I'm starting this thread to get input on what are perceived as the areas the AI most needs changes in, and specifics for how it might alter its decision making. All suggestions (and observations about current behaviour) are welcome, but the more specific the easier they will be to address.

Here are a few I have recently addressed or plan to address soon:

1) Ship spam whereby the AI winds up with more or less a ship in every owned water tile that then just sit there - should have been addressed in the latest DLL

2) Stack dither during city attack whereby the AI creates large attack stacks, but then just sits there on the out-skirts of the target city without making a concerted effort to conquer it even, though the stack is clearly (to a human) sufficient to do so. I plan to deal with this one next week.

3) Poor civic choice in respect of empire stability visa vi REV. As an example when I turned over a position from my game to the AI, it rapidly lost most of my empire due to choosing civics that gave it far too much instability.

4) Bad timing on war declaration/revolution. This one might be controversial - I noticed that the AI tends to declare war and change to war civics in the same turn, thereby starting the war with several turns of anarchy when it cannot produce anything. It seems to me that it should get the revolution over with and THEN declare the war, but I guess lost production just before is arguably as bad - what do people think is the correct balance here?

I'm starting this thread to get input on what are perceived as the areas the AI most needs changes in, and specifics for how it might alter its decision making. All suggestions (and observations about current behaviour) are welcome, but the more specific the easier they will be to address.

Here are a few I have recently addressed or plan to address soon:

1) Ship spam whereby the AI winds up with more or less a ship in every owned water tile that then just sit there - should have been addressed in the latest DLL

2) Stack dither during city attack whereby the AI creates large attack stacks, but then just sits there on the out-skirts of the target city without making a concerted effort to conquer it even, though the stack is clearly (to a human) sufficient to do so. I plan to deal with this one next week.

3) Poor civic choice in respect of empire stability visa vi REV. As an example when I turned over a position from my game to the AI, it rapidly lost most of my empire due to choosing civics that gave it far too much instability.

4) Bad timing on war declaration/revolution. This one might be controversial - I noticed that the AI tends to declare war and change to war civics in the same turn, thereby starting the war with several turns of anarchy when it cannot produce anything. It seems to me that it should get the revolution over with and THEN declare the war, but I guess lost production just before is arguably as bad - what do people think is the correct balance here?

I think that if an AI or Player suddenly goes from a "anti-war" type Civic setup to one geared towards war, the other AIs should take notice. Especially those bordering that Civ and moreso if there are negative relations. I don't think I'm good enough of a player to really know if the best civic strategy is to change first, build up, then declare war (especially if the above were implemented), or my current style of building up with my current civics, go to war, then change only if my war weariness goes out of control.

I saw #2 in action both with Neands and with a current game where the Greeks declared war, sent in a stack, then sat at some random location in my borders until a straggling single unit of his caught up, then started to take action. I had already converged units by then and effectively weakened him.

City placement for the AI may need to be looked at. With all the new buildings and goods in C2C, having a city by the ocean or river, or both really adds a lot to what you can build.

AI City placement definitely, not only try for coast but also not ON a resource they can see...
Several times I see AI set cities one plot away from coast, even to the point where it's a riverside ocean plot. More than several times I see AI cities on a resource they wanted, have even seen them set those cities. This does gimp said city quite a bit.

On that note maybe Barb Cities placements should be looked over if they are supposed to turn into a nation further along.

Cheers

AI City placement definitely, not only try for coast but also not ON a resource they can see...
Several times I see AI set cities one plot away from coast, even to the point where it's a riverside ocean plot. More than several times I see AI cities on a resource they wanted, have even seen them set those cities. This does gimp said city quite a bit.

On that note maybe Barb Cities placements should be looked over if they are supposed to turn into a nation further along.

Cheers

Screw barbs ;-) I'll look at general AI placement though.

AI City placement definitely, not only try for coast but also not ON a resource they can see...
Several times I see AI set cities one plot away from coast, even to the point where it's a riverside ocean plot. More than several times I see AI cities on a resource they wanted, have even seen them set those cities. This does gimp said city quite a bit.

Cheers

That is a generally a good policy to follow, but there ARE 2 important advantages to placing ON a resource, which sometimes necessitates it:

1) The city instantly gets access to that resource. No need to build a tile improvement on it and then a road to the tile.

2) It can never be pillaged or otherwise a unit placed on it to block the resource.

So if you just need that resource NOW (to say start making certain military units) then it can be an option. In most cases though, I agree with you.

Most I've seen placed cities on top of are Stone, Ivory, Pig, Hemp, Prime Timber, Iron, and Horse. Well, the ones I can tick of from the top of my head at least. Two of those are like you say Eldrin, Iron and Horse. The rest aren't, and I've even seen a city on a stone making it miss a cow for the BFC (would have gotten it in 3 rings but that's so far off that it's usually not a good idea to even contemplate that). One plot up would have given the cow, a banana and the stone in the BFC, placing on the stone still got the banana but, like stated, missed the cow as well as the hammers from the Stone (being a coastal city with 1 hill).

*chuckle* Well, could "quote" scenarios all day long. Suffice to say I agree that some times it can be worth it, even going as far as adding another example of it being worth setting on a resource:

3) When getting 2 or more other resources within the BFC when setting city on a resource where setting beside it in any direction would have limited that amount to 1 or even 0.

Cheers.

Also is there a way for the AI to recognize 1-tile landbridges so it can take this into account when building a city?

Also is there a way for the AI to recognize 1-tile landbridges so it can take this into account when building a city?

Yes, it is my intent to do a strategic analysis (I have a plan for how to do it) which will pick up that sort of thing

Yes, it is my intent to do a strategic analysis (I have a plan for how to do it) which will pick up that sort of thingNice! I'd like to see that code :)

Also dont forget small canals that they can bridge with naval transport units in the early game, and natural chokepoints on the map. I guess the code should be similar.

AI City placement definitely, not only try for coast but also not ON a resource they can see...
Several times I see AI set cities one plot away from coast, even to the point where it's a riverside ocean plot. More than several times I see AI cities on a resource they wanted, have even seen them set those cities. This does gimp said city quite a bit.

On that note maybe Barb Cities placements should be looked over if they are supposed to turn into a nation further along.

Cheers

Yeah the AI is weird in placement, for instance placing a city on a river and coast should be the best spot, however i frequently see them placing their cities not only one off from the river but one off from the coast too. Makes me want to raze their city and place a new city in a better spot.

Fixed the tendency the AI has to march large stacks up to cities then not really try to capture them and just 'hang around'.

Turned out this (at least the case of it I had in my game - if anyone has other cases post save games) was a long-standing (probably original BTS) bug, that surfaces when a stack is lead by a non-direct-attack unit (usually an early seige wepaon unit of some sort such as a battering ram). The way the AI operates, a stack's actions and decision making is based on that of its head unit (which should take the rest of the stack into account). In this case when it evaluated whether it could attack the city (having already moved next to it and having massively superior force) it decided it couldn't because the head unit was defend-only! This was because the routine in question was erroniously using the unit canMoveInto() call intead of the stack one (which checks if ANY units can).

Fix will be in the patch thread later today.

Fixed the tendency the AI has to march large stacks up to cities then not really try to capture them and just 'hang around'.

Turned out this (at least the case of it I had in my game - if anyone has other cases post save games) was a long-standing (probably original BTS) bug, that surfaces when a stack is lead by a non-direct-attack unit (usually an early siege weapon unit of some sort such as a battering ram). The way the AI operates, a stack's actions and decision making is based on that of its head unit (which should take the rest of the stack into account). In this case when it evaluated whether it could attack the city (having already moved next to it and having massively superior force) it decided it couldn't because the head unit was defend-only! This was because the routine in question was erroneously using the unit canMoveInto() call instead of the stack one (which checks if ANY units can).

Fix will be in the patch thread later today.

Now THIS fix is very badly needed, glad to see it was on your list, i didnt understand why they ALWAYs did this, thx for the info.

Now THIS fix is very badly needed, glad to see it was on your list, i didnt understand why they ALWAYs did this, thx for the info.

I agree.

However I also encounter some civs bringing out all their forces from their cities and leaving them with like 1 or 2 units. Whats even stranger is they are bringing city guard units with them.

Is there some way to tell the AI that they should keep units with the promotion of Riot Control (1-5) that the unit should stay in the city?

I agree.

However I also encounter some civs bringing out all their forces from their cities and leaving them with like 1 or 2 units. Whats even stranger is they are bringing city guard units with them.

Is there some way to tell the AI that they should keep units with the promotion of Riot Control (1-5) that the unit should stay in the city?

By and large the Guard-type units should be camped in the cities, but there could be some situational cases where moving one or two out makes sense; maybe to defend a nearby resource or choke point. With an attacking stack, the Guard unit may be there to protect a city once it is conquered.

Are we talking about the Town Watchman/Guard/City Guard line? Because if we are, I was thinking of dropping them from my mods because
1. they are bright pink
2. they don't get the city defense promotions.

By and large the Guard-type units should be camped in the cities, but there could be some situational cases where moving one or two out makes sense; maybe to defend a nearby resource or choke point. With an attacking stack, the Guard unit may be there to protect a city once it is conquered.

In general i find them just standing outside their city doing nothing. Not at any particular spot either, not at a choke point or even a good defensive terrain type such as hills or forest.

Are we talking about the Town Watchman/Guard/City Guard line? Because if we are, I was thinking of dropping them from my mods because
1. they are bright pink
2. they don't get the city defense promotions.

Yes i am talking about them.

1. Mine are not bright pink. However i recall back in the old days they use to be.

2. The they get a new promotion called "Riot Control"

Riot Control I = 10% Less Likely To Revolt
Riot Control II = 20% Less Likely To Revolt
Riot Control III = 30% Less Likely To Revolt
Riot Control IV = 40% Less Likely To Revolt
Riot Control V = 50% Less Likely To Revolt

Town Watchen = Riot Control I
Guard = Riot Control II
City Guard = Riot Control III
Police Squad = Riot Control V

I would like to add a Sheriff in between City Guard and Police Squad with Riot Control IV.

After that I would like to have things like a Police Car or Swat Team or even a Terminator-like Police Robot too for later eras. Note they would have Riot Control V plus Urban Tactics.

