Here is changes I'm thinking of making to the Aggressive AI setting (on vs off) - Agg refers exclusively to the "Aggressive AI's" game setting and not the presence or otherwise of the aggressive trait.

Things which will be changed from current build:
Agg AI's no longer have a diplo penalty towards humans.
Agg AI's no longer more like to dagger - they'll just dagger harder.
Agg AI's will be less likely to pursue Culture.
Normal AI's will train fewer units, favoring infrastructure more.
Agg AI's will build fewer wonders.

Things which already happen (wont be changed):
Agg AI's will be more likely to crush (full-out war)
Agg AI's will be more likely to declare war just for the hell of it.

Maybes:
Agg AI's will dogpile more and generally be opportunistic swine, while norm AI's will have some sympathy for the dogpile victim (maybe try to equalize things).


I acknowledge that different people want to play the game in different ways and I think that tweaking the aggressive AI setting is the best means for achieving this. Feedback, suggestions and general discussion about AI aggression is welcome here.

I think it looks pretty good from what you have listed.

If I'm reading it right, then the people who want to play a more 'wargame' style of play can simply select Aggressive AI and the players who want to play closer to the 'standard' Civilization can play with out it. If that be the case, then I think it could make most folks happy.

Note that I think that even the 'normal' AIs should still be quite capable of initiating and conducting wars, but they shouldnt be building up extended militaries to the exclusion of other things. And if they do go to war, it should be with the purpose of bettering their lot in life rather than berserkly lashing out heedless of the long-term consequences.

Hopefully this can become a good solution to what I view as the biggest problem currently confronting the 'Better AI'.

Agg AI's no longer have a diplo penalty towards humans.

That´s a great change. I hate being special :)

Normal AI's will train fewer units, favoring infrastructure more.

IMO normal's AI should build less units, should be more ineffective in offensive wars, but definitely should be able to defend and to repel an invasion by an aggressive AI or in the oppsite case we would see Builders a lot weakened.


Maybes:
Agg AI's will dogpile more and generally be opportunistic swine, while norm AI's will have some sympathy for the dogpile victim (maybe try to equalize things).

IMO also some of the other Normal's AI should begin Dogpile Wars, in this way they would be more competitive.Why ever all the easy conquests should be left to Genghis Khan and Montezuma? Only some of the most peaceful leaders like Gandhi,Asoka,Hatshepsut,Ramesse,Mansa Musa shouldn't begin Dogpile wars.These leaders could help who is invaded only if they are in good relation with civ attacked and definitely haven't a weak army compared to the aggressor

Marioflag,
You misunderstand the topic.
It's about the 'aggressive AI' custom game option not about warlike and builder type AI's

I suggest that even on normal setting cultural AI's should defend their culture capitals rigorously.

Especially they should be considered under threat no matter the diplomatic relations when nearing legendary status because humans will almost always try to burn them.

Maybes:
Agg AI's will dogpile more and generally be opportunistic swine, while norm AI's will have some sympathy for the dogpile victim (maybe try to equalize things).

That makes perfect sense.

I think you shouldent change the agressive(yes with the TRAIT agressive) AIs in normal games.


Now what? 90% of the people wated the AI tyo actually try a conquest/domination victory and now people are complaining? Im a heck of a pacifict guy, I really rarely attack AI or get more than haslf of the power graph of the leader in military, but heck, I want to see the Ai going for other victories and I would LOVE to be in the game that uncle Joe talked about in the other thread.
Dont forget that I was the one who insisted in putting AI to go for cultural victory, so no, Im COMPLETELY not a militar guy, I just want to see the AI going for more victories! And no Uncle Joe, that AI was not trying to stop you from winnig! It was actually trying to WIN! So what is the problem?


Note: I still think that there is too much defensive units.

Other Note: Yes I know he was talking about the setting Agreesive AI, and not the Trait, but IMHO the agressive AIs in normal game shouldent be much different. If what youj are saying ,Blake, will stop the Ai in normal game to try to win a domination/conquest victory, then its just not nice. And I dont like the agressive AI setting on..

And no Uncle Joe, that AI was not trying to stop you from winnig! It was actually trying to WIN! So what is the problem?

The problem is that its not a very effective strategy FOR winning. At best, he'll take out a few competitors and then be so far behind that any other non-engaged player will dispatch them (or at least be able to easily hold them at bay).

Yep, it was neat to see the AI on a rampage like that. But overall, its detrimental the gameplay if the AI is being so berserk that its killing its own chances of winning to do it.

Look at it like this. Have you ever played a group strategy board game where there was a player who didnt care if he won or lost as long as he got to roll his dice and attack someone? Its very annoying because there isnt anything you can do if he focuses his sights on you except reply in kind. Meanwhile, the other players are actually PLAYING the game while you are embroiled in the conflict with the player who is just attacking to attack.

To me, thats what this type of attack felt like. The Greeks would be HIGHLY unlikely to win the game because they were commiting 100% to the attack and were not doing anything besides trying to kill whomever was closest. But in a game where there are players who arent immediately accessible, he'll run out of steam and stagnate and continue to mass obsolete units in a vain effort to regain some sort of military supremacy. But by that point, its not likely to happen (and its exactly what I saw in my first game...a few AIs came on strong trying to conquer and then petered out and were worthless for the rest of the game).

People complain that the AIs were playing 'dumb' before and being conquered too easily etc. But I dont see this strategy as being any smarter. The end result is that they are still going to lose. The only difference is the 'conquerer' AI might take a few others down with him (which, unless one of them is the human player, is actually making the game easier for the other players).

And to me, it stems from the same thing as the defender spam. The AI doesnt properly moderate its troop strength (always selecting quantity over quality). If the 2.08 was too light, the 1/25 build is still far too high for most normal circumstances. Rein in the rampant excess of troop building (offensive and defensive) and I think the AI would be pretty close to 'Better'.

More effective use of higher tech troops would be FAR superior to simply massing up obsolete troops and trying to bull through. That is not a recipe for success. And thats why I think the AI does much better in the early game (Classical etc)...there ARE no real obsolete troops for it mass. But as the game goes on, its putting too much effort into those same troops and hamstringing its efforts to get more effective troops instead. And the AIs who arent trying to attack are still needing to divert the lion's share of their efforts to defending against those hordes and the cycle continues.

Personally I don´t see a problem with "attack early, get lot of land and backwards in tech", only if after that initial rush the civ focuses on building up and strentghtening his empire.

I made that strategy many times with a praetorian rush and it worked very well in the long run.

When did you stop the game? In which ERA? Maybe the Ai started to attack from the beggining because, as you said, there is no obsolete troops?

And how you know he didnt have any real chance of winning? Can I please get asave? The last save if possible, I want to put a small city in somewhere by world builder and see how the game goes without the human player, Im curious.

EDITed: Ah nevermind, I saw you did attach saves in the other thread. I will give a look in some hours.

The problem ultimately is:

If each civ adequately defends itself, which they are doing now,
then 1 civ vs 1 civ attacks will pretty much be doomed to fail. Especially if the defender has some siege units and counter attack units to weaken the attacking force.

Or to put it another way:

defending Civ has 4 cities with 25 units each.
10 each are attack units/siege units.

Attacking Civ marches toward a city.
40 units comes to counter-attack the attacking stack (fully utilizing its road mobility bonus)

Now THATS good "D" :)

To have a decent shot of success against such tactics it would likely take 2 or more civs working together to PROFITABLY take down another civ.

Short Term Solution: go along with what Blake is recommending (once the AI civs make good use of the military units that they have), along with a heavy amount of discussion about how fun/unfun the game is becoming and also how effective/ineffective the AI Civs are becoming.

Note that if this knocks everyone down a difficulty level (or even 2), then that alone will reduce the AI bonuses, and thus the size of the armies the AIs can build.

Long Term Solution: once the AI military tactics are decent, and the war-decision AI algorithms gotten to a stable condition, then the diplomacy part of the AI needs to be overhauled, along with additional tactics so that 2 AI civs (or a human civ and an AI civ) could work together somewhat effectively as a team. For example: AI civ 1 gives AI civ 2 a couple of good techs. In return, AI civ 2 uses 10 siege units to hit a city so that civ 1 can then capture that city. That would require a lot of work. But ultimately 1 on 1 wars are going to ultimately not be effective as a means of increasing power.

To to issue of number of defenders:

I think a close to optimal maximum number of defenders in a moderately theatened city (so one which could be attacked without the chance of relieve troops arriving in time) is around 7-8 units.

The breakdown is similar to this in the early game:
-2 city garrison defensive unit
-2 drill defensive unit
-1 antimelee attack unit
-1 fast (mounted) attack unit
-1 antimounted unit
-1 siege unit

Post gunpowder it changes some like this:
-2 city garrison defensive unit
-2 drill defensive unit
-1 antigunpowder attack unit
-1 antimounted unit
-1 siege unit

Post modern it changes like this:
-2 city garrison defensive unit
-2 drill defensive unit
-1 antigunpowder attack unit
-1 antiarmor unit
-1 airdefense unit
-1 siege unit

I mean mature cities of course not 1-3 pop outposts.
Cities that could be relieved from neigboring cities could host less defenders.
Cities considered out of threat could host just a minimum of defenders (like 2 defensive and 1 offensive).
Cities under heavy threat maybe should host more defenders just like top importance cities (capitals, holy cities).
Culture capitals or production capitals building the spaceship should be considered under heavy threat always.

Happy discussion guys and keep up the good work Balke/Iustus.

I understand you Uncle Joe and you're right about too many units are a draw back but i'm sure this will be corrected and i'd never play 2.08 again with AI's defending 10+ pop cities with 3-4 defenders and never actually mounting a dangerous attack on anyone.

Ah by the way, Blake, did you put the number of defenders according to the personality of the AI yet?

You are going to do that right?

Something nice would be for example, Isabella put a big number of defenders in it holy cities. Cultrual victory leaders put a heavier number of defenders in its cultural cities and etc..

Other Note: Yes I know he was talking about the setting Agreesive AI, and not the Trait, but IMHO the agressive AIs in normal game shouldent be much different. If what youj are saying ,Blake, will stop the Ai in normal game to try to win a domination/conquest victory, then its just not nice. And I dont like the agressive AI setting on..

AI's will have an easier time winning domination on Normal because OTHER AI's will also be less militaristic.... (less defenders, smaller counter-offenses) it's just that default AI's can't stand up to a MILITARISTIC human - well my idea is for the Agg AI's to be able to put up a decent residence to a militaristic human - and also able to badly punish builders who neglect military.

I would rather have a PACIFIST AI settings for the wusses (heheh suck it up you wusses :P) but that is too big a change, and I can't really see a problem with making Aggressive AI the setting for "I'm brutal warmonger and these AI's put up precious little resistance" setting... a major complaint about Aggressive AI is that it makes a "AI vs Human" mentality - well that's on the way out - so if you're a thug and want to play with other thugs, turn on Agg AI. IF you want to play wolf amongst the lambs, well play on Normal... you'll have the choice.


Ah by the way, Blake, did you put the number of defenders according to the personality of the AI yet?

You are going to do that right?

Something nice would be for example, Isabella put a big number of defenders in it holy cities. Cultrual victory leaders put a heavier number of defenders in its cultural cities and etc..
Probably ... I'm not really sure what kind of logic to use for defender count based on personality - the amount of defense needed is more about circumstances and strategy (ie CV definitely indicates a need for more defenders). Protective AI's will actually tend to amass considerably more defense than other AI's but that's a side effect (in short if a unit has a City Defense promotion it wont be as readily recruited to head to war - it'll instead be kept home more often, so when protective goes to war, the war will be more subdued. Protective civs also tend to build more archers, ergo protective AI's do play slightly more protectively than others).

Couldent get Uncle Joe save working because it needs a mod..

http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/6906/civ4screenshot0031se7.th.jpg (http://img206.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0031se7.jpg)

:hmm:

http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/4935/civ4screenshot0032dj8.th.jpg (http://img261.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0032dj8.jpg)


Nice wonders...Now, what about protect it?



-----


And people complaining about unit spam..

EDITED: LOL the other city has only 1 warrior on it...Maybe I even attack Ramses lolz

Ps: Noble, perm ally on, spaceship off.

To to issue of number of defenders:

I think a close to optimal maximum number of defenders in a moderately theatened city (so one which could be attacked without the chance of relieve troops arriving in time) is around 7-8 units.

The breakdown is similar to this in the early game:
-2 city garrison defensive unit
-2 drill defensive unit
-1 antimelee attack unit
-1 fast (mounted) attack unit
-1 antimounted unit
-1 siege unit

Post gunpowder it changes some like this:
-2 city garrison defensive unit
-2 drill defensive unit
-1 antigunpowder attack unit
-1 antimounted unit
-1 siege unit

Post modern it changes like this:
-2 city garrison defensive unit
-2 drill defensive unit
-1 antigunpowder attack unit
-1 antiarmor unit
-1 airdefense unit
-1 siege unit

I mean mature cities of course not 1-3 pop outposts.
Cities that could be relieved from neigboring cities could host less defenders.
Cities considered out of threat could host just a minimum of defenders (like 2 defensive and 1 offensive).
Cities under heavy threat maybe should host more defenders just like top importance cities (capitals, holy cities).
Culture capitals or production capitals building the spaceship should be considered under heavy threat always.

I like this way of defending. :)

I would rather have a PACIFIST AI settings for the wusses (heheh suck it up you wusses :P) but that is too big a change, and I can't really see a problem with making Aggressive AI the setting for "I'm brutal warmonger and these AI's put up precious little resistance" setting... a major complaint about Aggressive AI is that it makes a "AI vs Human" mentality - well that's on the way out - so if you're a thug and want to play with other thugs, turn on Agg AI. IF you want to play wolf amongst the lambs, well play on Normal... you'll have the choice.

A wuss setting...

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Agg AI's no longer have a diplo penalty towards humans.

This is one of the things that I didn't like about the aggressive AI setting so I really like such a change.

As a certified Wuss, here my thoughts on having a Wuss setting, and other thoughts about playing Civ.

As a Wuss, if I defend myself inadequately and an opposing Civ waltzes in and just takes over my cities - well bravo to the enemy civ.

But here are some of the issues that make the game less fun for me as a certified Wuss:

1) I have Japan the warmonger civ, and Augustus Ceasar as my neighbors. I am developing fine, and Japan and Rome are at war. So far so good. So they declare peace, and so far so good.

Then Japan declares war on me. I talk to Ceasar and he declares war on Japan. I am worried that with his Prats he is too strong and he, not I, will get the cities close to my border. I am not strong enough solo to take a Japanese city, but with his Prats if we attacked a city together he would be more likely to capture it, not me.

I needn't have worried. Though he had more than enough units to wipe out all of Japan, he just sat there and basically built up. So I have an infinite stalemate war with Japan, where the behaviour of civ A (Japan) is to wear me down so civ B (Rome) can head off to victory.

I suppose it could be argued that Rome's strategy was perfect. Let 2 other civs duke it out while Rome grows. Especially since there is no way to go to Japan and say "Look this Rome guy just stabbed us both in the back good, lets take him down".

These war strats of the AI make being a Wuss very not fun. One civ (the aggressive country, Japan) works as the pit bull slave of his Master builder civ (Rome), who then waltzes on to victory as two countries waste all of our resources on a fruitless war.

In a similiar game, there were 3 civs at the top: Me, the Master builder civ (I forget who), and the slave aggressive civ (Julius Ceasar). We are the top three, and the slave agressive civ and I have borders. Our cities are quite a ways away from our common border, and I have more units than him in our respective opposing cities (plus mine are a bit higher quality).

He declares war, and although he has zero chance of ever capturing any of my cities, he basically plays his pit bull slave role to the hilt. I am strong enough to guarantee the safety of my cities, but he is able to pillage and keep units on many of the tiles inside my developer area. Plus all my production is spent replacing my losses (just as his is).

As a Wuss, I am learning that the only way to be able to live peacefully is not just to have enough defense units to adequately defend my cities, but also to completely destroy any aggressive slave civs, since all of these are willing to destroy their own civs in order to guarantee victory for their Master builder civs. And thats pretty much what I am starting to do in my games.

What I am hoping for with the Better AI is 2 things:

1) I would like the slave aggressive civs to call off wars when it is clear that they have nothing to gain by continuing their attack. While I appreciate the devotion the aggressive civs have for their Masters, it is not fun for me.

2) When I CAN get other Civs to declare war on the slave civs, it would be nice if they kind of sent units into the territory of the civ they declared war on.

3) When a civ declares war on me for whatever reason, the civ then uses that war as a diplomatic penalty against me. And so it becomes difficult to bury the hatchet in any meaningful kind of way. In the game where Japan was the slave aggressive civ, I would have been happy to team up with Japan to take down the backstabber Ceasar. Except that he would not talk with me because... well after all he declared war on me and I brought the battle onto his turf?

I don't mind the slave civs being aggressive. But aggressive and stupid is annoying.

I dont know, I fail to see what is being a 'wuss' about wanting to play the game as it was apparently INTENDED to be played rather than going balls out to conquer the AIs every game.

If thats fun for some folks, there is the 'always war' option too. I want a challenging but varied AI. I believe the stock AI provides good variety, but its execution of its strategies are somewhat weak.

Warmongering is fun at times, but I can do that in plenty of games. Civ4 is fun because I DONT have to conquer the world to win or fight numerous wars, even have the most powerful military in the world (as long as you play your diplomatic cards right). I can try those things if I choose, but the military is NOT supposed to be the focus of Civ4

By your own admission, you say that launching the pre-emptive strikes and 'rushing' the AI is a good strategy because the AIs have a hard time against that. Isnt that wussing out instead? Isnt that taking the easy way out?

Come on, the 'wuss' thing was clearly a joke. :)

I've mostly quit games midway lately when it's been clear that I need a stack of at least 40 units (10-15 of them cats) to get a single city. Yes, I could've built a supersod and gone on rampage. But stacks of that size make the UI crawl (takes a few seconds to simply select one unit out of the stack), so I'd wear myself down faster than the WW hits my civ..

Anyway, I'm not playing multiplayer games. I don't really want to play against opponents that exist to make my life miserable (as in, other humans or an AI using the same strats as a human would with the same efficiency). So I definitelly will be using the wuss-settings. Going down difficulty levels doesn't really work, as I already did that - I think the AI production and research bonuses on Prince are a bit too low for me already. For now, it's rather about needing umpteen units to go to any war at all.

For now, I'll stay and wait for the unit spam reduction build. Maybe if the AI can get around with fewer units, maybe use them better - maybe if I can go to war with a stack of a dozen units again like it used to be, only now needing to use my stack well and have it backed up by active defense ministacks..

Come on, the 'wuss' thing was clearly a joke. :)

Yeah, I know, but its just indicative of the mentality that if you dont want to be playing with hordes of units against hordes of units that you are a wuss. At least in my case, I just find it tedious, not intimidating or 'hard'.

Elandal sums it up perfectly in his post:

For now, it's rather about needing umpteen units to go to any war at all.

I can't really see a problem with making Aggressive AI the setting for "I'm brutal warmonger and these AI's put up precious little resistance" setting... a major complaint about Aggressive AI is that it makes a "AI vs Human" mentality - well that's on the way out - so if you're a thug and want to play with other thugs, turn on Agg AI. IF you want to play wolf amongst the lambs, well play on Normal... you'll have the choice.




This seems like a fair way of splitting the baby.

I dont know, I fail to see what is being a 'wuss' about wanting to play the game as it was apparently INTENDED to be played rather than going balls out to conquer the AIs every game.


For now, I'll stay and wait for the unit spam reduction build. Maybe if the AI can get around with fewer units, maybe use them better - maybe if I can go to war with a stack of a dozen units again like it used to be, only now needing to use my stack well and have it backed up by active defense ministacks..

While I am making the reduced spam I'm sure you recognize that an AI with 5 axemen, however well it uses them, cannot beat - or even resist against - a human who brings 15 axemen to the party and I've yet to really see an AI "out mass" a good human, once a human gets their economy rolling. When it comes to the massing game, "the humans started it".

Regardless of how the game was intended to be played - the fact is that massing a military and conquering the AI's is an EXTREMELY straightforward route to victory

The Wuss jab is justified because it IS forcing the AI to build an inadequate military as an imposed variant.

The Wuss jab is not justified at all.
There is no need to hurl insults at your customer base.
Not a good business strategy.
Not even in "jest".

You seem like you have a plan of action already set in play.
Make it happen.

Make the AIs effectively use the units they make.
The agressive AIs will attack effectively (and bribe for help if they are having trouble).
The builder AIs will make a decent amount of units and defend agressively (and bribe for help when attacked).

