the target'.

2) Perhaps its just been my random samplings, but the AIs dont seem to be as proficient with amphibious invasions anymore. A few builds back it was launching some vicious attacks overseas. I havent seen one in any of my 1/30 games.

3) Many AIs seem very reluctant to adopt Free Religion. I believe that lack of 10% extra research across the board contributes to some of their late-game bog downs. Also the 'religious wars' that occur when AIs have perpetually bad relations due to different religions can continue for the entire game. If more AIs adopted Free Religion in Industrial, this might cut down on some AI hostility towards one another.

4) The AIs still seem to build too many farms. In my current game, I took Shaka's capital in Classical and he has Farms...lots of Farms around his capital. Yes, he can probably be using Slavery, but his GNP sucks and he is making little tech progress with no Cottages. I see the AIs (and my auto-workers sometimes) continue to build Farms even when Cottages would probably be better in the long run. Are the AIs capable of running a competent SE? If so, perhaps thats what they are attempting, but by and large I think the safer long-term play would be to build more Cottages than Farms.

Overall, I still think that 1/30 is the best build yet. I've has some close games and some not so close games. The ones that have been the easiest have been the ones where I kill my nearest neighbor ASAP and then develop in relative security and with 2 capitals to boost the econ. It can be rough going when first aquiring the early conquests, but it really pays off shortly thereafter. Hopefully some easy solution can be found to better balance the early game a bit between defense and expansion.

Overall, I still think that 1/30 is the best build yet. I've has some close games and some not so close games. The ones that have been the easiest have been the ones where I kill my nearest neighbor ASAP and then develop in relative security and with 2 capitals to boost the econ. It can be rough going when first aquiring the early conquests, but it really pays off shortly thereafter. Hopefully some easy solution can be found to better balance the early game a bit between defense and expansion.

But THAT is the best early strategy in CIV4(even if you are going to a peaceful game after) since it came out. Its completely a vanilla 'problem'. Maybe the team can see to that, but as you said it would be probably hard to 'fix' it..

That happened in my recent game, but I wasn't involved at all.

Noble, 1/30, Tiny, 12 civs, Fractal, Aggresive AI.

I started on a small island with Ragnar. I beelined to construction, invaded him with cats and secured my island and started teching in peace with no contact with anyone else whatsoever.

I then beelined to optics so I could go meet the rest who started on the big continent. Having gotten there, I discovered that Brennus had a few hundred more points than me and TWICE the score of the nearest AI civilisation. He was the most powerful, but even scarier was that his economy was thriving, he had the most culture, food, and highest GNP. He was a monster.

It was then that I realised that there were only 9 new civilisations. On further investigation, Brennus had a city called 'Madrid' nested within his empire and I concuded that he must have invaded and wiped Isabella off the map before I even discovered her.

So not only had he efficiently invaded and conquered someone. He consolidated his gains too. That's what I would expect if there had been a proficient human player on the other continent. So it seems that the classical early invasion is the best strategy, but the AI can do it too!

edit: I've fixed these issues, and more. The AI now must pass a sanity check before actually loading the settler onto a galley, it will also always be able to load a garrison unit onto the galley.

Take another look, I'm not sure that's the problem. I've seen the AI on the 30 Jan build have a Settler sitting in the capital city for a LONG time. I suspect the AI builds the Settler first, intending to build the garrison next, but hits a tech with a Wonder in the interim, switches over to the Wonder, and then doesn't build the garrison until after the Wonder is done. Wonder-happy leaders are building annoyingly large numbers of Wonders, but are building very few cities and easily getting knocked out.

By the way, the warmongers are on a tear with this build, I've seen Shaka and Genghis out of control, good job on the changes to warmongering for the AI.

I LOVE the diversity of the AI personalities in the 1/30 build. Playing with default settings, I see some civs amassing huge armies and bullying others around, while other civs hole and up crank out religions and wonders.

I really don't know whether to complain about this, because I've been having the time of my life the last few games :D... BUT, I think some of the civs are just plain doormats.

In my current game on Monarch (with the Better AI handicaps), I ended up on a continent with Ramesses and Roosevelt. They spent the BC years just sitting there pumping out wonders and building very few settlers or military units. I guess I can't blame them too much, since they're industrious, but they could have used a bit of moderation. I easily took all their cities before 0AD and won several holy shrines and wonders in the process, and I was even building quite a bit of infrastructure at the same time. I didn't even really have to do "rush attacks"... I just sent in my fogbusters and realized to my amazement that they were enough to take the capitals.

I managed to trap Ramesses on a peninsula and keep him to a single city. That's something I've noticed a lot... I think the AI can use a little training in how to avoid being blocked off, and how to block off opponents too. Sometimes they just expand into their backcountry.

Anyway, later I met Ragnar, and he threw the kitchen sink at me as soon as he got astronomy, even though he'd been trapped on a 3-city peninsula the whole game and had a much lower military rating than me. Now THAT was fun!

(small.tectonics.9 civs.normal speed.noble.1/30.Roosevelt/American)

Okay, my most recent game was an exciting thriller all the way to the end (or, to be precise, 2048AD). Really enjoyed playing it. The AI is doing a great job of keeping up in tech and in military building/warfighting. I found myself in a serious fight for control of the seas for the first time in a very long while -- I felt so threatened from sea attack that I even joined a Great General to a destroyer (which worked out very well.) I even had my a serious bid to seize control of the Incan lands defeated -- first time THAT's happened in a VERY long time. (France went to the rescue of its vassal and chopped my invasion force to pieces. Had to abandon Cuzco three turns after I took it.) And if it hadn't been for nukes, I would never have stopped Hannibal from launching the spaceships. (Ahh, nukes, the great equalizer....)

That said, I have a couple of critical observations. These certainly didn't make the game less enjoyable, but perhaps are areas that could be improved.


1.) I started on a continent shared with Stalin. I out expanded him two-to-one: when I had four cities, he had two. More importantly, there was no chokepoint or other way for me to block his expansion, he just didn't do it. He actually beelined for feudalism (he was on "Get Better Units) and had longbows when I was still playing with swords and axes. If he'd had a third city, I would have had serious trouble taking him down even with my elephants and cats.

2.) In the end game, after I built Manhattan Project, I noticed (via spies) that Hannibal was starting to build SDI in Utica. I quickly built some nukes and did a smash-and-grab attack on Carthage (which had the bulk of his army and something like 6 wonders.) Once I took Carthage, though,
he switched from building SDI to artillery. This was incredibly daft, since he had Mech Inf, since I only had a comparatively small force of SEALs/tanks (with one or two artly pieces,) and I was building a nuke every 4 turns in Washington. So I just did another smash and grab then mopped up his remaining two cities with my conventional forces. WHY did he stop building SDI??!? He was maybe 7 turns away from it when he switched, but since I was only building one nuke every four turns, he might have been able to complete it before I could get in position to take the SDI-producing city (which was inland, far away from the coast.)


3.) Hannibal didn't have oil, yet he could build Mech Inf. That just doesn't make sense. (Not a "Better AI" complaint!)

EDIT: I also used the air unit Explore option for the first time. It worked, but not as well as I'd hoped, since the air units were exploring areas that I wasn't interested in scouting. I eventually turned it off and manually ordered the air unit recons.

I experienced a weird quirk in the 1/30 build (with handicaps). I'm not sure whether it's a bug, so I'm posting it here as "questionable behavior". I was at war with Ragnar. At the beginning of a turn, I got the trumpets announcing that Kublai Khan declared war on me. But the first thing I saw was a dialog from him asking me to change to Bureaucracy! I said "No", and then I was able to enter the trade screen with him and sign a Peace Treaty! Afterwards I saw a message that he had vassalized Ragnar... which explains why he declared war on me. But why was I able to end a war before it even started? Don't get me wrong, I've always WISHED I could bribe someone to change his mind about attacking me... but I have a feeling something fishy is going on here.

See attached save from the end of the previous turn, which uses the jrayUGH mod (empty mod will be fine, since it has savegame compatibility).

OK, saved games for questionable behavior attached below.

The first is illustrating the "slow expansion" and "sleepy Settler" tendencies some of the builder AIs are showing. Elizabeth has a Settler sitting around in her capital, that Settler will be there for another ten to twenty turns, far more than would be needed to build the garrison unit--I'm guessing she's working on a Wonder. Built the Settler, started on the garrison but then switched over to a Wonder, but that's just a guess. Also note that Qin Shi Huang has no expansion cities, and he won't build any for a LONG time (at least twenty or thirty turns.)

147556

The second save shows some odd warmaking behavior. Shaka has a large stack of attack units, but no siege, and consequently they're just sitting there. I have no idea why there's no siege (maybe he doesn't have the tech?), but that stack hasn't gone anywhere and doesn't go anywhere. Also, note that Qin Shi Huang has some very lightly defended cities, a couple of coastal cities with only one defender (I'm seeing a lot of AI cities with only one defender.)

147557

1/30 build... the AI is still doing questionable city site behavior.

For example, Qin just created a city with 3 tiles of overlap with his capitol, and it also precludes working two dye tiles for the rest of the game. There is another site location he could have chosen that works both dyes and only has 1 overlap.

Both sites have coast access, both are non-hill (no hills anywhere around), neither have cultural pressure from other civs, both have fresh water, both work the only other resource tile (a rice).

I think that about covers it. Bottom line conclusion: either the algorithm could use some more tweaking, or else I'm missing something.

Wodan

The AI was defending its capitol with a spearman, an archer, and a few axemen. I brought a force of axemen, horse archers, and chariots w/ flanking, intending to first weaken the spearman with my chariots (hopefully keeping some). I placed the mounted units behind my axemen.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/109532/Civ4ScreenShot0000.JPG

The AI moved the spearman out of the city to the tile right of the axemen, presumably to attack my mounted units. It also replaced the spearmen in the city with a swordsman with no defensive promotions, and used one of the axemen defenders to attack my stack. The spearman move especially seems bad since I was clearly (to a human) moving the mounted units next turn to attack, and now I can pick off spearman with axemen if I wish.

People have already mentioned this one, but I will echo it.

The AI builds too many defensive siege units and fails to use them.

I am playing a 4 human multiplayer where we all have 1 AI ally each, always war, no tech trading, hub map.

I have a stack of about 12 units parked outside an enemy AI city, which has almost 20 Hwacha and various other units in it. My stack could easily be wiped out, but the AI does nothing.
Mind you, listening to the moaning of the AI's human ally is worth this behaviour in amusment value ;)

I will say that my AI ally is doing a stirling job of building a good defensive force in its vunerable cities, including those that could be attack by marine assault.

Some more general feedback... probably for the next major release (not 1.0).

The AI is still way to easy to sucker. Set up a defending stack in your most vulnerable city, or in a forest/hill/fort if possible. Let them fortify for 5 turns. Declare war.

The AI will dink around for 3-4 turns, and then send in a stack. It literally does not matter how bad the odds are. When the smoke clears, all the AI's non-garrison units will be gone.

I just set up about 8 riflemen and saw Qin suicide a mix of over 50 units, including about 20 knights, 15 maces, and the rest cats and oddball old units. Not a single rifle died.

It's part of the game to occasionally be in a "non fighting" war. A war where it simply isn't wise to fight. Eventually you declare peace and everyone goes on. The AI should realize this too.

Sending knights and maces against fortified rifles? Sheer suicide.

Wodan

20 Knights and 10 Cats should take a city with only 8 riflemen defending it. What went wrong? Did he not siege the city properly?

1/30 build... the AI is still doing questionable city site behavior.

For example, Qin just created a city with 3 tiles of overlap with his capitol, and it also precludes working two dye tiles for the rest of the game.

Wodan
Huh??? The AI should almost never place a city which will preclude tiles from being worked, it's SEVERELY penalized for doing so unless it's literally impossible to place a valid city which blocks fewer resources. I'd need a screenshot of this because the code to prevent resource-deadlocking is mega-reliable (it can't make a mistake and has on occasion pointed out better city sites to me...)


Btw the next version the defensive siege should be used to far greater effect...

20 Knights and 10 Cats should take a city with only 8 riflemen defending it. What went wrong? Did he not siege the city properly?
Knights are base ~10 vs fortified Rifles at base ~30. That's what went wrong.

Other points, in addition:
-- He didn't attack with ALL the cats first, to inflict collateral damage. He mixed up the unit attack order.
-- He also didn't attack all in the same turn. He did about 30 units (leaving 20, about half of which were damaged knights or cats due to retreating). Next turn, he threw the rest of his good money after the bad.

Wodan

Huh??? The AI should almost never place a city which will preclude tiles from being worked, it's SEVERELY penalized for doing so unless it's literally impossible to place a valid city which blocks fewer resources. I'd need a screenshot of this because the code to prevent resource-deadlocking is mega-reliable (it can't make a mistake and has on occasion pointed out better city sites to me...)
I'll see if I can find the save or recreate the situation.

Btw the next version the defensive siege should be used to far greater effect...
kewl. :)

Wodan

Questionable behaviour: the AI builds too many spearman for city attack duties.

I've seen the AI attack with stacks with 6 spearmen, 2 axemen and 1 swordsman. I saw the same behaviour when I was continuing my game today and I thought I'd report it. I do have some horse based units (chariots), but not that many, so there's no reason to build that many spearmen. Below are two screenshots where you can see the relatively large amount of spearmen. Both screenshots are from the same year but a different empire (both stacks are there to kill me). I've seen worse than this, but I'd say that even in these stacks, there are too many spearmen.