In short please don't drop them. Or at the very least merge them into the core if you don't want them in your mods.

In general i find them just standing outside their city doing nothing. Not at any particular spot either, not at a choke point or even a good defensive terrain type such as hills or forest.

If you le me have a save game with them doing this I'll find out why. In general thou I would say it's not unexpected that they not be in the city provided some are. It arrays it's defenders about half in the city and half on decent defensive terrain (or guarding workers) close by. Seeing one standing alone on poor defensive terrain is unusual though, especially if it doesn't also have bunch in the city. What it does not do (currently) is distinguish between defender types when deciding which to station actually into city and which nearby (clearly that could be improved)

If you le me have a save game with them doing this I'll find out why. In general thou I would say it's not unexpected that they not be in the city provided some are. It arrays it's defenders about half in the city and half on decent defensive terrain (or guarding workers) close by. Seeing one standing alone on poor defensive terrain is unusual though, especially if it doesn't also have bunch in the city. What it does not do (currently) is distinguish between defender types when deciding which to station actually into city and which nearby (clearly that could be improved)

Here is the file and a screenshot. Seems like for most of the game the Dutch make stacks of doom and leave their cities mostly empty. In their stacks are mostly city watchmen.

Red Circles = SOD
Red Squares = Cities with little guards.

Note they usually stand their and do nothing or sometimes go back and forth between 2 tiles.

In general i find them just standing outside their city doing nothing. Not at any particular spot either, not at a choke point or even a good defensive terrain type such as hills or forest.



Yes i am talking about them.

1. Mine are not bright pink. However i recall back in the old days they use to be.

2. The they get a new promotion called "Riot Control"

Riot Control I = 10% Less Likely To Revolt
Riot Control II = 20% Less Likely To Revolt
Riot Control III = 30% Less Likely To Revolt
Riot Control IV = 40% Less Likely To Revolt
Riot Control V = 50% Less Likely To Revolt

Town Watchen = Riot Control I
Guard = Riot Control II
City Guard = Riot Control III
Police Squad = Riot Control V

I would like to add a Sheriff in between City Guard and Police Squad with Riot Control IV.

After that I would like to have things like a Police Car or Swat Team or even a Terminator-like Police Robot too for later eras. Note they would have Riot Control V plus Urban Tactics.

In short please don't drop them. Or at the very least merge them into the core if you don't want them in your mods.


I definitely think the Guard units have a place in the game :cool: Especially with Hydro's crime stuff coming in, I would expect Guards and Police to act as some kind of countering force-- in addition to reducing rebellion. Maybe even with Civics where a unit in a city gives +1 :) they give an additional +1.

City Defense... I see two sides to that argument:

1) It would be nice to have a single unit that can be used to defend a city. Allows city defense promos as well as the other stuff.

2) If the above were implemented, would archer/ranged units be used as much, or at all, in the cities anymore?

2) If the above were implemented, would archer/ranged units be used as much, or at all, in the cities anymore?

Archers would still be needed to counter all the anti-melee units. Remember the City Guards before gunpowder are still melee units and can be taken out. City Guards units are more to keep the city from rioting and less about defending from armies. There should always be a place for military units like the archers. Personally i use at least the combo of archers, spearmen, city guards, dogs and healers for my cities. Each of those defend against different attacks.

Here is the file and a screenshot. Seems like for most of the game the Dutch make stacks of doom and leave their cities mostly empty. In their stacks are mostly city watchmen.

Red Circles = SOD
Red Squares = Cities with little guards.

Note they usually stand their and do nothing or sometimes go back and forth between 2 tiles.

What follows is off the top of my head based on what I see in the screenshot and what I know of the code. I have not done a deep analysis in the debugger of the save game to verify what each stack this it's up to (I can if you think what I say below can't be right, but it takes several hours).

I don't really see an issue with the screenshot. The stacks are just city defenders it has decided don't actually need to eb in the city right now since the is no attack force nearby, and they are more use increasing it's sight and occupying defensive terrain (they seem to be on hills and forests) than just sitting in the city doing nothing. If you moved in with attack forces sufficient to threaten the city they'd pull back into it to defend (or a least they should). Although they appear to be rather large stacks that's just the ai for you - it's not exactly economical with military units.

I am slightly surprised your footpad is not being attacked though(and that is concerning)

I am slightly surprised your footpad is not being attacked though(and that is concerning)

That is their bandit footpad, i have no units nearby. this is all espionage sight.

Wouldn't it be better to designate a few at least as "perma-defenders" so they get the 25% extra Str from fortifying? I know I do it that way. Some mobile troops to supplement the city defenders and strategic point defenders. The two latter whom don't move unless borders or balance shift somehow.

Wouldn't it be better to designate a few at least as "perma-defenders" so they get the 25% extra Str from fortifying? I know I do it that way. Some mobile troops to supplement the city defenders and strategic point defenders. The two latter whom don't move unless borders or balance shift somehow.

The way the AI works that's actually surprisingly hard to do. Howeer, it DOES always leave a fixed minimum + proportion of total in-area defenders in the city. The only issue really is which ones it prefers in that role.

Yesterday I got to the part of the game where capturing terrain was possible. Could anyone tell me at what technology this unlocks?

Also I only once saw another civ capture any terrain, it was on a resource but it wasnt connected nor developped. While I do think its cool they do this, I wonder if they bother to devellop and connect their 'captured' resources.

If the AI would do this more often units like thief would have an extra use. I thought about ways to drive off units of non-enemies. A neat feature would be to put a bounty on the tile that trades for some gold if the unit is removed and which would be invisible to the target or maybe you wouldnt be able to see who put the bounty. This bounty could attract other AI's or barbarians that are able to attack the nation in question.

Alright, so I'm playing a Snail game with the v17 release. Prince level with Raging Barbs. Huge Map - Planet Generator.

Started with the default number of AI for a Huge map, researching Stone Buildings at the moment, and the last AI has just been wiped out by barbs! I lost earlier and had to reload, and the second time through I got lucky with a clubman after my 2 Slingers had been defeated in my capital, otherwise I'd have lost again. Cave Dwelling is the only thing that has secured me at this point. AI... not so lucky.

I would be interested to hear of other players' experiences with Raging Barbs on the new version at Snail or slower.

Edit: By barbs I actually meant Neanderthals. I haven't seen the normal barbs in my game yet!

My experience was not in v17, but I think there would not be any differences.
Raging Barbs and Barbarian World were on.
Well, you know, Barb cities built units crazily and attacked AIs. Unfortunately, N-men also attacked their cities along with Barbs. It was like Barbs hired N-men mercenaries. AIs were wiped out. No surprise. :rolleyes:

My experience was not in v17, but I think there would not be any differences.
Raging Barbs and Barbarian World were on.
Well, you know, Barb cities built units crazily and attacked AIs. Unfortunately, N-men also attacked their cities along with Barbs. It was like Barbs hired N-men mercenaries. AIs were wiped out. No surprise. :rolleyes:

I didn't play with Barbarian World on, so not sure how much more that would add, but I actually thought the Neanderthal spawn RATE was GOOD, it's just that on Snail, maybe they came a little too early for the AI to handle. Or perhaps when Raging is turned on, the AI needs to boost his defenses more and rush to get Slingers (although they aren't a guaranteed safety net by far.)

I didn't play with Barbarian World on, so not sure how much more that would add, but I actually thought the Neanderthal spawn RATE was GOOD, it's just that on Snail, maybe they came a little too early for the AI to handle. Or perhaps when Raging is turned on, the AI needs to boost his defenses more and rush to get Slingers (although they aren't a guaranteed safety net by far.)

Several issues here:

Neanderthals are barbs, so they see each other as on the same side and will to an extent cooperate!
Raging barbs option doubles neanderthal spawn rate
Ai has no clue whatsoever about the game option and makes no adjustment whatsoever for it


In an ideal world you'd want every spawn region to act totally independently and not even have different groups of barbs cooperate, but practically speaking that's probably more or less impossible. What we could do is modify the game so that it has two separate barbarian teams so that Neanderthals and regular barbs are also mutual enemies. I could also fairly easily make the city production ai cognizant of the existence of the game option, and bias it more towar military production in the prehistoric era in that case. Part of the issue is that raging barbs is intended to present more of a challenge, but any challenge that the player faces, is also faced by the ai, so it's extremely hard to press the player hard without killing the ai. Perhaps when raging barbs is selected we should give the starting ai players one or two bonus units to begin with? Problem with that is that it's likely to be frustrating for the playe since the ai would explore much faster and beat the player to far more f the goodie huts and so on...

Several issues here:

Neanderthals are barbs, so they see each other as on the same side and will to an extent cooperate!
Raging barbs option doubles neanderthal spawn rate
Ai has no clue whatsoever about the game option and makes no adjustment whatsoever for it


In an ideal world you'd want every spawn region to act totally independently and not even have different groups of barbs cooperate, but practically speaking that's probably more or less impossible. What we could do is modify the game so that it has two separate barbarian teams so that Neanderthals and regular barbs are also mutual enemies. I could also fairly easily make the city production ai cognizant of the existence of the game option, and bias it more towar military production in the prehistoric era in that case. Part of the issue is that raging barbs is intended to present more of a challenge, but any challenge that the player faces, is also faced by the ai, so it's extremely hard to press the player hard without killing the ai. Perhaps when raging barbs is selected we should give the starting ai players one or two bonus units to begin with? Problem with that is that it's likely to be frustrating for the playe since the ai would explore much faster and beat the player to far more f the goodie huts and so on...

One option would to be to give the AI some extra defensive units in their city(s) when built but those units be special in that they can't be build and have no movement points. This addresses the exploration issue and forces the ai to defend its cities.

Several issues here:

Neanderthals are barbs, so they see each other as on the same side and will to an extent cooperate!
Raging barbs option doubles neanderthal spawn rate
Ai has no clue whatsoever about the game option and makes no adjustment whatsoever for it


In an ideal world you'd want every spawn region to act totally independently and not even have different groups of barbs cooperate, but practically speaking that's probably more or less impossible. What we could do is modify the game so that it has two separate barbarian teams so that Neanderthals and regular barbs are also mutual enemies. I could also fairly easily make the city production ai cognizant of the existence of the game option, and bias it more towar military production in the prehistoric era in that case. Part of the issue is that raging barbs is intended to present more of a challenge, but any challenge that the player faces, is also faced by the ai, so it's extremely hard to press the player hard without killing the ai. Perhaps when raging barbs is selected we should give the starting ai players one or two bonus units to begin with? Problem with that is that it's likely to be frustrating for the playe since the ai would explore much faster and beat the player to far more f the goodie huts and so on...