With luck this increase in AI playing strength will knock everyone down 1 or even 2 difficulty levels (hard to mount an attack on neighbor 2 when neighbor 1 declares war and sends in a powerful SOD and actually uses it well).

This will partially solve the massive number of units problem because 2 levels down the AIs have lower production bonuses.

I recommend only making one version of the game.
Just the standard version.
Once you get this going and in a state that you like then you can add in a more macho game. With your programming expertise this would likely only be beatable on Warlord difficulty and maybe not even on THAT level.

You have the ability to make aggressive AIs attack well, and builder AIs defend well. Do that first. Tweaking can come afterwards.

And never ever insult your customers.
Not even in jest.

I don't see any problem with the "wuss" jab. If someone feels insulted, their problem.

In any case, the unit massing ends up with more unit massing that forces more unit massing ad infinitum. I don't find that fun in any way or shape - it's just more units. Going to war with 40 units instead of 20 makes the game a lot slower without adding any new tactical aspect to it. And if the human can mass 40 units, then certainly the AI should mass even more - double the defenses? Forcing the human to again double his attack stack.. No, there's nothing in that route, nothing but more units.

OK, there's one change in game the massing causes: at some point, it's impossible to attack due to economic effect of too many units. At which point there should be no more war (it's cold war, everyone has too good defenses for anyone to attack) and thus the one with most land (and best economy) wins when everyone else gets cobbled by the expenses.

So, the humans started massing units first. That's because the humans were the first to go to aggressive war, and the only way to do it is to have attack stack stronger than expected defense stack. But if the response is to mass stronger defense stack, then the result is what we have: more units on all sides. If taken to the extreme, the only possible wars are dogpile wars - no single civ can afford an offense alone anymore.

What this does lead to is that I think the AI should indeed stop massing at some point. Yes, the human can continue where the AI is simply forced to stop. And thus the human will win. Win what? A war. Not the game. If the stack needed is huge, then the economic disadvantage to the human player is huge as well, and the whole balance comes down to whether that short term economic disadvantage can still gain enough land to be turned into later economic advantage big enough to still win.

As I believe that in SP games the AI is an obstacle, not an opponent, I feel that is acceptable. The AI will lose the war because it's not meant to win. If balanced properly, the human player can then use the land gained (which must be a lot) to make a comeback and still race to the win. If that is not possible, then the game has failed.

And never ever insult your customers.

He isn´t selling us anything, so we are not his customers. ;)

Besides, I prefer to be a wuss than an insecure boy that needs to build a BIG stack to compensate the lack of other atributtes. :lol: j/k

Anyway, I´m sure that Blake will find a way to make the AI use the units in an intelligent way (like a human do*), and also build an army balanced to its needs.

* "The victorious general first seeks to win and then go to war, while the defeated general first go to war and then seeks to win". I only attack when the odds favor me, and force the enemy to attack me in a place where I have the advantage. And I´m sure that Blake follows this quote when designing the AI.

If we assume that the defender always has an advantage (should have - defender has roads to move units around, won't get WW from fighting in own cultural area, has city defenses..) then the attacker always needs to have more units than the defender - barring a big technological advantage. We can say that the attacker needs twice the units of the defender in a city capture attack. Sometimes the figure is smaller, sometimes larger (it's been said that to take a fort you need ten times the numbers - this would be insane in civ), but 2x isn't usually that far off the mark.

So, attacker is always at an economic disadvantage: more units = more expenses, and attacker is paying supply in addition to maintenance, where defender is only paying maintenance. Of course the attacker can pillage to gain some gold, and when playing with small numbers of units this may well have been enough - pillaging a farm doesn't pay for a 20 unit stack though.

As I noted in my post above, the short term economic disadvantage grows by the number of units needed. This depends on the overall economies, with later eras having higher commerce per population point. A unit costs exactly the same in maintenance and supply in both early and late eras, so it's expected that in later eras the number of units around is larger. Paying 10g supply for an attack stack is crippling in ancient era, but pocket change in modern era.

Assuming the attack is simple march to city, bombard, suicide sieges, send in the CR units, send in the mopup units, stay for a few turns to heal and wait for the reinforcements (replacements for lost units as well as garrison for the acquired city), then the only thing affecting the outcome is the number of units. And raising the number of units leads to, at some point, a short term economic disadvantage too large to allow for offensive of this type anymore.

A stalemate of this kind means that the starting position is everything. If you can rex and secure backlands for later settling, you're in for the win. If you can't, then you lose. If there's a runaway somewhere, you lose. If you fail in one war, you lose. If you're smaller than your neighbours, you lose.


So what alternatives are there really?

There's of course diplomacy to make sure all wars are dogpiles. A single civ defending against multiple civs should have no chance here - each of the attackers goes for one city, takes the short term hit, but the defender gets broken. The one who loses the war no longer has economy to keep it in the game - it's going to fall behind in tech and will then be suspectible to being attacked with superior units.

Then there's the concept of smarter war. But I don't know how that can be done. CIV isn't a wargame, so it has very limited and simple warring system. Mixed stacks go only so far in smarts - the basic warring is still the same, only now requiring more units.. But if there's a solution, it must be somewhere in the "smarter warring" area.

What this does lead to is that I think the AI should indeed stop massing at some point. Yes, the human can continue where the AI is simply forced to stop. And thus the human will win. Win what? A war. Not the game. If the stack needed is huge, then the economic disadvantage to the human player is huge as well, and the whole balance comes down to whether that short term economic disadvantage can still gain enough land to be turned into later economic advantage big enough to still win.

As I believe that in SP games the AI is an obstacle, not an opponent, I feel that is acceptable. The AI will lose the war because it's not meant to win. If balanced properly, the human player can then use the land gained (which must be a lot) to make a comeback and still race to the win. If that is not possible, then the game has failed.


I just cant believe on that, sorry. Did you read the thread in this sub-forum called "What is the Better AI'' ?


But I liked your last reply to this thread and somehow I agree.

Yes, I've read that Arlborn. I don't see it reading as "the goal of the project is to make SP into MP with AI opponents that equal human opponents". I do understand if some people want that, and if it's possible to separate these two aspects with the Aggressive AI switch, all the better. The goal is a holy grail of computer strategy games, definitelly worthy reaching for. But it's not a real single player game goal, it's an MP goal.

I'm just afraid of that the project ends up making the AI not smart enough to play against humans but rather massing so much that the game loses focus completely. Of course it can be argued that more units is a smart move, but I've already outlined how I see that road going and thus can't see that as enhancing gameplay.


Note that I haven't ever played civ multiplayer. I've played very few games in multiplayer environment at all - a couple of lan parties a decade ago, a bit of fps'ing at the office after closing the door, some mmorpging.. Most of my multiplayer strategy game experience comes from tabletop, not computer games, and even there it's limited to a maybe 10 years or so and nothing at all recently.
So I do indeed focus on the single player experience knowing that if I want multiplayer I want human opponents and I would play with my friends, not random ****s in the 'net. And from my past experience playing MP strategy games with my friends I know very well that the wars would not be decided by units (even if those are needed too) but rather by diplomacy.

I think the difference between SP and MP is that in MP all of the players know it is a game and behave accordingly. (Well, all the humans, anyway.)

In SP, the AIs should, and generally do, behave like civilizations. Only when they won't trade you Rocketry do they go out of character ("We want to win," or whatever the exact message is. I see that as an error in judgement on the part of the developers.)

Given that, although the AIs should take actions that lead to a win, they must be guided -- perhaps hampered -- by their natures. If that approach is not taken, the risk becomes devolving all AIs into a win-at-any-cost machines, just like when humans play MP. I think most SP players won't like that at all.

We are customers? I didn't know that Blake and Iustus were getting money for this. Man, this sounds like a good deal for them. I should also go into the modmaking business if it pays so well... :p






(the above is a joke, not to be taken seriously.)



Besides, I prefer to be a wuss than an insecure boy that needs to build a BIG stack to compensate the lack of other atributtes. j/k

Also funny. :lol: :lol:

OK, there's one change in game the massing causes: at some point, it's impossible to attack due to economic effect of too many units. At which point there should be no more war (it's cold war, everyone has too good defenses for anyone to attack) and thus the one with most land (and best economy) wins when everyone else gets cobbled by the expenses.

Elandal hit the nail right on the head and my 3 recent games all back that up. In my latest, I share a continent with Toku (playing as Ottomans). We have a Mexican standoff for while and we split the continent about 50/50. In the late Classical, he DoW's me. We fight a relatively inconclusive war (although 50+ units are killed on both sides). We have a period of piece and buildup and then he attacks again in late Medieval (although I know he'll probably do it so I have built up too). This time, I manage to take one of his cities by the end of the mess and again, we both lose copious amounts of units.

Somewhere in the middle of our war, contact is made with the other continent. One of the AIs (Hatty) is a vassal to the Vikings. Another AI is alone on their own continent. And the last AI is (Vicky) is best buddies with Ragnar due to religion. The result? All of the other AIs (except Hatty) have nearly double the points of Toku and I and are miles ahead on the tech tree. The reason: they didnt go into the ridiculously expensive 'death spiral' of going to extended warfare.

Elandal is indeed correct and it was something I had sensed, but never really put the finger on. When the numbers of units are as big as they are, the cost for going to war is IMMENSE. Even a 'successful' war will often leave you behind others who are at peace (but still building up their massed defenses). When stacks of 20+ are clashing, you could be lossing 1000s of hammers of production in a single turn!! And you MUST replace those units or else be weak and eventually overrun.

It goes back to what I first stated...the massed militaries cost so much that they mute the other effects in the game. And in the early game, you might gain some success relative to the cost of those troops by attacking a neighbor. But from Medieval on, the cost of going to war is just crippling. And thats why the more warlike AIs always tend to peter out and fizzle...they come out strong and may take out a rival or so, but then they hit that wall of expense vs payoff with the huge militaries and they crash.

If you happen to be one of those involved in the early war with a warlike AI, you'll struggle to remain alive...there is no doubt that the AIs can prosecute wars much better now, but the cost is astronomical. But its likely you'll never recover from the early wars (assuming you win). And on the flip side, if you manage to stay at peace (through diplomacy or simply building a bigger stick), then you'll likely cruise to victory because the AIs will either destroy themselves and then fizzle or else poorly balance econ vs military and also fall behind.

I also think that Elandal is again correct on the consequences of having the AI not build as many units. He is correct that yep, they may lose a war to an aggressive human player. But thats fine. As long as the cost of prosecuting that war is balanced to the gains, there is NO PROBLEM. I agree that in 2.08, the cost/benefit ratio of attacking many of the AIs is very lopsided in favor of attacking (Blake's 'pinata' effect). But 1/25 is the polar opposite. It doesnt need to be anywhere NEAR that high. As long as the AI makes a 'credible' defense, its fine. 5-6 units per city will indeed lose to human stacks of 15. But that doesnt mean that the AI should be building 15-20 to resist. That just encourages the human to build 20-25 and the cycle begins again, only with the cost of warfare overshadowing all else.

At some point, it just has to be accepted that the 'better' idea is to simply make the cost of an attack the deterrent. And I believe that 5-6 units plus some reserves would do that. It would no longer be the cakewalk that it can be in 2.08, but a real cost will still be assessed (15-20 units still isnt cheap when the rest of the world is teching/building infrastructure).

So, FWIW, my opinion is that the AIs should build perhaps 2x-2.5x their 2.08 levels. If at war or actively building to attack, that should increase obviously, but for 'peacetime', the AI should cap their unit production and continue to develop. If one or more is killed off, so be it...the rest will still be presenting a challenge by continuing to progress.

Somewhere in the middle of our war, contact is made with the other continent. One of the AIs (Hatty) is a vassal to the Vikings. Another AI is alone on their own continent. And the last AI is (Vicky) is best buddies with Ragnar due to religion. The result? All of the other AIs (except Hatty) have nearly double the points of Toku and I and are miles ahead on the tech tree. The reason: they didnt go into the ridiculously expensive 'death spiral' of going to extended warfare.

This happens without Better AI on the Continents map. Yes, maybe it's worse with more unit build up, but if there is a peaceful continent and a warring continent, the research will be imbalanced.

This happens without Better AI on the Continents map. Yes, maybe it's worse with more unit build up, but if there is a peaceful continent and a warring continent, the research will be imbalanced.

No doubt it happens even in 'stock'. But the point is that the disparity was HUGE (much larger than what I routinely experienced in 1.0 or 2.08). Which led me to exactly where Elandal already was...the insane cost of war when units are dispatched 20 at a time while the costs of 'peaceful' development remain unchanged.

Thats what I was trying to say before in the old thread. The balance in the game between 'guns or butter' has been completely thrown out of whack.

This happens without Better AI on the Continents map. Yes, maybe it's worse with more unit build up, but if there is a peaceful continent and a warring continent, the research will be imbalanced.

Yep. Now I dont see the reason why the building of units made you have war with Toku. He would declare on you anyway, just perhaps now its a little harder to take him off of you?

I'm really curious to keep playing that game I started with the last version where 2 AIs didnt give me any resistence, and I had only 5 melee units(4 axeman and one spearman) and 2 horse units(the UU of Mongol). And I only needed the 2 horse units againt Cathy..And Ramses I pretty much would only need them also..
Now I gotta wait untill I make contact with other continnets(6 AIs left), but untill now, no mass spam of unit by the AI, I checked with chiplote and with only 3 defensive units and like 10 offensive units(axeman-swordman-horse archer era still) I had twice more power than any other(that includes Monty)...

Yep. Now I dont see the reason why the building of units made you have war with Toku. He would declare on you anyway, just perhaps now its a little harder to take him off of you?

I think you missed the point. The building of units didnt CAUSE the war with Toku. But the cost of fighting those wars was astronomical compared to 2.08. Instead of 10-15+ unit dying (to the tune of maybe 400-600 hammer lost), 40-50 units were dying (about 1600-1800 hammers worth). Of course you have to rebuild the losses (or else your military rating sucks and you get attacked again). So, if you are spending 1600-1800 on simple replacements for war that netted you nothing you can see how that hurts compared to those without that expense.

The cost of development and techs stay static, but the cost of military sky-rockets. Imagine that instead of the AIs building more units and the players following suit every game that military units simply cost 4-5x what they do now. So, the AI would still be defending with 2-3 units per city and attacking stacks might be 4-5, maybe 6 unit. Thats basically what this emphasis on unit production is doing...its simply multiplying the cost of military units by a large margin (400% or so would be my guess).

I just dont see how anyone can look at the military expenses going up while the rest of the costs stay static and NOT think that something will be knocked out of whack in the game model.

Something else I want to note is that my design goal is something like a "friendly" Multiplayer FFA game - assuming all players are of equal skill, only one of them is going to win (barring moral victories) - if you are one of the players in that FFA game, you should only have a 1/N chance of winning (where N is the number of players). Much the same should be true in a game against the AI at a suitably hard level.

I have no intention of making an AI you can win against every single time, I want an AI that will beat you and that will try to win itself (I'm basically committed to removing all anti-human bias - so all AI's should be subject to the 1/N rule, without some of them deliberately choosing victory-denial strategies).

Where does the "Better" come into it? Well, I also want balanced gameplay - a multiplayer game is balanced superbly despite the "1/N" thing, but an Immortal 2.08 game is not balanced the same way - what's the difference? Well when the AI uses unbalanced strategies, the humans need to use the opposite strategies - if the AI's always neglect defenses and tech mega fast, the human needs to conquer them, every time. Even if the victory odds come out to 1/N, it'll still only be possible to win if you pursue the "One Right Strategy".

What I want, is 1/N odds where you only get those 1/N odds if you correctly adapt to the situation - where it's not about pursuing the "One Right Strategy" but making the right moves and hoping for some lucky breaks. So at the ideally hard difficulty, you should sometimes be able to win by turtling and teching - the AI should not be able to tech so fast that it can always win such a tech race.

You can obviously get better than 1/N odds by playing a lower difficulty level.

Most players seem to want approximately (N-1)/N odds - that something bizarre or extremely unlucky must happen for them to actually lose. I could quote someone saying that Deity should be winnable every single time. I disagree, those who disagree with me, can deal with it. The goal of this project is not and has never been making an AI you can beat every time.

To put it another way, you'll get shafted sometimes.

And I know that in the original game, the AI provides "Whack a mole" gameplay - quite literally in their war strategies. The AI provides some resistance to your victory and you need to whack them if they get frisky, but they aren't really playing the game. I wouldn't say that was the design intent so much as limited time to program the AI, plus limited understanding of strategies at the time the AI was programmed.

I dont know exactly what to read into your post, but I think what you are attempting to do then far exceeds simply making the AI 'better'. To do what you are looking to do would require removing all of the AI 'personality' as well as the diplomacy engine since those items clearly restrict the AIs and not the human players. You'll never achieve the 1/n chance of a win with the AI if they are constrained while the players are not.

All that aside, I think it should be fairly clear by now that simply increasing the number of units that the AIs build doesnt really contribute to that goal all that much. Its not altering the chances of a game win by any particular party. It is diminishing the returns of military action (by players or AIs). If that is intended, then so be it. But it IS a new dynamic created by the latest builds.

I also want balanced gameplay - a multiplayer game is balanced superbly despite the "1/N" thingAs someone who has never played multiplayer how (if at all) will this impact on AI personalities? I play random leaders and the traits of that leader only have a minimal impact on the way I play. Of course that's just me. My concern is that AI leaders will go against their personality in pursuit of this balanced gameplay ideal, which is something I'd rather not see happen.

I dont know exactly what to read into your post, but I think what you are attempting to do then far exceeds simply making the AI 'better'. To do what you are looking to do would require removing all of the AI 'personality' as well as the diplomacy engine since those items clearly restrict the AIs and not the human players. You'll never achieve the 1/n chance of a win with the AI if they are constrained while the players are not.

All that aside, I think it should be fairly clear by now that simply increasing the number of units that the AIs build doesnt really contribute to that goal all that much. Its not altering the chances of a game win by any particular party. It is diminishing the returns of military action (by players or AIs). If that is intended, then so be it. But it IS a new dynamic created by the latest builds.

I probably should've put more emphasis on "Friendly Multiplayer" - that's not the cuthroat type where you play to win and ignore all "fluff" game aspects, but like where you might decide to not attack someone because they share your religion (then be surprised offended when they backstab...).

You're missing the big picture - as long as the AI has too small armies, conquering them becomes "The one right strategy" - regardless of your situation, you should attack your under-defended neighbors. The problem is - this means at higher difficulties everything has to be balanced around "The one right strategy" - since the AI's deficiency at fighting is not in any way corrected, the AI instead gets boosted in the other direction - it techs even faster, and the One Right Strategy becomes even more reinforced.

In the ideal world for me, it would be possible to win by space race on Deity, if the AI's spend enough resources fighting and (somehow) you manage to stay out of the crosshairs. I have absolutely no problem at all with tech stagnation caused by large-scale conflicts, it gives builders the chance to leap ahead.
And look at the conflict-induced dark ages in human history and the sheer amount of resources spent on war, Civilizations were torn down by "Barbarians" and kettle calling pot black aside - the "Barbarians" certainly proceeded to progress much less than the "Civilizations".

I'm not going for a historical simulation here, but:
WAR IS HELL.

That is one of my goals, war should be hell for those waging it and for those it is being waged on. I'll ease up on that for the normal AI setting, but under Aggressive AI, WAR IS HELL.

It can easily be argued that in the stock game (whether patched or not), the military budget needed to wage war was too low - warring was very cost-effective. Current BetterAI OTOH seems to have gone too far in the other direction: it's easy to spiral down the unit spam path, leading to economic stagnation.

The ways to avoid this depend on the neighbourhood. You can go for two different gambles:
1) Go light on military and work diplomacy to make sure you still can keep out of wars. You need enough land to keep economic advantage, and might try to capitalize on that advantage by beelining an advanced military tech that allows you a window during which you can go on offensive with fewer units, units that are technologically superior to those of your neighbours.
2) Go all-out war. Mass units, throw the kitchen sink at your neighbour. You still need to make sure nobody is going to attack you while you're going for someone - possibly by making sure everyone is busy warring.

Neither of the above is a surefire strategy. They depend on the types of neighbours you have (warmongers or peaceful builders) and can still fail. If you do succeed, you should be on the way towards victory, but should you fail you can go reroll. Due to the high risk/high reward nature of the strategies and the early phase of the game they need to be executed, I find them distasteful. The game is decided too early, the rest either being slow stagnation to death or a cruise for victory. There's no balance, no competitive endgame.