My guess is that the AI views the spearman as a better city attack unit. Both units can get city attack upgrades. One has strength 4 and a 100% bonus against a specific unit and the other strength 5 and a 50% bonus against a specific unit. The AI probably doesn't look any further. However, the 100% bonus is against units that rarely defend cities because these units (mounted units) don't get defensive bonusses.

So maybe you could code something that when buiding units for city attack purposes that a specific bonus against units that don't get defensive bonusses is not considered valuable. So the 100% bonus against mounted units from the spearman is not considered interesting for city attack purposes because it is a bonus against units that don't get defensive bonusses.

Of course, spearmen are still needed as stack defence units.

Maybe the AI builds that many spearmen for a different reason. I'm just guessing here.

Spearmen for city attack 1.JPG
Spearmen for city attack 2.JPG

Huh??? The AI should almost never place a city which will preclude tiles from being worked, it's SEVERELY penalized for doing so unless it's literally impossible to place a valid city which blocks fewer resources. I'd need a screenshot of this because the code to prevent resource-deadlocking is mega-reliable (it can't make a mistake and has on occasion pointed out better city sites to me...)
I was wrong... there's a tile right in the middle where a city could be squeezed. It results in something like 14 tiles of overlap with all the cities around it.

Wodan

Slightly Offtopic:
That is 3 Swordsman, 10 Axeman, 12 Spearman... did you survive Roland?

Slightly Offtopic:
That is 3 Swordsman, 10 Axeman, 12 Spearman... did you survive Roland?

Yes, I'm still here. And my civilization is too.. ;)

I've been in wars since the the year 2000BC in that game. It's emperor level, aggressive AI, huge map and the AI is really agressive. I've been declared war upon for 12 or 13 times now, I'm starting to lose count. So I'm pretty well prepared for such stacks. The first stack in the first war was the hardest one to beat. I'm a bit unlucky that their religion doesn't seem to spread to me, so they don't like me as much as some of their neighbours of the same religion. It's 740AD and I'm well on my way to my fourth great general, just from defensive wars, crazy isn't it.

Questionable behaviour: the AI builds too many spearman for city attack duties.


I wonder if the problem here is that spearmen are one of those melee units that is eligible for the "City Raider" promotion? Maybe that's skewing the AI decisionmaking process? It sees a cheap unit that counts as a city raider, so when it's gearing up for a dagger it says: "Aha! Lots of spearmen! That's the key!"

FULL DISCLOSURE: I haven't seen AI excessively build spears in any of my games so far....

I wonder if the problem here is that spearmen are one of those melee units that is eligible for the "City Raider" promotion? Maybe that's skewing the AI decisionmaking process? It sees a cheap unit that counts as a city raider, so when it's gearing up for a dagger it says: "Aha! Lots of spearmen! That's the key!"

FULL DISCLOSURE: I haven't seen AI excessively build spears in any of my games so far....

Interesting. Have you been the target of ancient age attack stacks (before swordsmen)? In my game, the majority of the ancient age attack stacks is composed of spearmen. I must have killed about 60 or so spearmen by now and 30 axemen and 10 swordsmen (the lesser number of swordsmen can be explained by a lack of iron from my most aggressive opponent). With such high numbers, it can hardly be a coincidence.

Yes, I also think that the AI think the spearman is a good attack unit because it can get the city raider promotion. But that only explains half the story. The axeman is equally expensive and is build in less quantity. I also added a possible explaination to what I saw in the post where I posted the screenshots. But I must say that it is just guesswork.

I have to admit that I haven't seen large stacks of Spearmen either. And usually when I do see AI Spearmen they are simply escorting other stacks (often retreating if the other units are killed off). Perhaps its has something to do with the Aggressive AI setting?

I have to admit that I haven't seen large stacks of Spearmen either. And usually when I do see AI Spearmen they are simply escorting other stacks (often retreating if the other units are killed off). Perhaps its has something to do with the Aggressive AI setting?

Have you been the target of ancient age attack stacks (before swordsmen)? I just want to make sure that we're talking about the same situation. The number of attacks with massive amounts of spearmen was just too large to be a coincidence. I mean, one attack with 6 spearmen and 2 axemen at the start of the game could be a coincidence, but it happened a dozen times and each and every time the majority of the attack stack would be spearmen. And the spearmen were not promoted to support the stack either. They mostly had city attack promotions.

Another hypothesis would be that he attacked with so many spearmen because I had scouted with chariots and those were the units that the AI saw. They were not the only units that I had of course.

I saw monty with a big stack of Pikeman ands siege units, with some maceman in the middle..I did the chipotle function and all pikeman were for city attack..I found it odd too.

But he only attacked me when he got granadiers..

Interesting. Have you been the target of ancient age attack stacks (before swordsmen)?

Yes. Stalin came after me with a mix of units. I don't think he had any spears. Then again, I did not have any mounted units available either.

Just curious -- what game speed are you using?

Yes. Stalin came after me with a mix of units. I don't think he had any spears. Then again, I did not have any mounted units available either.

Just curious -- what game speed are you using?

I'm playing at epic game speed (1.5 times as slow as normal).

Maybe the building of all of those city raider spearman was a reaction to seeing some of my chariots then. Still, not very smart. Chariots are not great city defenders.

I'm playing at epic game speed (1.5 times as slow as normal).

Maybe the building of all of those city raider spearman was a reaction to seeing some of my chariots then. Still, not very smart. Chariots are not great city defenders.

I almost always play on normal. I wonder if using the slower speeds has a tendency to exacerbate unit building strategies that aren't that apparent on normal speed. (I.e., more turns available, so more units get constructed, and a larger % are of a type that may not be appropriate for the situation.)

I play Epic too and yep, I've been the target of a number of Classical attacks. Usually its Axemen, Horse Archers and a few Spears (or Swordsmen if they have Iron). I've also been Archer rushed by the Romans of all people.

The biggest variable is still the Aggressive AI vs non-Aggressive AI, although I dont know what that would trigger more Spearmen than Axemen.

As far as 'seeing your Chariots', does the AI really adapt like that? I have no idea how Civ4 AI is programmed but I would think its more scripts and probabilities than responses to what it 'sees' on the battlefield. It would be neat if it DOES adapt though. :)

I almost always play on normal. I wonder if using the slower speeds has a tendency to exacerbate unit building strategies that aren't that apparent on normal speed. (I.e., more turns available, so more units get constructed, and a larger % are of a type that may not be appropriate for the situation.)

You don't build more on epic speed. There are 1.5 times as many turns and everything costs 1.5 times as much. Movement stays the same though, so you can move your units a bit further. I can't see any relation with this and building more spearmen.

I play Epic too and yep, I've been the target of a number of Classical attacks. Usually its Axemen, Horse Archers and a few Spears (or Swordsmen if they have Iron). I've also been Archer rushed by the Romans of all people.

The biggest variable is still the Aggressive AI vs non-Aggressive AI, although I dont know what that would trigger more Spearmen than Axemen.

As far as 'seeing your Chariots', does the AI really adapt like that? I have no idea how Civ4 AI is programmed but I would think its more scripts and probabilities than responses to what it 'sees' on the battlefield. It would be neat if it DOES adapt though. :)

The aggressive AI is visible in the fact that I've had about 12-13 war declarations before 500AD. But I can't see a relation to building spearmen.

The AI could keep a list of the units that it has observed of you and 'react' to that. In this case, that would be very stupid because even if I had very many chariots (something that the AI may not conclude because of the few units that moved through his lands), then still a few other units could stop the spearmen from capturing my cities. Chariots (or horse based units in general) aren't good city defenders, so you don't need city raider spearmen to attack the cities and you do need city raider axemen and city raider swordsmen to defeat the other units.

Spearmen in an attack stack can serve a useful force protection role. That being the case, they should be promoted with Combat not City Raider (leading to Formation). Also, more than two in a stack is not required.

This is similar to the behavior I saw, where an attacking stack had five or six machine guns. One or two is fine for force protection. The rest are nonsense.

I know all of the above is obvious. My point is that these units have a purpose in an attack stack. The AI just doesn't seem to know what that purpose is. It's probably just a matter of fine tuning the composition of attack stacks. Given the correct initial promotions, the AI probably will use the units more appropriately.

My guess on the Machine Gun things is thats its because MGs are classified as 'Siege Weapons'. Perhaps the AIs are even upgrading older units into MGs 'by mistake'.

Questionable behaviour: the AI builds too many spearman for city attack duties.

I've seen the AI attack with stacks with 6 spearmen, 2 axemen and 1 swordsman. I saw the same behaviour when I was continuing my game today and I thought I'd report it. I do have some horse based units (chariots), but not that many, so there's no reason to build that many spearmen. Below are two screenshots where you can see the relatively large amount of spearmen. Both screenshots are from the same year but a different empire (both stacks are there to kill me). I've seen worse than this, but I'd say that even in these stacks, there are too many spearmen.

My guess is that the AI views the spearman as a better city attack unit. Both units can get city attack upgrades. One has strength 4 and a 100% bonus against a specific unit and the other strength 5 and a 50% bonus against a specific unit. The AI probably doesn't look any further. However, the 100% bonus is against units that rarely defend cities because these units (mounted units) don't get defensive bonusses.

So maybe you could code something that when buiding units for city attack purposes that a specific bonus against units that don't get defensive bonusses is not considered valuable. So the 100% bonus against mounted units from the spearman is not considered interesting for city attack purposes because it is a bonus against units that don't get defensive bonusses.

Of course, spearmen are still needed as stack defence units.

Maybe the AI builds that many spearmen for a different reason. I'm just guessing here.

Spearmen for city attack 1.JPG
Spearmen for city attack 2.JPG

I added the bold. That is exactly right. It is a tricky problem to solve, if you do not allow yourself to know that melee and archer units are what is likely to be defending cities.

I know Blake was working on the problem, but I also know that it is not trivial to solve if you want your solution to work with mods as well.

-Iustus

I added the bold. That is exactly right. It is a tricky problem to solve, if you do not allow yourself to know that melee and archer units are what is likely to be defending cities.

I know Blake was working on the problem, but I also know that it is not trivial to solve if you want your solution to work with mods as well.

-Iustus

Ah, nice to hear that my first guess was correct. And I know that you're thinking about mods. You're not looking at spearmen and axemen, you're looking at units with values and bonusses and the code must work correct whatever these strength values and bonusses are.

That's why I suggested the following, also in that piece of text that you quoted.

However, the 100% bonus is against units that rarely defend cities because these units (mounted units) don't get defensive bonusses.

The spearman bonus works against mounted units and mounted units aren't good city defenders because they don't get defensive bonusses. To put it more abstract. You look at the 100% bonus and try to judge if it helps a unit in its potential city attack role. To judge this, you look at the units that are effected by this 100% bonus. If these units are good city defenders (get defensive bonusses in cities, have high strength value, can be build by the enemy), then the 100% bonus counts as a very good bonus for the city attack unit. If these units are not so good city defenders (no defensive bonusses in cities, low strength value, cannot be build by the enemy), then the 100% bonus is not considered useful for the city attack unit.

The spearman can be considered again for a stack defense role, but then other arguments are used to determine its value in that role.

For instance: the AI 'knows' that the opponent can build axemen, swordsmen, spearmen, archers, chariots and horsebowmen. It doesn't know which ones are good city defenders. It has to calculate that.

Let's take an average city defence value of 40%. That's a bit arbitrary and maybe not that perfect for mods. You could code is as a function of the maximum cultural defence value and the maximum building defence value.

You calculate the strength value of a basic promoted spearman for city attack duty versus each of the possible defenders. That would be a city raider 1 spearman in civ4 for the attacking sprearman, but might be different in a mod. The axeman would have the combat 1 promotion and the archer the city garrison 1 promotion and the chariot the combat 1 promotion for city defence duties.

The strength of the spearman versus the axeman would be 4 / 5* (1 + 0.5 + 0.1 + 0.4 + 0.25 -0.2) = 4 / 10.25 = 0.390

The strength versus the chariot would be 4 / (4 / (1 + 1 -0.1 + 0.2)) = 2.1

You take the minimum of all of these strength values and that is the city attack value of the spearman.
You do the same for the axeman versus all of these units. Now you have a city attack victory value for the spearman and the axeman.

Then you divide this city attack value of both units through the building costs of these units and the highest value gives you the best city attacker. In civ4, these building costs for the axeman and the spearman are the same, but that's not true in every mod.

It's quite a lot of calculations but a computer can do this very fast.

To make the AI less predictable, you could multiply these city attack values by a random variable between 1 and 3 and only then determine which unit is better in the city attack role. That way, there will be some less efficient city attackers which can be useful in specific situations. And it's always nice to have an AI that is not too predictable.

Hello,

As this is my first post on this thread I just want you all to know that I have been following this thread closely for quite some time and have downloaded the 1/30 build about about a week ago. I personally think that it is a great build and is making huge strides in the right direction for a better playing experience. I really do not have anything new to add in regard to questionable behavior that hasn't been said about the 1/30 build. Just thought I would introduce my self prior to me posting anything debatable so you regulars weren't like "who is this joker?"

see ya :rockon:

A trivial issue with the city build governor.

Leipzig is building culture to pop it's borders even though it doesn't need to because of the surrounding cities.

(From a build based on rev 356).

This is on the 2/9 build, and I have not encountered this problem prior to it.

As you can see from the screen shot I am at war with Carthage, and there are two workers next to my axeman. Even more surprisingly, my axeman is already on top of two workers which he captured in the exact same way he is going to capture the highlighted workers.