Hmm... well if the AI were given 2 Slingers, it would still need to know to keep those units for defense and not explore with them.

At the least, I think the AI should be aware of the game options Raging Barbarians or Barbarian World, so that it knows to bolster its defenses. That would be what a player would do.

Hmm... well if the AI were given 2 Slingers, it would still need to know to keep those units for defense and not explore with them.

At the least, I think the AI should be aware of the game options Raging Barbarians or Barbarian World, so that it knows to bolster its defenses. That would be what a player would do.

Oh for sure, but it's exactly the kind of thing that illustrates why i hate game options so much from an ai perspective, so I'll do something to move it in the right direction, but I don't plan to spend much time trying to tune it for any but what I consider the mainstream option choice.

One option would to be to give the AI some extra defensive units in their city(s) when built but those units be special in that they can't be build and have no movement points. This addresses the exploration issue and forces the ai to defend its cities.

That isn't a bad idea, but it sounds like more work involved since a new unit would need to be created. Would a free building that provides +% city defense work just as well?

Oh for sure, but it's exactly the kind of thing that illustrates why i hate game options so much from an ai perspective, so I'll do something to move it in the right direction, but I don't plan to spend much time trying to tune it for any but what I consider the mainstream option choice.

I agree that not a lot of time should be spent on this, but I do think it's a feature others use. What about-- as a possible alternative to AI tweaking-- giving the AI some kind of combat bonus against barbarian units when Raging is on? Would that be easier?

It may also just be a matter of timing. Maybe the Neanderthals, on Snail, just need to start spawning 10 turns later? That might be an easier tweak to start. Hopefully someone can comment on this topic who is playing on Marathon or Epic.

I still simply remove the Neanderthals.

Besides, Koshling, what is it you consider mainstream options?

I still simply remove the Neanderthals.

Besides, Koshling, what is it you consider mainstream options?

The ones I play with of course! Seriously though, obviously any choice is arbitrary, so I will concentrate on any we have a wide consensus for being 'the recommended choice' shaded by my own views (since this is a hobby not a job).

I like the suggestion of just giving the AI a (small) bonus against barbs - doesn't effect AI-player interactions so not a direct balance issue, but should be tunable to whatever level turns out to be needed to keep the AI alive on raging.

Wrong area BUT, i am trying to PM you and it says you have way too many PM's now and your box is full??

Let me know when you get rid alot of those thx.

Wrong area BUT, i am trying to PM you and it says you have way too many PM's now and your box is full??

Let me know when you get rid alot of those thx.

Done now

As for AI suggestions: The poor AI is still lousy at city placement and/or doesn't evaluate for the third plot ring at all. On resources, one plot away from coast, in a heavy tundra/permafrost/ice region. This is with v17, still. And also still switch Civics a bit too often. In fact Civic switching by Assyria in my latest game had a very bad result for him:
Both of us were pressing culture against each other. With battles swaying the outcome to my side and with civic changes capping his culture growth he lost a city via culture flipping DURING his civic anarchy (which as far as I know is a time when you can't do much about it, if anything can be done at all).

re: raging barbs: the way I understand it the AI are mostly inept until they have some defenders that are on par with neanderthals (i.e. slingers/axemen/spearmen), the main problem there being that single neanderthal units will enter their borders often one after the other and attack the city until no more defenders are left. The AI needs to focus hard on having lots of units at hand until they have sufficient defenses. Without raging barbs the neanderthals simply won't enter cultural borders so that this is not a problem. A small(ish) bonus won't do much simply because the stone thrower is much too weak to survive terribly well (so you need spare ones even if in a city on hill tops - and its unlikely that you'll have the AI found all its first cities on hilltops). Once slingers come around the problem mostly goes away since neanderthals are really not much of a threat if you have 3 or 4 defenders then.

My main problem with a barb bonus is that it needs to be large enough to overcome the stone thrower vs. neanderthal mismatch but at that point its likely large enough that the AI will steam roll every barb city early on.

re: raging barbs: the way I understand it the AI are mostly inept until they have some defenders that are on par with neanderthals (i.e. slingers/axemen/spearmen), the main problem there being that single neanderthal units will enter their borders often one after the other and attack the city until no more defenders are left. The AI needs to focus hard on having lots of units at hand until they have sufficient defenses. Without raging barbs the neanderthals simply won't enter cultural borders so that this is not a problem. A small(ish) bonus won't do much simply because the stone thrower is much too weak to survive terribly well (so you need spare ones even if in a city on hill tops - and its unlikely that you'll have the AI found all its first cities on hilltops). Once slingers come around the problem mostly goes away since neanderthals are really not much of a threat if you have 3 or 4 defenders then.

My main problem with a barb bonus is that it needs to be large enough to overcome the stone thrower vs. neanderthal mismatch but at that point its likely large enough that the AI will steam roll every barb city early on.

Those are some good points. In my game though I found that even Slingers weren't enough in a Raging Babarian setup. There were groups of 2-3 Neanderthals invading my one city every few turns and eventually they took out my Slingers (and a few other Str 1 units I had). I think the other problem with just giving a bunch of units to the AI is that they might use them to explore and not defend.

The Cave Dwelling NW helps a lot as it adds +50% to City Defenses, but you need that in addition to Slingers w/ Garrison promotions. It is definitely possible to accomplish before the Neanderthals get overwhelming, but you really have to focus on that path to get it done in time.

this is true, but again speaks against a flat anti-barb bonus, it would need to be a +50% or higher bonus even on deity which later on would just mean that any barb city would be taken by the nearest available AI.

Frankly what about a simple neanderthal malus, say -50% for city attack? that way they'll still be nuisance in raging barbs by destroying all improvements but won't wipe out AIs early on, hell, one could even remove that once neanderthal culture is built...

Simple solutions can often be the best ones :) That's a good idea. I would lean towards -25% to start though and see how that fares. Raging Barbs should still be a challenge since, as an optional difficulty, it is meant to add challenge.

As for AI suggestions: The poor AI is still lousy at city placement and/or doesn't evaluate for the third plot ring at all. On resources, one plot away from coast, in a heavy tundra/permafrost/ice region. This is with v17, still. And also still switch Civics a bit too often. In fact Civic switching by Assyria in my latest game had a very bad result for him:
Both of us were pressing culture against each other. With battles swaying the outcome to my side and with civic changes capping his culture growth he lost a city via culture flipping DURING his civic anarchy (which as far as I know is a time when you can't do much about it, if anything can be done at all).

Yeh. I haven't had time to look at either of these elements since about V12. On day (hopefully soon!)...

Simple solutions can often be the best ones :) That's a good idea. I would lean towards -25% to start though and see how that fares. Raging Barbs should still be a challenge since, as an optional difficulty, it is meant to add challenge.

I agree - this seems a good suggestion (and doesn't need me to fiddle with the AI while I have about a million other things on my list so it gets my vote!). Should just require having a negative <iCityAttack> value on the Neanders I think.

Good solution. Still won't play with them, but a good solution nonetheless.

Good solution. Still won't play with them, but a good solution nonetheless.

ahaha just like your name ID, popping in and saying wishful things, and poof gone, and not even using it yourself, NICE:lol:

Pushed the -25% to SVN. To be fair I applied it to both the wild Neanderthals and the ones made with the Culture.

Ok, been thinking about it and have a possible solution for the AI Civic switching:

Like you said Koshling, there's not really any way to set the AI's up with a good way to handle when to switch (bunch together and take all at once, for saving turns might work, wait until golden age will not) so an intermediate solution is this:

Have three (or four) hidden techs (not in the tech tree, if that's possible) that one can't tech normally, the only way to get them is from start of game IF one is an AI.
On Settler difficulty the AI doesn't get any.
Chieftain, Warlord, Noble; Free Tech: Civic Anarchy I (-25% Anarchy from Civic changes)
Prince, Monarch, Emperor; Free Tech: Civic Anarchy II (-50% Anarchy from Civic changes)
Immortal, Deity; Free Tech: Civic Anarchy III (-75% Anarchy from Civic changes)
With four it could be
Chieftain, Warlord; -20%
Noble, Prince; -40%
Monarch, Emperor; -60%
Immortal, Deity; -80%

Cheers

Ok, been thinking about it and have a possible solution for the AI Civic switching:

Like you said Koshling, there's not really any way to set the AI's up with a good way to handle when to switch (bunch together and take all at once, for saving turns might work, wait until golden age will not) so an intermediate solution is this:

Have three (or four) hidden techs (not in the tech tree, if that's possible) that one can't tech normally, the only way to get them is from start of game IF one is an AI.
On Settler difficulty the AI doesn't get any.
Chieftain, Warlord, Noble; Free Tech: Civic Anarchy I (-25% Anarchy from Civic changes)
Prince, Monarch, Emperor; Free Tech: Civic Anarchy II (-50% Anarchy from Civic changes)
Immortal, Deity; Free Tech: Civic Anarchy III (-75% Anarchy from Civic changes)
With four it could be
Chieftain, Warlord; -20%
Noble, Prince; -40%
Monarch, Emperor; -60%
Immortal, Deity; -80%

Cheers

I'd prefer to try to fix the AI. I hate giving it artificial advantages that are not transparent to the user. If I can't resolve it with better AI we can fall back to this sort of thing.

I'm not sure if anyone's noticed this, but since the government civic changed from hard caps on # of cities to unhappiness penalties for going over the limit, the AI has gone back into 'settle everything you can' mode. My current game has every AI over-expanded, they haven't even discovered bronze working yet and some of the have 12+ cities. Every city but their capital is unhappy, most of them have shrunk to size one.

I'm playing on Prince, and I was at/near the bottom of the score board all through the prehistoric age, but after we got tribalism all the other civs did was build tribes and overexpand, to the point where they are spending all their income on city maintenance and unit support costs and barely researching. Is it possible to hard-code the AI to respect over-expansion limits, and only go over the limit if they capture a city during wartime?