Note that going up or down difficulty levels is not really a viable solution: either the gamble is not necessary (going down enough you can compete without either gamble) and the gamble is only a way to win early on (you can gamble without fear of losing, as loss only means you need to play competitive game to the end); or the gamble is necessary, victory not being possible without gambling (again not good - you have to try a desperate strategy with high risk of failure to have a chance at competitive endgame).

If for any reason you get caught in the unit spam spiral of death, you no longer have a choice: you have to get something out of the military budget, so you have to go throw the kitchen sink at a neighbour. Should you lose that gamble, you can reroll. Victorious war may lead to competitive endgame or cruise to victory, depending on what the other civs were doing. Again, this is not balanced.

Also remember that if there's more than one continent and the different continents end up on different paths (one going the military route, the other going peaceful route), severe imbalance will already follow due to civs on one continent suffering from some degree of economic stagnation over what the other continent is having. You can see a glimmer of this already in stock game when one continent has peaceful builders / techers that happily trade and speed up the tech tree with the other continent consisting of more aggressive leaders that are grumpy tech traders and rather build units and go to war. In stock game, it's nothing a human player can't overcome: conquer the aggressors, take hold of at least a major part of the continent, develop the land and race the techtree powered by more land than anyone else has. But if the military budgets get higher, the difference between the strategies gets sharper as well.

Unfortunatelly whatever the point of balance, the human player will find a way to exploit the AI. If the AI doesn't build enough units, the human player will simply roll over it. If the AI builds enough units to make this impossible, then the military expenses (both hammers and maintenace costs) will drag the economy down causing stagnation - most likely exploitable by working lighter allowing the AI civs to stagnate. Neither option allows for balanced game. Therefore I still conclude that the balance will be found in the economic advantages and disavantages the human player will have from building a military that will invariably be enough to conquer the AI civ.

As I said earlier, I don't have a solution that would make warring hard but possible - I don't know how to make the AI smart in warring. I'm not even sure if fighting smart is possible using the civ combat engine - it is quite limited afterall. I do believe that between humans, diplomacy would play a huge role with the wars that are started by deals being decided more by the dealings before than on the field using units - the units are just an endgame for the diplomacy. And there's no way for AI to match this, to participate in this level of diplomacy. Due to the diplomatic castration, units end up playing the role of diplomats as well as the role of armies. Which leads us back to problem #1: how to use them in smart way?


I can't say I'd envy Blake's or Iustus' position here. There are good reasons why the AI needs to mass units (so the human player won't take them out easily), but OTOH that leads to other problems (unit spam spiral of death). If a solution that satisfies all parties exists and is found, great. If not, then the division of AI behaviour using the Aggressive AI setting is a good way to go.

You're missing the big picture - as long as the AI has too small armies, conquering them becomes "The one right strategy" - regardless of your situation, you should attack your under-defended neighbors.

Absolutely agree. Even though people are CHOOSING not to attack the AI, I agree that its almost always a viable strategy in stock.

However the opposite extreme does not 'fix' the problem....it changes it. NOW the optimal strategy seems to be to build up your military and 'stay out of the crosshairs' as you call it. War is very likely not going to be profitable so avoiding it becomes paramount. But even trying to duck fighting doesnt allow you to deviate from the need to pour resources into the military left and right.

Somewhere between the two extremes is likely the 'right' answer IMO. If 2-4 units is too few and hordes of 15+ are too many, then the likely 'sweet spot' is closer to 6-8 IMO. Even that is probably too many in some cases once siege weapons are prevalent.

And so I spent enough time writing a single post that several were posted by others :)

Now I understand the design goals a lot better. It's a fine target, and I certainly hope it's reached some day. However, it's not what I'm looking for in the game, and thus I'm happy enough to have the not-so-aggressive AI setting that allows for different game.

The thing I'm looking for is a game that has its lows and highs, but where I have a fairly high chance of being competitive all the way to the end. The best game might not be one where I launch the spaceship - it could as well be one where Monty launches his ship three turns before I can. The major issue there is that I can play the game to the end knowing that I still have a chance.
If the game is for any reason decided too early, it becomes dull for me. If I have to decide on a gamble and lose or win during the middle ages, then what's the point in having eras after that? And if it's all about that single gamble, timing your tech and military for a single offensive, then that's the effective victory condition.

So if you want to think in 1/N terms, I would like to have something like (N-1)/N chance to get to modern era in competitive shape, then whatever chance to actually win (that's less important to me). That is: barring unusual conditions, I'm not out of the game before the ship parts are being built.

I just played a game of Civ1 and it really took me back. (Don't worry...I'm not going far off topic here.) What I especially noticed was how different military tactics were to what Civ has now evolved to (Civ4). In Civ1, when a unit was killed, everything in the stack was killed too except in cities, making SODs non-existent (for the most part). Zones of control also made for very interesting unit advances. Now we have Civ4, and the battle mechanics have made it preferable, or necessary as I'd argue, to put everything in stacks. I think it was the developers' intentions to put in collateral damage units to prevent the SODs (this was in the manual IIRC) but they fell short.

Anyway, this is not the place for me to argue how Civ4 rules could be improved. For the Civ4 we're stuck with I think making the AI 'better' will require bigger stacks. I'm not talking about ridiculous 20+ stacks in meaningless cities, but defending an important city with 10 or so units I think is justified.
I'd like to see the AIs use intel better like scouting and the recently-improved air-explorers to determine where other players (human or AI) have their main forces located, and then use this info to attack where they are weak (or defend where they are strong). I'm sure this is already done to some extent since I've seen AIs head for the most poorly defended cities of mine, even in stock Civ4. Amphibious landings would be awesome to see as I bet many human players are complacent about their coastal defenses (I know I am when playing against AIs).

I guess I'm just critical of the combat engine in Civ4, agreeing with Elandel's comments #44, and understanding that the BetterAI isn't necessarily going to please everyone.

All said, I think Blake and Iustus are doing well with the mod, and I agree with the project objective so I look forward to every new build release.

P.S. To those who were offended by Blake's 'wuss' comment. Seriously, Civ4 is A GAME and I'm sure the way one plays it does not reflect one's qualities as a person. I don't want to be rude but if you identify your gameplay that much with your personality you need to find bigger things to worry about. Besides.. in reality I'm sure it's equally likely that warmongers and builders are wusses.:lol:

That is one of my goals, war should be hell for those waging it and for those it is being waged on. I'll ease up on that for the normal AI setting, but under Aggressive AI, WAR IS HELL.Do you have any plans as to how to achieve this? Crippling economy; Tech stagnation; war weariness?

Whilst more of a peacenik (read wuss ;)) than warmonger I fully admit that a Civ 4 game without war is actually a little boring. It is part if civilisation (both real and game).

I'm interested at this point to see whether there are alternatives to helping achieve your goal whilst returning unit numbers to a more reasonable number (IMO).

It sounds like an interesting design goal, Blake. While I'm not that familiar with multiplayer, I do understand the goal of an AI that is competitive on every aspect of gameplay, including the military aspect. Good luck as it sounds like a formidable task. :goodjob:

Lovely goal Blake, and Im in to it.


Now, I dont play with agressive AI on(might try somewhere in next version), and in my current game I dont see any unit spam yet. So I think its starting to work the thing between normal game and agressive AI game. Well we are heading now to the gunpowder era, lets see what happen..But I can play olny tomorrow or other later day argh!~

Cant wait! :D

My personal opinion is that Blake is going the right way.

I agree with the Blake the point of this mod, is to make sure the human player isnt special that its a 1/N chance of winning.

On my latest game using 25/01/07 aggressive AI, has been one of the most exciting yet.

Because it has not been all about me. 3 seemingly aggressive CIVs on my continent has taken out the the men in the middle partitioning them as they go.

I've managed to maintain a tech lead but they've now all pilled in on me and I've made some mistakes and lost a small city, but to me its working they have built up a bigger miltary force than me and are not afraid to use it.

I've had one example of Ghengis making peace with Rome and then declaring war the very next turn on Mansa, which was excellent because Ghengis had a huge army and he needed to use it or he'd go stale.

Good work Blake !

I do agree they've are some changes to balance which need to be made but some of these outside the scope of the project.

A particular bugbear of mine is inflation, the problem with it is it's completely based on time. Therefore if you manage to research quickly you can research even quicker, and if you research slowly you research even slower. I think this needs to be changed.

Uncle_Joe on this latest build using Aggresive AI, I have to say I'm not seeing huge stacks of unit because the AI are so keen to use their military when ever they have the chance.

The problem is that builder AIs are getting small chance when attacked...Or no chance at all..

Sure if they got good diplomatic relationship with their neighboor AND their neighboors are busy eslewhere, they got a big chance of even winnig the game, but that is not what normally happens..

And then we come to Defensive unit spam thing.

That is a bit complicated :lol:

The problem is that builder AIs are getting small chance when attacked...Or no chance at all..

Sure if they got good diplomatic relationship with their neighboor AND their neighboors are busy eslewhere, they got a big chance of even winnig the game, but that is not what normally happens..

And then we come to Defensive unit spam thing.

That is a bit complicated :lol:


This is what I am seeing in all my games with the 25/1 build.

If you are not building a huge army you will be attacked, no matter your diplomatic stance towards the AI.
This is resulting in it becoming a war game only.

Earlier builds were most impressive, with the AI doing well at culture, wonders and developing its citys well, but now it is too much of a warmonger game. The standard game is what I would expect from an aggressive AI setting.

In my opinion this is what it should be.

There is no point the warmonger CIV building a huge army and not using it. Remember it takes less units to defend than attack. So the builders still have a chance.

I mean how are Ghengis, Monty etc meant to win if they dont take over countries ? The point of this mode is so all the AI's can win somehow, Blake has already stated this.

If the aggressive AI's dont attack they stagnate. I mean some countries simply should disappear due to geography right from the start, especially if they are completely surrounded.

This is what I am seeing in all my games with the 25/1 build.

If you are not building a huge army you will be attacked, no matter your diplomatic stance towards the AI.
This is resulting in it becoming a war game only.

Earlier builds were most impressive, with the AI doing well at culture, wonders and developing its citys well, but now it is too much of a warmonger game. The standard game is what I would expect from an aggressive AI setting.

I dont think that the unit'spam' is a bad thing. Maybe tune down 2/3 in the non-agressive AI setting OK, but if its too much then any warmonger player can win easily..

The problem is that then when they get a good power and see that the neighboor is an easy prey, even if pleased, well..

I think Blake has to find somewhere in the code where he can restrict a bit more each AI to their personality..

@scu98rkr: For as much as you may like it, CIV is not a game olny about war..They have to gollow their own personality unless the choice would be REAL dumb and would destroy them completely..
But, for an example, Gandhi attacking a friendly CIV only because it would be relatively easy to conquer dont make sense in my mind...At least not with the Agessive AI setting off.

Im not particularly a warmonger. In fact I tend not to go to war, I tend to get into a lead just sit there.

One of the reasons I like this this build is because its makes me go to war. I cant just sit there out tech/building the enemy. I have to think about my defense as well.

Personally I feel this build gives the Warmongering AI's a chance, before they used to building up a huge army and not attack.

In my case I havent seen any non aggressive CIV's attacking mainly because the aggressive CIV's have attacked them before they can.

I dont think this makes the game JUST about war but you have to be aware of it !

Before the only way the AI could win was Cultural or Space race. Ie Ghengis, Monty etc could NOT win.

You could say this made the game too much about teching/culture.

If we want the warmongering AI's to stand a chance of winning (conquest/domination) and using their personalities. This sort of change is needed.

Have you ever seen an AI get close to winning conquest domination ?

I think one of the problems is war requires much more micro management and people get sick of this if they are constantly at war. Rather than the war it self being the problem.

Man, I didnt mean anything of it!

I love ot see that the warmongers AIs stand a chance!!

The problem is that the other AIs are going out of their personality because of the war! I think it should happen only with agressive AI setting on.

I used to only think 'bugger it I'm going to be attacked' when I had Monty / Alex on my borders or was a different religion etc.
Not when Gandhi researchs bronze working.

To me thats the point, if we want the AI to be better it has to do the unexpected.

Although Ghandi etc are meant to be more peaceful and lean towards building / culture. They need to be able to go to war if the opportunity is right.

For instance if your on an island with Ghandi, and think I wont build any defensive unit because its just Ghandi. Your exploiting him, because you know what will happen and he does nt.

Therefore if you do leave your self unprotected Ghandi should go to war because this is the best course of action. However Ghandi should be more inclined for peace if your forces are about equal than Monty for instance. All AI should be capable of all tactics if the situation is right.

To me thats the point, if we want the AI to be better it has to do the unexpected.

Although Ghandi etc are meant to be more peaceful and lean towards building / culture. They need to be able to go to war if the opportunity is right.

For instance if your on an island with Ghandi, and think I wont build any defensive unit because its just Ghandi. Your exploiting him, because you know what will happen and he does nt.

Therefore if you do leave your self unprotected Ghandi should go to war because this is the best course of action. However Ghandi should be more inclined for peace if your forces are about equal than Monty for instance. All AI should be capable of all tactics if the situation is right.

True, True.

But if I am playing with a 'peaceful' AI next to me and deliberately foster good relations I would hope that I could let my guard down a little.
e.g. I had Roosevelt with me on an island. I had quite a few archers and chariots, shared a religion and was donating a healthy resource. I was around plus 5 or 6 in relations. Then quite soon after he researched Bronze working he went for me.
eg. in another game Frederick came sailing over from his lonely island. On first contact he must of had a city catch my religion, as he immediately converted to my religion. He also immediately asked for a trade deal which I agreed to. I was only just below him in power at this first contact.
Next go he declares war! Only thing I can think of was a surplus of troops. I defeat 2 loads of units he lands and he takes peace. He immediately asks for that trade deal again, which I give him. Relations look rosey now. After the 10 turns of peace are up immediate war again!

True, True.

But if I am playing with a 'peaceful' AI next to me and deliberately foster good relations I would hope that I could let my guard down a little.
e.g. I had Roosevelt with me on an island. I had quite a few archers and chariots, shared a religion and was donating a healthy resource. I was around plus 5 or 6 in relations. Then quite soon after he researched Bronze working he went for me.
eg. in another game Frederick came sailing over from his lonely island. On first contact he must of had a city catch my religion, as he immediately converted to my religion. He also immediately asked for a trade deal which I agreed to. I was only just below him in power at this first contact.
Next go he declares war! Only thing I can think of was a surplus of troops. I defeat 2 loads of units he lands and he takes peace. He immediately asks for that trade deal again, which I give him. Relations look rosey now. After the 10 turns of peace are up immediate war again!


While this is acceptble for some AIs, its not acceptble IMHO for all the personalities. Like for example Isabella(same religion) or the Indians and some others.

If a really peacefull AI or trustfull is a friend of you, it shouldent attack you out of nothing, or the game will get boring as all the AIs will do always the same.

True, True.

But if I am playing with a 'peaceful' AI next to me and deliberately foster good relations I would hope that I could let my guard down a little.
e.g. I had Roosevelt with me on an island. I had quite a few archers and chariots, shared a religion and was donating a healthy resource. I was around plus 5 or 6 in relations. Then quite soon after he researched Bronze working he went for me.
eg. in another game Frederick came sailing over from his lonely island. On first contact he must of had a city catch my religion, as he immediately converted to my religion. He also immediately asked for a trade deal which I agreed to. I was only just below him in power at this first contact.
Next go he declares war! Only thing I can think of was a surplus of troops. I defeat 2 loads of units he lands and he takes peace. He immediately asks for that trade deal again, which I give him. Relations look rosey now. After the 10 turns of peace are up immediate war again!


Is Roosevelt actually a "peaceful" leader?

I recall seeing a spreadsheet floating around the forum someplace showing how the AI would behave in various circumstances. I recall being surprised at how aggressively coded the American leaders (esp. Washington) were in Warlords.

I have to say I have not yet played the latest build with the "aggresive AI" option off.

The example with Roosevelt seems harsh and I do with think +6 with no negatives Roosevelt should think twice about attacking you, especially if power is similar.

However in the second example Bismark tends to be a bit of a warmonger if he thought he could take some of your cities why not ?

I think the only thing is he didn't consider is how difficult sea invasions are.
(After playing some LAN mulitplayer I've realised its not just the AI which has problems with this, sea invasions are just plain hard.)

I guess this is the right thread for this. Note, that I'm not complaining. Just reporting. :)

Playing 07-01-25 build. Stalin has been almost continuously at war since he got horse archers (guessing a bit here). He beats somebody into submission, then declares on somebody else. When it was my turn, he already had two vassals.

Can't say I've seen this behavior before. It probably has to do with the changes that prevent an AI from sitting on a big, unused military.

Also, in this game, one of Stalin's victims was Mansa. Also my neighbor, I took the opportunity to join in. His capital was the seat of four religions (all but Buddhism and Hinduism). I captured two cities from him and then he was out. If it had been only one, I would have guessed he was trying for OCC CV! :lol:

EDIT: Forgot to mention: Not a single shrine!

After pondering on this today (rather then doing what I am paid for) I wonder if the fact that I am not using the AI handicap may have some bearing on the matter.

^^^ Now that you mention it, I'm sure it matters in these discussions.

To be on the record: I'm using only the Better AI, no XML changes.

To me thats the point, if we want the AI to be better it has to do the unexpected.

Although Ghandi etc are meant to be more peaceful and lean towards building / culture. They need to be able to go to war if the opportunity is right.

For instance if your on an island with Ghandi, and think I wont build any defensive unit because its just Ghandi. Your exploiting him, because you know what will happen and he does nt.

Therefore if you do leave your self unprotected Ghandi should go to war because this is the best course of action. However Ghandi should be more inclined for peace if your forces are about equal than Monty for instance. All AI should be capable of all tactics if the situation is right.I have the same reservations about AI going against it's personality, but that's a very good point.

Sounds like that's what Blake is aiming for in terms of balanced play and pursuing 'the right strategy'.

I think I am seeing the "guns make us powerful; butter only makes us fat" situation that Uncle Joe (and others) were describing earlier using the 1/25 mod in my current game. It probably helped that all civs started on this large wrap-around continent in the southern hemisphere, making it easier for everyone to get involved in wars with everyone else. Tech has definitely been delayed a bit. Per chipotle, Hannibal and Julius Caesar were both major practitioners of the "dagger" strategy. Ramses has been opting for "peaceful/builder" a lot, but this hasn't stopped him from taking large parts of Japan for himself. I had a horrible starting position, hemmed in by Korea, although I've started to make up for it by colonizing a lot of otherwise empty overseas island-continents.

This has been an entertaining game so far, and i don't think I'm going to win (unless I can eke out a 21st century spaceship win,) as Ramses is far and ahead #1 in terms of population.

Not really complaining about this, but I can see how the constant fighting with large (15-20 unit) stacks could get annoying if this is ALL that goes on in a game. FWIW, Noble, 8 civs, small tectonics map, NOT using the new handicaps.

I think I am seeing the "guns make us powerful; butter only makes us fat" situation that Uncle Joe (and others) were describing earlier using the 1/25 mod in my current game. It probably helped that all civs started on this large wrap-around continent in the southern hemisphere, making it easier for everyone to get involved in wars with everyone else. Tech has definitely been delayed a bit. Per chipotle, Hannibal and Julius Caesar were both major practitioners of the "dagger" strategy. Ramses has been opting for "peaceful/builder" a lot, but this hasn't stopped him from taking large parts of Japan for himself. I had a horrible starting position, hemmed in by Korea, although I've started to make up for it by colonizing a lot of otherwise empty overseas island-continents.

This has been an entertaining game so far, and i don't think I'm going to win (unless I can eke out a 21st century spaceship win,) as Ramses is far and ahead #1 in terms of population.

Not really complaining about this, but I can see how the constant fighting with large (15-20 unit) stacks could get annoying if this is ALL that goes on in a game. FWIW, Noble, 8 civs, small tectonics map, NOT using the new handicaps.


Anyway that is not so bad if he wins, because Ramses is builder, but not extreme.
If he is going to win, then its a vicotiry of a non-warmonger AI.
Do he always has a big power in the graph?

All I want is AIs having chance of winning following their personality(unless its too dumb for a specific situation). After all, I would love to see Alex winning a Conquest victory, but Gandhi? No please.:rolleyes:

Some of this is moved from the other thread. It seems to belong more properly here.

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.
Just read Blake's post. The one about the 1/N win chance?

There are two things being talked about, both by Blake and others. One is simple task implementation (we might call this "tactics" though not in a strict military sense); two is strategy (again, not necessarily in a military sense).