I am not sure if this is occurring because The Better AI team adjusted the worker flee rate, but the behavior is rather dubious. Unless of course if the workers are eager to flee to a society that is not running the Slavery civic...:lol:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y147/zarakand/Civ4ScreenShot0000-3.jpg

Just a follow up, I thought I would show how crazy this behavior is with this screen shot. I currently have 3 cities and 12 workers!! I'm sorry that I do not have a save, I need to change my ini file to start auto saving every turn.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y147/zarakand/Civ4ScreenShot0001.jpg

Something I would report as 'questionable behavior' is some of the AI's panic builds when a city comes under threat. Using Nationalism to draft a guy here and there is fine, but wholesale slaughter of their population to add a single Catapult or other troop probably isnt good to see quite as often.

In my last game, I was fighting a war with Saladin. He had a couple of good-sized cities on the border that were culturally pressing against some newer cities I had taken from the French. I decided to declare war to remove those cities and the pressure. I moved in with stacks of Rifles/Grenadiers/Cannon but didnt have enough to actually complete the conquest. But even at only what I would consider a 'mild' threat, the AI ripped those cities from pop 12 and 14 down to 3 and 4 by panic building Cavalry and Catapults. IMO, thats just not worth the cost. And its exploitable to simply move adjacent to enemy cities and watch them self-destruct. Smart defense is one thing, but it appears that the AI is also overreacting in many cases.

When you add the above to the fact that many of the AI are in prolonged wars due to the removal of the 'auto-peace' and I think its stunting many AI cities and thus their long-term potential. I almost every game I've played, if I can get through the early game intact and with a little wiggle room, the AIs just totally fall behind in Industrial and beyond. Up until that point they are very competitive and often slightly ahead of me but then they seem to just hit a wall. I think they might be pop-rushing too much and suffering from too many long wars.

As I said in the impressions thread, I think some sort of 'auto peace' or war limit needs to be added back in. Without that, the AIs run the risk of running themselves into the ground in stalemated conflicts.

As I said in the impressions thread, I think some sort of 'auto peace' or war limit needs to be added back in. Without that, the AIs run the risk of running themselves into the ground in stalemated conflicts.


With all the glibness of someone who isn't going to do the programming, nor understands the difficulty of implementing his suggestions, perhaps instead of making it a simple hard-coded time of 30 turns, maybe make it a variable time -- something between 25 - 50 turns or something like that?

As I said in the impressions thread, I think some sort of 'auto peace' or war limit needs to be added back in. Without that, the AIs run the risk of running themselves into the ground in stalemated conflicts.

With all the glibness of someone who isn't going to do the programming, nor understands the difficulty of implementing his suggestions, perhaps instead of making it a simple hard-coded time of 30 turns, maybe make it a variable time -- something between 25 - 50 turns or something like that?

I disagree with both these ideas. The declaration of peace should not be related to the length of the war, but to the success rate of the war. If after 30 turns of fighting, neither side has captured a city, then the war is not going to be a profitable one. If the war weariness is becoming intolerable, then peace should be a preferred option, even if the war has only lasted a few turns. If the war has cost many units, but also many cities were captured and war weariness is still tolerable, then the war should be continued.

The problem with coding this is probably keeping track of the right statistics of the war (lost cities, captured cities, lost units, killed units, war weariness, relative military strength) and then deciding what to do based on these statistics. Please do not let the AI sign a peace treaty when it has a huge stack in front of a lightly defended city. Good luck with coding something reasonable.

By the way, I'm usually able to sign a peace treaty after I've defeated some attacking stacks of the AI. And most AI wars are also not indefinite in nature.

The declaration of peace should not be related to the length of the war, but to the success rate of the war. If after 30 turns of fighting, neither side has captured a city, then the war is not going to be a profitable one.....

The problem with coding this is probably keeping track of the right statistics of the war (lost cities, captured cities, lost units, killed units, war weariness, relative military strength) and then deciding what to do based on these statistics. Please do not let the AI sign a peace treaty when it has a huge stack in front of a lightly defended city. Good luck with coding something reasonable.



Well, that's the rub, isn't it? I'm not referring to player versus AI wars, but rather to AI vs AI wars. I have seen on multiple occasions an AI player get bogged down in a war with another AI player, where a couple of cities will change hands, and then things will just sputter to a halt. But the war continues along with the negative effects attendant (skewed production/tech priorities, lack of trades, etc.) I would much prefer the AI to act as you describe but it sounds as though this would be something that perhaps should wait until Better AI 2.0 or 3.0 given the difficulty of the programming task. All I was suggesting was that in the interim, a variable "auto-peace" solution might avoid the AI "always war" stagnation effect.

I disagree with both these ideas. The declaration of peace should not be related to the length of the war, but to the success rate of the war. If after 30 turns of fighting, neither side has captured a city, then the war is not going to be a profitable one. If the war weariness is becoming intolerable, then peace should be a preferred option, even if the war has only lasted a few turns. If the war has cost many units, but also many cities were captured and war weariness is still tolerable, then the war should be continued.

Well sure, if thats possible that would be great. But if something like that cant be easily rigged, then I'd vote to have the AI more likely to make peace than they are now.

As jkp1187 noted, the AI to AI wars are often extremely long and drawn out and indecisive after a while. And that has a decidedly negative effect on the AI's growth. So, its not 'smart' to keep fighting an inconclusive war and pop-rushing troops and being subjected to pillaging and whatnot.

I think in many cases people focus on the AI to player relations but the AI to AI interactions are just as important (and in fact since they are more constant, the AI to AI relations might be MORE important). So its critical to make sure that these increased numbers of wars and the longer durations arent simply making things EASIER for the player be wearing the AIs down fighting each other.

Well, that's the rub, isn't it? I'm not referring to player versus AI wars, but rather to AI vs AI wars. I have seen on multiple occasions an AI player get bogged down in a war with another AI player, where a couple of cities will change hands, and then things will just sputter to a halt. But the war continues along with the negative effects attendant (skewed production/tech priorities, lack of trades, etc.) I would much prefer the AI to act as you describe but it sounds as though this would be something that perhaps should wait until Better AI 2.0 or 3.0 given the difficulty of the programming task. All I was suggesting was that in the interim, a variable "auto-peace" solution might avoid the AI "always war" stagnation effect.

Well sure, if thats possible that would be great. But if something like that cant be easily rigged, then I'd vote to have the AI more likely to make peace than they are now.

As jkp1187 noted, the AI to AI wars are often extremely long and drawn out and indecisive after a while. And that has a decidedly negative effect on the AI's growth. So, its not 'smart' to keep fighting an inconclusive war and pop-rushing troops and being subjected to pillaging and whatnot.

I think in many cases people focus on the AI to player relations but the AI to AI interactions are just as important (and in fact since they are more constant, the AI to AI relations might be MORE important). So its critical to make sure that these increased numbers of wars and the longer durations arent simply making things EASIER for the player be wearing the AIs down fighting each other.

Yes, it might be very hard to code this. But as long as I haven't heard that it is too hard (by the betterAI team), I'll vote for the harder solution where the arguments for peace and war are taken into account.

The BetterAI team has removed the 'peace after 30 turns' rule and the AI are still capable of signing peace treaties. I don't know exactly why they sign them and according to your descriptions they sometimes sign them too late. But I don't think they sign them at random. I think there is some coding logic behind the signing of peace treaties. At least when an AI is attacking me and has lost a whole lot of units, then it typically wants to sign a peace treaty. That at least seems reasonable to me. Maybe the logic isn't perfect yet and needs some refining so that the AI will sign peace treaties sooner in some cases.

If you think that in one of your games an AI-AI war is taking too many turns without any success, then maybe you should upload some savegames of these two AI's at war and suggest some improvent.
Something like: France and Spain went to war in 1305 and stayed in that war for 50 turns while no cities exchanged hands. Both their power graphs dropped dramatically and their cities shrunk through massive drafting. You should provide some savegames at various points in the war.
That kind of data might help the team refine the code that governs the signing of peace treaties. If I see some endless inter AI wars, I'll try to do the same.

On the whole I agree with what you're saying Roland, but there are times that AI's should engage in fruitless wars. It would present a decent simulation of real life where both sides refuse to end the attrition even though neither is benefiting from ti. Clearly, if it can not continue to happen at the rate that it is otherwise the game would not be fun.

Perhaps it can be tied to personalities? For example, Monty or Toku could be more inclined to continue in a war for 30 + turns even though it has not proven to be beneficial. Where as Gandhi would be willing to talk after 2 turns even if the war is going well for him.

Perhaps it can be tied to personalities? For example, Monty or Toku could be more inclined to continue in a war for 30 + turns even though it has not proven to be beneficial. Where as Gandhi would be willing to talk after 2 turns even if the war is going well for him

I think thats the way it was before the change...each leader had a different 'timer' (but I'm not sure...someone from BetterAI would have to confirm).

On the whole I agree with what you're saying Roland, but there are times that AI's should engage in fruitless wars. It would present a decent simulation of real life where both sides refuse to end the attrition even though neither is benefiting from ti. Clearly, if it can not continue to happen at the rate that it is otherwise the game would not be fun.

Perhaps it can be tied to personalities? For example, Monty or Toku could be more inclined to continue in a war for 30 + turns even though it has not proven to be beneficial. Where as Gandhi would be willing to talk after 2 turns even if the war is going well for him.

I think it's reasonable that Montezuma and Tokugama and other crazy warmongerers would find a higher level of war weariness acceptable than Gandhi. And of course, a warmongerer should find it more interesting to continue a war when it captures cities. Such things could give them personality. Still the general idea that high levels of war weariness and a stalemate war would result in a bigger chance of peace seems reasonable.

I disagree with both these ideas. The declaration of peace should not be related to the length of the war, but to the success rate of the war. If after 30 turns of fighting, neither side has captured a city, then the war is not going to be a profitable one. If the war weariness is becoming intolerable, then peace should be a preferred option, even if the war has only lasted a few turns. If the war has cost many units, but also many cities were captured and war weariness is still tolerable, then the war should be continued.

The problem with coding this is probably keeping track of the right statistics of the war (lost cities, captured cities, lost units, killed units, war weariness, relative military strength) and then deciding what to do based on these statistics. Please do not let the AI sign a peace treaty when it has a huge stack in front of a lightly defended city. Good luck with coding something reasonable.

By the way, I'm usually able to sign a peace treaty after I've defeated some attacking stacks of the AI. And most AI wars are also not indefinite in nature.

Many of these things are already being tracked. If you turn on chipotle, you can see the value an AI puts on peace, which is how it determines if it is winning or losing a war. From the chipotle thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=204063), take a look at this picture:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/95686/warinfo.JPG

If you look at the middle picture, you can see that Brennus is winning the war with Iustus (because 150 is lower than 210), losing the war with Ramesses (because 400 is higher than 40), and losing the war with Roosevelt (because 190 is higher than 60). These values very nearly translate into gold, so in this case, Brennus would ask Iustus for about 60g for peace, but you would pay Ramesses about 360g for peace, and pay Roosevelt about 130g for peace.

Specific examples of when you think the peace value calculations are in error would be helpful.

Well, that's the rub, isn't it? I'm not referring to player versus AI wars, but rather to AI vs AI wars. I have seen on multiple occasions an AI player get bogged down in a war with another AI player, where a couple of cities will change hands, and then things will just sputter to a halt. But the war continues along with the negative effects attendant (skewed production/tech priorities, lack of trades, etc.) I would much prefer the AI to act as you describe but it sounds as though this would be something that perhaps should wait until Better AI 2.0 or 3.0 given the difficulty of the programming task. All I was suggesting was that in the interim, a variable "auto-peace" solution might avoid the AI "always war" stagnation effect.

Well sure, if thats possible that would be great. But if something like that cant be easily rigged, then I'd vote to have the AI more likely to make peace than they are now.

As jkp1187 noted, the AI to AI wars are often extremely long and drawn out and indecisive after a while. And that has a decidedly negative effect on the AI's growth. So, its not 'smart' to keep fighting an inconclusive war and pop-rushing troops and being subjected to pillaging and whatnot.

I think in many cases people focus on the AI to player relations but the AI to AI interactions are just as important (and in fact since they are more constant, the AI to AI relations might be MORE important). So its critical to make sure that these increased numbers of wars and the longer durations arent simply making things EASIER for the player be wearing the AIs down fighting each other.

Yes, it might be very hard to code this. But as long as I haven't heard that it is too hard (by the betterAI team), I'll vote for the harder solution where the arguments for peace and war are taken into account.

The BetterAI team has removed the 'peace after 30 turns' rule and the AI are still capable of signing peace treaties. I don't know exactly why they sign them and according to your descriptions they sometimes sign them too late. But I don't think they sign them at random. I think there is some coding logic behind the signing of peace treaties. At least when an AI is attacking me and has lost a whole lot of units, then it typically wants to sign a peace treaty. That at least seems reasonable to me. Maybe the logic isn't perfect yet and needs some refining so that the AI will sign peace treaties sooner in some cases.

If you think that in one of your games an AI-AI war is taking too many turns without any success, then maybe you should upload some savegames of these two AI's at war and suggest some improvent.
Something like: France and Spain went to war in 1305 and stayed in that war for 50 turns while no cities exchanged hands. Both their power graphs dropped dramatically and their cities shrunk through massive drafting. You should provide some savegames at various points in the war.
That kind of data might help the team refine the code that governs the signing of peace treaties. If I see some endless inter AI wars, I'll try to do the same.

Keep track of the peace values, is there a common theme?

I think thats the way it was before the change...each leader had a different 'timer' (but I'm not sure...someone from BetterAI would have to confirm).

No, it was a hard coded maximum (50 turns for total war, and 40 turns for limited war, if memory serves). The more aggressive leaders have a modifier on the peace value though, so that is what changes how long a war lasts. Some leaders require a bigger difference in order to accept peace.