I'm not sure if anyone's noticed this, but since the government civic changed from hard caps on # of cities to unhappiness penalties for going over the limit, the AI has gone back into 'settle everything you can' mode. My current game has every AI over-expanded, they haven't even discovered bronze working yet and some of the have 12+ cities. Every city but their capital is unhappy, most of them have shrunk to size one.

I'm playing on Prince, and I was at/near the bottom of the score board all through the prehistoric age, but after we got tribalism all the other civs did was build tribes and overexpand, to the point where they are spending all their income on city maintenance and unit support costs and barely researching. Is it possible to hard-code the AI to respect over-expansion limits, and only go over the limit if they capture a city during wartime?

I'm sure there will be n easy fix for this when i get some time.

That's with a SVN version right?

Original v17 isn't doing that. Especially with City Limits turned Off and No Rev. I have vital full blown AI Empires to deal with, not hollow shells. The Ottomans at 1695AD are still out teching me, though I have just passed them in # of cities built (24, they have 22). I do get redfaces every time I capture a barb city though. They eventual subside after I build Another Unhappiness Reducing building. :p (Too Much WW and unhappiness penalties in this version)

JosEPh

(Too Much WW and unhappiness penalties in this version)
JosEPh

I would have to agree on that.

I would have to agree on that.

WW has been allieviated a fair bit with the changes I pushed a couple of days ago, but obviously that won't retrospectively effect any WW you already had built up in existing games.

WW has been allieviated a fair bit with the changes I pushed a couple of days ago, but obviously that won't retrospectively effect any WW you already had built up in existing games.

What are the main causes of WW? Civics? I know there are some buildings like the market ones or graveyards, but they should not effect games if people just don't build them.

Koshling figured it ou and posted it:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=439574

Basically the problem is WW never goes down while you are at war, and goes up after every battle (though more for the loser and less inside of your borders). The problem is it's normalized for Vanilla BTS army sizes and maps, not the 3x-5x army sizes and 2x-3x number of armies you have in a typical C2C game, so the WW engine thinks every battle you fight is worse than Antietam and after a couple of them you are at +100% :mad: in every city.

WW has been allieviated a fair bit with the changes I pushed a couple of days ago, but obviously that won't retrospectively effect any WW you already had built up in existing games.

ah ha, that might be my problem then.:blush:

ah ha, that might be my problem then.:blush:

It also might be that I have not tweaked it enough yet, but the changes made so far will mean you get far less WW if you are basically having a fairly decisive win (winning most battles that you choose to fight, even if the war as a whole drags on). If however, you are trying to stage an invasion of enemy territory using sheer weight of numbers, but crappy units (so LOSING most battles even though you eventually are winning the war) it'll still be almost as bad as ever (but that was a deliberate choice sincle I felt it modelled somethign closer to reality better)

It also might be that I have not tweaked it enough yet, but the changes made so far will mean you get far less WW if you are basically having a fairly decisive win (winning most battles that you choose to fight, even if the war as a whole drags on). If however, you are trying to stage an invasion of enemy territory using sheer weight of numbers, but crappy units (so LOSING most battles even though you eventually are winning the war) it'll still be almost as bad as ever (but that was a deliberate choice since I felt it modeled something closer to reality better)

No its fine, i will deal with it, and thx for letting me know.;)

btw, dont worry about those <tags> for a up to a month , its no biggy right now.

To be perfectly honest, I could use a period of a few weeks with relative stability in underlying mechanisms, so I have time to spend on some of the more important existing AI issues:

Tendency to civic switch far too often
Tendency to over-expand when its causing them stability or happyness issues
City placement
Inappropriate use of defend-only units

It also might be that I have not tweaked it enough yet, but the changes made so far will mean you get far less WW if you are basically having a fairly decisive win (winning most battles that you choose to fight, even if the war as a whole drags on). If however, you are trying to stage an invasion of enemy territory using sheer weight of numbers, but crappy units (so LOSING most battles even though you eventually are winning the war) it'll still be almost as bad as ever (but that was a deliberate choice sincle I felt it modelled somethign closer to reality better)

Something else to consider that I just thought of. "Mercenary" type units (Warlords, Thieves, Assassins, Bandits, etc.) shouldn't cause War Weariness; maybe anything with no nationality (assuming that gives WW now), or POSSIBLY with the invisible tag (thoughts?) since those are all under-the-table units so-to-speak. Also be sure to check units attacked BY enemy controlled units of that type, as I'd say that wouldn't cause it either.

Offhand, future units that are completely computer operated shouldn't cause WW if lost. (I think this was mentioned elsewhere..?)

Maybe some weapons which were used mainly as demoralizing weapons (like the V1) could cause extra war weariness.

I've been looking at the code for settling, and there are already (some) safeguards against settling when the (soft) city limits are already causing you unhappyness. Now, I can see ways to improve those checks (potentially), but there are various ways I could do it, and I can't find an example in my games where the AI is settling itself into unhappyness.

If anyone has save games that exhibit this happening they would be useful as examples.

The way it works currently is that it inhibits the building of settlers (or tribes etc.) when any extra settlers (once settled) would create city-limit unhappyness AND the civ-wide happyness quotient is already negative. There is no code in the settler AI itself to inhibit them settling once they are built however. In the absence of inhibitions the AI will build up to about 1 settler for each 2 cities it currently has (max).

Obvious possible changes I can see are:

Change the calculation of the civ-wide happyness quotient. Currently this is the sum of each city's net happyness multiplied by its population. This means that a few large but happy cities will dominate a larger number of small but unhappy cities, and thus allow more settler building. No unhappyness in capital civics might cause this to happen. Lots of ways to tweak this function:

Make the city's contribution only consider a capped number of happyness/unhappyness (say first 3 or 4, so that a city happy by 20 doesn't overpower 4 cities unhappy by 4)
Don't weight by population (or at least not linearly)
Omit the captial from the calculation if using a no-capital-unhappyness civic. Similarly cities with no-unhappyness wonders

Add code to the settler AI itself to cause them to just wait in cities if settling would cause more unhappyness (based on same check settler production uses)


While these are all valid ways to proceed, I'd rather see some concrete examples to let me choose a bit more intelligently, so any examples you have (or can describe in more detail) would be appreciated...

Omit the captial from the calculation if using a no-capital-unhappyness civic. Similarly cities with no-unhappyness wonders


I think this is the big one, if you think about:

10 Pop 2 cities at +10 :mad: each = 10x2x10 = 200 :mad:points
1 Pop 10 capital at +20 :) = 1x10x20 = 200 :) points.

Not to mention that as a city grows unhappier, it starves & shrinks, which reduces it's anger quotient by a large percentage as the population drops. I think a better system would be (not real python, just pseudo-code):


for each player.cities:
if city.nethappiness > 3:
quotient += 3
else:
quotient += city.nethappiness

if quotient / player.numbercities >= civics.oversettlingpenalty:
build settler

So you ignore population, and cap the contribution of happy cities to 3, then figure out the average and if building another city won't drop it below 0 then you can build a settler.

I've got a game where this has been happening, I'll upload a few saves from different times when I get home tonight.

I think this is the big one, if you think about:

10 Pop 2 cities at +10 :mad: each = 10x2x10 = 200 :mad:points
1 Pop 10 capital at +20 :) = 1x10x20 = 200 :) points.

Not to mention that as a city grows unhappier, it starves & shrinks, which reduces it's anger quotient by a large percentage as the population drops.
I suspect you're right - just want to confirm before I dive in with no actual way to test the results in any game I have.
I think a better system would be (not real python, just pseudo-code):
That's ok, it's C++ anyway ;-)
I've got a game where this has been happening, I'll upload a few saves from different times when I get home tonight.
Thanks - much appreciated

Not to mention that as a city grows unhappier, it starves & shrinks

Yeah this happens to me ALL the time. up down, in all cities but going up two then down 1 but the starvation and unhappiness is crazy.

I wonder if we could modify the starvation code to give a city some of it's food reserves back when it shrinks, say 50% or 75%? That way when a city starts to starve it doesn't drop from 10 people to 1 in just 9 turns.

I wonder if we could modify the starvation code to give a city some of it's food reserves back when it shrinks, say 50% or 75%? That way when a city starts to starve it doesn't drop from 10 people to 1 in just 9 turns.

I'm not sure that makes sense. Starvation occurs when the population is eating more than it produces. Therefore they dip into the reserves until that hits bottom at which
point people begin to perish until food production equals or beats the required amount.

Although more complicated, a more intuitive result would be nearby cities with excess food shipping their surplus to the city in starvation until they are back on their feet.

I'm not sure that makes sense. Starvation occurs when the population is eating more than it produces. Therefore they dip into the reserves until that hits bottom at which
point people begin to perish until food production equals or beats the required amount.

Although more complicated, a more intuitive result would be nearby cities with excess food shipping their surplus to the city in starvation until they are back on their feet.

Or the people leaving the starving city and moving to where there is food.

I'm not sure that makes sense. Starvation occurs when the population is eating more than it produces. Therefore they dip into the reserves until that hits bottom at which
point people begin to perish until food production equals or beats the required amount.

Although more complicated, a more intuitive result would be nearby cities with excess food shipping their surplus to the city in starvation until they are back on their feet.

Yeah, but I've always looked at 'food reserves' as more of a 'fractional population point' rather than actual stored food. You don't wait until the granary is full and then magically turn rice in babies. The way I imagine it is the more food you produce the more secure people feel in both moving from the wilderness into the city, and the more secure they are in starting or expanding a family, so food getting stored is actually people moving into or being born in your city, the limit being the point at which you grow to the next level.

From a gameplay perspective it takes 50 - 100 turns to grow a city one point, but if that city starves down to 0 stored food it will undo 50 - 100 turns of growth every turn. It seems like there shouldn't be such a huge disparity between speed of growth and speed of loss.

You don't wait until the granary is full and then magically turn rice into babies.

Isn't that how China got such a huge population? :p :lol:

Or the people leaving the starving city and moving to where there is food.

Won't that be ok then if i put back in the Immigration Mod? I believe thats what it was set up for in the first place??

Do you have a GOOD working copy of the way "we" changed it?