A task might be the worker algorithms, citizen governor, or military unit actions. We should recall that one of the things BetterAI did was remove the blind "road everything" from the worker algorithms. There are many more changes to this type of routine task that I've seen the BetterAI change. These little things add up to an overall "smarter" AI. So, in this sort of "tactical" sense, the AI is acting much more like humans.

The strategy is what most people are immediately leaping to here. Talking about Dagger, or turtling/teching, etc. We've been so focused on the military but this is really an overall question... what path does the AI pursue to victory, each time it selects how to govern each specific civ in a game.

I tend to share the views of Uncle_Joe and Elandal on this so I'm interested to hear what you think.
I think it might sound like I'm disagreeing with them, which is why I've tried to be careful to put in some "agree with you" etc.

I do think that the current BetterAI is not what *I* want, and based on the 1/N post by Blake, is not what he wants either. That said, I don't want to go back to 2.08 either, I think they're making huge progress.

I guess what it comes down to is that I don't expect miracles, and I expected all along to have some wild swings in the "strategy" behavior. So, now that we're actually seeing some of those wild swings, it doesn't bother me. Oh, it bothers me in the sense that I will continue to give feedback and that we're not quite there yet, but it doesn't bother me in the sense that I think everything since 2.08 (except the bug fixes) is trash and needs to be thrown out. To me, that would be a huge mistake.

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.

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.
Agreed!

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.
That makes sense.

I guess the question then becomes what do you mean by "military emphasis".

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.
I don't think it's a question of "going down that particular path". All I'm suggesting is to recognize the similarities between the diplomacy modifiers and how humans act in a game such as Diplomacy (or MP Civ).

You mention backstabbing. Exactly... there is a Civ modifier by "you attacked our friend" as well as one for "we remember what you did to the English" or something like that.

I'm going to back up a minute, because we lost the quote trail. How does this relate? You originally said
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.
Maybe I'm overlooking your qualifier "regardless of other circumstance" but to me, if you backstab an AI, then other AIs should have a bigger military on their borders with you. If you have good relations with an AI, then they should have less.

And, programming the AI to win means that they should recognize when it is a good idea to double team the leader.

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.
Wait a second... are you saying that you want the ai to recognize when it is a good idea to double-team the leader, or you don't want that?

That situation probably distills this debate down to its essence. If I'm good to an AI (say, Isabella), adopt her religion, give her stuff, help her fight her enemies, don't backstab anybody (including her of course), then let's give a situation where someone, let's say Catherine, is #1, I'm #2, and Isabella is #3. Let's assume we're all friendly with each other, and Catherine is about to win, with whatever victory condition. Should Isabella be amenable to me getting her to join me in a war on Catherine?

Personally, I would be disappointed if the AI was programmed to preclude that possibility. I spend all game doing my "builder" strategy or other non-warlike game, which we like as part of Civ. Then, I discover Catherine is about to win. And, I can't do a thing about it?!? How disappointing is that. It makes me say, "I should have converted to a war strategy earlier and wiped her out."

Yet, it sounds like you're saying that's preferable to the alternative, which is to program the AIs to recognize some human goals, such as ganging up on a leader.

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.
To me this becomes a question of what is meant by "the direction the mod is heading"... the observed results, or the stated goals of the BetterAI team.


The ways to avoid this depend on the neighbourhood. You can go for two different gambles:
1) Go light on military and work diplomacy to make sure you still can keep out of wars. You need enough land to keep economic advantage, and might try to capitalize on that advantage by beelining an advanced military tech that allows you a window during which you can go on offensive with fewer units, units that are technologically superior to those of your neighbours.
2) Go all-out war. Mass units, throw the kitchen sink at your neighbour. You still need to make sure nobody is going to attack you while you're going for someone - possibly by making sure everyone is busy warring.
3) Build enough units for defense. Reserve the capability to rush build in case of attack. (Note that the AI has this option too, and the BetterAI does a pretty good job at this, though it could still be improved.)
4) Get land via other methods... opportunistic settlers wandering around through the war zone of two neighbors, waiting for cities to be razed (very likely in the early game), isolating large chunks of territory by not having open borders (or by closing them when the AI sends a settler or galley over), etc.

As I said earlier, I don't have a solution that would make warring hard but possible - I don't know how to make the AI smart in warring.
IMO, teach it to:
1) know when to quit a war
2) either upgrade or disband old / worthless units
3) be better at rush / whip of defender / counter-attack units
4) better use anti-stack defenses (cats)
5) better distinguish garrison troops and counter-attack troops
6) not create so many garrison troops

I do believe that between humans, diplomacy would play a huge role with the wars that are started by deals being decided more by the dealings before than on the field using units - the units are just an endgame for the diplomacy.
This gets back to #1 above... the AI needs to know when to quit.
-- Part of that is to not overexpand and thereby suffer economic penalties to an empire size that the current economy can't afford.
-- Part is the ability to recognize when the goals have been met (the goal is not necessarily total victory over the opponent, but simply getting more territory for one's self and/or hamstringing the opponent's growth).
-- Part is recognizing the "big picture" in terms of victory (in particular the power graph... this gets back to ganging up on the leader... B and C are warring enough that both their power drops to a certain level below A, then a decision has to be made in regard to what is remaining to be gained from continuing the war or suing for peace because A is the real enemy who is threatening to win the game)

I can't say I'd envy Blake's or Iustus' position here. There are good reasons why the AI needs to mass units (so the human player won't take them out easily), but OTOH that leads to other problems (unit spam spiral of death). If a solution that satisfies all parties exists and is found, great. If not, then the division of AI behaviour using the Aggressive AI setting is a good way to go.
My own personal feeling (from direct observation of my games using the recent builds, as well as from posts by Blake and Iustus) is that the current BetterAI builds and designates too many units as city defenders. Change that, and we've achieved 80-85% of the goals here.

Wodan

Anyway that is not so bad if he wins, because Ramses is builder, but not extreme.
If he is going to win, then its a vicotiry of a non-warmonger AI.
Do he always has a big power in the graph?


Lately he has -- I don't recall if Egypt was always on top with regard to power. If you want to, check the file I uploaded titled "NO DRAFT" under the Bug Report thread. (I couldn't get "draft" to work -- bonus points if you can tell me what's wrong with THAT and/or tell me what I missed....)

[EDIT: Never mind, Iustus explained what was wrong with the Draft thing, and it was weird. Nothing wrong with better AI, though.]

I guess the question then becomes what do you mean by "military emphasis".

By that I mean that even if I'm not intending to attack a neighbor, a heavily disproportionate amount of my econ is going towards constantly building and upgrading military units. I would guess that my military expenditures in 1/25 are between 3x and 4x what they would be in a similar 2.08 game (regardless of circumstances).

The only way to survive in 1/25 (short of luck) is to horde military. You cant neglect it even for a little while or else your military rating falls and its tough to catch back up. So, I end up with stacks and stacks and stacks of military units every game. To me, that is not fun and its not 'decision making'. The decision is already made...build military and more military.

Wait a second... are you saying that you want the ai to recognize when it is a good idea to double-team the leader, or you don't want that?

I'm saying thats its going to be impossible to program an AI to make 'judgement calls'. In some cases, I absolutely think it would be a good idea to double-team the leader. In others I dont. And I certainly wouldnt want to get to a situation where every time you are about to win, 5 AIs pile on because its the 'smart thing to do'.

Its not really a solvable equation IMO because there isnt even a 'right' answer to be shooting for.

To me this becomes a question of what is meant by "the direction the mod is heading"... the observed results, or the stated goals of the BetterAI team.

Both. The observed results are to me, not as much fun when I feel like I must build military as my primary focus game after game. The stated design goal seems to support this because if the AI is going to be 'smart' and 'play like a human' then naturally it should be attacking you if you start to take a lead. In many cases, thats what other humans would do.

Now, supposedly they intended to temper that with the AIs' 'personalities', but to me that is going to be next to impossible. Are we saying that its 'smart' for the warlike AIs to attack the winner but not smart for the builder to do so?

On another note, it also makes AI behavior predictable and adds to the 'luck of the draw' factor in the game. If I KNOW that AI 'x' is going to attack me if I'm in the lead, then I'll make sure to take out AI 'x' as a 'pre-emptive strike' since I'm going to be attacked anyways (again, since its 'smart' to do so).

Its a big complicated ball of wax that I cant see being resolved any time in the near future. My understanding is that the AI team is trying to build towards the 1.0 release. And in that case, I think we are farther from what I consider to be 'fun' than we were a number of weeks back. YMMV.

[...]
3) Build enough units for defense. Reserve the capability to rush build in case of attack. (Note that the AI has this option too, and the BetterAI does a pretty good job at this, though it could still be improved.)
This is a variation of "go light on defense". To keep a credible defense took 30% of my total commerce (unit maintenance), which means it was already in the spiral of death - I was down to half my research power without having an offensive force. Not to forget the hammers building the defense forces took, albeit with the reduced research power I'm not sure if there had been other good builds available at all..
So light on defense combined with capability of rushing credible defense WHEN (not IF) the attack comes. Certainly a valid strategy, but the risk of facing overwhelming attack is still too high to not call it a gamble.

4) Get land via other methods... opportunistic settlers wandering around through the war zone of two neighbors, waiting for cities to be razed (very likely in the early game), isolating large chunks of territory by not having open borders (or by closing them when the AI sends a settler or galley over), etc.
This is something I probably have to work on. I really don't like settling so that I can't secure a culturally owned path to my core, but maybe it's necessary at times.
I think I noted the backyard backfill in "lucky start" category, although after considering Snaaty's strategy this seems doable without reliance on lucky start that gives the backyard to you: settle forward to create the backyard. Again this is something I probably should try.


Without quoting more, I do agree with you on many points. Your points regarding what smart warring might mean were definitelly good ones. Indeed if understanding the big picture can be broken down into small steps the AI can take, it'll be closer to the goal of being smart.

Not to forget the hammers building the defense forces took, albeit with the reduced research power I'm not sure if there had been other good builds available at all..

And this is exactly what I meant when I've referred to the latest builds reducing decision-making (ie guns or butter). Often tech is progressing much slower (not necessarily a bad thing), but that leads to situations where I'm not making any trade offs....I just spam military until something new comes along to build and then I build those in every appropriate city. So the 'decision' is to always build military, but puncuated with the buildings as soon as they are available.

In 2.08, there are often lots of buildings available that I may want but I also know that I have to build at least some military to keep up with the Joneses. Even the 2.08 AIs will attack if you are really weak and while they might not 'conquer' you, they can make a nice mess...certainly enough to make it not desirable to be attacked.

The only way to survive in 1/25 (short of luck) is to horde military. You cant neglect it even for a little while or else your military rating falls and its tough to catch back up. So, I end up with stacks and stacks and stacks of military units every game. To me, that is not fun and its not 'decision making'. The decision is already made...build military and more military.

Why don't just spy on your enemy planning a war against you what kind of force they'll send on you and build a proper combination to counter their forces. Also rally units to your border cities. Also can build forts into defensive terrain with some defenders to trick them.
But let them pull ahead in power to launch that damn attack on you.
Just be well prepared and slaughter them :D
Getting into an arms race with your enemy yet decided to attack you is pointless. It will just hurt both of you.
Let them attack and than wipe them out quickly instead of arms racing :D

Is Roosevelt actually a "peaceful" leader?
I recall seeing a spreadsheet floating around the forum someplace showing how the AI would behave in various circumstances. I recall being surprised at how aggressively coded the American leaders (esp. Washington) were in Warlords.

Yes he has very peaceful personality.
Washington is a bit less but still peaceful too.

Joe, you are becoming tiresome.

I don't think the unit spam even exists anymore. Players are complaining the AI's are defending themselves far too lightly.

Also AI personalities are a tricky thing. Some AI's are horrible backstabbers - I think for example Asoka and Frederick (although it may be Peter) actually have backstabber personalities, it's just that they wouldn't ever build up enough military to start feeling frisky - one of my few military defeats (pre-Better AI) was to Asoka, who decided to backstab me with a large axeman horde he built for god knows what reason. I can probably try and reduce this tendency by tying in the old aspects of personality with the side effects of reducing aggression - for instance the "Train Unit" probability - those AI's with a high train unit.

Here are the "Bastard Charts" to show which leaders are the biggest scumbags, according to their probability of training units, their probability of declaring war, their probability of shamelessly dogpiling and finally their probability of declaring war at Pleased - the Total column is basically their "Bastard Rating" - the higher the total, the more likely they'll cause trouble. For all numbers, bigger means badder.
(A 0% of dogpiling does not mean a 0% of him dogpiling you - it'll just be a total war rather than a dogpile war - however 0% at pleased DOES mean a 0% chance of declaring war - it wont happen unless the AI decided to declare before becoming pleased)

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/3615/bastadchatsbh3.png

The winner is Ragnar, being highest or highest equal across the board - except in attacking those he is pleased with (only one is higher).

There are some anomalies - Mehmed despite having SOME nice personality traits (respects friends) is actually a big warmonger - call him an Honorable Warmonger, Brennus is like his little brother. Don't trust these guys unless they're actually pleased.

Catherine and Isabella both have fairly low train units - but are also very shameless in declaring war, making them the incompetent backstabbing b*tches we know and love. However Isabella also has her obnoxious personality working against her - making her both more likely to declare war, and more incompetently (catherine is more likely to wait for a position of strength).

Elizabeth is generally peaceful, but does have a chance of declaring war at peace but more importantly has an incredibly high probability of sliding a knife in your back if you are distracted - Roosevelt has an identical warring personality (good job...), fortunately both these leaders have low unit training probabilities so they may be too timid to attack (which is why they are backstabbers). Asoka is also something of a closet bastard but does respect his friends. And actually many leaders, such as Mansa Musa, will just decide to up and attack people they are pleased with - the dice rolls make it that way. Just because SOME peaceful AI's will do this shameless backstabbing rarely, does not mean that Hatty or Ramsesses will - those two are much more pleasant (not all peacemongers are XML'd equally...).

What Better AI does is enable all AI's to train up larger armies if they feel the need (rather than the army component being based largely on dice rolls also), this generally increases their chances of declaring war. This will tend to make the closet bastards (like Elizabeth) more likely to come out of the closet...
Whether this is going against their personality, or just a repressed aspect of their personality, is subject to debate.
I will be using the "Train Unit" factor in more places to get more diversity in army sizes (the train unit factor wont be respected much when actually in a real war, when desperate they'll all spam units).

Anyway hopefully this gives some insight into the AI personalities...

Joe, you are becoming tiresome.

Enough said. I've tried (apparently unsuccessfully) to make the point. I cant back it up any further.

As I've said REPEATEDLY, its your call to make.

Good luck with itl

@Blake: Is that 'Train Unit' the actual % of the hammers they use in total, used only in units(in Vanilla)?

And how come your changes changed it if you didnt change that part? You just took off some restrictive codes?

Im impressed by that list.

No the train unit is a fuzzy thing...
Basically at a certain point in the (Vanilla) code for choosing production - after things like basic defensive and economic needs have been taken care of, the AI will have Build Unit % chance of training a unit, otherwise it will try to build a building, and if it can't build a building, it'll then train a unit.
Defense
Settlers Workers
BuildUnit% check:
- Choose a unit
- or Choose a building
Choose a Unit
Choose a Building
Process.

What BetterAI does to the build selection process is adds a lot more context sensitive decision making - rather than just having a simple dice roll decide whether to build a unit or building, the AI will actually build a unit if it feels underdefended, or build an economic building if it'll pay off quickly, or prepare a dagger stack and it'll build a barracks before training significant units... and so on. Only after all that context sensitive stuff is done, does it finally get to the simple BuildUnitProb dice roll.
Once the AI runs out of buildings to build, it goes into unit spam mode regardless - until it hits it's quota of units and uses a process, if one is available.

It is somewhat fair to say that the buildUnitProb is indicative of how large an army the AI would like to keep on hand - especially offensive army above and beyond the basic defensive requirements. The probability itself doesn't mean much - but Isabella's being twice as large as Gandhi's means that Isabella should have twice as many offensive units...

That chart does indeed shed new light to my experiences. Seems I've been hit by closet warriors where I thought I had peaceful neighbourhood.

The only way to survive in 1/25 (short of luck) is to horde military. You cant neglect it even for a little while or else your military rating falls and its tough to catch back up. So, I end up with stacks and stacks and stacks of military units every game.
Have to disagree there. My latest game I started on a peninsula. Continents map. Louis was in the middle, and Alexander down south.

I spread my religion to Louis, and tossed him some bones (extra fish or something, free gift, plus some cash I think). I did the same thing to Alex.

Louis, true to his nature, built a wonder or something and had strong cultural pressure on 2 of Alex' cities.

Quite soon, Alex, of course, declares on Louis. He asks me to help. I tell him to go sit and spin (not in those words of course). Louis asks me to help. I say yes. Not a single unit of Alex' attacked me. (Louis was between me and Alex, remember.)

After a bit, I sue for peace with Alex.

After a bit more, I send Alex some cash to declare peace with Louis.

Okay, repeat that cycle twice more. My dip relations with Louis are huge by this point. (I have a +5 or something for religion, +4 for agreeing to help him in wartime, +4 for good trade relations, +2 for supplying him with resources, yadda yadda.)

After the second time Alex had all but wiped Louis out. I still hadn't fought a single one of his units. Yet, I had just a single unit in every one of my cities, either a warrior or a chariot. Alex had swords and phalanxes all over the place. Anytime I wanted, I could have build some units and saved Louis' bacon. But, I didn't have a problem at all with Alex both wiping him out and also with Alex choking himself with empire maintenance and unit supply costs.

So, I guess I have to take exception to your "only way" phrasing. There is at least one set of circumstances where it can be done. I daresay there are more.

ps by the time Louis was gone, my tech level was way way ahead. I was building Cav and Muskets while Alex had just barely gotten longbows.

Devil's advocate now. Game before this one, with the 1/9 build (I think). Anyway, I did Aggressive AI and got a middle pangaea start. Holy cow was I torn asunder. :run:

I'm saying thats its going to be impossible to program an AI to make 'judgement calls'. In some cases, I absolutely think it would be a good idea to double-team the leader. In others I dont. And I certainly wouldnt want to get to a situation where every time you are about to win, 5 AIs pile on because its the 'smart thing to do'.

Its not really a solvable equation IMO because there isnt even a 'right' answer to be shooting for.
You've got a point, but I think it could be done. And I definitely think that there should be an increased chance of AIs declaring war if you're in the lead and/or about to win.

I agree having ALL of them declare war EVERY time would be bad for the game. There shouldn't be a kingmaker phenomenon going on (AIs with no chance to win knocking down the leader simply so 2nd place could win). Also, peaceful AIs that you have good relations with should stay that way.

However, military AIs, especially on aggressive settings, by all means should attack. They've probably been doing it all game, though, so that's nothing new.

The real question is a "neutral" AI, who has a realistic chance to win if he "changes sides" against you. I definitely would be in favor of the BetterAI programming this to happen.

Its a big complicated ball of wax that I cant see being resolved any time in the near future. My understanding is that the AI team is trying to build towards the 1.0 release. And in that case, I think we are farther from what I consider to be 'fun' than we were a number of weeks back. YMMV.
Thanks for your thoughts on the rest of the stuff. No comment except on this last. To me, I'll repeat that if the BetterAI team reduces the building of huge garrison stacks this will help immensely IMO. I think they've already said they're doing this, so we'll have to wait till the next build and see.

This is something I probably have to work on. I really don't like settling so that I can't secure a culturally owned path to my core, but maybe it's necessary at times.

I think I noted the backyard backfill in "lucky start" category, although after considering Snaaty's strategy this seems doable without reliance on lucky start that gives the backyard to you: settle forward to create the backyard. Again this is something I probably should try.
Give it a try. I do it more often than not. It's hugely powerful. It's my main "counter" to the people who say you HAVE to do an early war to do well on high levels (because you need the territory). One or two well sited cities can cut off galley/coastal approaches, or can block off a neck of land and give you the majority of a continent and/or subcontinents to expand into. One or two cities with higher maintenance early in the game is a paltry price to pay.

Without quoting more, I do agree with you on many points. Your points regarding what smart warring might mean were definitelly good ones. Indeed if understanding the big picture can be broken down into small steps the AI can take, it'll be closer to the goal of being smart.
Yeah, I guess we'll see what Blake and Iustus are able to pull off.

Wodan

No the train unit is a fuzzy thing...
Basically at a certain point in the (Vanilla) code for choosing production - after things like basic defensive and economic needs have been taken care of, the AI will have Build Unit % chance of training a unit, otherwise it will try to build a building, and if it can't build a building, it'll then train a unit.
Defense
Settlers Workers
BuildUnit% check:
- Choose a unit
- or Choose a building
Choose a Unit
Choose a Building
Process.