I think it's reasonable that Montezuma and Tokugama and other crazy warmongerers would find a higher level of war weariness acceptable than Gandhi. And of course, a warmongerer should find it more interesting to continue a war when it captures cities. Such things could give them personality. Still the general idea that high levels of war weariness and a stalemate war would result in a bigger chance of peace seems reasonable.


AI_endWarVal
{
EndWarValue = 100

EndWarValue = EndWarValue + (CountOurCities + CountTheirCities) * 3);
EndWarValue = EndWarValue + (CountOurPopulation + CountTheirPopulation);

EndWarValue = EndWarValue + (WarSuccessThemVsUs * 20)

EndWarValue = (EndWarValue * (TheirPower + 10)) / (OurPower + TheirPower + 10)

if (weAreNotHuman and our power is at least 20% higher)
{
if DaggerStrategy then reduce EndWarValue to (90% * TheirOurPowerRatio)

if We Own 20% more Land than Them then reduce EndWarValue by (90% * TheirOursLandRatio)

if we in financial trouble // warmonger war to solve finances factor
{
if TotalWar and (Dagger or (maxWarRand < 100)) reduce EndWarValue by (70% * power ratio factor)
if LimitedWar and (limitedWarRand < 100) reduce EndWarValue by (70% * power ratio factor)
if DogpileWar and (dogpileWarRand < 100) reduce EndWarValue by (70% * power ratio factor)
}
}

if total war and the aggressor is non-human, double EndWarValue
if total war and the aggressor is non-human, increase EndWarValue by 50%

round to the nearest 10 (actually using "DIPLOMACY_VALUE_REMAINDER" from GlobalDefines.xml)

if human and less than 10, set it to 10.
}

WarSuccess itself is calculated the following way:
every action triggers a change in the value, based on the values from GlobalDefines.xml:
<Define>
<DefineName>WAR_SUCCESS_DEFENDING</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>3</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>WAR_SUCCESS_ATTACKING</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>4</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>WAR_SUCCESS_UNIT_CAPTURING</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>1</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>WAR_SUCCESS_CITY_CAPTURING</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>10</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>WAR_SUCCESS_NUKE</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>10</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>



I may add showing the war success value as well to Chipotle.

-Iustus

I found a big bug, war is declared much much much more often than they should be. In updating the chipotle code to use the new percentages (based on a change made recently to declare war more when AI is paying high unit support costs), I found a bug in that code. When it thinks it should have a 5% chance of declaring war, it actually has a 95% chance for declaring war.

So, your observations that the AIs are always at war is not in error. I think this was also in the 1/30 build, but perhaps I am mistaken about that.

Expect a fix soon.

(I meant to post this on the 2/9 feedback thread, I will post it there as well)

-Iustus

Many of these things are already being tracked. If you turn on chipotle, you can see the value an AI puts on peace, which is how it determines if it is winning or losing a war.

-Iustus

I actually expected that the AI was already tracking many of these things and that's why I didn't want to revert back to the old maximum war time limit. I think that some of the complaints by players about indefinite AI-wars should be solved by refining the formulas that you showed at the bottom of your post.

Thanks again to take the time to explain how the AI functions. It's always interesting to read this kind of stuff and helps debates to become a bit more constructive.

About the warsuccess thingy. I expect that war success for the opponent means negative war success for you. If you kill a unit then that is a positive thing, but if your opponent kills a unit of yours, then that is a negative thing. If you capture and then lose a city again, then that's a neutral effect on warsuccess. Is that correct?

I didn't see a factor for war weariness. I know that it is connected to killing and losing units in foreign territory and capturing cities and nuking and getting nuked. So it resembles the warsuccess modifier a bit. But the main difference is that war weariness can only become worse during a war. Another difference is that a very succesfull war can lead to disastrous levels of war weariness. Even if you sign a peace treaty after a war has lasted so long that war weariness became crippling, then redeclaring war after a short peace period won't reset the war weariness. It will still be crippling and thus such a redeclared war is bad for both parties involved (assuming both have high levels of war weariness).
Crippling war weariness is a thing that should cause both parties in the war to want to end the war and stay in peace for a while. War weariness decreases only very slowly.

I found a big bug, war is declared much much much more often than they should be. In updating the chipotle code to use the new percentages (based on a change made recently to declare war more when AI is paying high unit support costs), I found a bug in that code. When it thinks it should have a 5% chance of declaring war, it actually has a 95% chance for declaring war.

So, your observations that the AIs are always at war is not in error. I think this was also in the 1/30 build, but perhaps I am mistaken about that.

Expect a fix soon.

-Iustus

Good job finding the error. It might explain at least a part of those dozen war declarations that I got in my 1/30 game before 0 AD. ;)

About the warsuccess thingy. I expect that war success for the opponent means negative war success for you. If you kill a unit then that is a positive thing, but if your opponent kills a unit of yours, then that is a negative thing. If you capture and then lose a city again, then that's a neutral effect on warsuccess. Is that correct?


No. Only war success counts, not war failure. But since there are two different peace values, yours and his, your success affects your peace value and his success affects his peace value, so it works out. I actually made a mistake above, the war succes value for peace is his success vs you not the other way around.


I didn't see a factor for war weariness. I know that it is connected to killing and losing units in foreign territory and capturing cities and nuking and getting nuked. So it resembles the warsuccess modifier a bit. But the main difference is that war weariness can only become worse during a war. Another difference is that a very succesfull war can lead to disastrous levels of war weariness. Even if you sign a peace treaty after a war has lasted so long that war weariness became crippling, then redeclaring war after a short peace period won't reset the war weariness. It will still be crippling and thus such a redeclared war is bad for both parties involved (assuming both have high levels of war weariness).
Crippling war weariness is a thing that should cause both parties in the war to want to end the war and stay in peace for a while. War weariness decreases only very slowly.

Right now, there is no factor for war weariness, you are correct. Adding one, might make these stagnating wars end.

-Iustus

No. Only war success counts, not war failure. But since there are two different peace values, yours and his, your success affects your peace value and his success affects his peace value, so it works out. I actually made a mistake above, the war succes value for peace is his success vs you not the other way around.

It was not the brightest question as you already mentioned at the top of your post that the difference of the war success values governs the price for peace value. I'm getting a bit tired and should be going to bed.

Right now, there is no factor for war weariness, you are correct. Adding one, might make these stagnating wars end.

-Iustus

I would like such a change. And I would also like to see the AI take into account war weariness when redeclaring a war against someone they have been at war with recently. It's not nice to start a war with 5 unhappy people in most of your bigger cities. :)

Good luck with the war declaration code. It seems difficult to get it exactly right. :goodjob:

Right now, there is no factor for war weariness, you are correct. Adding one, might make these stagnating wars end.

-Iustus

I agree -- this might be an interesting route to try.

Roland: I do not have any savegames describing the effects we spoke of (and I am too lazy to want to go back thru my recent game turn by turn,) but will try to keep track of AI DoWs in the next game -- whenever Iustus/Blake release the next build -- and see if these effects transpire.

Roland: I do not have any savegames describing the effects we spoke of (and I am too lazy to want to go back thru my recent game turn by turn,) but will try to keep track of AI DoWs in the next game -- whenever Iustus/Blake release the next build -- and see if these effects transpire.

It's probably better to wait for the next build anyway as Iustus wants to fix a bug related to war declarations. It might solve a lot of problems that you've noticed in your most recent games.

It's probably better to wait for the next build anyway as Iustus wants to fix a bug related to war declarations. It might solve a lot of problems that you've noticed in your most recent games.


Maybe -- it sounds like Iustus is only talking about frequency of DoW, whereas the thing Joe and I were talking about related to tendency of AI to make peace. (Correct me if I misunderstood.) The 'stagnating war' effect might still be there whenever war actually IS declared....

Maybe -- it sounds like Iustus is only talking about frequency of DoW, whereas the thing Joe and I were talking about related to tendency of AI to make peace. (Correct me if I misunderstood.) The 'stagnating war' effect might still be there whenever war actually IS declared....

Ok, that might be true. Maybe adding war weariness in the 'making peace code' would help solve that. I don't know how difficult that would be. It seems that Iustus finds it reasonable, so we can hope. :)

2/12 build, standard map, noble level, 12 civs

This is an example of the 'daft' declaration of war I mentioned earlier -- here, I have astronomy, Stalin does not. Stalin cannot reach my territory with any of his units other than caravels. Granted, he recently discovered military tradition and now will have Cossacks, still it's a waste of his time to declare war on me. I consider it a 'questionable' decision -- I can hurt him, but he can't hurt me.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/AutoSave_AD-1610.CivWarlordsSave

Otherwise, game is fantastic so far. I was stopped dead at the gates of Sparta and had to retreat... The AI is using promotions very intelligently for defense (especially hills/city defense.) I am in the middle of the pack so far, as opposed to most of the previous games, when I often found myself at the top. The peace values per Chipotle showed up as: Stalin: 180,0. Me: 140,0.

FWIW, though, I have NOT yet noticed the constant AI wars, nor the stagnating sitzkrieg effect discussed earlier.

Just completed my first 2/12 game.

Fractal, Epic, Custom Handicaps, 7 Civs, No Aggressive AI, everything else default.

It was definately a much more 'peaceful' game than any of my recent games. Then again, almost anything would seem peaceful compared to the constant berserk attacks in the previous few builds.

The game was certainly not devoid of warfare, but it was not the focus this time (a good change, I think). I was attacked twice in the relatively early game (once by each of my neighbors...Toku and Saladin). There were apparently a few other wars on the other side of the world before I made contact. Late in the game (Modern Age), Roosevelt attacked and quickly made of a vassal state out of Carthage which was interesting (they were equal tech, but Roosevelt had a larger army).

A few other things contributed to the relative peace. For one, most AIs were the same religion for most of the game. And one of the traditional warmongers (Monty) was isolated on a distant island. He was quite backwards for most of the game. The only other warmonger was Toku and he was sandwiched in the middle and never really amounted to much. His attack on me was rebuffed and he never had enough troops to seriously threaten anyone else the rest of the game. He ended the game up as a willing vassal of Saladin.

On the very good side, the lack of constant warfare eroding the AIs meant that there were 3 other AIs in very close running all the way until the very end. I was behind in tech for much of the mid-game but eventually caught up and took a slight lead later on. I was pretty much in the lead for productivity for most of the game and eventually just outbuilt the Space Race win over two others who were even with me in tech.

I also didnt witness any prolonged wars in this game. The AIs made peace pretty much when it made sense to rather than being obstinate and running the wars into the ground.

I would still renew my observation that the AIs are building too many farms. This might help with Slavery, but its not a good long-term plan and that shows in the end game. I also still havent seen the AI doing much amphibiously in quite a while. At one point in the builds, they were pretty adept at dropping piles of units in the backfield.

Overall, I think catching that bug has made the game feel a whole lot more like 'Civilization' again instead of 'Global Conquest' or somesuch. There were wars, but they weren't the emphasis of the game. Hopefully I'll be able to get a few more games in over the week (lousy weather here so everyone is iced under).

Thanks for reading!

I also agree that the workers are a bit retarded. I'm assuming the AI workers are the same as if I were to have mine automated, and automated workers simply just do some stupid things!

My MAIN pet-peeve of automated workers, is their refusal to acknowledge the existence of coastal trade routes and rivers! When trying to connect a resource, they will build a 20 tile road that goes straight to the capital, rather than building a ONE tile road to a nearby connected city, or a nearby connected river! The AI Worker NEEDS to recognize rivers in their resource connection calculations, if they did, not only the AI would do much better, but human would too with auto-workers not wasting 120 turns on a 6 turn job!

Just MY 2 cents ;P

Hello. This is but my second post ever, yet long time have I been here. Onward!

My current game settings (Warlolrds 2.08):

Map Type - Fractal
Map Size - Standard
Climate - Temperate
Sea Level - Medium
Speed - Epic
Resources - Standard
Raging Barbs
New Random Seed
Warlord Difficulty
4 Rival Civilizations

I am playing as Montezuma. I started on a mediumish continent with Tokugawa and Alexander. A nearby continent contains Ragnar and Genghis Kahn. You'll notice a trend, no? All aggressive leaders. Now, for the questionable behavior...

I'm noticing that with Better AI, I'm definitely getting stomped flat more often. In an almost completely random game (4 random rival civs), I still get trashed by losing the tech lead early, and winding up in really stupid holy wars. This game is different, though... I've only seen war twice, once between Ragnar and Genghis, most likely due to their close proximity, and once when Toku declared on me, since he changed his State Religion to the same as Alexander's (Judaism; his old one, as well as mine was Hinduism). Luckily, I built my shrine, and wound up spreading Hinduism to his cities shortly before he declared. After about 5 turns at war, he switched back to Hinduism and canceled his war (no offer for peace, just was no longer at war).

So my question is, shouldn't a map with 5 Aggressive Civilizations have more war? I mean, it's 1112 AD, and nobody is at war with each other anymore...

EDIT: I guess I forgot to mention that it is the 2/12 build of Better AI that I'm using...

Yea I def didnt have that same prob, playing marathon SmartMap earth with new world, Im constantly being declared war on, Im at war with 4 civs right now! and its not even 1000AD :P

At Warlords difficulty, there is a 'penalty' to the chance that the AIs declare war. Also, for a standard map, you are a bit light on AI opponents, probably leading to less border friction.

I think you might also be 'peace shocked' due to just how incredibly warlike the AIs were in the previous few builds. But after you learned to keep out of the wars (most of them), the game was actually EASIER because many of the AIs (and most of the builders) were being wrecked by the constant warfare.