I know this is something JosephII Has complained about, but would it be possible to get the AI to be more cognizant of REV? it has problems with preventing revolts and maintaining a large empire.

I know this is something JosephII Has complained about, but would it be possible to get the AI to be more cognizant of REV? it has problems with preventing revolts and maintaining a large empire.

Yes. It's on my list. Annoys me too.

Or the people leaving the starving city and moving to where there is food.

If food was not incoming. I'm operating under the assumption that the gov't would want to keep its people. ;)

But if food doesn't arrive (brigands choking off the trade routes, or no excess food elsewhere) then yeah, people would start to emigrate. Even possibly to a neighboring Civ depending on factors and proximity.

Yeah, but I've always looked at 'food reserves' as more of a 'fractional population point' rather than actual stored food. You don't wait until the granary is full and then magically turn rice in babies. The way I imagine it is the more food you produce the more secure people feel in both moving from the wilderness into the city, and the more secure they are in starting or expanding a family, so food getting stored is actually people moving into or being born in your city, the limit being the point at which you grow to the next level.

From a gameplay perspective it takes 50 - 100 turns to grow a city one point, but if that city starves down to 0 stored food it will undo 50 - 100 turns of growth every turn. It seems like there shouldn't be such a huge disparity between speed of growth and speed of loss.

I think the point of starvation causing such a rapid loss in population is to give the player a reason to end it. If you only lose 1 population then have another 50 turns until you lose another, it become much less of a priority.

Everyone here has made valid points so the best solution would probably be a compromise.

Emigration should be dependent on how much shrinkage in food a city has, not how many pop it's lost. If it's an event the risk of it occurring could be increased by how much loss in food, if it's a modmod then I have no idea how it works but should still be dependent on -:food: a city has.
When a City does shrink maybe keep 5% food. If it's a huge shrinkage it's only an extra turn to turn it about, but if it's only shrinking slowly it gives a player more turns to turn the city around.

Cheers

Receiving and losing pop because of immigration should be affected by border civics (no foreign immigrant with closed border, free specialist instead of pop with skilled worker, ect...)

Won't that be ok then if i put back in the Immigration Mod? I believe thats what it was set up for in the first place??

Do you have a GOOD working copy of the way "we" changed it?

I liked the Immigration Mod. If it won't cause too many problems I would like it back too. :goodjob:

Koshling:

Here are the saves where I am seeing the AI overexpand. The big offender is the Assyrians, who for some reason still haven't converted to Despotism despite have 13 cities! The saves are all Max Compat, and were made using the SVN, between Sept. 18th and 20th.

What are the main causes of WW? Civics? I know there are some buildings like the market ones or graveyards, but they should not effect games if people just don't build them.

Civics yes indeed, but new changes to building chains are also contributing.

As for not building certain bldgs, that is already happening. So why have bldgs ppl won't build?

@Koshling,
Karadoc the author of the K-Mod found an original BtS bug that Greatly affects AI city placement. He talks about it on the last page of his mod thread. I think you should look at it cause it sounds very appropriate. If I get a chance I'll link the post. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10868135&postcount=65

JosEPh

I build all the buildings you mention in various posts as not wanting to build Joseph, though, granted, not all in every city but I do build them where I think the gain outweighs the loss, and surprisingly often it does.

So your question of "So why have bldgs ppl won't build?" is really moot as some do build them. At least one person anyway.

Cheers

I also build them when the gain outweigh the loss. In the case of the graveyard that turns out to be almost all cases.

I checked out Karadoc's mod-thread and must ask this:
Is the AI in C2C capable of setting up build queues in cities? I've never seen them do so when my espionage was high enough. (Or tech queues, though that's less of an issue as most often one can't get more than one per turn.)

Which leads me to the second point: AI and espionage with the new system doesn't work. Period. It/they keep building -espionage buildings because they give +gold and don't build +espionage buildings because they give -gold. This also leads to more revolutions a lot earlier as the rev index increases staggeringly fast for the poor sods.

I'd consider Karadoc a good addition to the team too as he seems to have a bit more insight into OOS's in the game in general, and might be able to troubleshoot OOS save games. Not my call though.

Cheers

Hydro wrote:...but they should not effect games if people just don't build them.

@BG , I think you missed the point.

Nor did I say that "no one" would build them. I have even stated that I won't build coliseums or arenas until I "have to" to combat the redfaces. But the question still stands.

I also find it strange that Hydro would post that statement, because now we are building in redundancy? Not intentionally I'm sure, but that is what is happening.

I hope Koshling took a look at the link I post from karadoc's K-Mod. I think the answer to better AI city placement has been found. No need to invent the wheel twice as they say.

JosEPh :)

Won't that be ok then if i put back in the Immigration Mod? I believe thats what it was set up for in the first place??

Do you have a GOOD working copy of the way "we" changed it?

If I remember correctly the changes 'we' made to it were almost all in the Main Screen Python code. Since I bought a terabyte hard disk so I could back up every version of RoM, AND and C2C I had, I expect I can find it. :D

If food was not incoming. I'm operating under the assumption that the gov't would want to keep its people. ;)

Who said anything about them leaving the country? I meant leave the city for other cities, perhaps that new one just settled.

Foreign food tastes funny anyway.:rolleyes:

Who said anything about them leaving the country? I meant leave the city for other cities, perhaps that new one just settled.

Foreign food tastes funny anyway.:rolleyes:

I know you did. :) I was saying the possibility could exist for them to leave the country, as does happen, illegal or legal. Though there would need to be significant circumstances. :mischief:

As for not building certain bldgs, that is already happening. So why have bldgs ppl won't build?


I give you the choice NOT to build them. Not all buildings may fit the way you play. In fact if you just build every building you can build, then you are loosing the whole strategy of building that I tried to put in my buildings. Every building I make has a purpose however there are some combos of buildings you may not want to build while other you may want to build one building before another.

For example the Crime buildings. One may say why build them if you are getting all this :mad:, :yuck: and -:espionage: not to mention it will slowly destabilize your nation. But the units they give and the money the provide are awesome! Many times my economy was starting to tank and with the boost of a Bandits Hideout saved me. Morally I am a horrible leader, but from a gaming point of view it was awesome. On the other side of the coin you can use things like the Gallows to keep the peace. All making your :mad:, :yuck: go down the toilet even worse. Is it not worth it? You decide. However building a :health: or :) building could allow you to have your cake and eat it too.

No one is forcing you to build them or not to build them. That is the whole point of having all these buildings. The more you build the more you must balance them, but the more cool things you will unlock if you do so.

You ask why? Because it makes a more interesting game and you unlock features you may not otherwise get if you had not built the building.

I checked out Karadoc's mod-thread and must ask this:
Is the AI in C2C capable of setting up build queues in cities? I've never seen them do so when my espionage was high enough. (Or tech queues, though that's less of an issue as most often one can't get more than one per turn.)
It's irrelevant - the AI gets multi-build/multi-reserach wihout queueing because unlike player it gets a chance to queue something else up when it completes mid-turn. That's why you never see it queueing, bu that doesn't mean it doesn't get full benefit from multi-production.

Which leads me to the second point: AI and espionage with the new system doesn't work. Period. It/they keep building -espionage buildings because they give +gold and don't build +espionage buildings because they give -gold. This also leads to more revolutions a lot earlier as the rev index increases staggeringly fast for the poor sods.
I hadn't realised poor espionage totals increased the REVN index! Educate me please!![/QUOTE]

I'd consider Karadoc a good addition to the team too as he seems to have a bit more insight into OOS's in the game in general, and might be able to troubleshoot OOS save games. Not my call though.

Cheers
Totally agree. I exchanged messages with Karadoc yesterday to get the fix for the settler issue he posted about. I'd be very in favor of him contributing if he wishes to...

[QUOTE=JosEPh_II;10908325I hope Koshling took a look at the link I post from karadoc's K-Mod. I think the answer to better AI city placement has been found. No need to invent the wheel twice as they say.

JosEPh :)[/QUOTE]

I did (thanks for the pointer). I have got the code fix from Karadoc. However, so far as I can see it doesn't really mean the the AI would found in a place it didn't intend to, just that sometimes it would not move its settler there efficiently (or perhaps just wander around and never get there), not that it would instead found in a worse spot. As such I don't think this effects city placement per se, just the AIs ability to get a settler to found at all in some circumstances.

Alright, have to admit I am not totally sure what the REV Index really is. I meant that they get higher instability because of it. As for educating you probably already know that the -EP+Gold buildings also give +Instability.

Alright, have to admit I am not totally sure what the REV Index really is. I meant that they get higher instability because of it. As for educating you probably already know that the -EP+Gold buildings also give +Instability.

I yes, I thought you meant an implicit link rather than the direct link from the instability mod on the buildings.

The problem in the AI in regard to REV is VERY obvious. In at least civic evaluation, it doesn't consider the instability mods AT ALL (it does somewhat for buildings but I think it weights them incorrectly). The problm is (in fixing this) that the code for REV is a nasty mismash of C++ and Python with a ton of inter-dependencies. In particular it's the C++ that works out the instablity aggregate values, but the Python that interprets them to determine their impact. Since it has to be the C++ that evaluates them for the AI, that means the C++ has to second-guess the Python's interpretation (yuck) to weight them in terms of their impacts. In reality I'm probably going to wind up just putting in fairly arbitrary weights at first and adjusting them based on what happens (not ideal and very tedious to tune, which is why I haven't leapt into it yet)

I yes, I thought you meant an implicit link rather than the direct link from the instability mod on the buildings.

The problem in the AI in regard to REV is VERY obvious. In at least civic evaluation, it doesn't consider the instability mods AT ALL (it does somewhat for buildings but I think it weights them incorrectly). The problem is (in fixing this) that the code for REV is a nasty mismatch of C++ and Python with a ton of inter-dependencies. In particular it's the C++ that works out the instability aggregate values, but the Python that interprets them to determine their impact. Since it has to be the C++ that evaluates them for the AI, that means the C++ has to second-guess the Python's interpretation (yuck) to weight them in terms of their impacts. In reality I'm probably going to wind up just putting in fairly arbitrary weights at first and adjusting them based on what happens (not ideal and very tedious to tune, which is why I haven't leaped into it yet)

I hope you really don't too soon either, C2C stuff is way more important than another author's mod, HE is the one that should be fixing the problems, not us.:mischief: Help yes, fix, no.(well maybe)

I hope you really don't too soon either, C2C stuff is way more important than another author's mod, HE is the one that should be fixing the problems, not us.:mischief: Help yes, fix, no.(well maybe)

It bugs me in my games, so it's fairly high on my list ;-p

It bugs me in my games, so it's fairly high on my list ;-p

I guess then its up to you, but please do pass, whatever you find on to the mods author as well, thx.;)

SO, it's about C2C and how AI handles Instability/Stability for it's cities and Empire. Right now it does not.