What BetterAI does to the build selection process is adds a lot more context sensitive decision making - rather than just having a simple dice roll decide whether to build a unit or building, the AI will actually build a unit if it feels underdefended, or build an economic building if it'll pay off quickly, or prepare a dagger stack and it'll build a barracks before training significant units... and so on. Only after all that context sensitive stuff is done, does it finally get to the simple BuildUnitProb dice roll.
Once the AI runs out of buildings to build, it goes into unit spam mode regardless - until it hits it's quota of units and uses a process, if one is available.

It is somewhat fair to say that the buildUnitProb is indicative of how large an army the AI would like to keep on hand - especially offensive army above and beyond the basic defensive requirements. The probability itself doesn't mean much - but Isabella's being twice as large as Gandhi's means that Isabella should have twice as many offensive units...

It sounds you made a very good way to the AI decide what to build :)

Blake, got some question about your recent chart.

'Train' is buildunitprob or that something in leaderheadsinfo.xml?
'War' is maxwarrand?
'Backstab' is dogpilewarrand?
'Warpleased' is nowarattitudeprobs?

I think yes but i cannot look at the file now it's not in this computer. (edit: found a copy in temp dir hurray :))
Thanks.

Correct. BuildUnitProb is in leaderheadsinfo.
And there are of course more factors that go into the AI personality, but that set is somewhat representative.

Correct. BuildUnitProb is in leaderheadsinfo.
And there are of course more factors that go into the AI personality, but that set is somewhat representative.

Your chart is somewhat flawed.
For instance Churchill and Cyrus have 100% nowarattitudeprob for pleased so they should never attack pleased rivals.
They have 70% for cautious so they should also be reluctant to attack their neutral rivals (30% prob).

And I definitely think that there should be an increased chance of AIs declaring war if you're in the lead and/or about to win.

I agree having ALL of them declare war EVERY time would be bad for the game. There shouldn't be a kingmaker phenomenon going on (AIs with no chance to win knocking down the leader simply so 2nd place could win). Also, peaceful AIs that you have good relations with should stay that way.

However, military AIs, especially on aggressive settings, by all means should attack. They've probably been doing it all game, though, so that's nothing new.

The real question is a "neutral" AI, who has a realistic chance to win if he "changes sides" against you. I definitely would be in favor of the BetterAI programming this to happen.That sounds pretty good, I was mildly concerned from your first mention of it that you would advocate ganging up on the leader or backstabing friends to win. Whilst a lot of human players may well do that (I tend not to) I don't know thats it's a good idea gameplay wise.

I have no issue with your enemies (regardless of position) or neutral civs (in a position to win) attacking the leader if they are about to win (I'm not sure about en-mass attacks though, all against one; maybe friendly civs should be more willing to help out, suppport a friendly victory, even without direct benefit). Friends should stay as friends, perhaps try to ally with a leading friendly Civ (note I always play perm alliances).

So anyone who won't like occasional attack on friends should set nowaratitudeprob values for pleased and friendly to 100% for all leaders as far as i understand.

Because of this backstabbing tendencies AI's maybe should keep a bit more units in friendly borders not just the 1-2 we see now in the 1/25 build. (Noble*)

To the idea of AI's being obstacles in the game and how the game was intended to be played.

As a fact, as Civ4 came out AI's are really obstacles.
But Civ is a game series and it never been this way AFAIK.

Just an example:
I checked back Civ1 (Civnet actually) recently and wasn't surprised that the Russians (a Civ1 warmonger) wiped out 2 civs until 1880 BC !
And they don't play like an 'obstacle' at all :D
They are dominating the game. Actually they would have won by domination if that was possible in Civ1.
Still very likely they will won by spaceship. They have half the world.

And that is common in Civ1.

Also don't forget the massive wars of Civ2.
There sometimes esp. when you're weak you just can't make peace with an AI. "We've decided to rid the world of your worthless civilization" Are you remember? :)
You can't even beg :)

In Master of Orion (which is actually also a Civ just in space) races are going for victory desperately and there are multitudes of wars in the game.

So both thoughts are valid:
1.) Firaxis/Sid changed their usual gamestyle for Civ4 to lean it towards a restricted AI game
2.) They didn't have the time or enthusiasm to adapt a similar AI behaviour to Civ4 it was in previous games.

I think 2.) might be closer to truth but actually it doesn't matter that much.
We grown up on Civ and MoO and an AI which could give us feelings of the old competitive AI's is a good thing.

To tell the truth when Civ4 came out i was disappointed how insanely pacifist the whole game was.
It felt very wrong to me.
Not a single war in an entire game or only some marginal ones.
Now we are closing to a state where it resembles the old days.

That's my point of view.

Your chart is somewhat flawed.
For instance Churchill and Cyrus have 100% nowarattitudeprob for pleased so they should never attack pleased rivals.
They have 70% for cautious so they should also be reluctant to attack their neutral rivals (30% prob).

I have corrected the entries. Although it doesn't change my points any (other than the specifics).


In Master of Orion (which is actually also a Civ just in space) races are going for victory desperately and there are multitudes of wars in the game.
Master of Orion has excellent diplomatic concepts (some flawed ones too, like the "Enemy of my Enemy") but on the whole it's a good model for 4X diplomacy and warmaking. I especially like the turf wars / cold war concept. That you can kill a unit and say "What'ya gonna do about it, huh?". It's a very nice flexible system.
And it's also nice that the AI's have diverse personalities rather than being tied to a specific leader.

Not a single war in an entire game or only some marginal ones.
....
To the idea of AI's being obstacles in the game and how the game was intended to be played.
Yeah, no wars are boring. Though I have had a number of BetterAI games like that (not the most recent build though).

I'm warming more to the idea of AI's being more like opponents than obstacles; Blakes 'friendly multiplayer' decription sounds like a good compromise. My concern was that a 'win or else' human attitude would cause AI's to loose their personality (for me leader personality is a key Civ concept).

Master of Orion has excellent diplomatic concepts (some flawed ones too, like the "Enemy of my Enemy") but on the whole it's a good model for 4X diplomacy and warmaking. I especially like the turf wars / cold war concept. That you can kill a unit and say "What'ya gonna do about it, huh?". It's a very nice flexible system.
And it's also nice that the AI's have diverse personalities rather than being tied to a specific leader.

I like the preemptive strike concept best.

When they see you're gathering ships in a nearby system and either they tell you to stop it or there'll be war (and will) or they don't say anything just take the first shot at you telling something like "Don't take us for fools! Your massing of fleets in XY star system is an act of war. Now pray to whenever gods you believe..." after it.

I also like the event system especially that sometimes you get into some totally unplanned and unwanted wars because of it messing things up a lot and making it very hard or impossible to be in good terms with everybody while they kill each other with diligence (which could be done in MoO2).

Also sometimes a leader got killed by an assasin thus the 'personality' of a rival changed. Nice idea.

My concern was that a 'win or else' human attitude would cause AI's to loose their personality (for me leader personality is a key Civ concept).

Sure it is.
They must try to win according to their personality.

When they see you're gathering ships in a nearby system and either they tell you to stop it or there'll be war (and will) or they don't say anything just take the first shot at you telling something like "Don't take us for fools! Your massing of fleets in XY star system is an act of war. Now prey to whenever gods you believe..." after it.I'd love to see that in a future Civ. It annoys me right now that there is nothing diplomatic you can to if you see an attack coming. I posted a thread about it some time ago. If you strike first you get 'you declared war on us/our friend' penaties; or you wait and let them invade; or bribe someone to attack them first. None of the scenarios are particularly great. I hope Firaxis puts some serious effort into diplomacy for the future expansion/game.

Completely out side the scope of this project but it would be cool if a CIV is stagnating it could swap leaders. Either if a warmonger has over expanded and needs to catch up technologically or if a peaceful leader isnt using his technological advantage militarily.

Completely out side the scope of this project but it would be cool if a CIV is stagnating it could swap leaders. Either if a warmonger has over expanded and needs to catch up technologically or if a peaceful leader isnt using his technological advantage militarily.

Yes would be great but surely impossible through this mod.
And would be really annoying when you are dispatched :cool:

Yes would be great but surely impossible through this mod.
And would be really annoying when you are dispatched :cool:

haha would be fun :p

What a off-topic! :) Post it in General section of CIV4, who knows :lol:

Here are the "Bastard Charts" to show which leaders are the biggest scumbags, according to their probability of training units, their probability of declaring war, their probability of shamelessly dogpiling and finally their probability of declaring war at Pleased - the Total column is basically their "Bastard Rating" - the higher the total, the more likely they'll cause trouble. For all numbers, bigger means badder.

The chart is cool, but the column headed as "Backstab" is really meant to be "Dogpile"? That's what you say in the paragraph above. I would think that "backstab" refers to the probability of DoW when Pleased.

I've been having a very entertaining game starting with the 01-25 build and now using the 01-29. As I noted somewhere, Stalin has been in a rolling war through the whole game. I made peace with him for a while -- he declared on Monty then -- but now he's back at me. Mehmed decided to join in the fray, for no reason other than dogpiling, near as I can tell.

Until Mehmed attacked, I had a scout in his borders. Most of his cities had only a catapult as a defender. However, he has come after me with three stacks of elephants, knights, crossbows, and pikes. I lost a city that I captured from Washington (a Stalin vassal) -- a city with no buffer tiles. I should be able to repel him before losing anything else. The wildcard is Shaka, who is Friendly with me, but won't join in any reindeer games -- er, I mean, wars.

The chart is cool, but the column headed as "Backstab" is really meant to be "Dogpile"? That's what you say in the paragraph above. I would think that "backstab" refers to the probability of DoW when Pleased.

Me too...........

Me too...........

I think dogpille makes sense, or they wouldent hacve the 'pleased but war' modifier..Would they?

I am very pleased with the aggression/unit action level in 1/29 (noble level). So far, seems to have hit it just right. I am actually trying for a culture win in my current game -- in a race with Mansa. Elizabeth is around too, though, and she's trying to stir up trouble where possible. I am not getting the "too many guns, not enough butter" thing that others have mentioned.

I am coming to the conclusion that my slow tech but normal unit build rate is my problem.

It allows the AI, with thier bonuses, to accumulate so many units that picking on a human who just cant keep up is enevitable.

I will modify my AI handicap to counteract this.

Couldent get Uncle Joe save working because it needs a mod..

My apologies if you guys worked this out already, but I don't have time atm to catch up on this whole thread...

But I see this so much that I just have to jump in and say: Unless a game was started with Lock Modified Assets turned on or the mod alters the savegame file structure, all you need to do is create an empty folder at My Games\Warlords\MODS with the same name as the mod (say "MyMod") and update CivilizationIV.ini to have Mod=Mods\MyMod. Then load the savegame and Civ4 won't know the difference!

My apologies if you guys worked this out already, but I don't have time atm to catch up on this whole thread...

But I see this so much that I just have to jump in and say: Unless a game was started with Lock Modified Assets turned on or the mod alters the savegame file structure, all you need to do is create an empty folder at My Games\Warlords\MODS with the same name as the mod (say "MyMod") and update CivilizationIV.ini to have Mod=Mods\MyMod. Then load the savegame and Civ4 won't know the difference!


WoW, one more thing to learn here!

I didnt know, thanks for the information :goodjob:

WoW, one more thing to learn here!

I didnt know, thanks for the information :goodjob:

Let me know if you decide to try it, and whether it works. Maybe I've just been getting lucky :). But I switch mods all the time using this method... I'll start a game in my "jrayUGH" mod and then want to see how a certain turn looks in Ruff's mod, so I'll just re-name the jrayUGH folder to jrayUGHtemp and rename Ruff to jrayUGH and re-load the game, and there's the same turn rendered in Ruff's mod. I've never had any glitches so far.

Let me know if you decide to try it, and whether it works. Maybe I've just been getting lucky :). But I switch mods all the time using this method... I'll start a game in my "jrayUGH" mod and then want to see how a certain turn looks in Ruff's mod, so I'll just re-name the jrayUGH folder to jrayUGHtemp and rename Ruff to jrayUGH and re-load the game, and there's the same turn rendered in Ruff's mod. I've never had any glitches so far.

This will only work for mods that do not alter the save game file in any way. If a mod adds new unit types (rather than replacing current ones), or basically adds anything else new, then problems could definitely occur.

BetterAI does not make any of these changes, so it can be taken in or out at will.

A different handicaps file does not make any of these changes, so it can be substituted at will.

Most mods add thing though, new civics, new units, etc. If anything new exists in the save, you are going to be in trouble.

-Iustus

I think dogpille makes sense, or they wouldent hacve the 'pleased but war' modifier..Would they?

In my understanding dogpiling is joining a war for booty or to take a city or 2 from the weaker looser and backstabbing is when someone attacks a rival with good relations.

In my understanding dogpiling is joining a war for booty or to take a city or 2 from the weaker looser and backstabbing is when someone attacks a rival with good relations.

Yes sure, the problem is that this situation is already covered by that other modifier. So maybe if a civ have big % of backstab AND of Attack when Pleased, maybe he will join a war against a friend CIV only because the CIV will get pwned then...

Nevermind...

Well, so far over the past 2 days (and 1.5 games) I've been VERY pleased with the AI. Good level of aggression and overall tactics. Nice mixed stacks, too. No more humongous piles of archers sitting in cities.

The only even semi concerning thing I've seen so far is Peter DOW'ed me from waaaay far away. He, Monty, and I were the only 3 on a long chain of 3 subcontinents, no links to the rest of the world. (This is pre-astronomy.) Peter sends a few triremes and a single galley with a spear and archer. I fight off the triremes while the troops clump around one of my cities for a few turns, then sit in a forest next to it for a few more. After a bit, they leave the forest onto one of my hamlets, but by that time I have 2 axes and 2 war chariots and take them out (I didn't bother attacking while they were in the forest as they were doing no harm).

Anyway, long story short, the distance didn't bother me so much, but the fact that apparently it was a "Total War" or something. (I didn't have chipotle turned on.) Evidence: he refused peace for a very long time, despite not sending more troops and despite any success whatsoever. And his messages to me were the "no way in the world I'm declaring peace" type of thing. He was willing to go to peace only after Monty finally joined in. It was long enough that I was able to get all the way to Education and Optics, so, yeah, a long time.

Wodan

:ninja: edit: I'm not saying this is necessarily bad, but it might be. If there's a low % of having a Total War from across the planet, that's probably OK, and my experience was simply a vagary of chance. However, if distance doesn't affect the calculation, it probably should. Also, being across water without having galleys should be taken into consideration as well. Nothing wrong with having a "pillage" / casual war with only triremes, but a "Total War" should require the AI to pre-prepare with galleys.

Is there a post anywhere explaining what the various AI strategies that show up in Chipotle mean? (I.e., Dagger, Missionary 1, Peaceful, etc.)

Yes, I've seen it somewhere. Check the old post (i know it's f'n huge) or Iustus or Blakes past posts. Also a forum search with the names in it might return it...

Is there a post anywhere explaining what the various AI strategies that show up in Chipotle mean? (I.e., Dagger, Missionary 1, Peaceful, etc.)


There is yes, I can't remember where though. Dagger is when the AI declares after building a planned attack stack (and can be very lethal) Total is when the AI goes for a mass city grab, limited is when the AI goes for a money making scheme basically, and Dogpile is just to take advantage of a civ in a bad situation (you can get lucky and gank some cities doing this, seen this plenty of times on multi). The big one that's a problem if you see is unplanned. unplanned war is a bug and should be reported in the bug thread.

Thanks. Is it okay if you don't see a strategy listed under Chipotle? (Not while at war or planning one, just nothing listed.)

Thanks. Is it okay if you don't see a strategy listed under Chipotle? (Not while at war or planning one, just nothing listed.)

The AI is at war, and it doesn't even say unplanned?

If that is true, I bet it's a bug, but I can't see how that is even possible.

No -- not at war. Just chillin'.

The AI is at war, and it doesn't even say unplanned?

If that is true, I bet it's a bug, but I can't see how that is even possible.

1/30 Report:

I admit that I had been extremely critical of the earlier January builds. To me it seemed like they were heading down the path of almost requiring military action (even defensive) in order to succeed. I was also skeptical of some of the other AI changes that have been added recently.

After the 1/25 build, I had pretty decided that this mod was just not for me and was going to simply go back to 2.08 but with higher AI handicaps to make up for the lack of 'intelligence'. However I saw that a new build (1/30) was quickly released to correct a few bugs (but it also added some further refinements to the AI). So I decided to give it a go and see if it was something I thought I'd want to continue with.

Well I can say I'm glad I tried it. IMO, HUGE strides have been made in alleviating some of the problems that I routinely encountered in the earlier builds. I still believe that there is probably a need for some further tweaking, but I have to admit that I was very favorably impressed in the near two games I played out with 1/30.

I'll break it down into the Good and the Bad (Epic, No Aggressive AI, Fractal, Custom Handicaps):

The Good:

1) The AIs were much more competitive with each other. In the earlier builds, a warmongering AI would often go hell bent on KO'ing its neighbors. If those neighbors happened to be 'builders', they went down the toilet pretty quickly. The result was that AI competitors were being destroyed very early and the attacking Civs would bloat out and stagnate. With 1/30, the interior defenses are better so the 'house of cards' seems to be greatly reduced. Early wars have consisted more of snipping off a city or two rather than to the death.

2) The AI's seem to be actually 'blockading' coastal cities now. Whether that is by intent or was just happy coincidence (I didnt see anything in the version notes), it was most unpleasant to deal with. A few Caravels and Frigates moved up to my coastline and pretty much parked there starving out those cities. Does anyone know if its actually possible to 'blockade' trade routes/resource routes out in Civ4 as you could in Civ3? That could be horribly effective if it works.

3) The AIs are far less reluctant to DoW distant Civs later in the game. Same religion and happy relations only go so far now. You have to watch your back even against overseas Civs. In my second game, Stalin DoW'ed me about when we were all getting to Astronomy. He was pretty far away and on an island by himself so I pretty much ignored him. Shortly thereafter he blockaded a number of my cities and made some coastal raids with Knights/Grenadiers etc. It wasnt life-threatening, but it was effective and it made me think twice about blowing him off in the future. This is a much needed improvement IMO and makes the game feel much more fluid.

4) The AIs are using a good mix of units now. I think its still favoring Siege weapons a little too much (see screenshot), but overall its forces are varied and tougher to counter.

5) The AI CERTAINLY knows how to use Spies! I saw some people requesting this and BELIEVE ME, its already there. I must have had my Iron, Uranium, and Coal all blown up at least a half a dozen times each and at one point, I had not ONE luxury left alive in my empire. There were at least 2 AIs pouring spies into my land (I caught Ottos and Germans on a few occasions).

The Bad:

1) Some of the AIs are still perhaps overbuilding units. The attached screenshot is from my first game. The Ottomans had almost 50 units stacked in a nearby border city (including over 30 Catapults and Trebs which had been converted to Cannon by the time of the screenshot). To me, that is still too many for that time in the game. It takes a LOT of hammers to build that huge force and it literally sat there until the Modern Age when it was converted into Artillery. That is a huge expense to be sitting on that long. I hestitate to want to see it totally changed but perhaps redistributing it a bit so its not all sitting in one huge stack? In my second game, there have been a lot more smaller wars which generally has kept the SODs reined in a bit. I havent seen stacks bigger than 12 or so in that game and it feels pretty 'correct'.

2) Sometimes the AIs dont know when to call it quits in a war. I had the Mongols repeatedly DoW me trying to capture a border city (that they didnt border...they were moving through the Chinese to get to me). He must have lost 100s of units over 5-6 wars (he went to war about every 20-25 turns). And he wasnt making much progress. The first war, he ALMOST took it with a humongous pile of units, but it held out. After that, it was mostly half-hearted attempts. The ONLY thing he wanted for peace was that city too. Blowing up his sea resource, starving out his coastal cities and even having the snot nuked out of his homeland wouldnt change his fixation on that city. Obviously even if he had eventually taken that city, it certainly would not have been worth cost (most of his major cities were nuked).

3) The building of much larger number of units is slowing tech progression down to the point where no one even got close to launching the Space Ship by game's end. I think 2 Civs had built the Casings and one was working on Thrusters by 2050. At some point, I think the AIs need to release that enough units is enough and focus on teching them rather than adding to them (new types such as aircraft notwithstanding).