The last games I played with 2/12 was certainly less warlike than the previous few builds, but more of the AIs were competitive until the end. In the earlier builds, some AIs had high scores, but their econs were often a mess with their score being propped up by massive (inefficient) land area (and the occasional vassal state).

Without the constant warfare depleting units, wrecking cities, and pillaging the land, the AIs are now keeping up (or surpassing) in tech until the late stages of the game. With the earlier builds, I knew that if I survived intact until the late Renaissance/early Industrial, the game was usually as good as won.

I just think it is going to take people a little getting used to the way it was back before the AI DoW bug was introduced.

Actually, as I said, I've been playing on the same difficulty before, with 4 random AI, and usually got the smack down by mid-game. I may just be really bad at the game myself, but it still doesn't explain why there isn't more war.

I've also never played in any earlier version of Better AI. So these have been my first experiences using this mod.

I may just be really bad at the game myself, but it still doesn't explain why there isn't more war.

Prior to 2/12, there was a pretty big bug in the AI's war declaration routine. Basically it was reversing a very small value (say 5%) into a very large value (95%). And this was on the 'total war' check IIRC. So, it meant that on any given turn when the conditions were right, the AI would declare war. That lead to a LOT of wars (some smart, many not so smart).

The 2/12 build caught that bug and its back to 'normal' for AI declarations of war. Note that if you find you want more warfare, simply check 'Aggressive AI' in the game settings. That should give you plenty. ;) And if all has gone according to plan, the AIs dont specifically target the human players anymore on that setting.

I think some people actually enjoyed the effect of the DoW bug that caused AIs to declare war whenever they saw an opportunity. Post 1.0, perhaps we will pursue being able to set an option that will give you this 'always war' type effect.

-Iustus

I've just played a fantastic game using the latest build! I had aggressive AI checked (the first game in which I've used this) and there was lots of war going on, but a great deal of it was between the AIs.

I did get attacked myself at various points by three different civs, but I think that was mostly down to religious differences (plus I was doing a little warmongering of my own!). I'm really happy that not all war declarations were directed only at me; something I've experienced quite a lot in vanilla Warlords/Civ IV.

Again, I've found automated workers doing retarded things! Now they try to connect cities that are already connected via river, by building roads that are like 30 tiles! The AI just needs to treat river tiles as roads, or something, with the current AI the workers COMPLETELY ignore rivers and coastal routes, it's quite annoying, Hell I've seen the AI players build route 66's to minor cities ALREADY connected via coast, it's annoying and I don't think it would be too difficult to program in this major advancement into the AI ;P

Maybe the AI is a little too keen to use siege weapons when defending a city. I accidentally found that if I put one unit next to one of the AI citys he would use several siege weapons to kill it rather then use the best unit to kill it with.
(I accidentally moved a pikeman next to a city rather then join my stack on a wooded hill, rather then use a maceman to attack the AI used several catapults)

That's interesting, because I was just thinking that the AI is underutilizing roads right now.

Benefits of roads are more than simply connecting cities and resources. If you have a roaded mine, there's a chance of resource appearing. Also, the military tactical benefits of roads are obvious, allowing defenders to rush to an attack faster than the invaders.

Currently, the AI seems to be ignoring these two things to a large extent.

Wodan

If you have a roaded mine, there's a chance of resource appearing.AFAIK a hill with a mine does not need to have a road to have a chance of randomly discovering a resource; the tile just needs to be worked (unless thats been changed in BetterAI).

Well in the initial stages of construction, the AI Workers need to connect resources FIRST, and put an emphasis on strategic resources, and use the rivers in the connection process, once all needed resources are connected, is when the AI should city-link. I don't think thats too unreasonable. Maybe make it an option, I'm sure BetterAI can better the AI on this ;)

*and make sure All cities are on the trade network before city-linking
Maybe have an automated worker emphasis control panel, like for the city?? ;)

AFAIK a hill with a mine does not need to have a road to have a chance of randomly discovering a resource; the tile just needs to be worked (unless thats been changed in BetterAI).

No gameplay changes in BetterAI. And I think you are right on this.

Here is a screenshot of some of the 'overfarming' that the AI does.

Do the AIs actually try and use a Specialist econ? And even if they do, how much benefit can it get from a size 9 city trying to do it with this many farms. That is an insane amount of food being produced in their capital.

Note that Cyrus had other piddly little cities surrounding his capital that were also completely overfarmed. I believe this is probably a pretty bad waste for the AIs. Am I just missing something here?

Here is a screenshot of some of the 'overfarming' that the AI does.

Do the AIs actually try and use a Specialist econ? And even if they do, how much benefit can it get from a size 9 city trying to do it with this many farms. That is an insane amount of food being produced in their capital.

Note that Cyrus had other piddly little cities surrounding his capital that were also completely overfarmed. I believe this is probably a pretty bad waste for the AIs. Am I just missing something here?
Do you know for sure that those cities have always been in their present size? The AI does a better job of whipping/drafting now. So, if he's been in a war, the city sizes might well be smaller than they were or could be.

That said, you might have something. I still think the AI might be under-roading a bit.

Wodan

I... think I recall the team explaining that the preference for farms was part of Cyrus' programming. So this is the famous "personality" no one wants to take out of the game.

Do you know for sure that those cities have always been in their present size? The AI does a better job of whipping/drafting now. So, if he's been in a war, the city sizes might well be smaller than they were or could be.

Yeah, but if you are using your size 9 city to continuously whip, then you arent being very efficient. And whipping doesnt bring in the research. Cyrus has been a backwards noodge the entire game.

Whipping was THE strategy when Civ4 first came out (and the rounding bug was discovered). It has been eventually patched to the point where its no longer the no-brainer that it once was. Having your economy relying on whipping is a bad idea IMO, especially this late in the game (Renaissance Era).

And I see this in many AI cities that are never amounting to anything. I dont think its a one-time issue.

I... think I recall the team explaining that the preference for farms was part of Cyrus' programming. So this is the famous "personality" no one wants to take out of the game.

I dont recall seeing that, but is it really better to have the personality be 'inefficient'? If there were some great benefit from the farms, by all means, let him do it. But when it means that the AI essentially just becomes a dead player waiting to be conquered? No thanks.

I know this has been reported before, but I just wanted to reinforce it. The AI is building way too many spearmen, and now no defensive units at all.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y147/zarakand/Civ4ScreenShot0002.jpg

Uncle Joe,

I was talking about emergency whipping units in wartime, while you're talking about whipping as part of economics. Two entirely different things....

Wodan

Ah OK, gotcha. No, he has been at peace for some time. And yep, his cities have been limited in size (probably by happiness more than anything else).

I dont recall seeing that, but is it really better to have the personality be 'inefficient'? If there were some great benefit from the farms, by all means, let him do it. But when it means that the AI essentially just becomes a dead player waiting to be conquered? No thanks.

I was the one that reported this issue a while back when the betterAI mod was still discussed in one long thread. And I indeed got the answer that it has to do with the building preferences of the Cyrus AI. Cyrus likes farms.

By the way, I personally think that some terrain building preferences are fun for the personalities of the AI. But it must remain minor and not hurt their economies too much. But it's probably hard to get the AI to build a specific number of cottages while the next AI build 5% more farms and a third AI 5% more workshops.

It's not a bad thing to see this reported again.

By the way, whipping is still the most efficient way of production for small cities with a granary (even after the rounding bug was removed). It's not very efficient for larger cities (10+), later in the game. Of course, it doesn't make sense to not build cottages and only farms for even more whipping. Especially since too high growth rates aren't very useful for whipping as the negative happiness effect still requires time to dissapear. Whipping is especially useful if you whip 2 citizens at once and not very efficient if you only whip 1 citizen.

Somewhat later in the game, when multiple buildings that enable specialists are available, Cyrus could run a specialist economy. That could work. But the problem is that Cyrus also builds massive amounts of farms before he has the buildings to enable specialists.

Thought this was a little odd in my current game. Prince Epic Continents Standard using 12 Feb 2007 better AI version. Isabelli is the only one on the island with me, yet she hasn't expanded at all. Year is currently 940 BC and she's had a settler sitting in Madrid ever since I learned writing, ~30 turns ago. Provided an image of the current layout, though I'm actually heading my scout back her direction to see where she places a settlement if she does indeed do so.

148441

Here's a quick follow up:

148444


I decided to attack since I already had swordsmen, but I do believe there has to be something wrong here. Took out one warrior already.

Here's a quick follow up:

148444


I decided to attack since I already had swordsmen, but I do believe there has to be something wrong here. Took out one warrior already.

Gosh. You sure you're playing on Prince?

Yup, I'm in 5th place overall, and when repeating the same map, same thing happens to Isabella time and again.

Current game: Pangea / Prince / Normal / Standard

I'm playing Isabella (having Monty as a vassal); it's 1950 and Ragnar has just declared war. He is slightly behind me in armed forces strength, but ahead in tech. I have Flight (and hence lots of Gunships) and he does not. He sends lone tanks over the border (some sort of scouting force in his mind ???). I send out a Gunship from the nearest border town (I have an extensive railroad system), pick off the tank, and return to the city to heal. It's like he thinks that because he doesn't have gunships the enemy won't have them either.

3 AI 3 Human players, quick speed, inland sea.
Think of the layout as a clock, we had AI Brennus at 1 O'clock, AI Zulu at 3 O'Clock, Human at 5 O'Clock, AI Chinese at 7 O'Clock, me at 9 O'Clock and human at 12 O'Clock.

The human at 5 O'clock notices that the chinese have walked a great artist through his territory and into the Zulu's territory.

I have also seen this odd pathing with a great general when playing a single player with inland sea.

I should note, having played through it a little more, that the other civs are fully formed. I'm not sure what happened with Isabella, but every game it seemed to happen that way. One game I played, she actually founded another city, on a forested tundra mountain on the coast (see post #193, is the spot just inside the lower left-hand side of the border), but in my opinion it seems like a horrible spot... 1 grassland hill & 1 grassland (shared), both on a river, 5 tundra (3 on river), 2 tundra hill (1 on river), and the rest as coast, no resources. This could be a viable mid-game filler settlement for commerce, but as your second city, it was horrible. In this particular game, she started to rush settlers for cities when I attacked her and broke whatever algorithm she was using.

In the game represented by 192 & 193, she had bronzeworking and slavery, but didn't finish the mine for some reason. It only took my worker 2 turns to complete it after I captured Madrid and rioting was over.

Some reflections on the most recent build:

(Standard/Prince/Tectonics/city flipping after conquest/must kill all units to conquer)

1.) I am noticing some good counterattacking with artillery and defensive units when the AI has an advantage. In my most recent game, the Zulus, despite being completely on the defensive, nearly destroyed a force of 9 tanks (I think they took down six and severely damaged the survivors) with a combination of artillery, infantry, and SAM Inf.

2.) I am still noticing, however, the AI blindly focusing on building some things that it shouldn't in an emergency. Despite my army bearing down on one of their last cities, the Zulus were still building the Apollo Program there.

3.) I also noticed an unusually large population of destroyers parked in that city, despite the fact that I was threatening to take it -- and also despite the fact that I was using my fleet and occasionally shipping troops back and forth. Now there HAD been some fast and furious naval combat at the start of the war, and my aircraft had dinged most of their ships even if I couldn't engage them in the water. It's possible that they were repairing, and it's also possible that, given my air superiority, the Zulus didn't want to sortie their fleet unless a ship moved within easy range of port, to prevent air attacks, but it seems pretty foolish to wait in port when they might be able to do some damage by going out on the high seas.

4.) I noticed that the AI, where appropriate, is aggressively building ships, and using them in a "picket line", off their coast, with typically two to three ships per picket. Very nicely implemented.

5.) I am not sure if the AI is handling play under the "city flipping after conquest" well. I noticed that in one game, Stalin was at war with Mansa. Although Stalin had reduced Mansa to one city, he wasn't making any progress. It looked as though he placed all of his offensive units in the most recently-taken city (presumably to prevent a culture flip,) and was not attempting to take Mansa's last city (which he probably could've done given his overall strength). I think the AI needs to learn that, in this circumstance, it may be wiser to press on the offensive to finish off the enemy. (Disclaimer: Mansa never capitulated, so it's possible he was able to chew up several attacks from Stalin while holed up in his capital. I did not look at this using Worldbuilder.)

I saw another Machine Gun oddity last night using the most recent Better AI build. Mao sent an MG into my vassal's borders while we were at war with him. I saw it go from China into Monty's land. This was a lone MG, not part of a larger attack group. As far as I could see, there could have been no purpose in this mission. The MG disappeared on the next turn (probably killed).

[QUOTE=Shynji;5130897]I should note, having played through it a little more, that the other civs are fully formed. I'm not sure what happened with Isabella, but every game it seemed to happen that way.


In my current game (current AI build, too), Isabella is thriving at about 980 AD. Nothing strange about her expansion ability, power or culture levels.

3.) I also noticed an unusually large population of destroyers parked in that city, despite the fact that I was threatening to take it

I've observed this phenomenon several times - the AI leaves naval forces in a city that is in danger of being captured, when these naval forces could safely be moved to a nearby port.

Some reflections on the most recent build:

3.) I also noticed an unusually large population of destroyers parked in that city, despite the fact that I was threatening to take it -- and also despite the fact that I was using my fleet and occasionally shipping troops back and forth. Now there HAD been some fast and furious naval combat at the start of the war, and my aircraft had dinged most of their ships even if I couldn't engage them in the water. It's possible that they were repairing, and it's also possible that, given my air superiority, the Zulus didn't want to sortie their fleet unless a ship moved within easy range of port, to prevent air attacks, but it seems pretty foolish to wait in port when they might be able to do some damage by going out on the high seas.