Edit: Unless the Rev mod is separate from C2C? In either case it's the C2C buildings that cause the current massive AI problem with revolts all over the place and in my opinion that's pure C2C "fixing".

Cheers

SO, it's about C2C and how AI handles Instability/Stability for it's cities and Empire. Right now it does not.

I really do understand that, BUT the word i see is REV, and anything that is wrong with that needs to be reported to the author, even though "we" have it included in C2C, i'm just sayin'

But you'll are right, i tried to play with REV on once inawhile, but errors always happen, and then i quit the game right away, and say to myself, "i knew i shouldn't have started a REV game, geez".:sad:

I really do understand that, BUT the word i see is REV, and anything that is wrong with that needs to be reported to the author, even though "we" have it included in C2C, i'm just sayin'

But you'll are right, i tried to play with REV on once inawhile, but errors always happen, and then i quit the game right away, and say to myself, "i knew i shouldn't have started a REV game, geez".:sad:

I never play without it. Don't get errors at all - just the AI doesn't handle large civs well is all.

The issue may well be caused by C2C use of REV features, but the lack of rev-cognizance in the AI assessment is a REV bug. However, this is like arguing how about many angels can dance on a pinhead - it may be a REV bug, but its exposed by C2C usage.

I never play without it. Don't get errors at all - just the AI doesn't handle large civs well is all.

The issue may well be caused by C2C use of REV features, but the lack of rev-cognizance in the AI assessment is a REV bug. However, this is like arguing how about many angels can dance on a pinhead - it may be a REV bug, but its exposed by C2C usage.

ahaha, i like it when a person makes me laugh, thx i needed that:lol: But true.;)

SO, it's about C2C and how AI handles Instability/Stability for it's cities and Empire. Right now it does not.

Edit: Unless the Rev mod is separate from C2C? In either case it's the C2C buildings that cause the current massive AI problem with revolts all over the place and in my opinion that's pure C2C "fixing".

Cheers

To be the Devil's Advocate here; I don't play with Rev On and so in my Non Rev games the AI handles the C2C buildings just fine. As I reported before the empires in my games are not stricken, shriveling Empires because of massive Rev hemorrhages but vibrant strong opponents. So it's really a Rev problem.

Why? Because the premise that Rev is built on was for a more Vanilla BtS game. Less tech, less buildings, less Wonders than what C2C has. If the Rev team had 1st played C2C (or RoM) Then built REV, I'm positive you would see a better mesh between the 2 Mods. But that's not how it happened. So to say that C2C is the problem is putting the cart before the horse, imho. :)

Maybe (being the advocate again) Rev players should play a game or 2 of Non Rev C2C and then compare apples to apples.

As for me, once WW and Pacifism gets fixed properly, the AI is a strong opponent in C2C sans Rev and with those fixes will be even tougher.

Edit: @ Hydro,
I understand you completely and I like your take on how things interact, but that part of your statement I quoted just struck me as very odd. Also sometime the game dictates which buildings you can/need to build vs what you would Really like to build to see what new avenues you've created. I'm a Fan of your work, but sometimes I just need to say Whoa, slow down a bit you're moving too fast. Do you understand where I'm coming from? I think you do. ;)
JosEPh :D

To be the Devil's Advocate here; I don't play with Rev On and so in my Non Rev games the AI handles the C2C buildings just fine. As I reported before the empires in my games are not stricken, shriveling Empires because of massive Rev hemorrhages but vibrant strong opponents. So it's really a Rev problem.

Why? Because the premise that Rev is built on was for a more Vanilla BtS game. Less tech, less buildings, less Wonders than what C2C has. If the Rev team had 1st played C2C (or RoM) Then built REV, I'm positive you would see a better mesh between the 2 Mods. But that's not how it happened. So to say that C2C is the problem is putting the cart before the horse, imho. :)

Maybe (being the advocate again) Rev players should play a game or 2 of Non Rev C2C and then compare apples to apples.

As for me, once WW and Pacifism gets fixed properly, the AI is a strong opponent in C2C sans Rev and with those fixes will be even tougher.

Edit: @ Hydro,
I understand you completely and I like your take on how things interact, but that part of your statement I quoted just struck me as very odd. Also sometime the game dictates which buildings you can/need to build vs what you would Really like to build to see what new avenues you've created. I'm a Fan of your work, but sometimes I just need to say Whoa, slow down a bit you're moving too fast. Do you understand where I'm coming from? I think you do. ;)
JosEPh :D

1. I have had some games where rev gets out of hand while others where I never seem to have to worry about it. And yes I have played games without Rev on. Personally I think rev is a bit nerfed from how it use to be. There are way more ways to counter them, than in the past. I have only had a few games where rev went out of hand, but they have made the most interesting games. Most of the time I don't even notice I have rev on.

2. No problem old man. Just wanted you to be aware of all the "Easter eggs" I have hidden in this mod. One could play the mod over and over and not unlock some features unless the right set of circumstances line up. That is one thing i love about this mod is how no game is the same even if you try to play the same way. As for slow down, LOL I sometimes think I mod too slow compared to everyone on the team.

As for slow down, LOL I sometimes think I mod too slow compared to everyone on the team.

What?! You've got to be kidding! You're a modding MACHINE dude. You're nick should be HydroMACHINErx! :eek:

To be the Devil's Advocate here; I don't play with Rev On and so in my Non Rev games the AI handles the C2C buildings just fine. As I reported before the empires in my games are not stricken, shriveling Empires because of massive Rev hemorrhages but vibrant strong opponents. So it's really a Rev problem.

Why? Because the premise that Rev is built on was for a more Vanilla BtS game. Less tech, less buildings, less Wonders than what C2C has. If the Rev team had 1st played C2C (or RoM) Then built REV, I'm positive you would see a better mesh between the 2 Mods. But that's not how it happened. So to say that C2C is the problem is putting the cart before the horse, imho. :)

Maybe (being the advocate again) Rev players should play a game or 2 of Non Rev C2C and then compare apples to apples.

As for me, once WW and Pacifism gets fixed properly, the AI is a strong opponent in C2C sans Rev and with those fixes will be even tougher.

Edit: @ Hydro,
I understand you completely and I like your take on how things interact, but that part of your statement I quoted just struck me as very odd. Also sometime the game dictates which buildings you can/need to build vs what you would Really like to build to see what new avenues you've created. I'm a Fan of your work, but sometimes I just need to say Whoa, slow down a bit you're moving too fast. Do you understand where I'm coming from? I think you do. ;)
JosEPh :D

I play with rev on and in most cases the AI is doing fine with large and strong empires, until they go to war with me and I beeline taking out their capital. Then they fall apart. I also don't have the unhappiness problems you seem t have.

On another note since Hydro made us all use the minimum population to build buildings I have not specialised my cities beyond turning on unlimited wonders and building all the wonders I can in my capital because it is the only one large enough to build them. The limits also mean that I do build almost the buildings in every city because there is nothing else to do.

On another note since Hydro made us all use the minimum population to build buildings I have not specialised my cities beyond turning on unlimited wonders and building all the wonders I can in my capital because it is the only one large enough to build them. The limits also mean that I do build almost the buildings in every city because there is nothing else to do.

I do think the minimum population limit on buildings have helped the AI in building the buildings they need first before the buildings they could live without. Before there were so many buildings available for them to choose, but now there are far fewer to choose when first building a a city. Thus the AI is forced to make better choice since it cannot make the other restricted buildings yet.

[qquote]DH wrote:I also don't have the unhappiness problems you seem t have.[/quote]

Probably so, as I like to keep the Redfaces and :yuck: under control at all times. It maybe a Pavlov reaction from my initial experiences with REV. :mischief: :p And it has colored my style of play.

But seriously the WW is too much in the Mod right now. Hydro did reduce the WW from the Market chain at my suggestion and I appreciate that. But coupled with the Gov't Civics I prefer it's still too much. I understand the reasoning but don't agree with all of it. I honestly think that No Gov't Civic should ever give more than 25% WW and Fascism should never give a -50% to WW but only -25% (of course this is using the assumption that Fascist Gov'ts are warmongers). In the last version I had went into the Civ4CivicsInfo.xml file and reduced the Gov't Civics as I've outlined. The game, for me anyway, played much smoother and some of the AI actually adopted Democracy and Federal. Whereas before that only 1 or 2 AI would even use Republic. The rest stayed on Monarchy or below.

And Pacifist Civic is still too strong too. In my current game with 7 AI, 5 have already switched to Pcft and I'm sure that the remaining 2 will do so also as soon as the get the Tech that enables it. Shaka of All the AI leaders should Never adopt Pcft. Goes totally against his LH Traits, same for Monty and Hyanc (sp?). When a Civic is so strong to cause a leader to go against his traits then imho it's unbalanced and OP.

But these are topics not strongly tied to AI improvements (although I do think they would help the AI play better).

JosEPh :)

On the Subject of REV and AI, I came across this settingfrom this File(...\Caveman2Cosmos\Assets\Config):
<list id="TurnsBetweenRevs" key="TurnsBetweenRevs" type="int" default="8"
values="1,2,3,4,6,8,10,12,15,20,25,30,40,50"


With the Longer game speeds used for C2C (Marathon, Snail, etc.) 8 turns between revolutions is imho too short of an interval for the AI to handle properly. Every eight turns would make it were you would have AI's going into revolutions seemingly "all the time" as has been reported by many Rev players. Why not use a larger number? I think 30 would be more realistic and less taxing on AI and player. Maybe even 50 if you're playing on Snail or slower. In fact maybe the entire range, "values" needs to be extended to 100.