Overall:

Like I said above, I'm actually very favorably impressed. The AIs certainly played a much 'tighter' game in this build. The biggest complaint (early wars of extermination by massed units) seems to be corrected. I think with a few more tweaks and bug fixes, this AI is pretty close realizing what I believe were the original goals for BetterAI. I think it still might be a bit too militaristic (not necessarily warlike, but arms racing), but its feeling like its moving in the right direction towards more balanced play again.

Great job on the latest build!

1/30 Report:


The Bad:

2) Sometimes the AIs dont know when to call it quits in a war. I had the Mongols repeatedly DoW me trying to capture a border city (that they didnt border...they were moving through the Chinese to get to me). He must have lost 100s of units over 5-6 wars (he went to war about every 20-25 turns). And he wasnt making much progress. The first war, he ALMOST took it with a humongous pile of units, but it held out. After that, it was mostly half-hearted attempts. The ONLY thing he wanted for peace was that city too. Blowing up his sea resource, starving out his coastal cities and even having the snot nuked out of his homeland wouldnt change his fixation on that city. Obviously even if he had eventually taken that city, it certainly would not have been worth cost (most of his major cities were nuked).



I had the same feeling in a game I was having. Frederick (who was on a nearby island) kept on landing stacks of units by my nearest city (using triemes for transport).
Each time I would wipe the stack (of between 3 and 10 units) out. He would try a few times and then accept peace, only to declare war again 10 turns later.
He declared war like this at least 4 times.
I had decided that this was how the entire game was going to go, and was watching his stack of boats prepare themselves for the next declaration of war, when he asked for open borders instead.
He then sailed along my coastline and attacked the chinese instead.

I was impressed.


I am now using the AI handicaps by the way, so I am unsure if the new build or the handicaps have improved the game for me.

1/30 Report:
Well I can say I'm glad I tried it. IMO, HUGE strides have been made in alleviating some of the problems that I routinely encountered in the earlier builds. I still believe that there is probably a need for some further tweaking, but I have to admit that I was very favorably impressed in the near two games I played out with 1/30.
That's good to hear. And it's good that changes are working as intended :).


1) Some of the AIs are still perhaps overbuilding units. The attached screenshot is from my first game. The Ottomans had almost 50 units stacked in a nearby border city (including over 30 Catapults and Trebs which had been converted to Cannon by the time of the screenshot). To me, that is still too many for that time in the game. It takes a LOT of hammers to build that huge force and it literally sat there until the Modern Age when it was converted into Artillery. That is a huge expense to be sitting on that long. I hestitate to want to see it totally changed but perhaps redistributing it a bit so its not all sitting in one huge stack? In my second game, there have been a lot more smaller wars which generally has kept the SODs reined in a bit. I havent seen stacks bigger than 12 or so in that game and it feels pretty 'correct'.

From looking at the minimap it appears that Mehmed and Isabella are best-buddies. He's basically put nearly his ENTIRE army where he feels the most hostility. I guess he has about 10 cities, so that's only 5 units per city (plus 1-2 normal garrisons) so maybe 7 units per city. That's not a huge army and would be costing him probably only 5% of his GNP, while somewhat expensive in terms of hammers the fact is there isn't really that much to build and the AI is fairly efficient about building up infrastructure quickly - over the course of a game it's really not much to train 7 units per city. So while it's a big SoD I wouldn't call it evidence of overspam.


2) Sometimes the AIs dont know when to call it quits in a war.
Yeah no kidding. The entire war-motivation thing needs a major overhaul. It's not going to happen in 1.0, for now the logic will remain "I attack you because I hate you".


3) The building of much larger number of units is slowing tech progression down to the point where no one even got close to launching the Space Ship by game's end. I think 2 Civs had built the Casings and one was working on Thrusters by 2050. At some point, I think the AIs need to release that enough units is enough and focus on teching them rather than adding to them (new types such as aircraft notwithstanding).
FYIW in my first Warlords (2.00) game under similar settings I launched in about 2048 - tech pace can be pretty slow sometimes. It is worth noting that commerce is somewhat undervalued in the 1/30 build so the AI's are getting less commerce than they should be (that also extends to getting more hammers and thus completing infrastructure sooner and spamming units sooner which means more money tied up in expenses...).


Overall:

Like I said above, I'm actually very favorably impressed. The AIs certainly played a much 'tighter' game in this build. The biggest complaint (early wars of extermination by massed units) seems to be corrected. I think with a few more tweaks and bug fixes, this AI is pretty close realizing what I believe were the original goals for BetterAI. I think it still might be a bit too militaristic (not necessarily warlike, but arms racing), but its feeling like its moving in the right direction towards more balanced play again.

Great job on the latest build!

You're welcome. Balance is always at the forefront of my mind. But understand that a few builds back I had written a COMPLETELY new system for allocating defenders (and attackers for that matter) smartly and a lot of supporting code had to be changed to work with it and then more tweaking had to be done etc etc (the AI is a verrrry complex system it's no co-incidence that so few have risen to the challenge). With an ambitious feature always comes some kinks to work out.... so I'm saying I never lost sight of the goals, but actually just side effects of ambitious changes - and not unexpected side effects (there has to be some bad builds to make the really good builds possible...).

I'm happy enough with it's performance over all that I don't plan to add any new major features for 1.00 - the focus will be on some fine-tuning, this means the next builds will just keep getting better, but it also does mean that for now the AI will keep it's current "fundamental" limitations in diplomacy, war-making and so on.

Playing a game with 1/30 and I can echo some of the feedback that it does indeed seem to be the best build yet. As for AI agression, here's what's happened:

Isabella started the game between Genghis and Shaka, gone by 1000 BC, I don't think she even built a 2nd city.

Hannibal next to Genghis and Shaka, gone by 0 AD.

Oddly, these two are bosom buddies, sharing buddhism.

I'm on an island by myself (now) and decided on a cultural victory (playing Tokugawa). Not the best leader for it, but I thought it setup well with the number of religions I was able to get early and the isolated island. Ragnar had other ideas, he backstabbed me at friendly status landing a 2 galleons of knights on my shores. I can probably fight him off, but at this point it looks like I made a serious miscalculation going for a cultural victory with those other leaders in the game.

All in all it's been the most fun of any Civ game I played. There have been some questionable decisions (not all by me, lol).
1) I don't think that the AI responds to a pillaging stack very well. I sent about 12 units, including 4 longbows into Genghis territory (shaka is between us, I have just one city on that land mass). Instead of attacking it like a city with siege units, he threw units one or two or 3 at a time which I was easily able to fight off.
2) Once this stack was decimated I decided to throw the remainder (about 5 units) at his capitol and declare peace, I actually managed to take it with some lucky dice rolls, but for several turns he had the opportunity to reinforce the city under attack, even just one more unit would have saved the city. He also could have switched to slavery and rushed some defensive units. I should have razed it, but I didn't and he retook it a few turns later...

(All games played on Tectonics map, noble level, small map, 8 civs, normal speed).

I agree with the war motivation observations. In a recent game, everyone dogpiled on the Vikings (who were living alone on their own continent,) and would not quit. Repeated amphibious attacks were made, a couple of cities taken and re-taken by the disparate allies, but Ragnar kept holding on. At one point, I delcared war on him just to gain some diplomatic points (I did nothing for the war -- I focused on a space race win.)

In addition, I shared a continent with the Incans in the same game. Although I was clearly posing a major threat, and had expanded over more territory than they, Huyana built a surprising number of galleons. What for, I've no idea; it made it that much easier to take him down, though. (On the other hand, the map was heavily sea-based, so it wasn't a completely stupid idea to have galleons on hand, especially because Saladin was located on a nearby continent and it seemed that he and Huyana were constantly squabbling with each other.)

I also noticed that the AI doesn't seem to expand using settlers as aggressively as it probably should (although that just may be the fact that I've "outgrown" Noble level play and find it easy to out-expand them now.)

For what it's worth, I have played two games to completion using 1/30 -- one to a space race win (launch around 2006), another to a cultural win (around 1990). In general, the military stacks are balanced (and I note that in the Inca game referenced above, Huyana managed to get Military Tradition before me and successfully used cavalry for defense of cities in lieu of musketmen, forcing me to call off my first attack on him until I got riflemen.)

Oh -- one more comment -- In the culture-win game, I joined in an attack by my ally, Tokugawa, on Korea. Toku had some strong stacks of rifles/cannons (although Wang Kong kept chewing them up,) so I sent in a couple of longbowmen and pikemen on a pillaging mission. I had them all over the place, all the way up to Seoul, pillaging towns and what not. Even though Wang Kon had a ton of Artly and SAM Inf, he didn't venture out to kill my pathetic pillagers! That certainly wasn't a good AI decision....

From looking at the minimap it appears that Mehmed and Isabella are best-buddies. He's basically put nearly his ENTIRE army where he feels the most hostility. I guess he has about 10 cities, so that's only 5 units per city (plus 1-2 normal garrisons) so maybe 7 units per city.

Funny you should mention that. ;) Mehmed and Izzy WERE best-buddies for most of the game. But being that back-stabbing biatch that she is, Izzy eventually DoW'ed him and invaded with a HUGE army. Mehmed had the highest 'power', but she certainly did a number on him. He lost a few cities pretty early on, but eventually took some back when that stack moved out. I guess thats what prompted me to wonder if perhaps that stack would have been better off spread out a bit rather than piled up on the frontier between me and him (given that I was no threat at all...in near last place and constantly embroiled on the other front with the berserk Mongols).

But what I really enjoyed about that was that Izzy back-stabbed someone ELSE for a change. :) And it was interesting that Mehmed was both higher in military, friendly with her, and cruising to the win. He ended up losing to the Mongols (who won on score), almost undoubtedly as a result of Isabella's attack.

But what I really enjoyed about that was that Izzy back-stabbed someone ELSE for a change. :) And it was interesting that Mehmed was both higher in military, friendly with her, and cruising to the win. He ended up losing to the Mongols (who won on score), almost undoubtedly as a result of Isabella's attack.


THE MONGOLS WON? WOW...

Was it Genghis? :crazyeye:

That by itself is an improviment for me..

THE MONGOLS WON? WOW...

Was it Genghis?

Ayup. And this is despite me nuking the snot out of them as quickly as I could build ICBMs. I think I must have fired at least 6-8 at him over the course of our final wars.

I knew I was out of that game fairly early on. The Mongol kept attacking me about every 15-20 turns without fail and that just sapped my strength way too much. I fought the Chinese once or twice and the Germans (who were otherwise friendly) were vassals to the Mongols so I fought them all the time too. Mehmed pretty much kept to himself and exploited the large land area he had been dealt and I thought he was likely to win when Izzy made that attack. She got close to winning on points, but I think she suffered too much in her attack on Mehmed. Still, it was far better odds of her to win that way than simply sitting back and letting Mehmed cruise to victory. ;)

But yep, good ole' Genghis won that game, mostly on land area methinx since his tech was pretty backwards compared to the Chinese and the Ottos. If there had been no time limit, the Chinese were ahead in the Space Race and would have eventually taken the win (assuming nothing unfortunate happened to them).

Ayup. And this is despite me nuking the snot out of them as quickly as I could build ICBMs. I think I must have fired at least 6-8 at him over the course of our final wars.

I knew I was out of that game fairly early on. The Mongol kept attacking me about every 15-20 turns without fail and that just sapped my strength way too much. I fought the Chinese once or twice and the Germans (who were otherwise friendly) were vassals to the Mongols so I fought them all the time too. Mehmed pretty much kept to himself and exploited the large land area he had been dealt and I thought he was likely to win when Izzy made that attack. She got close to winning on points, but I think she suffered too much in her attack on Mehmed. Still, it was far better odds of her to win that way than simply sitting back and letting Mehmed cruise to victory. ;)

But yep, good ole' Genghis won that game, mostly on land area methinx since his tech was pretty backwards compared to the Chinese and the Ottos. If there had been no time limit, the Chinese were ahead in the Space Race and would have eventually taken the win (assuming nothing unfortunate happened to them).

Must have been a hell of a game!

I just met the others AIs in my game, but cant play much heh! Really anxious hehehe.

Playing with the Jan 30th build:

I've found that every game the AI attacks me first and early in the game before I really have a good means to defend myself. The first game it happened I was extremely surprised as I knew I was second in military power. It seems to not matter if I am weak or strong, far away or close, with a religion or without, the strongest AI attacks me first, in the BC era. Possibly the only way for me to prevent this is to build nothing but military units for the first 4000 years.

Anyone else seeing this? I was playing as Ghandhi in all of my games since the 1/30 release.

I just tried a game without using the Better AI mod and the same thing happened again. Perhaps it relates to how I play as Gandhi. The AI just hates me when I'm him. ;)

Yes, I was going to say something like that. To the effect of, "I haven't been experiencing that... maybe it's just you." :)

Wodan

EVERYBODY hates Gandhi!

Not sure why they would intrinsically hate Ghandi . . . For what it's worth, I've been getting attacked right off the bat unless I make Archery a priority and get some defenders out. Otherwise, it's virtually guaranteed that I'll have Axemen on my doorstep before I can say "they have Bronze-working?" Also, certain leaders are virtually guaranteed to get things going early, especially Ragnar, Montezuma, and Genghis. Gettting an early religion and opening up borders with neighbors also seems to help--I think they're slightly less likely to attack if you can get Open Borders early, so Writing is a fairly important tech.

I think the most useful thing the better AI guy can do, other than calling everyone wusses for not going into a pure warmonger stragety :lol: . is to define for himself exactly what he wants the "AI" to do. Win 100% of the time on emperor? Immortal? Warlord?

Might I suggest you start then to employ the tactics of big blue, that of looking a certain number of turns ahead? After all this is very close to a perfect information game. You can define what is known each turn and plot a course to achive maximum victory over the largest # of possible moves.

What is it you want your better AI to do? Provide more of a challange for a human than Immortal? Just make a new diff slider adjustment then... Provide more of a human-like opponet? They still act live civs, not like people playing a game.

Ultimatly you have to decide at what point you are willing to sacrafice the "Civ-ness" of the AI for raw efficiency.(more lateR)

In the ideal world for me, it would be possible to win by space race on Deity, if the AI's spend enough resources fighting and (somehow) you manage to stay out of the crosshairs. I have absolutely no problem at all with tech stagnation caused by large-scale conflicts, it gives builders the chance to leap ahead.


I think the point some of the others are trying to make is that the current AI implementation goes too far in the other direction. Instead of making war cost 'just right' you made war cost 'way too much'. Being on either side of it.

If a single average war means you lose so much tech that you can't catch up and some other civ comes along with upgraded units and crushes you then ALL war is too expensive.

If ALL war is too expensive then the "one true path" becomes a diplomacy/cultural win. All you have succeeded in doing is switching the one true path because you tiled the meter too far in the other direction vis-a-vis war.


That is one of my goals, war should be hell for those waging it and for those it is being waged on. I'll ease up on that for the normal AI setting, but under Aggressive AI, WAR IS HELL.

IMHO if you are trying to prove a historical point there's just no helping you.

The game is decided too early, the rest either being slow stagnation to death or a cruise for victory. There's no balance, no competitive endgame.


IMHO 100% agree. Early game is too important in the entire Civ series. 50-90% of the techs, choices, land, and diplo is pointless, depending on skill level of participants.

You want a real challange Blake? Try making the endgame important.

To me thats the point, if we want the AI to be better it has to do the unexpected.

Although Ghandi etc are meant to be more peaceful and lean towards building / culture. They need to be able to go to war if the opportunity is right.


This is what the random personalities setting should be for.

If ALL war is too expensive then the "one true path" becomes a diplomacy/cultural win. All you have succeeded in doing is switching the one true path because you tiled the meter too far in the other direction vis-a-vis war.

War is still the fastest way to win.

Ultimatly you have to decide at what point you are willing to sacrafice the "Civ-ness" of the AI for raw efficiency.(more lateR)

I don't understand. :blush:
If you meant some simulation of emotions is also a necessity beside effectiveness i agree with that.

EVERYBODY hates Gandhi!

Yes with basepeaceweight of 10 it's very likely that most will :)

A thread here made me think that checking agressive AI should make the AI percieve the human player as a warmonger. If I click nothing, the AI should treat me like our diplo shows, and how the AI would treat my chosen civ leader. However if I click agressive AI, the AI should see me and go "****" I started next to Monty. It shouldn't get the basic diplo penalty as is done now, but it should be aware I can and do backstab, like how it is aware of this for Monty.

Basically in terms of the intended "friendly" MP game, if I click agressive AI, I think it's reasonable for the AI to assume that I will play any leader in a similar diplomatic fasion as Alex or Monty. If this is not picked, I think it would be wrong for the AI to just go "Human player = not trustworthy"

phungus420,

AI doesn't take into account which leader you're playing you're just a human player for them.

A thread here made me think that checking agressive AI should make the AI percieve the human player as a warmonger. If I click nothing, the AI should treat me like our diplo shows, and how the AI would treat my chosen civ leader. However if I click agressive AI, the AI should see me and go "****" I started next to Monty. It shouldn't get the basic diplo penalty as is done now, but it should be aware I can and do backstab, like how it is aware of this for Monty.

Basically in terms of the intended "friendly" MP game, if I click agressive AI, I think it's reasonable for the AI to assume that I will play any leader in a similar diplomatic fasion as Alex or Monty. If this is not picked, I think it would be wrong for the AI to just go "Human player = not trustworthy"
Good analogy and point.

Wodan

edit: Kettyo, I think he was using Monty as an example... saying that he thinks the AI should react the same way WE do when we start next to, say, Monty (or Alex or Tokugawa etc)

In a recent game, I launched an amphibious attack on Brennus in the Industrial age. (Well, I was, he was still in Renaissance...) Anyway, I seized a city on Brennus' west coast with a force of 3 grens, 2 knights, and a trebuchet, then scouted a bit with a caravel and noticed that one city on the other side of the continent was empty save a single galley.

It looked like the AI sent all its defensive units west (which seemed like this is what it did, because he did launch a couple of attacks and managed to pick off one of my knights,) hoping to crush the beachhead. At the same time, it started cranking out catapults from the cities at the far end of the beachhead. This effort was for naught because I was able to overwhelm the enemy thanks to superior firepower and use of naval transport, but in general this was not a bad strategy for the AI to follow. If he'd been up in tech, this would've been more effective. (And FWIW, he did not have a huge army -- Brennus was stagnating because he'd been isolated from all the other civs for most of the game.)

Anyway, good job on teaching the AI how to fight.

It looked like the AI sent all its defensive units west (which seemed like this is what it did, because he did launch a couple of attacks and managed to pick off one of my knights,) hoping to crush the beachhead. At the same time, it started cranking out catapults from the cities at the far end of the beachhead. This effort was for naught because I was able to overwhelm the enemy thanks to superior firepower and use of naval transport, but in general this was not a bad strategy for the AI to follow. If he'd been up in tech, this would've been more effective. (And FWIW, he did not have a huge army -- Brennus was stagnating because he'd been isolated from all the other civs for most of the game.)

Yes, the AI tends to 'panic build' siege weapons rather than defensive weapons when a city is threatened. I think it should build the best city defender it can rather than a catapult or cannon. Chances are, that unit wont even get a chance to attack if the build is in response to a stack moving adjacent. So, it makes more sense IMO to have a unit that will be harder to dislodge.

I also, I agree that the AI currently has some trouble distributing units. I believe some of that is the AI trying to build a SOD. If the AI has 50 units for 5 cities, it currently seems to be 38-40 in one city (border) and then a handful in a few larger cities and then only 1-2 in 'safer' cities. I believe it would be better off redistributing those forces a bit rather than a single mass.

Good analogy and point.

Wodan

edit: Kettyo, I think he was using Monty as an example... saying that he thinks the AI should react the same way WE do when we start next to, say, Monty (or Alex or Tokugawa etc)

OK sorry my fault then.
I agree but i think AI should handle humans as high threat even without the AggAI option ;)

War is still the fastest way to win.

Yes and no. Its a very fine line to tread IMO. Sure, most of the games where I've won I've had to take out a nearby opponent or at least weaken them somewhat. And many of the games I've lost have been because an AI on another continent is able to solidify control early on and just become too big to deal with.

But a large part of that is due to the nature of Civ4 itself. There is very little you can do to impact a rival outside of military conflict. If someone has more/better land than you and you are other otherwise equal, then eventually they'll pull ahead unless you do something about it. But in Civ4, almost the only variable to use IS to attack (either to take land from them or at least to wreck their homeland bring them down that way).

If it becomes exceedingly difficult to attack a neighbor, then eventually the game comes down to who has the best start area. Obviously that is overstating it a bit, but it is the logical endline if conquest becomes TOO hard.