4.) I noticed that the AI, where appropriate, is aggressively building ships, and using them in a "picket line", off their coast, with typically two to three ships per picket. Very nicely implemented.


I've observed this phenomenon several times - the AI leaves naval forces in a city that is in danger of being captured, when these naval forces could safely be moved to a nearby port.

(4) above was meant to at least partially address the (3) problem. I am curious to know what unitai those destroyers parked in the threatened city had. If you hold down the ctrl key under chipotle mode (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=204063), you will get a screen like this with the information I want:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/95686/groupinginfo.jpg

(This picture is showing 3 assault sea galleons, 1 escort sea galleon, and two escort sea frigates).

In the case where there were destroyers parked in a city, was there a picket line of ships nearby? That is to say, perhaps there were no holes in the picket line to be filled (visibility wise), so the excess ships were in port?

-Iustus

In the case where there were destroyers parked in a city, was there a picket line of ships nearby? That is to say, perhaps there were no holes in the picket line to be filled (visibility wise), so the excess ships were in port?

-Iustus


I had blown large holes in their fleet by that point -- there was no picket to speak of, at least none in the sea between my Roman (former Mali) possessions to the north and the Zulu continent. There had been some serious naval battles after I'd declared war. Nevertheless, the Zulus still had a respectable fleet of destroyers and at least one battleship. All of the destroyers appear to be tasked to "escort" duty, and the transports to "assault" duty. There are also some battleships and destroyers in Ondini, too, again, all tasked to "escort" duty, along with a couple of "assault" transports. I could not see the tasks listed for all of the units in Nobama, so in lieu of a screenshot, I'm just attaching the 1927 and 1928 savegames.

It looks like there were 11 destroyers and 1 battleship in Nobama, and 2 battleships and 2 destroyers in Ondini.

Note also that thanks to my spy, you can see that Nobama is still building the Apollo program in 1928 (which will complete in 111 turns,) despite the fact that my tank army has just taken Ulundi.

I've also included the 1933 turn, which is after the Zulus capitulated, just for completeness' sake, because I'm not sure if the Zulu fleet remained in port when I took those cities, too, or if they actually survived to the end of the war.


http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/Marcus_Aurelius_AD-1927.CivWarlordsSave

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/Marcus_Aurelius_AD-1928.CivWarlordsSave

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/Marcus_Aurelius_AD-1933.CivWarlordsSave

Here's another screenshot of a stack packed with Machine Guns. In the picture, my vassal Monty is providing completely ineffective support to my invasion of America.

Here's another screenshot of a stack packed with Machine Guns. In the picture, my vassal Monty is providing completely ineffective support to my invasion of America.

At least he threw some infantry and a cavalry in there, too! Most of my vassals do the same thing, but they at least show up for the battle despite suicidal odds, landed Grenadiers and such to take on enemy Infantry....god bless 'em! They also send ships and bombard city defenses. NOt the most helpful thing ever, but better than nothing, I suppose.

Iustus,

By the way, when declaring war, one of the first things I tried to do was take out as much of the picket line as possible. Then, too, the rest of the AI pickets started acting aggressively (and doing well enough to sink one of my carriers and several other ships.) But these escort-tasked ships should've switched on to attack or something, I think.

Also -- the AI did not make any threatening moves despite my moving a large naval/amphibious stack near their sea borders. So, in a sense, the picket line isn't doing much for them. I'd think that if the AI sees such a force closing through its pickets AND relations are annoyed/furious AND there isn't any other mitigating factor (AI and Human at war with same third country, even though they don't like each other that much, Human has defense pact with AI's closest friend,) it may be worthwhile to have the AI declare war and launch a pre-emptive strike on the human's fleet before it can land. Otherwise, it's possible that the human will be able to land his army and then fight off the AI fleet in detail.

(4) above was meant to at least partially address the (3) problem. I am curious to know what unitai those destroyers parked in the threatened city had.
-Iustus

I had another instance of the AI using its naval forces badly.

I was fighting Catherine and had moved a large force next to St Petersburg which was defended by a single Infantry. When I went to attack the next turn, Catherine had brought in an Artillery and now there were the Transport and 2 Destroyers in port. The transport had code "assault sea" and the destroyers had code "escort sea". I had no naval forces in the immediate area. Catherine then lost the transport and 2 destroyers when I took St Petersburg (and then capitulated when I offered it to her).

[EDIT: large map/epic/Prince/Tectonics/city flipping after conquest/require complete kills/16 civs]

A couple of observations:

I saw what I thought was the Greek fleet staying in port while I threatened to attack, tasked to "escort". They had a mess of caravels and galleys, while I was there with frigates and galleons. Then they started moving out -- they played cat and mouse with me for a little bit, so I let them go out. They ended up next to Knossos (which I had just taken,) and I let them go there. They could not land troops (other than by making an amphibious attack,) so I figured I was safe.

Far from it! They launched an all-out amphibious attack -- their losses were bad, but mine were total. They took down 7 grenadiers, a war elephant and a couple of trebuchet, and re-took the city (!). I had NEVER seen the AI do an amphibious attack before -- bravo!

I guess I'm of mixed opinions toward this now. It seems that when the AI is ready to go, this is a powerful weapon. (I was cursing Alex left and right...and although I was able to get him to capitulate, I could not conquer all of Greece thanks to the losses suffered here.) The problem is that I have not seem them ready to sortie on a regular basis. I wish that the AI would be more willing to switch their offensive naval units from 'escort' to 'attack' when the situation is desperate.

Athenian fleet in port: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/Questionable_--_cowardly_athenian_fleet.CivWarlordsSave

Athenian fleet sorties:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/Questionable_--_NOW_the_fleet_sallies.CivWarlordsSave


A questionable incident I ran into earlier: barbarians build city. They later build a worker. The Spanish take the city. But then, the Spaniards do NOT garrison their newly-taken city. Even odder, the barbarian worker just sits in (now-)Spanish territory, not moving. For their part, the Spanish do NOT go and capture it(??!?) Instead, I sent a unit in (via Open Borders) and take it for myself later!


Barbarian worker:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/QUESTIONABLE_-_letting_worker_sit_there.CivWarlordsSave



Finally, still noticing the odd behavior of the AI issuing a DoW even though they can't touch me with anything but caravels.... I believe that the power rating had Napoleon ahead of me, but given his position on the other side of the world, the DoW just seemed a bit odd. I mean, it'd be different if I had a colony or something within striking distance.... I understand the rationale that 'hararssing' wars like this can be tools of diplomacy and all that, still the war appeared to be done on his own.... [EDIT: meaning: he really had nothing to gain and everything to lose by declaring war.] Of course, not much happened b/c I wasn't in a position to do much other than shoot up a couple of his caravels. Greece tried doing the same thing later and I turned Alexander into a vassal (though not before he smashed one of my grenadier stacks using a massive horde of primitive units). I guess I don't mind it that much in the scheme of things (on the power graph, I DID lag behind both when they declared war, and humans do irrational things too, so it's not unrealistic,) but reporting it for completeness' sake.

Napoleon's DoW:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/50676/QUESTIONABLE_Napoleon_DoW_without_Astronomy.CivWar lordsSave



Whew. I think I'm going to take a break from playing this week.

That does remind me. I have a game where the Americans control an island far off their continent.

There is not a single improvement on the island, even though there are size 10 to 15 cities on it defended by multiple military units. The AI forgot to build workers (maybe because it thought it had enough back home).

The same is true of the water resources -- completely unimproved.

In a completely unrelated note, I've seen AI placing stacks next to my border, yet not invading. We have closed borders. Those units might be there to see into my territory (but why large armies?), but if they are there to invade, it doesn't make much sense. Once you have railroads (or even a decent road network) placing an army next to your opponents borders seems pointlessly threatening.

That does remind me. I have a game where the Americans control an island far off their continent.

There is not a single improvement on the island, even though there are size 10 to 15 cities on it defended by multiple military units. The AI forgot to build workers (maybe because it thought it had enough back home).


I seem to recall seeing a similar situation in my previously-mentioned game. The Egyptians colonized an island that wasn't that far at all from their homeland. I recalled seeing very little in the way of improvements at all. At the same time, the Spanish colonized an island on which I had managed to plant a colony -- I saw the usual worker development.

Confusing.


In a completely unrelated note, I've seen AI placing stacks next to my border, yet not invading. We have closed borders. Those units might be there to see into my territory (but why large armies?), but if they are there to invade, it doesn't make much sense. Once you have railroads (or even a decent road network) placing an army next to your opponents borders seems pointlessly threatening.


It appears to be a pattern of behavior with the AI -- they seem to do this a lot with ships, presumably for spying purposes. But there's no real point to doing this with army units, since they can't see any farther than you'd see normally with your borders....

Hmm. Did the AI build a fort maybe?

Iustus, Blake, great work etc. I've just been playing with the 2/12 build and noticed a few things.

The AI can be very slow at building workers on islands. This might have something to do with building lighthouses fast and so not working any unimproved land squares. I've seen resources left unconnected for most of the game because of this.

In my last game, I saw a capital build 25 work boats in a row. I'm not sure why that was but they had no workers and hostile ships kept the work boats all in port and the one fish unimproved.

In the early game, settlers still aren't getting the escorts they need. It's normally a good thing that cities don't build units early until they are adequately defended to the high Better AI levels. But units won't escort settlers when they think they are needed for defence. Archers are cheap compared to settlers.

I've just seen another AI diplomatic victory for a warmongering civ. With 15 surviving civs, Catherine was some distance ahead in score but she was some way behind in tech despite a solid economy. This was mostly because she insisted on giving away techs to more advanced vassals before trying to trade with them. Were I in her position, I'd be giving away technology in order to give my vassals a chance of getting something worth trading for as well as to help them militarily. When you give away all your advances, the chances are your vassals will trade them for you so if you don't ever have anything to trade with them, you'll never see the rewards.

I saw the AI not building the Internet when it could. So I had a look at the source and it seems your not the only people to have trouble with > and <. As far as I can tell, the AI will only build it when they've met 2 or fewer players.

Some time ago the preferences for the various civics have been changed. I personally think that the AI prefers mercantalism too much now. I've played a game a while ago where all the AI's switched to this civic once it became available. Of course, once one of them chooses to go for mercantalism, it is more interesting for the other ones to choose this civic.

In my present game, I'm on a continent with a bunch of civilization who all (except 1) have the same religion. Of course, we all love eachother and are happily trading away (except for a bit of war because it's the aggressive AI setting). All of these open borders lead to a huge foreign trade route income, so I expected the AI to prefer to stay out of the mercantalism civic. However, I just saw the tech leader on our continent switch to mercantalism (not his favourite civic). It has a horrible effect on his commerce rating. I added the commerce graph to demonstrate this. The white line is the line from the civilization who just chose to use mercantalism. Note that it also hurts some of the other AI's, but to a far lesser degree. Personally, I think it is a very bad move from Bismarck (the leader of the white line civilization).

(For the ones who notice it: the increase of the white, orange and light purple lines, 200 years ago coincides with the end of a war between these civilizations. It is unrelated to the above remark but also interesting. It is probably related to the war blocking trade routes and causing war weariness.)

Commerce graph.JPG

I agree that it seems to select Mercantalism a little too often. I've also said that many of the Civs seem to avoid Free Religion for too long as well. They are losing out on that 10% free Science which can be key late in the game.

The graph, while interesting, doesn't have a validating counterpoint because we don't know how much Civ X gained from the added specialists. For all we know, the added research (etc) is more than double the loss.

That said, it sounds like they are too blindly choosing mercantilism, so maybe it bears looking into.

Regarding Free Religion, lately I've been doing a lot of experimentation comparing that to the various religious strategies. e.g., Free Religion vs Sankore/Spiral. The tendency I think is to try and hang on to Sankore/Spiral as long as you can. However, I've about come to the conclusion that it's idiotic to not get FR as soon as possible. The 10% bonus blows away the piddly +2/+4 per city from the wonders.

That's not to say Sankore/Spiral are not worthwhile, merely that they are wonders whose benefit has a time limit (like Colossus or many others).

In addition, there are other benefits to religion (such as dip modifiers), so if you want to keep religion regardless of the harm to your economy, then Sankore/Spiral help mitigate the pain somewhat.

Anyway, I diverge. :D

Wodan

The graph, while interesting, doesn't have a validating counterpoint because we don't know how much Civ X gained from the added specialists. For all we know, the added research (etc) is more than double the loss.

That said, it sounds like they are too blindly choosing mercantilism, so maybe it bears looking into.

You seem to want to play devil's advocate.

In this case, the drop in commerce output is about 80, while 16 specialist are added. And no, the civilization doesn't happen to have the pyramids and use the representation civic. The specialists will probably barely increase the output of great people because they are spread out over all of the cities. Let's assume that every city has a library and thus can enable a scientist (which is probably not true for 2 just captured cities), then it's 80 commerce versus 48, both before multipliers from buildings. Very negative, I'd say.

I used the graph because a visible representation is often far more convincing then a representation with cold hard numbers. It's easier to see allthough not as accurate and precise.

I agree that it seems to select Mercantalism a little too often. I've also said that many of the Civs seem to avoid Free Religion for too long as well. They are losing out on that 10% free Science which can be key late in the game.

I personally prefer organized religion over free religion in almost every case. A 25% bonus on building production (which is harder to get bonusses on) is worth more to me than a 10% bonus on science. It seems that Blake agrees as the civilizations often pick organized religion when not at war or planning a war. When at war or planning a war, they often pick theocracy.