If it was 50 to 100 game turns between revolutions I personally might be more inclined to use it. Maybe. :p

But changing this value to a higher # should help. Just my opinion though.

JosEPh :)

Edit: This line has an error in it.
<list id="HappinessModifier" key="HappinessModifier" type="float" default="1.0"
listType="float" values="0.00,1.10,0.25,0.50,0.75,1.00,1.25,1.50,1.75,2.00, 2.50,3.00,3.50,4.00,5.00" format="%.2f"


The 2nd value should be 0.10 not 1.10. Might not mean anything since the default is "1.0".

But that brings up another ?. Why is the default "1.0" when the values are 2 decimal place values (ie, 1.00)?

Edit2:
<list id="BarbCivMaxCivs" key="MaxCivs" type="int" default="-1"
values="-1,0,1,2,3,4,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45"

Wouldn't this eventually cause problems by allowing too many Barb Civs to occur? With an Unlimited # that -1 allows it can cause CTDs. Because without special .dlls for extra Civs it's been proven that if you exceed 48 AI, plus the 1 for Barbarian, Plus Player you exceed the core BtS game limit for # of Civs (50)the game was designed to handle. Afforess and Zappara (among other modders) had to get a handle on this when they 1st tried to incorporate REV and Barb Civ into the RoM/And Mods. And it can cause the game to crash.

On the Subject of REV and AI, I came across this settingfrom this File(...\Caveman2Cosmos\Assets\Config):
<list id="TurnsBetweenRevs" key="TurnsBetweenRevs" type="int" default="8"
values="1,2,3,4,6,8,10,12,15,20,25,30,40,50"


With the Longer game speeds used for C2C (Marathon, Snail, etc.) 8 turns between revolutions is imho too short of an interval for the AI to handle properly. Every eight turns would make it were you would have AI's going into revolutions seemingly "all the time" as has been reported by many Rev players. Why not use a larger number? I think 30 would be more realistic and less taxing on AI and player. Maybe even 50 if you're playing on Snail or slower. In fact maybe the entire range, "values" needs to be extended to 100.

If it was 50 to 100 game turns between revolutions I personally might be more inclined to use it. Maybe. :p

But changing this value to a higher # should help. Just my opinion though.

JosEPh :)

Edit: This line has an error in it.
<list id="HappinessModifier" key="HappinessModifier" type="float" default="1.0"
listType="float" values="0.00,1.10,0.25,0.50,0.75,1.00,1.25,1.50,1.75,2.00, 2.50,3.00,3.50,4.00,5.00" format="%.2f"


The 2nd value should be 0.10 not 1.10. Might not mean anything since the default is "1.0".

But that brings up another ?. Why is the default "1.0" when the values are 2 decimal place values (ie, 1.00)?

Edit2:
<list id="BarbCivMaxCivs" key="MaxCivs" type="int" default="-1"
values="-1,0,1,2,3,4,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45"

Wouldn't this eventually cause problems by allowing too many Barb Civs to occur? With an Unlimited # that -1 allows it can cause CTDs. Because without special .dlls for extra Civs it's been proven that if you exceed 48 AI, plus the 1 for Barbarian, Plus Player you exceed the core BtS game limit for # of Civs (50)the game was designed to handle. Afforess and Zappara (among other modders) had to get a handle on this when they 1st tried to incorporate REV and Barb Civ into the RoM/And Mods. And it can cause the game to crash.

Those are the settings you can choose in the BUG mod, I think. I also believe that all numbers are adjusted for game speed. It is the numbers that appear in the list you can choose from. Although I can't find them on the BUG screen so I could be wrong.

Also Rev wont go over the maximum number of civs. It checks for that before trying to create a new civ.

Bit of a random thing I noticed with worker/gatherer Ai's in version17... I had just convert a gather to a worker and sent it to help a gather with a mud path. After the worker started building the path I noticed that gather had 4 turns left on the mud path and the newly assigned worker had 8.

As far as I can tell from this workers and gathers can't stack jobs. I remember complaining about how workers kept building and rebuilding the same thing on the same square a few months back... do workers/gathers have some random tag that explains city/country of origin like combat units do? I was stealing gathers from two different AIs. So if their is such a tag then it would explain why work units act like this. Work unit from country X are one unit type, from country Y another unit type and perhaps ones you make yourself a third.

If true this explains so much. Different work units are concidered different unit types instead of one type unit. After a while each country would end up with several clusters of unit fighting each other. At least gathers and workers are this way apparently.

version 17 used.

Bit of a random thing I noticed with worker/gatherer Ai's in version17... I had just convert a gather to a worker and sent it to help a gather with a mud path. After the worker started building the path I noticed that gather had 4 turns left on the mud path and the newly assigned worker had 8.

As far as I can tell from this workers and gathers can't stack jobs. I remember complaining about how workers kept building and rebuilding the same thing on the same square a few months back... do workers/gathers have some random tag that explains city/country of origin like combat units do? I was stealing gathers from two different AIs. So if their is such a tag then it would explain why work units act like this. Work unit from country X are one unit type, from country Y another unit type and perhaps ones you make yourself a third.

If true this explains so much. Different work units are concidered different unit types instead of one type unit. After a while each country would end up with several clusters of unit fighting each other. At least gathers and workers are this way apparently.

version 17 used.

There is only one gatherer unit but I think I saw that a gatherer is not a worker unit in the XML.

Okay I was wrong I was on version 10 there... I hate navigating Windows 7's file tree... I'll tell you if I see it this again after I manage to get some workers past the wall of Neanderthalls. At least the gather thing is apparently valid.

Koshling:

Here are the saves where I am seeing the AI overexpand. The big offender is the Assyrians, who for some reason still haven't converted to Despotism despite have 13 cities! The saves are all Max Compat, and were made using the SVN, between Sept. 18th and 20th.

Finally got round to looking at this in more detail, an I've made some fairly serious changes as a result:


Reworked happiness calculation to no longer weight by city size (net unhappiness in a small city is at least as bad as in a large city)
Always happy cities (whether via wonders or civics) no longer contribute to the calculation
A secondary check on the happiness state by the settler itself is now made in addition to the settler building checks that cities were making


Most importantly of all, I also overhauled the whole AI whether-to-change-civics routine in several ways:

It no longer seeks to normalize all civic values so as to be able to compare them across the entire spectrum of possible civics (this was problematic because of outliers with extremely large or extremely small values and lead to a lot of distortions)
It now looks ahead in the tech tree to determine if there are other advantageous civics in the near future that should cause it to hold off for now
It no longer uses an artifical countdown before it even considers a civic change. It will now check every time it gets a tech at least
Fixed major bug with the calculation of unhappiness for foreign culture


Hopefully these changes will lead to more sensible behaviour both on city founding, and on civic swapping. I have not yet pushed these to SVN as I have a bit more testing I want to do first, but once I do (tomorrow I hope) please be on the lookout for any strange behaviour in regard to civic swaps the AI makes.

Edit - changes now pushed to SVN

The AI does not seem to understand the new sea improvements I added. At least I have never seen them build a becon to improve a reef.

The AI does not seem to understand the new sea improvements I added. At least I have never seen them build a becon to improve a reef.

If you happen tom have a convenient save with a work nearby an improve ale feature post it and I'll take a look see.

Is there any way to change the AI worker (also auto worker) habit of building forts everywhere?

Is there any way to change the AI worker (also auto worker) habit of building forts everywhere?


I have brought that up before, but from what everyone was saying "so what." That was the answer i got before, i dont like it, later on because the opposing civ comes in with Mounted units and ONLY goes for the forts and takes over that part of your territory and resource to go with it:mad:

I have brought that up before, but from what everyone was saying "so what." That was the answer i got before, i dont like it, later on because the opposing civ comes in with Mounted units and ONLY goes for the forts and takes over that part of your territory and resource to go with it:mad:

You mean you don't station defensive units in them? No I mean that the AI builds forts inside the working area of a city when there are other things to build. For example it will build a fort on forest rather than a lumberjack. This is probably down to the bonuses a fort gives being larger than the bonuses a lumberjack gives.

You mean you don't station defensive units in them? No I mean that the AI builds forts inside the working area of a city when there are other things to build. For example it will build a fort on forest rather than a lumberjack. This is probably down to the bonuses a fort gives being larger than the bonuses a lumberjack gives.

Yeah, i never use defensive reinforcements on forts (sigh), but thats just me.
But that is exactly what i meant, i am bad with words. But does the worker consider :hammers: over :gold:, :gold: over :culture: etc? Whats the determining factor(s)?

Is there any way to change the AI worker (also auto worker) habit of building forts everywhere?

Yeh easy to inhibit it in the auto-build. Will need a bit more work to incraese the AI intelligence about wher to build them for it (but worthwhile at some point)

Here is one thing that must be added...

:mad:Thou Shall Not Build Forts in the First Ring Around Thy Cities.
and...
:mad:Thou Shall Not Build a Line of Forts Stretching From the Sea to the Fort in the First Ring Around Said Cities.

On a different note, I think the Leader Trait Spiritual needs to be nerfed badly. I'm playing on Nobel with Rev on and the top AIs are always a Spi Trait leader that has two or three times the amount of cities (usually ending up at 8-9 for the middle of the road and 15-16 for the Spi Leader) and has only 1-2 Revs a game every other AI is shedding colonies and rebels at 7-8 tops in the medival period. Double size and stable is broken.

On a more whining note, (with out checking manually) somehow said Spi Leader can expand at a few hundred turns in an eternity game... at a point I'm surrounded by a moat of Neanderthalls... which isn't resolved without abusing rogue invisiblity. That AI has to be bribing the Neanderthalls to form moats around me.

If they aren't bribing slope heads they are somehow all building tribes with enough protection to cross a Neanderthall moat and defend it... and then managing to keep up in Sci with a Sci Trait Leader.

End of Whine.

Here is one thing that must be added...

:mad:Thou Shall Not Build Forts in the First Ring Around Thy Cities.
and...
:mad:Thou Shall Not Build a Line of Forts Stretching From the Sea to the Fort in the First Ring Around Said Cities.