Personally, I think 1/30 strikes a pretty good balance at the moment. It could still use some tweaks to force distribution and whatnot, but the cost of warfare seems pretty appropriate in most cases. Yes, I've seen some 'death spirals', but I've also seen some quick blitzkrieg-style conquests.

2.08 has the AIs too weak and I think the 1/16 build was just the opposite. The AIs were overbuilding units to the exclusion of much else in many case. I still see that occasionally with 1/30 (AIs seem to get caught in some 'keep up with the Joneses' loop), but by and large it seems much better.

Problem in AI considering the human a high threat is that only 95% of the human players are backstabbers who'd sell their grannys for the right price..

I would rather the backstabbers play with Aggressive AI (the warmonger setting) so that those who intend to play more peacefully can do so (by not ticking Aggressive AI) without the AI massing units on the border "because the human is a high threat".


I'm currently playing Hannibal (07-01-30 + handicaps, fractal, large, epic, prince) and had a most unusual start. No, having double-stone + marble with fish + double-clam feeding the city isn't unusual (used to be, but seems marble and stone are very common these days). Settled on plains hill stone (one turn to move) and decided that this capitol is clearly a production powerhouse. In next three or some turns I find London..
I almost never go to early war, but here I had London right beside me. So I teched to BW and found copper in my capitol (would've been out of the fat cross if I hadn't moved settler initially). Some 20 axes later (this is why I rarely go to early wars - the number of axes required is too high compared to expansion by settlers), I had five cities without building a single settler. Also built Stonehenge, Great Wall, Oracle (-> CoL), and Pyramids (high production capitol with marble and stone - almost never build a wonder these days as the AI builds them quite early).
Shaka (who was the third civ on this continent - if this had been a pangaea I might have quit already, but I got continents-type map so I was happy) took the last English city, opportunistic as he is.


I was arguing for the point that the human shouldn't be treated as a backstabber, and here I am: going for the first civ I see.. However, this is unusual for me. Maybe one start out of 20 I go to war with axes, and generally I play some diplomacy to make sure that my target (who isn't usually pleased at all with the diplomacy I've played - some trade embargo and so on penalties) isn't too much liked by my friends. Which means that while I'm not Gandhi, I doubt I'm any more of a warmonger than Mansa is, and certainly nowhere in the always-war-Monty/Ragnar range.


By this time, I settled to consolidate my holdings and tech up. I had some cats from the last stages of English Wars, and some veteran axes (the survivors). No iron, no horses, no ivory - only copper (Shaka had horses, iron, and copper). There were no backlands to settle, the only method of expansion would be war with Shaka. Certainly this game was different from what I usually get: I was given almost no choice in methods of expansion. What I did have was tech lead.
So went and declared on Shaka. Took half his empire (got up to maces and trebs during the war, upgrading my veteran axes as I went), and sued for peace when he got maces. Teched up to grens, and declared again with the intent to get the whole continent in this war.


Shaka has had reasonable defenses for most parts. Mixed stacks, half a dozen defenders per city, small stacks attacking my sod as it marches. His problem is mainly that I have more advanced units, but there's another problem: he's got cats. Lots of them. Where a city has half a dozen defenders, it also has half a dozen cats. And no cat ever has attacked my sod. If they had, even my advanced stack would've been halted - collateral damage kills any tech advantage and any stack when applied in high enough amounts (you can stop an infantry-sod with catapults and finish it off with knights - although sieges in that stack would be a bit harder).

I would say that the AI defenses are right currently - except for the siege units. Either use them or don't build them, but having cats sitting in a city, waiting to be destroyed, is not useful. And I think replacing the cats with city defense units would be wrong, getting those cats out with other active defense units to smash the offensive sod would be the right thing to do. In this case I probably would be only slowed down due to technologically superior army, but if we were at tech parity, it'd be enough to stop the invasion completely. Even without cats, the only thing that kept my sod moving at times was the Medic3 unit..


I also have a huge tech lead over everyone. I don't recall this kind of tech lead on prince before.. Maybe it's because of the map? Monty and Cyrus (with two cities, vassall of Monty) on one continent, Asoka and Tokugawa on another, Catherine and Mansa on yet another. So there certainly hasn't been much techtrading between AIs until Optics. Also getting Pyramids (and thus denying them on some AI) has probably helped.
I was able to delay Liberalism to grab Steam Power with it.. Basically the game has been over for a while - taking half the Zuluan Empire would've given me enough land to win cruise to space. I'm guessing I'll finish off Shaka then decide whether there's any point in continuing the game anymore, but considering Monty decided to declare war (with a caravel, not being able to send out any real units) I'm a bit pissed off and probably will continue just to stomp on him. The reason I'm even thinking about that is that I can run most of my cities with the build governor and thus am not bogged down into too much MM :)

This game feels like at least a level easier than a couple of halfgames I've played with current BetterAI. Maybe early war makes a game easy, maybe wonders made it easy, maybe the map made it easy - too many random issues to say what it was.

I've had some trouble with a mod losing settings (easily restored by setting them again then quicksave -> quickload) - not really important as those aren't gameplay affecting settings but rather interface settings, just annoying as it sometimes happens more than once when playing a single turn. I don't think this is related to BetterAI in any way though, the UI mods have felt flaky most of the time.

I'll attach two saves (one from the beginning and another from when Monty declared war while I'm finishing off Shaka).

I can confirm the problem with siege units not being used to counter-attack a stack outside the city. I've seen this as well. This one change, would I think make conquest for the human player considerably harder, but I don't think it will cause an arms race.

Yep, I think thats the way to go at this point...help the AIs 'fight smarter, not harder'...ie, I dont think they really need hordes more units than they have now, but they need to make better use of them. As indicated above, 'defensive' siege needs to sally out and attack or else its useless. And a huge SOD on the borders probably isnt as beneficial is having slightly more defenses in more areas.

errr... can i have an exact link for downloading this mod? Also, do i need the expansion for it?

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=178407

There are versions for both Warlords and Vanilla Civ4.

A side comment on the siege units: The scorned Charge promotion has become useful in the 01-30 build.

I've found that mounted units with Charge can really chew up those tons of catapults or cannons now found in AI cities. Sure, they're pretty easy to beat anyway, but with Charge, the horsey suffers much less damage in the process. And given that you know each city will have several siege units to take out, it makes more sense than before to use this promotion.

But the big benefit is when the AI gets Machine Guns. These guys are extremely difficult to take out with any gunpowder unit. Yes, if you have enough of your own siege you can use them, but I often run out before I've dealt with the MGs. This is where Cavalry with Charge really shine!

In the game I had with the 1/25 build on a world map, Qin managed to destroy the Koreans and Mongols, make vassals of the Indians, Persians, Arabs and Egyptians and conquer most of Russia. Saladin later broke away after refusing a resource demand but that wasn't the most sensible of decisions and Toku signed on to replace him.

Qin ended up getting half of the UN votes for a diplomatic victory just from him and his vassals. This wasn't quite enough to win but if I hadn't been in as good a position to intervene earlier , he would have.

True, he was falling behind in science. He would have been better off sometimes trying to trade with his vassals instead of blindly gifting them tech.

The point is that Aggression can pay off for an AI in the right position.

So my vote goes for 1/30 being a little too soft.

OK sorry my fault then.
I agree but i think AI should handle humans as high threat even without the AggAI option ;)

I don´t think so. I think it should consider the human player a high threat when he is amassing forces, especially near it´s borders.

Partial Game report:

I've started a game with the 30-1 build.

Aggressive AI, huge fractal map, epic speed, conquest is the only victory condition, emperor level. I'm quite comfortable at playing emperor level as I normally play at higher levels with the unmodded AI.

I was first attacked by Mehmed in 1990 BC, I got peace a few hundred years and many deaths (mostly his) later. Then I got attacked by Mao Zedong around 1300 BC. Again a few hundred years and many deaths later I got peace again. Mao marched on with his left over troops to attack Wang Kon. Then Alexander declared war around 700 BC. I can't get peace with him yet.

Then 385BC, disaster year. Mao asked me to join his war against Wang Kon (yeah, right, as if I didn't have enough on my hands) and then made peace the same year and attacked me the next turn with the stack that was moving through my lands towards Wang Kon. In that same turn (385BC), Hannibal attacked.

So I've been the victim of 5 out of 6 war declarations in my neighbourhood (I know 6 AI's by now). :sad:
Now I'm at war with 3 emperor level opponents, 2 of which are stronger in the power graph. It could become my shortest game yet. :lol: But I'm not giving up yet. But I really need peace.

Next to that, there is no copper in my neighbourhood (say within 15 tiles of my capital, haven't explored any further) and so I've only been able to build axeman since 385BC when I connected an iron mine with my fifth city.

I'm not really complaining about this game. I mean, I did want aggressive AI's but I really hope that they start being aggressive towards oneanother instead of towards me. ;) I'm not that weak in the power graph, there are other targets. Just bad luck, I guess.

One points of concern. Usually, I can barely keep up with the AI expansion rate at emperor level. But this game, I'm the one who's expanding the fastest. The AI should realize that there is a lot of open territory around it on huge maps and it should claim more of it or else it will fall behind later in the game (if I get there ;) ).

Okay, now lets see if I can survive a three front war...:cool:

(continuation from post no 155, just above)

Ok, it's not 425 AD and I still alive :D

I've just been declared war upon for the tenth time, soon I'll lose count ;) Why do they all pick on me? :confused: I'm not the weakest, at least not according to the power graph and there is someone else with a different religion (allthough they don't all know him). I'm actually hoping that the religion of my periodical enemies spreads to my cities, but for some reason all the other religions in the world do spread to my cities but not the state religion of four of my neighbours. I have 3 different religions in my lands and 3 of my 10 cities don't even have a religion. Just bad luck I guess. But I'm not going to switch to another religion than that one or I shall surely be the victim of even more war declarations.

Now, why am I still alive in an emperor level game where the AI seems to think I'm the anti-christ and I need to be destroyed? ;)

The major reason is that they seem to attack with mostly spearmen, some axemen and archers and a few swordsmen. Now, I know, I do have some chariots so a stack of only axemen would not work that well but a stack of 6 spearmen, 2 axemen and 1 swordsman is a bit weird in my opinion. The lack of swordsmen might be related to getting iron relativery recently. But the huge amount of spearmen compared to the axemen is weird.

My guess is that the AI compares the 100% bonus vs mounted to the 50% vs melee and thinks 100% > 50% thus spearmen are better than axemen (apparently the bonus is more important than the 4 vs 5 strength difference). Something simple like that would explain the love for spearmen over axemen. Maybe the code should look at city defenders and realise that mounted troops don't get a defensive bonus and are thus bad city defenders. Therefore spearmen are not needed a lot for city attack duties. The spearmen are clearly chosen as city attackers as they even have the city attack promotion.

The other reason is that while they are building all these units and using them as cannonfodder against my defending city garrison II archers and combat I, shock axemen, I'm also expanding a bit. We're living on a huge world together and there's more than enough space for all of us. But it seems that the AI doesn't realize this and just builds very few settlers compared to the number of units. Now I know, it's the aggressive AI setting, but still some sensible expansion would be good even for the uberaggressive homocidal AI. :D

I'll play some more tomorrow and see how much longer I will survive the onslaught. I already have 2 great generals from defending and the third one is more than halfway.

(continuation from post no 155, just above)

Ok, it's not 425 AD and I still alive :D

I've just been declared war upon for the tenth time, soon I'll lose count ;) Why do they all pick on me? :confused: I'm not the weakest, at least not according to the power graph and there is someone else with a different religion (allthough they don't all know him). I'm actually hoping that the religion of my periodical enemies spreads to my cities, but for some reason all the other religions in the world do spread to my cities but not the state religion of four of my neighbours. I have 3 different religions in my lands and 3 of my 10 cities don't even have a religion. Just bad luck I guess. But I'm not going to switch to another religion than that one or I shall surely be the victim of even more war declarations.

Now, why am I still alive in an emperor level game where the AI seems to think I'm the anti-christ and I need to be destroyed? ;)

The major reason is that they seem to attack with mostly spearmen, some axemen and archers and a few swordsmen. Now, I know, I do have some chariots so a stack of only axemen would not work that well but a stack of 6 spearmen, 2 axemen and 1 swordsman is a bit weird in my opinion. The lack of swordsmen might be related to getting iron relativery recently. But the huge amount of spearmen compared to the axemen is weird.

My guess is that the AI compares the 100% bonus vs mounted to the 50% vs melee and thinks 100% > 50% thus spearmen are better than axemen (apparently the bonus is more important than the 4 vs 5 strength difference). Something simple like that would explain the love for spearmen over axemen. Maybe the code should look at city defenders and realise that mounted troops don't get a defensive bonus and are thus bad city defenders. Therefore spearmen are not needed a lot for city attack duties. The spearmen are clearly chosen as city attackers as they even have the city attack promotion.

The other reason is that while they are building all these units and using them as cannonfodder against my defending city garrison II archers and combat I, shock axemen, I'm also expanding a bit. We're living on a huge world together and there's more than enough space for all of us. But it seems that the AI doesn't realize this and just builds very few settlers compared to the number of units. Now I know, it's the aggressive AI setting, but still some sensible expansion would be good even for the uberaggressive homocidal AI. :D

I'll play some more tomorrow and see how much longer I will survive the onslaught. I already have 2 great generals from defending and the third one is more than halfway.

The next build will have some changes in when AIs build settlers, which should belp this situation.

-Iustus

The next build will have some changes in when AIs build settlers, which should belp this situation.

-Iustus

Ok, that sounds good. I also seemed to notice this behaviour in previous builds so it's probably not something very new. I'm now expanding twice as fast as my opponents (10 cities versus 5 or 4) and I'm hindered in my expansion speed by the constant war and the jungles surrounding my starting position and of course the always limiting city upkeep cost.

And what about the issue of the abudance of AI spearmen in city attack groups? I could send savegames if needed, but it is just a description of general behaviour.

I've just been declared war upon for the tenth time, soon I'll lose count ;) Why do they all pick on me? :confused: I'm not the weakest, at least not according to the power graph and there is someone else with a different religion (allthough they don't all know him).

I've noticed something similar with this build...top tercile in power but a lot of ganging up on me. My guess was that the AI has been bribing other AIs to go to war against me, based on the timing of the declarations. Is that possible in your case? I found I couldn't bribe anyone to join in on my side, so I've modified my "avoid adopting a religion" diplomatic strategy (which coupled with a strong military used to allow me to avoid wars altogether) to one where I try to adopt the religion of a few hopefully stalwart allies. It seems to have worked out better, but I don't have a very large sample size so it could be coincedence.

Darrell

I've noticed something similar with this build...top tercile in power but a lot of ganging up on me. My guess was that the AI has been bribing other AIs to go to war against me, based on the timing of the declarations. Is that possible in your case? I found I couldn't bribe anyone to join in on my side, so I've modified my "avoid adopting a religion" diplomatic strategy (which coupled with a strong military used to allow me to avoid wars altogether) to one where I try to adopt the religion of a few hopefully stalwart allies. It seems to have worked out better, but I don't have a very large sample size so it could be coincedence.

Darrell

Sharing borders is also a pretty prominent factor. If you turn on chipotle, you can see how the AI feels about going to war with each civ, to see if you really are on the top of the list, or if you are just unlucky in the random rolls.

-Iustus

I've noticed something similar with this build...top tercile in power but a lot of ganging up on me. My guess was that the AI has been bribing other AIs to go to war against me, based on the timing of the declarations. Is that possible in your case? I found I couldn't bribe anyone to join in on my side, so I've modified my "avoid adopting a religion" diplomatic strategy (which coupled with a strong military used to allow me to avoid wars altogether) to one where I try to adopt the religion of a few hopefully stalwart allies. It seems to have worked out better, but I don't have a very large sample size so it could be coincedence.

Darrell

Sharing borders is also a pretty prominent factor. If you turn on chipotle, you can see how the AI feels about going to war with each civ, to see if you really are on the top of the list, or if you are just unlucky in the random rolls.

-Iustus

My guess is that it was a combination of factors in my game. Of course the aggressive AI setting caused the AI to declare many wars. I don't know if the betterAI team has already 'fixed' the negative diplomacy modifier of the AI versus the human player at this setting. But if this hasn't changed yet, then that could be part of the cause as well.

The reason that they picked me the most was at first because I was weaker (you start weaker at emperor level than the AI nations who start with some units and some military technologies). Next a religion spread among a number of other civilizations but it hasn't spread to my lands yet. So some of them share a religion and I have no religion. I could pick a different religion, but then they would hate me even more. So they like eachother more. There is one nation with a different religion but most of the AI civilizations don't know him.

Another reason is that I'm positioned at the center of these nations. So I'm bordering all of them. That means that if one of them declares war on me, then I'll be an attractive target for the next.

There's not a lot that I can do about it as long as their religion doesn't spread to my lands, so it feels a bit unfair. But it is actually quite reasonable, except that I've been quite unlucky with the position and the spreading of the religion.

I don't know if I will continue this game now. I've survived their determined attacks and have outexpanded them because the AI expanded too slow in this build. So I'll probably start a new game with the new build. I expect to win the present game because I have more than double the amount of cities of my strongest competitor.

I found I couldn't bribe anyone to join in on my side, so I've modified my "avoid adopting a religion" diplomatic strategy (which coupled with a strong military used to allow me to avoid wars altogether) to one where I try to adopt the religion of a few hopefully stalwart allies. It seems to have worked out better, but I don't have a very large sample size so it could be coincedence.

Darrell

Adopting a religion has ALWAYS been a very important part of diplomacy. In fact I tend to say that going No-State-Religion is a handicap because it makes it so darn hard to get allies in wars.

Just played a little with the last version (fixed war declaration percentage) and it definitely feels too cuddly and peaceful. In the whole game (terra, standard size, monarch) there were only two AI-wars (both times Julius Caesar declared on Ragnar) and I could cruise straight to infantry and tanks.

Perhaps it would have been more interesting with Alexander and Montezuma on the map. But somewhere inbetween, more war willingness but also prevention of very long and costly wars, should be the golden mean.

Just played a little with the last version (fixed war declaration percentage) and it definitely feels too cuddly and peaceful. In the whole game (terra, standard size, monarch) there were only two AI-wars (both times Julius Caesar declared on Ragnar) and I could cruise straight to infantry and tanks.

Perhaps it would have been more interesting with Alexander and Montezuma on the map. But somewhere inbetween, more war willingness but also prevention of very long and costly wars, should be the golden mean.

Maybe it's time to switch on to aggressive AI?

I've got Aggressive AI turned on, and have had several wars begun between AIs. None against me, but that's probably lack of relations (until recently only Hatty has been in contact and we're the same religion) as much as anything.

Wodan

Continuing a 4 human 4 AI game with the 12/2/07 build.
Each human has 1 AI as a ally, always war.

We all noted that our AI partners did not seem to be taking any aggressive action now. They are doing O.K. at defence though. I saw my ally take out a pillaging stack of 6 units that another human sent against him.

However, I marched a stack of units up to a AI (Korean) city that had 16 Hwacha's, 2 trebs and several other units in it just to see what would happen.
I got attacked by 1 Hwacha.
(my attack was halted by the AI's human ally who had seen me coming and next go arrived with lots of catapults and other units, so I ran away)

New version is definitely too "cuddly". Getting a declaration of war from the AI almost takes undefended cities, an overflowing treasury, and a neon flashing "attack me I've got free loot" sign.

The dramatically reduced chance of having war declared is going to make the game far less challenging. At first I was worried about defending against attacks from my neighbors; after I figured out that nobody was declaring war on anybody under any circumstances, I forgot about them and just focused on building my cities.

If the best strategy for human players often involves taking out or reducing a neighbor early in the game, then the AI should seriously consider that, even without the "Aggressive AI" settings. Warmongerers in particular shouldn't be trying to play builder; they're no good at it, they just get out-cultured and out-built. In my current game, even Ragnar hasn't even thought about attacking anyone--there's no way he's going to out-build and out-tech the others without stealing some of their cities first. I think the warmongering settings need some serious adjustment at the moment--not quite as high as when they were bugged, but much, much higher than what they are now.

It depends on how the game shakes out. In my first 2 games, there wasnt much war, but the AI were still competitive all the way up. They attacked me a few times and each other once or twice.

In my third game, there were quite a few wars. The religions were more split than the previous two and that lead to a handful of wars. Alexander stomped on and vassaled two opponents and we eventually had a 'world war' between me and Vicky against Alex, his two lap-dogs, and Peter. Only one nation wasnt involved in that war and he was isolated on another continent.