I personally prefer organized religion over free religion in almost every case. A 25% bonus on building production (which is harder to get bonusses on) is worth more to me than a 10% bonus on science.

To each his own I guess. Most of the time many of my cities are no longer building buildings so that 25% is wasted. And usually it my older, more established cities that are 'full up' and building units or else science/commerce depending on specialization.

All I know is that late in the game, the AIs almost ALWAYS seem to drop behind in the tech race, even if they are competitive or leading earlier in the game. The key difference I can point to is that I'm gaining 10% more than them through the Free Religion. I'm also saving on Civics upkeep as Organized Religions can be quite expensive late in the game. Finally, depending on how religions spread, Free Religion can actually result in more happiness in most cities than sticking or OR.

To each his own I guess. Most of the time many of my cities are no longer building buildings so that 25% is wasted. And usually it my older, more established cities that are 'full up' and building units or else science/commerce depending on specialization.

All I know is that late in the game, the AIs almost ALWAYS seem to drop behind in the tech race, even if they are competitive or leading earlier in the game. The key difference I can point to is that I'm gaining 10% more than them through the Free Religion. I'm also saving on Civics upkeep as Organized Religions can be quite expensive late in the game. Finally, depending on how religions spread, Free Religion can actually result in more happiness in most cities than sticking or OR.

If you're not building a lot of buildings anymore, than organized religion is not that useful anymore. It's only useful then for spreading religions and maybe you've already build some monasteries for that cause. I usually have some recently conquered AI lands that still need some city improvements and also my old cities still need a few buildings that only become available in the late stages of the game. Sometimes I acquire a new religion that I wish to spread and I don't have the monasteries to build the missionaries.

By the way, the 10% won't give you a tech lead fast. If it takes on average 6 turns to research a technology (very dependant on game speed), then it will take you 60 turns to get 1 technology ahead of your opponents. And at that moment they will start benefitting from the research bonus that civlizations get for technologies that have already been developed by other civilizations.

More likely causes for a sudden technology lead can be found in conquest. Have you conquered some lands in the past and developed them into perfection in recent years? Do you now have 50% more cities than your opponents? Of course that will lead to some extra research speed. Especially in the late game when higher upkeep costs from a large empire are not that important anymore. And if you somehow have more resources than your AI opponents, then you can grow your cities larger and make use of every single tile that is in your empire. That will of course also give you extra research. These effects useally far outweigh the 10% extra research from free religion. Of course, every 10% helps.

Of course, to each his own.

In my current game, Washington was running mercantilism when he had open borders with only 2 civs which put together would have been smaller than him. That's good. Unfortunately he's met and signed open borders with more players since then and is still in mercantilism.

By the way, the 10% won't give you a tech lead fast. If it takes on average 6 turns to research a technology (very dependant on game speed), then it will take you 60 turns to get 1 technology ahead of your opponents.

It's even worse than this. The 10% is only on base science; it isn't cumulative with libraries and universities. So if you have both everywhere that's 90 turns. Late game, I tend to see it give 5% to overall science. OR is often worth the cost if there's anything left to build.

The AI's other civic choices can be just as bad for it's economy. Farming and running specialists everywhere wouldn't be such a bad idea if they were running representation or pacifism They don't get as much out of towns by frequently not running free speech, even when aiming for cultural victory. They love nationalism but that size 10, 2 production island city is still building a rifleman rather than drafting it.

On a completely different topic, after the AI has taken a city with a large stack, they tend to leave all their siege units defending while heading for the next city with an attack stack without them. This stack sometimes ends up suiciding itself against a 60%+ defence and the city is defended with the worst possible units.

This might have something to do with bombard and collateral being put first in a stack so they can bombard and attack first. But presumably they are also being used as the first to stay defending because of it.

In this case, the drop in commerce output is about 80, while 16 specialist are added. And no, the civilization doesn't happen to have the pyramids and use the representation civic. The specialists will probably barely increase the output of great people because they are spread out over all of the cities. Let's assume that every city has a library and thus can enable a scientist (which is probably not true for 2 just captured cities), then it's 80 commerce versus 48, both before multipliers from buildings. Very negative, I'd say.
Those numbers are better, and seem sufficient to prove the case. (That it was a dumb move by the AI.)

I used the graph because a visible representation is often far more convincing then a representation with cold hard numbers. It's easier to see allthough not as accurate and precise.
Agreed. However, the graph still needs to prove the case. If it does not do this (which it didn't), then it would be a good idea to supplement it with the cold, hard numbers. Which you did, so we're done here. :)

You seem to want to play devil's advocate.
Would you rather take the risk that the people reviewing your report take a look, say to themselves, "This doesn't prove anything," and simply delete it and move on? It's it much better to have me pick it apart first. :D

Wodan

.... Serving a vital need of the civ community.

Re: the 10% not being worth it

On that logic, why build Libraries? It's only 25%. If it takes on average 6 turns to research a technology (very dependent on game speed), then it will take you 24 turns to get 1 technology ahead of your opponents. And at that moment they will start benefitting from the research bonus that civlizations get for technologies that have already been developed by other civilizations.

And, it's even worse than that. You have to spend production capital to make the Library in the first place. Plus, you have to build them in every city to get the bonus civ-wide.

Wodan

.... Serving a vital need of the civ community.

10% science might not seem like much, but it definately adds up over 100s of turns. Even if it only puts you 2 techs ahead in the whole rest of the game, 2 techs is 2 techs. Add in the potential for MORE happiness from FR AND the lower upkeep and its certainly not a no-brainer to remain OR for the bulk of the game.

But I think the point is that the situations vary and so does the 'better' Civic. There really isnt a blanked 'better' choice between OR and FR. I'd just like to see that reflected in the game a little more.

How about a :wow: on topic post.

Here's a screenshot of my current game. It shows how the BetterAI is still not quite there, in regard to city placement. I've reported this before. I don't know if the BetterAI team intends to tweak this some more before releasing 1.0, but I hope so.

Anyway, take a look at where Stalin put StPete. A total of 6 tiles of overlap, and he gave up fresh water. All he gained was a shot at an extra spice. (The spice is disputed with Thebes.)

In addition, he makes impossible to work several tiles. (not resource tiles, normal tiles)

My guess is that the resources are still driving a huge modifier. The AI builds cities to get resources. Everything else is secondary. (I don't think that's the best way to have them do it.)

Wodan

How about a :wow: on topic post.

Here's a screenshot of my current game. It shows how the BetterAI is still not quite there, in regard to city placement. I've reported this before. I don't know if the BetterAI team intends to tweak this some more before releasing 1.0, but I hope so.

Anyway, take a look at where Stalin put StPete. A total of 6 tiles of overlap, and he gave up fresh water. All he gained was a shot at an extra spice. (The spice is disputed with Thebes.)

In addition, he makes impossible to work several tiles. (not resource tiles, normal tiles)

My guess is that the resources are still driving a huge modifier. The AI builds cities to get resources. Everything else is secondary. (I don't think that's the best way to have them do it.)

Wodan

I don't know, this one isn't necessarily what I'd do, but it's arguable. I mean, eliminate Thebes and there's no problem, St Pete gets access to extra spice AND the clams after border expansion. Plus, it is 3 squares from Moscow for easy reinforcement. I mean, this IS Stalin, after all....

I don't know, this one isn't necessarily what I'd do, but it's arguable. I mean, eliminate Thebes and there's no problem, St Pete gets access to extra spice AND the clams after border expansion. Plus, it is 3 squares from Moscow for easy reinforcement. I mean, this IS Stalin, after all....
Yeah, and he already has 2 spice in Moscow.

Besides, why "eliminate" Thebes when you can conquer it?

Overlap is as much as concern when it is internal to your empire as when it is with another civ.

Bottom line, we can't attribute too much intelligence to the AI. Contingency planning on "elimination" of a rival city vs "I already have this resource" are probably too much to ask.

All I'm pointing out is that I strongly suspect the algorithm is placing too much emphasis of resources within the fat cross.

Wodan

Yeah, and he already has 2 spice in Moscow.

Besides, why "eliminate" Thebes when you can conquer it?

Overlap is as much as concern when it is internal to your empire as when it is with another civ.

Bottom line, we can't attribute too much intelligence to the AI. Contingency planning on "elimination" of a rival city vs "I already have this resource" are probably too much to ask.

All I'm pointing out is that I strongly suspect the algorithm is placing too much emphasis of resources within the fat cross.

Wodan

Didn't notice the spices in Moscow. That makes it less arguable.

Would you rather take the risk that the people reviewing your report take a look, say to themselves, "This doesn't prove anything," and simply delete it and move on? It's it much better to have me pick it apart first. :D

Wodan

.... Serving a vital need of the civ community.

You were right. I was a bit tired when I posted it. I should have added the numbers in the first place. The numbers + the graph would have been better.

Re: the 10% not being worth it

On that logic, why build Libraries? It's only 25%. If it takes on average 6 turns to research a technology (very dependent on game speed), then it will take you 24 turns to get 1 technology ahead of your opponents. And at that moment they will start benefitting from the research bonus that civlizations get for technologies that have already been developed by other civilizations.

And, it's even worse than that. You have to spend production capital to make the Library in the first place. Plus, you have to build them in every city to get the bonus civ-wide.

Wodan

.... Serving a vital need of the civ community.

I was arguing that it was not very likely that the science output of free religion would cause a dramatic science lead in the late game. The bonus is just too small. Nor Me is right that the relative bonus from this civic is closer to 5% because lots of buildings which increase science output have already been build this late in the game and the 10% science bonus is only applied to the base science output.

The bonus of organized religion is also not really 25% anymore in the late game in your old cities which already have large production bonusses. And it only applies when you're constructing buildings. It's quite hard for the AI to compare these civics.

The AI needs to do the following things:
1) put a relative value on 1 science point compared to 1 hammer.
2) calculate the increase in science per turn
3) estimate the amount of production going towards building production and calculate the increase in hammers per turn.

I don't know if the AI has access to all the numbers necessary to do the calculations. I don't know how easy it is to do this comparison. It's clear that the choise is not easy as we humans don't even agree what is the best option.

By the way, I agree with your city placement criticism. The AI should have placed that city one tile to the east. I also think that the AI picked that location because of the value it places on resources.
It is of course very difficult, maybe even impossible, to write a city valuation method which will result in the 'right' city placement. When humans place a city, they look at all the land around the city to see how it will fit in a continent wide city placement pattern. The AI uses a very local valuation method. And if this valuation method doesn't value resources highly enough, then it might not go for the cities with many resources early enough.

I would prefer a two step city placement algoritm. A first step where the AI divides the land into a city placement pattern so that very few tiles are lost and cities have low overlap. And a second step where the AI actually chooses which city in this pattern is the most attractive one to build first. The first step in the algorithm wouldn't value resources very highly but mainly look at city overlap and tile loss (tiles inbetween cities which will never be used). The second step would value resources very highly to determine which city is the most attractive one to build first.
I don't know how feasible such an algorithm would be. Especially the first step might be difficult because it requires a significant amount of calculations to determine an 'ideal' city placement pattern. Every city placement is dependent on the city placement of other cities and the number of combinations of city placement grow very large very quickly.

Could you weight down the values of second and subsequent resources?

e.g. first spice worth 100, second one worth 80, third and subsequent ones worth 40. That might help.

Could you weight down the values of second and subsequent resources?

e.g. first spice worth 100, second one worth 80, third and subsequent ones worth 40. That might help.

In general, the second instance of the same resource is worth less. But on the other hand, if it allows me to trade for something that I don't have myself it can be worth exactly the same as the first instance of the resource.

I saw the AI not building the Internet when it could. So I had a look at the source and it seems your not the only people to have trouble with > and <. As far as I can tell, the AI will only build it when they've met 2 or fewer players.

That's bizarre. Can you point me to the place in the code where this is located? Is it just a simple fix of replacing a "<" with a ">" (or vice-versa)? (And this should probably be reported in the Bug Reports forum....)

I don't know if the AI has access to all the numbers necessary to do the calculations. I don't know how easy it is to do this comparison.

In this particular case, it wouldn't be too hard to calculate this. It should be simple to calculate the value of these civics for each city. Some civics and civic combinations would be more difficult.

Blake posted the heuristics he used for the civics a few months ago. They only depended on easy things like the number of cities. They are an improvement on vanilla civ. Having said that, I still think that Free Speech > everything might be better than the current Better AI legal civic choices.

It wouldn't be too hard to come up with better choices based on more direct calculations without slowing things down noticeably. But the effort involved means that I doubt it's going to be a priority however much we complain about it.

I would prefer a two step city placement algoritm. A first step where the AI divides the land into a city placement pattern so that very few tiles are lost and cities have low overlap. And a second step where the AI actually chooses which city in this pattern is the most attractive one to build first.

Look at the competition Stalin appears to be facing in Wodan's screenshot! This is going to be a bad idea for him. A human might think that they can count on conquering Thebes but that's a little optimistic for an AI. This kind of thing happens often enough that planning for the future might not be worth it.

That's bizarre. Can you point me to the place in the code where this is located? Is it just a simple fix of replacing a "<" with a ">" (or vice-versa)? (And this should probably be reported in the Bug Reports forum....)

It's in CvCityAI::AI_projectValue() in CvCityAI.cpp, one of the lines with getTechShare(). I've reported it, just not on this site. When I changed it, Cyrus built the internet so it looks to be genuine.

Is it just my imagination, or is there some changes in capitulation? Does the Better AI capitulate more easily to other AI than before?