Perhaps the chances could increase a tad IMO, but its not really necessary for the standard setting. The game isnt supposed to be centered on warfare. I know a lot of players are happy if they can go a whole game without being in a war. I'm somewhere in the middle. I prefer for diplomacy to be viable, but I like having a potential threat to deal with. Having to plan for war exclusively game after game wasnt as much of Civilization IMO.

I think the BetterAI standard should not deviate too far from the norm as far as wars are concerned (thats what Aggressive AI is for, particularly now that its not going to include the 'kill the human' penalties).

The 2/12 build is more peaceful than the 1/24 build.

In my current game (Pangea, Large, Marathon, 18 civs, Aggressive civs) here are the wars declared by an AI civ:
350 BC Wang Kong vs Alex
80 BC Rangnar vs Wang Kon
40 BC Kublai Khan vs Brennus
01 Isabella vs Brennus
100 AD Montezuma vs Isabella
140 AD Napoleon vs Washington
(which is where I stopped playing)
Oh, and everyone (except Monty and Brennus) are Jewish.

I kind of liked the fireworks of 1/24, but 2/12 is probably more realistic.
But I think the AI civs are putting together weaker stacks and throwing them suicidally against entrenched defenders behind walls when such weak stacks would do better by pillaging.

Three more games (2 with 2-3 players each though) and the AIs were all pretty non-warlike.

Many also seem to be a little light on the troops again. Is it possible another bug was introduced somewhere? Most of the time they have adequate garrisons in most cities (about 4+ units) but I'm not seeing any form of a 'field army' or reaction stack anywhere. So when they get attacked they are generally pretty passive (nothing to hit back or force the invaders out).

That is not without exception of course. If the AIs are the aggressor, they do tend to have some nicely mixed large armies.

My gut feeling is that somewhere between the January builds and what we have now is probably a good starting place. The January builds were extremely warlike and felt like Aggressive AI was always checked but the latest build is probably a little bit too peaceful overall. There are still wars, but AIs dont seem like they are competing for space or resources anymore.

Current game: Pangea / Prince / Normal / 7

I'm Isabella versus Ragnar / Monty / Alexander / Hannibal / Wang Kon / Gandhi

Starting positions had me more or less in the middle with Hannibal to my right, Monty to my left, Alex above me, Ragnar above Hannibal, Wang above Alex and Gandhi above Monty.

Warfare has been more or less continuous once the land was all settled (big surprise with Ragnar, Monty and Alex). Needless to say, this was not the type of game that suited Gandhi, and he didn't last long (Ragnar, Monty and Alex all carving out their bits).

My strategy was to appease Alex and take out Monty (it didn't help that Monty first declared war on me around 3000BC with a lone warrior as his killer stack). We had different religions so I knew he'd be impossible to reason with; after 3 wars (one bite at a time), I was finally able to vassilize him.

When I was in the midst of this, Ragnar dogpiled me (at this time he had both Hannibal and Wang as vassals, although Hannibal later broke away), and I was in a world of hurt because both Ragnar and Hannibal had a huge tech lead on me and comparable sized armies(eg they had Artillery and I was still at Rifling / Cannons). Fortunately for me, I was able to bribe Alex with Military Tradition to declare war on Ragnar. He very obligingly did, so Ragnar and minions turned their attention to Alex and made peace with me a few turns later. This saved my bacon, but it was an incredibly dumb move on Alex's part (any human player would have realized that the risk was not worth the reward).

It's now 1950 and after a long chase I have finally (more or less) caught up to both Ragnar and Hannibal in tech and am now chewing on Hannibal (who for some reason is still fighting Alex although he's losing the war back home).

Random observations (not just from the current game):
1) the AIs still love SAMs and Artillery relative to Tanks, Infantry and Marines.
2) the AIs seem indifferent to Flight (because it can be ignored for Space Race ???) which means they are slow to get Aircraft and Gunships so there is a period where you can have a tank-heavy, SAM-light force and do serious damage without the AI having an effective response.

My previous game had much less warfare, so I suspect that the amount will vary based on the particular leaders that are in any given game.

2) the AIs seem indifferent to Flight (because it can be ignored for Space Race ???) which means they are slow to get Aircraft and Gunships so there is a period where you can have a tank-heavy, SAM-light force and do serious damage without the AI having an effective response.

I noticed this too. It's good for me, because I rarely go for Rocketry, unless I'm trying to win Space Race. I like to get Radio for Eiffel Tower, but now add Flight (used to skip it) because 7-8 Bombers can be very effective against an AI without Flight. I build the Bombers in cities that don't produce extra promotions (i.e., no Military Instructors), since they aren't as useful producing less-than-crack troops.

Also noticed: A lack of robust response to invasion. For example, in the game I'm playing now, I've declared on Monty twice. The first time, I expected a wave of Horse Archers or something in response. Nothing. The second time, I expected nothing and got it. A few Knights showed up around the newly captured cities, but I dispatched them easily with Cannons and Grenadiers. Yes, I had a big tech lead on Monty, but in the old days, I still would have expected a big response from him. Now he just sits there and takes it.

Also noticed: A lack of robust response to invasion. For example, in the game I'm playing now, I've declared on Monty twice. The first time, I expected a wave of Horse Archers or something in response. Nothing. The second time, I expected nothing and got it. A few Knights showed up around the newly captured cities, but I dispatched them easily with Cannons and Grenadiers. Yes, I had a big tech lead on Monty, but in the old days, I still would have expected a big response from him. Now he just sits there and takes it.

Yeah, this is what I meant by a lack of a 'field army'. They have fairly decent garrisons in each city for peacetime, but there is no reaction to being attacked. If they arent the aggressor, there is little response at all.

Just had a very enjoyable game (Prince / Fractal / Quick / BetterAI handicaps). I chose Louis and went for a cultural victory. I missed Hinduism and Buddhism but got Judaism. Luckily, none of the AI opponents on my continent had any religion, so I spread it everywhere. I lightbulbed Theocracy from a spare Great Prophet and spread that all over too. I was at 100% spending the whole game and never went into deficit. Cruised to a culture victory in 1926, with only one opponent even having started the space race.

There were exactly 2 wars the entire game. I bribed Brennus to attack Hannibal. I was *way* ahead of Brennus in tech, and I just took the opportunity when I noticed he'd go to war for 5 techs. Seemed like a dumb decision for him at the time -- I just wanted to keep the 2 AI players distracted with war for a while -- but he ended up not getting wiped out by Hannibal (as I'd expected) and ended up ahead of me in score for a while. I never went to war myself. The other war was between the bottom 2 scorers HC and Roosevelt, and nothing really came of it.

So I'd agree with the other observations that the 2/12 build seems a bit light on AI war. On the other hand, our continent was all matched on religion. Also later in the game (after I'd gone Free Religion) Brennus went annoyed at me and I got the sense he was gearing up for war. There was a huge stack (10-12 cavalry and 7+ cannons) in a city right on my border. I immediately upped my defense and offered a few freebies to him, and he never declared, which was fine with me.

All in all, a very enjoyable game, and the lack of warfare on my part meant I finished in just over 5 hours.

Thanks once again to the Better AI team for a great experience!

Same experience with lack of war.

There where rare wars, usually for obvious reasons. Most of the world's wars where instigated by me.

This makes me want an "aggression" meter I can play with.

As a second note, when fighting wars, the AI wasn't being very aggressive with me. I had a smaller military, and they declared war -- yet they only sent one or two probes into my territory.

In my game there is no lack of wars even though I'm on a continent where everyone has the same religion. You'd expect peace, but after the best settlement spots were taken, one AI went to war with another allthough the relations were very good. It was just that one was stronger than the other. And then the strongest AI on my island joined in and the weakest AI is now being taken apart.

But I use the aggressive AI setting and that changes a lot. You shouldn't complain about lack of AI aggressiveness when you don't try the aggressive AI setting. If you want aggressive AI's, then just use the aggressive AI setting. Now if you're using the aggressive AI setting and still don't see any wars, then something is wrong and the aggressiveness of the AI needs to be increased. But in my game, I don't see the lack of AI aggressiveness. It is of course not as aggressive as in the previous build when I got 12 AI war declarations on my own nation alone before the AD years. But for me that was a bit over the top, even for aggressive AI.

I was wondering something related to the aggressiveness issue. Is the chance of war declaration at a certain turn in any way related to the game speed setting? Because, if it isn't then you'll see more wars at the lower game speeds where there are more game turns.

I've been playing the 02-12 build at Prince without the Aggressive AI option and it's become somewhat of a snooze for me. I went up to Monarch, but couldn't get my game to click. If I kept up in tech, I fell behind in military and got stomped.

So I went to Prince with the Aggressive AI option. This is more challenging, but I think still winnable. I've had see-saw battles with multiple AIs, though I think I'm prevailing. The dog-pile wars against me are the worst, but accepting that I might lose a couple low-value cities while I wipe out the invaders has helped me stay calm. :)

In short, the Aggressive AI option does make quite a difference.

Yes, I've tried a few on Aggressive now and there certainly are a lot more wars. I'm not sure a lot of them made sense though (attacking me when I had a clear power advantage and simply defeated their army and then took/razed a few of their cities).

I've also seen quite a few AI wars that again didnt amount to too terribly much. Both side wrecked each other's econs with pillaging and the occasional city changing hands and were quickly out of contention.

To me, there is certainly area for a middle ground. On one hand, the non-Aggressive AI feels really passive most of the time. There are occasional wars, but by and large it doesnt seem like the AIs are actually making any attempts to better their positions.

On the other hand, the Aggressive AI often feels like its being 'aggressive' just to do. It often seemed like the wars were just to fulfill the 'aggressive tag' rather than as part of an actual attempt to conquer a neighbor or aquire a needed resource or eliminate a rival.

Personally, I thought the level of conflict felt better before the huge aggression kick that started in the early January builds. The arms races weren't preferable, but the number of wars felt correct. The 1/24ish build that introduced the DoW bug went way too far IMO, but the 2/12 build feels too passive. Perhaps in attempting to curb the unit spamming and to mitigate some of the bug-induced banzais the AIs have been throttled back a little too far.

I tried the 2/12 version in occ with custom handicaps, I was gandhi and hatesput,Augustus, Tokugawa, Bismarck, Wang kong, Ragnar as oppenents in pangea agressive Ai on. Ragnar collected a huge SOD of axes,spears,swords and some archers and had them sit in his capital for a long time and finally built one other city. He was very low technolgy most propably due to the huge amount of unit upkeep and lack of cities. Augustus on the other hand had a big Sod of preatorians , axes in one of his border cities with me. He was also trailing a bit in technology and however he built some cities which helped him research . I was Hindu and spread it to Hatty, Bismarck and Augustus and Tokugawa. Wang was Jewish and Ragnar buddhist . Inspite of all this there were no war declarations, till I started bribing Ai's into war. However Ai , Ai war was eventful with big Sod's marching around and no peace for a long time.

Yes, I get the impression that there are enough wars with 2/12 and aggressive AI. But the reason why many of them were pointless might have been that some civs just didn't build the units to back them up.

I think that when we had the always war bug, the unit spamming had been over-corrected. Yes the 1/25 was over the top. I'm my OCC game using that build, Augustus sent his SOD of 67 units against me. I lost and reloaded which still turned out close. Praetorians are overpowered even against rifleman.

Now that the AI can keep up economically, it should be able to build more units without hurting itself too much. I'm experimenting with using a unit cost limit of 10% of science plus income minus expenses, rather than 20% of expenses.

For my last few games I've been playing on a Large map (with the recommended 9 AIs) rather than the Standard with 7. And so far, I've seen a LOT more conflict in 3 games. Part of it I attribute to having the religions more scattered, but even there I've been at war with same-religion AIs at least three times in 2 games.

Its interesting to see the greatly increased wars with no other settings changes.

For my last few games I've been playing on a Large map (with the recommended 9 AIs) rather than the Standard with 7. And so far, I've seen a LOT more conflict in 3 games. Part of it I attribute to having the religions more scattered, but even there I've been at war with same-religion AIs at least three times in 2 games.

Its interesting to see the greatly increased wars with no other settings changes.

Of course, more civilizations means more conflict as there are more civlizations that can start a war and more difference in religions. If one civilization starts a war, then that can lead to dogpiles and more hatred against the starter of the war. All of that leads to even more conflict.

I always play on huge maps with aggressive AI. At any given moment in the game, there is a place in the world with war, just like in our world. In the game, that is a good thing, in reality not so... :(

Note that three games of course is only a very small set and in your case it could be largely a coincidence. But on the other hand, there are good reasons for more wars on the larger maps.

G'day there. I'm new to this forum but have been following Blakes work for sometime. I'm a fanatic of Jdog5000 the creator of the Revolutions Mod. I've been following this thread because I believe Blake's work and Jdog's are the best thing that has happened to CIVIV and now there is a merge between the two.

Jdog has created a test build of Revolutions 0.81aw and Better AI 24/2. He officially retired from working on the Revolutions Mod arfter the 0.81aw build proved stable and balanced. However he came out one last time to produce this test build after we convinced him. A couple of us Revolutions fanatics have tested the build and it's fine.

Could I suggest you people who love Better AI give the Revolutions Mod a try? Some of you have noticed that the better AI is less aggressive latest build. If you try Revolutions, you might get more of the balance between conflict and nation building you are after. The dynamics of Jdog's revolutions are just great including leaders being overthrown, cities rebelling and uprising, civil war, religious conflict etc etc. All this and more without even going to war on anyone else!

You have to get used to playing the Revolutions mod. It adds an extra level of complexity to the game. Hogging all six religions is probably not a good idea because your own citizens will fight each other. You have to be very careful about when you introduce labour reforms. You have to constantly be aware of cities whose citizens appear happy on the surface, but which contains an underground rebellious movement. Wars and diplomatic relations are more complex because now if you get bogged down in war, your own citizens might attempt to overthrow you in the middle of it. If you have got the cash you can pay them off or meet the various other demands they may make upon you.

Don't ride the mod off because you are finding it too hard. It's not. The essential game play of Warlords is unaltered. It's just a little more complex and dynamic. A lot of beginners get discouraged because their society keeps collapsing from within. Preventing and/or managing revolution takes practice. I and others believe it's what Warlords has always needed. It's awesome to see a huge empire collapse in the late game due to vassals breaking away, trade problems just generally dying from within. The power vacuum created is a lot of fun.

With the Better AI now implemented, I think the Revolutions mod is even better. The balance hasn't changed but the improvement in the AI is much appreciated. The Autoplay component in Revolutions is now more useable with the more capable AI which is good for fast forwarding a game x-turns or during those times when you are overthrown.

Installation procedure is to download and install the official release of Revolutions 0.81aw:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=171127

Then replace the CivGameCoreDLL with the download of the Better AI and Revolutions merge CivGameCoreDLL:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/38534/betterAIRevolution.zip

If you want to follow the latest on how the build is going go to this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=171127&page=51

The release is not yet official and hasn't been included in the database. However I can't see why it shouldn't be once confidence rises from 95% to 100%.

Maybes:
Agg AI's will dogpile more and generally be opportunistic swine, while norm AI's will have some sympathy for the dogpile victim (maybe try to equalize things).


I think I like this, because there should be the element of balance of power in the game. Like in Europe no country could be too overpower because other countries will combine and dogpile that powerful nation.

I think I like this, because there should be the element of balance of power in the game. Like in Europe no country could be too overpower because other countries will combine and dogpile that powerful nation.

I think this is meant in different way. I guess that Blake wants the AI civilizations to dogpile the one that is trouble already. So when a nation is already at war with 2 nations then other nations will join to get their share of the territory.

Infantry has a point. If the computer is seeking to win the game, smaller nations are not a danger. The big bad nation is a danger. Ganging up on the nation that is too powerful seems like a good idea.

At the same time, dogpiling a weak nation makes lots of sense, because you get some of the spoils. The problem is when you are dogpiling along with a large nation: the large nation gains a larger share of the spoils, and gets even larger.

Infantry has a point. If the computer is seeking to win the game, smaller nations are not a danger. The big bad nation is a danger. Ganging up on the nation that is too powerful seems like a good idea.

At the same time, dogpiling a weak nation makes lots of sense, because you get some of the spoils. The problem is when you are dogpiling along with a large nation: the large nation gains a larger share of the spoils, and gets even larger.

Oh surely he has a point. It can be a good tactic to stop the strongest nation from becoming stronger. I just don't think that Blake was planning to program that. I think he was talking about dogpiling the weak nation (which as you say can also be a good tactic). The section of text 'and generally be opportunistic swine' seems to indicate that line of thought.

There has been some discussion about whether the AI should be aware of the victory conditions in a sense that it should stop other nations from acquiring victory. There is a group that says that the AI should not attack allies or good friends just because they're about to win and there is a group that says that the AI should stop even its allies and good friends from winning the game. I personally say that the AI should try to mimic a real life civilization instead of playing a game. So it should view a victory of an ally as a partial victory of its own civilization and not something that must be prevented. It should stil try to win itself and try to prevent enemies from winning but it should not go to war with an ally just because that ally is about to win a spacerace or cultural victory.

(Of course, if the good friend is very weak militarily and the aggressive AI option is checked at the start of the game, then the AI should sometimes attack its weak friend. Especially the more militaristic civilizations should do this.)

Two more games on the Large map with all other of my settings the same as before. And again, in both games there were a LOT more wars (and this is with no Aggressive AI setting). I am in the 1500s and I've been in just about constant warfare with at least one other AI for almost the last 1000 years.

The difference between the Standard and Large map is just night and day for the amount of wars being declared. I really wouldnt want to see more that what I'm seeing now (on Large). On the Standard, it did feel awfully peaceful though.

Just toss in a slowly growing diplomatic penalty for "You are getting too strong!" (domination), "your cultural imperialism is getting tiresome" (cultural), "you are abandoning the world, and not taking us along!" (space race), "You destroyed entire civilizations!" (elimination), "The End Times Approach!" (time), "We Fear A World Government" (diplomatic)

... ok, "The End Times Approach" is a bit silly. But so is the time victory condition. :)

It would be a rather fun option -- as the game approaches the end of the time limit, civilizations start getting more and more violent with each other. In the end, civilizations let loose with their nuclear arsinals, trying desperately to claim more of the world before it all closes up shop!

:)

The difference between the Standard and Large map is just night and day for the amount of wars being declared. I really wouldnt want to see more that what I'm seeing now (on Large). On the Standard, it did feel awfully peaceful though.

It might be a coincidence. My last game was on a Large Fractal map (which turned out to be one single continent) with all standard settings and the orginal handicap file, on Monarch.

The game was quite peaceful with only two wars througout the entire game that was not declared or bribed by me, and one of those two was declared 10 turns before game end.

There were lots of different religions and close borders, but still not much fighting.

It was a great game though, with me winning a space race victory one turn before Hatti would have von a cultural victory. :)

Just toss in a slowly growing diplomatic penalty for "You are getting too strong!" (domination), "your cultural imperialism is getting tiresome" (cultural), "you are abandoning the world, and not taking us along!" (space race), "You destroyed entire civilizations!" (elimination), "The End Times Approach!" (time), "We Fear A World Government" (diplomatic)

... ok, "The End Times Approach" is a bit silly. But so is the time victory condition. :)

It would be a rather fun option -- as the game approaches the end of the time limit, civilizations start getting more and more violent with each other. In the end, civilizations let loose with their nuclear arsinals, trying desperately to claim more of the world before it all closes up shop!

:)
While this really did make me laugh, it also seems like a very good idea. I love the idea of the AIs going crazy as the turns start to run out -- I'd even turn the time victory back on just for that. It's a good idea for the rest of them as well, but the "End Times" is just too good to pass up.

Even more fun, you could occasionally have civs go into "End Times" mode at the wrong time -- it's happened before. Maybe give each civ its starting date, which is heavily weighted to the end of the game.

Was it civ 2 that had everyone declaring war on you if it looked like you were going to win? That was tiresome to say the least, lots of people who stood no chance delaring war on you and making the turns take forever.

How about any civs that think they have no chance of winning (ie. not going for space race or cultural victory) delaring war on thier weakest neighbour as they get around the industrial age onwards, giving them a chance of having an expanded empire to either catch up in tech or achieve a domination victory.

I had the same problem with ASSoka, even without the Better AI mod. In my experience, Asoka is a coward who will only backstab after he has run away with the tech lead and thus is able to produce more advanced units than anyone else.

Maybe I missed something, but isn't "war at pleased" and "backstab" the same thing? Or does 'backstab' count for attacking at "cautious" too?