My last game (Prince level) I and Augustus were fighting against Gengish. I captured one city, and Augustus captured one city. Gengish had still about 10 cities, Gengish managed almost completly destroy my stack and there was not much roman groud forces left - and Gengish capitulates to Augustus. Gengish still had 95% of land and 45% of population. So the war was over. Augustus got a good vassal, and I got one city, surrounded by mongol culture.

This is a second time something like this happens: AI capitulates easily to other AI, without suffering any real losses.

I have not seen this. The AI will capitulate to any player when they're at war and an extreme imbalance of power exists (and they're through the initial stage of "REFUSES TO TALK". I once had Ragnar capitulate without setting foot in his territory. I've also had civs capitulate to me only after taking one or two cities from them (both before and after BetterAI.) Depends on the situation, I think....


Is it just my imagination, or is there some changes in capitulation? Does the Better AI capitulate more easily to other AI than before?

My last game (Prince level) I and Augustus were fighting against Gengish. I captured one city, and Augustus captured one city. Gengish had still about 10 cities, Gengish managed almost completly destroy my stack and there was not much roman groud forces left - and Gengish capitulates to Augustus. Gengish still had 95% of land and 45% of population. So the war was over. Augustus got a good vassal, and I got one city, surrounded by mongol culture.

This is a second time something like this happens: AI capitulates easily to other AI, without suffering any real losses.

So I was fighting a War with the Russians -- and they pillaged their own roads and improvements (inside their cultural borders).

This might be them being extremely clever -- "Pillage it before you do" or "Pillage it before you capture the city" -- but it seemed very strange to me.

So I was fighting a War with the Russians -- and they pillaged their own roads and improvements (inside their cultural borders).

This might be them being extremely clever -- "Pillage it before you do" or "Pillage it before you capture the city" -- but it seemed very strange to me.

Whoa, that's interesting. Do you have "before" and "after" save files by any chance? I'd actually be interested in seeing that.

Scorched earth policy!

So I was fighting a War with the Russians -- and they pillaged their own roads and improvements (inside their cultural borders).

This might be them being extremely clever -- "Pillage it before you do" or "Pillage it before you capture the city" -- but it seemed very strange to me.

so much realistic !!! the ai must have read the stories of the russian campaign of napoleon !

How about a :wow: on topic post.

Here's a screenshot of my current game. It shows how the BetterAI is still not quite there, in regard to city placement. I've reported this before. I don't know if the BetterAI team intends to tweak this some more before releasing 1.0, but I hope so.

Anyway, take a look at where Stalin put StPete. A total of 6 tiles of overlap, and he gave up fresh water. All he gained was a shot at an extra spice. (The spice is disputed with Thebes.)

In addition, he makes impossible to work several tiles. (not resource tiles, normal tiles)

My guess is that the resources are still driving a huge modifier. The AI builds cities to get resources. Everything else is secondary. (I don't think that's the best way to have them do it.)

Wodan

hi wodan ! in a way i desagree with you : having 6 common tiles for 2 cities means that each cities may work 17 tiles (instead of 20). and thats not that bad !
such a situtation would obvously cause no pbs in the early games (because the cities are not big enough to work all tiles) and finally have reduced impact on late game (the cities only miss 3 standart tiles, which is not that great).
I change my city placement recently, allowing my cities to share some tiles : and that works ! I only keep exceptionnal spots clear (for main prod city or main science city).

hi wodan ! in a way i desagree with you : having 6 common tiles for 2 cities means that each cities may work 17 tiles (instead of 20). and thats not that bad !
such a situtation would obvously cause no pbs in the early games (because the cities are not big enough to work all tiles) and finally have reduced impact on late game (the cities only miss 3 standart tiles, which is not that great).
I change my city placement recently, allowing my cities to share some tiles : and that works ! I only keep exceptionnal spots clear (for main prod city or main science city).
And what, exactly, benefit is gained for this overlap?

1) dynamic toggling of tiles worked (allowing 2 cities to share, for example, a high-output mine)
2) cities closer to capitol, resulting in lower city maintenance
3) more cities per total land area
4) other?

Note that none of the above are the case in my example.

Wodan

The AIs attack tactics are questionable. A stack should know if it has a decent chance to take a city before it actually tries -- and I've had an attack stack that was cleary insufficient to kill more than 1 or 2 units attack a city over a river rather than move around it.

The AI also seemed prone to attacking the closest city. This made "super stacking" my defences against the AI rather easy.

Next, the AI doesn't view barbarian cities as an easy source of new city locations.

The AI also seems to be missing any anti-barbarian smarts. Barbarian attacks are highly predictable -- they tend to move their troops along known paths, coming from areas of high-fog. Quite often placing a handful of units along the barbarian approach paths (both defensive and offensive) seriously stems the tide. (I noticed this, because I modded up the rate of barbarian spawn, so areas with serious barbarian flow are much more common: the same effect of a barbarian flow can exist in standard civ, it just requires a larger foggy area).

Next, the AI doesn't seem to want to sally that much. I can often move a mediocre small stack near an enemy city, and the AI doesn't smash it -- even if it has a decent chance of being able to kill 2 units and only end up with at most 1 unit dead (and quite possibly none).

And what, exactly, benefit is gained for this overlap?

1) dynamic toggling of tiles worked (allowing 2 cities to share, for example, a high-output mine)
2) cities closer to capitol, resulting in lower city maintenance
3) more cities per total land area
4) other?

Note that none of the above are the case in my example.

Wodan

well i guess 3) is the good answer :o where should russian have grabbed land south ? theyre surrounded ^^
plus they claim the second iron and thats a good point.
anyway i dont say i would have build a city there, i just mean this is not so stupid :o

A country is at war with me, sends one medium stack of attackers which I waste, and then only sends 1-2 more attackers soon after. I build up a bit more and then mass to take a border city. Seems like if they weren't going to prosecute the war then they ought to have sued for peace (not that I'd have taken it). Then after taking that city one would think they should sue for peace, but again nothing is heard from the idiot.

Also, they quickly pushed 2 ships up my coast and sat them outside my closest coastal city to them. Not much effect if the coastal spot is not a resource. A country ought to continue up the coast until it finds a resource spot. Or since it sees my coastal border city poorly defended maybe they should put greater weight to maybe building a galley and doing a coastal invasion.

Also, I agree with Yakk 2 posts up. The AI is stupid, stupid, stupid when it comes to manipulation of forces. They usually have more units (I'm at Monarch), but use them so poorly that I can always beat them in battles & wars.

Also, they quickly pushed 2 ships up my coast and sat them outside my closest coastal city to them. Not much effect if the coastal spot is not a resource. A country ought to continue up the coast until it finds a resource spot. Or since it sees my coastal border city poorly defended maybe they should put greater weight to maybe building a galley and doing a coastal invasion.

If the ships happened to be caravels, then that is their optimal use. They can't transport real units and can't pillage, so the only thing they can do is kill your naval vessels and block the use of your coastal tiles. If the ships weren't caravels and they knew you had coastal resources, then it was stupid.

well i guess 3) is the good answer :o where should russian have grabbed land south ? theyre surrounded ^^
plus they claim the second iron and thats a good point.
anyway i dont say i would have build a city there, i just mean this is not so stupid :o
One tile EAST, not south. The iron is irrelevant.

Wodan

How about a :wow: on topic post.

Here's a screenshot of my current game. It shows how the BetterAI is still not quite there, in regard to city placement. I've reported this before. I don't know if the BetterAI team intends to tweak this some more before releasing 1.0, but I hope so.

Anyway, take a look at where Stalin put StPete. A total of 6 tiles of overlap, and he gave up fresh water. All he gained was a shot at an extra spice. (The spice is disputed with Thebes.)

In addition, he makes impossible to work several tiles. (not resource tiles, normal tiles)

My guess is that the resources are still driving a huge modifier. The AI builds cities to get resources. Everything else is secondary. (I don't think that's the best way to have them do it.)

Wodan

Personally If I were Russia, I'd settle on the coal hill 1 tile SE of it's current location and grab all the current resources plus the cows, have zero overlap with the capital and still get the fresh water bonus and is still a coastal city.

I'd get a work boat to the clams immediately and work it for growth and whip a monument. I Would Settle on the Coal because Coal has not been revealed by research yet as I Assume your starting the game from the Ancient Age.

I assuming that tile is Coal, It's hard to tell sometimes when the resource button isn't on lol.

The AIs attack tactics are questionable. A stack should know if it has a decent chance to take a city before it actually tries -- and I've had an attack stack that was cleary insufficient to kill more than 1 or 2 units attack a city over a river rather than move around it.

Next, the AI doesn't seem to want to sally that much. I can often move a mediocre small stack near an enemy city, and the AI doesn't smash it -- even if it has a decent chance of being able to kill 2 units and only end up with at most 1 unit dead (and quite possibly none).

Same observations here. Last week my spy watched AI vs. AI wars. First there was Peter vs. Hyuana, and then Churchill vs. Hyuana. Peter and Churh had a tech lead compared to incas.

I think there was two problems. First it started well: Peter quickly captured 2 cities, but then Peter's stack stopped. The second captured city was large, but was totally surrounded by incan culture, so the city was useless. Peter's stack had over 20 units, mainly artillery, infantry and cossacks but also a few tanks (versus incan riflemen, cavalry and cannons). Definitely they should have taken the next (80% culture) city. The war finally ended, and Peter had one useless city inside incan cultural border. Not very smart, I think.

Second problem was wandering alone units, mainly artillery. Incan twice-flanked cavalry always destroyed those wandering units without real casualties, so Peter lost several artillery for nothing. Perhaps those units were pillaging, but still it was stupid.

Later Churchill too had alone unit problem. First Churchill too captured 2 cities. Then Churchill's main stack stopped, but several alone infantry tried to attack 80% city! I think Churchill lost about 10 units, and Hyuana lost none. After that engish stack easily took that city, but they suffered lot of unnecessary casualties.

I have also noticed that AI doesn't always counter-attack my small stack, even if they have decent number good units to do so.

Look at this Ireland city. It was founded in 300BC and now it's 2015AD.

Firstly, there's no worker. So England has no pigs. I know now that a major reason for this is all those 2 food, 3 commerce coastal tiles. It tries to be big enough to work all 9 of them. But without the culture slider and those happy buildings, the 9th citizen would be unhappy and the city would be starving at size 9. The governor is now sensible enough not to do that. Even without this, island cities are reluctant to build workers. For some reason, sometimes they build more when they've already got one.

So it needed buildings. This seems to be a problem for low production cities in general. I suppose that Hastings has the right buildings apart from the barracks and there total cost does represent a reasonable portion of the city's 2-production-for-2300 years output. But a whipped forge, library and university would have paid off quickly. With 55 base commerce, a bought library or university would pay off in 30 odd turns, assuming 1 gold = 1 beaker.

Low production cities tend to build only very cheap buildings because others take too long. Instead, they build units. Ironically, they rarely finish those either because they like to switch production every time a new tech is discovered. Spending 45 turns on a forge or library would obviously be better.

Personally If I were Russia, I'd settle on the coal hill 1 tile SE of it's current location and grab all the current resources plus the cows, have zero overlap with the capital and still get the fresh water bonus and is still a coastal city.

I'd get a work boat to the clams immediately and work it for growth and whip a monument. I Would Settle on the Coal because Coal has not been revealed by research yet as I Assume your starting the game from the Ancient Age.

I assuming that tile is Coal, It's hard to tell sometimes when the resource button isn't on lol.
Sorry, yes that's coal.

Well, perhaps. as a human I would either settle on the hill (1SE) or the tile 1E. The hill is better defense, better cultural push possibilities. However, given the damn Greek settlements, I plan to go to war soon to get Thebes. Given that I'm facing Alex and also that he's cornered me in, I'll be at war with him all game, do or die. So, I would probably intelligently plan on having all his cities, and the hill is dubious, at best. I'll be on the offensive, so the defensive possibilities are null.

As an AI, I would prefer to be further away from the greek borders, not closer to it. If I have a premeditated war flag set, then see above... I'm going to war, and will plan to own all his cities soon. (Otherwise, I'll be dead, and it won't matter.)

If I don't have a war code set, then the hill might be good. Might. I could prioritize temples and theatre, to push borders. And, I could build walls on the hill, which will be all but impregnible until cats show up. That's about the best case I can build for the 1SE spot.

In any event, the spot he picked was suboptimal from any angle I can figure.

I've been watching this closely and my whole conclusion after looking at hundreds of AI city placements in multiuple games is that the current BetterAI has a predilection for 3-away cities rather than 4-away. I think that should be reversed.

Wodan

Sorry, yes that's coal.

Wodan

hm i always wondered, do AI know where the ressources are before they reveal them ?
that could explain things :o

hm i always wondered, do AI know where the ressources are before they reveal them ?
that could explain things :o

In the original game they knew about the tile bonus of the resource when deciding to construct a city (they didn't actually know about the resource itself). This was fixed in an early patch.

Ya -- a single worker (ideally ferried to the city) would be able to generate:

+3 food
+2 production (lumber mill)
+6 production -2 trade (water wheel with railroad -- those are 3 each IIRC)
+3 production -1 food -3 trade (railroad workshop) or +5 trade +1 hammer (town)

So an overall change of:
-5 trade +11 production +2 food

which changes the city from:
+3 food 20 commerce 2 productin
to
+5 food 15 commerce 13 production
or
+6 food 20 commerce 11 production

a ridiculously massive improvement in city quality.

...

This makes me think that there needs to be a "city needs workers" and "empire needs workers" subengine whose job is to figure out where workers would do the most good, then figure out a way to get them there (either by getting a connected city to build them, or using a transport to carry them there, or airlifts).