On a different note, I think the Leader Trait Spiritual needs to be nerfed badly. I'm playing on Nobel with Rev on and the top AIs are always a Spi Trait leader that has two or three times the amount of cities (usually ending up at 8-9 for the middle of the road and 15-16 for the Spi Leader) and has only 1-2 Revs a game every other AI is shedding colonies and rebels at 7-8 tops in the medival period. Double size and stable is broken.

On a more whining note, (with out checking manually) somehow said Spi Leader can expand at a few hundred turns in an eternity game... at a point I'm surrounded by a moat of Neanderthalls... which isn't resolved without abusing rogue invisiblity. That AI has to be bribing the Neanderthalls to form moats around me.

If they aren't bribing slope heads they are somehow all building tribes with enough protection to cross a Neanderthall moat and defend it... and then managing to keep up in Sci with a Sci Trait Leader.

End of Whine.

Why not build from coast? Around the city I agree (it provides FAR too good a tile to attack from if taken).

That AI has to be bribing the Neanderthalls to form moats around me.
Maybe an AI close to you has Neanderthal Embassy and is making neander units to hem you in?

It's never occurred to me to build a line of forts to a landlocked city to give said city a passage to the sea. Wow! I usually don't build Forts because I don't use the Civic(s) that grants them Hammers or Gold.

JosEPh

It's never occurred to me to build a line of forts to a landlocked city to give said city a passage to the sea. Wow! I usually don't build Forts because I don't use the Civic(s) that grants them Hammers or Gold.

It didn't occur to me either... that may actually be useful. However, the workers do it reflexively as a religious rite.

I mean that my workers are building a line of forts from a fort only junk tile (at least at that point in the game) directly to the fort they build directly outside my city.... they build an armored invasion route. Granted this is mostly from desert/ice cities unless marsh or something do it. The forts are composed of terrain entirely inside my culture borders and the Zone of control extends entirely within my borders. Meaning the sole purpose of these forts is giving invaders fortifications to invade by,.. I never order them to do it... its just the worker religion to build endless forts.

Maybe an AI close to you has Neanderthal Embassy and is making neander units to hem you in?

On turn 1-200ish in an eternity game? I haven't actually seen that building... but as they are spawning in the forest I have my doubts. Good move, for them, if there is a bulding that lets you control where the barbarian units spawn themselves. I tried an early raging barbarians game and it would actually speed up my growth (ignoring the lack of terrain improvement tiles) if I got :science: from killing them. While killing less of my guys for far more of theirs. The difference between normal neanderthalls and raging neanderthalls is that one gets themselves killed off attacking my cities, providing me with exp, and the other lurks just out of sight in forests killing anything that moves and being generally miserable for me.

I know its likely being fixed... but if raging animals attacked my towns (and couldn't pillage) I'd enjoy raging barbarians and a way to speed up my games. The Moat of Doom, with those tantalizing animals randomly flowing through it, combined with all the forests spawning directly towards me like an organic tower walking attack... the Neanderthalls might as welll be the Zerg. My early culture's paranoia as seen in their mythology must be insanely Lovecraftian... like the Summerian mythos. The Gods are actively trying to kill them... only instead of with flash floods its with ominous creeping forests that spew forth axe weilding Doom!

Maybe an AI close to you has Neanderthal Embassy and is making neander units to hem you in?

It's never occurred to me to build a line of forts to a landlocked city to give said city a passage to the sea. Wow! I usually don't build Forts because I don't use the Civic(s) that grants them Hammers or Gold.

JosEPh

It doesn't. You can span ONE tile that way, but no more. Only land tiles that are coastal can be moved into by ships with either forst or cities on them.

On turn 1-200ish in an eternity game? I haven't actually seen that building... but as they are spawning in the forest I have my doubts. Good move, for them, if there is a bulding that lets you control where the barbarian units spawn themselves. I tried an early raging barbarians game and it would actually speed up my growth (ignoring the lack of terrain improvement tiles) if I got :science: from killing them. While killing less of my guys for far more of theirs. The difference between normal neanderthalls and raging neanderthalls is that one gets themselves killed off attacking my cities, providing me with exp, and the other lurks just out of sight in forests killing anything that moves and being generally miserable for me.

I know its likely being fixed... but if raging animals attacked my towns (and couldn't pillage) I'd enjoy raging barbarians and a way to speed up my games. The Moat of Doom, with those tantalizing animals randomly flowing through it, combined with all the forests spawning directly towards me like an organic tower walking attack... the Neanderthalls might as welll be the Zerg. My early culture's paranoia as seen in their mythology must be insanely Lovecraftian... like the Summerian mythos. The Gods are actively trying to kill them... only instead of with flash floods its with ominous creeping forests that spew forth axe weilding Doom!

Neanderthals are only set to spawn in the forest during wave 3, the last and shortest of the three. It's a setting of year -6000 to -5000. Prior to that they spawn on certain features in wave 1 and then bonuses in wave 2. There is some overlapping, with the last 1000 years being the greatest boom before they stop completely.

I tuned it using Raging with the idea that the spawn speed is faster so if that was manageable than normal should be fine. However, if we get more reports of amassing neanderthals, then we can tweak some more.

I'm going to have to play a game and time it out... but that short spawning time span seems wrong or something in public v17. I end up with as many as 8 or 9 or them on one side and 3-4 on the other... as I said a Neanderthall moat. I can't really clear them out as the keep spawning and I lose unit because they can't last against 3-4 of the unless paired up on a forested hill. Preferably fortified. Once they show up I only get animals that attack my fortified troops along my borders. Going after animals just leaves my often wounded hunting unit open to attack and the animal he just subduded barely alive on a different square.

On a more AI based line of thought, I think the reason the moats occur is the same reason that back in v10 scouts kept circling my base snarfing up all the animals. Something about the player draws them in toward their capital. Possibly the reason units set to kill things or explore wander around inside my cultural borders so much.

I'm going to have to play a game and time it out... but that short spawning time span seems wrong or something in public v17. I end up with as many as 8 or 9 or them on one side and 3-4 on the other... as I said a Neanderthall moat. I can't really clear them out as the keep spawning and I lose unit because they can't last against 3-4 of the unless paired up on a forested hill. Preferably fortified. Once they show up I only get animals that attack my fortified troops along my borders. Going after animals just leaves my often wounded hunting unit open to attack and the animal he just subduded barely alive on a different square.

On a more AI based line of thought, I think the reason the moats occur is the same reason that back in v10 scouts kept circling my base snarfing up all the animals. Something about the player draws them in toward their capital. Possibly the reason units set to kill things or explore wander around inside my cultural borders so much.

You need to look in the thread Tricks and Tips, there is an easy way to get rid of those pesky Neanderthals.

I'm going to have to play a game and time it out... but that short spawning time span seems wrong or something in public v17. I end up with as many as 8 or 9 or them on one side and 3-4 on the other... as I said a Neanderthall moat. I can't really clear them out as the keep spawning and I lose unit because they can't last against 3-4 of the unless paired up on a forested hill. Preferably fortified. Once they show up I only get animals that attack my fortified troops along my borders. Going after animals just leaves my often wounded hunting unit open to attack and the animal he just subduded barely alive on a different square.

On a more AI based line of thought, I think the reason the moats occur is the same reason that back in v10 scouts kept circling my base snarfing up all the animals. Something about the player draws them in toward their capital. Possibly the reason units set to kill things or explore wander around inside my cultural borders so much.

Ah. I should have asked if you're using SVN or not. I believe the Neanderthal spawn tweaks were made after public v17 was released. But just in case, I've asked AIAndy in another thread about possibly making a global limit to the number of spawns so if the max is reached or greater it wouldn't spawn anymore. There could be more difficulties involved than I can think of though, so we'll see.

I don't actually want to remove the Neanderthalls... as I said the idea of my tribe creating a mythos about evil creeping forests and it killer tree spawn (Neanderthalls) amuses me greatly. At least the moat keeps me from seeing all my animals snarfed up by AI scout units that constantly circle my base.

My problem is that the AI, thread topic relivance, seems to be under the psychic impression of where I am with its patrols, explores, and such. I think the AI is programmed to home in on the player and that is why the moat pops up. Also, why I end up with so many troops sent to explore or seek and destroy running around in circles in my base.

On another note, I got around to a test game using raging barbarians, eternity speed, huge map, 29 AI and me (all at nobel). Turn 51, 11286 BC... The raging barbarians neanderthalls kill their first AI off 1 player. This is in no way 6-5000 BC as the Neanderthall spawn times, as was mentioned.

Again you may have fixed that or changed that now, in the test version.

I don't actually want to remove the Neanderthalls... as I said the idea of my tribe creating a mythos about evil creeping forests and it killer tree spawn (Neanderthalls) amuses me greatly. At least the moat keeps me from seeing all my animals snarfed up by AI scout units that constantly circle my base.

My problem is that the AI, thread topic relivance, seems to be under the psychic impression of where I am with its patrols, explores, and such. I think the AI is programmed to home in on the player and that is why the moat pops up. Also, why I end up with so many troops sent to explore or seek and destroy running around in circles in my base.

On another note, I got around to a test game using raging barbarians, eternity speed, huge map, 29 AI and me (all at nobel). Turn 51, 11286 BC... The raging barbarians neanderthalls kill their first AI off 1 player. This is in no way 6-5000 BC as the Neanderthall spawn times, as was mentioned.

Again you may have fixed that or changed that now, in the test version.

Nope. Just paranoia. There is no such coding in the AI.

Is it just me, or is it taking alot LONGER per turn after Renaissance Era?

Is it just me, or is it taking alot LONGER per turn after Renaissance Era?

Dunno - haven't got out of prehistopric yet on V17. Post a save game and I'll look at it when I get out o my pile I'm snowed under (ie - in a week or so I expect)

Dunno - haven't got out of prehistoric yet on V17. Post a save game and I'll look at it when I get out o my pile I'm snowed under (ie - in a week or so I expect)

Holy Moly, you got "snow" already, dang glad i dont live there.:joke::sarcasm:

I don't actually want to remove the Neanderthalls... as I said the idea of my tribe creating a mythos about evil creeping forests and it killer tree spawn (Neanderthalls) amuses me greatly. At least the moat keeps me from seeing all my animals snarfed up by AI scout units that constantly circle my base.

My problem is that the AI, thread topic relivance, seems to be under the psychic impression of where I am with its patrols, explores, and such. I think the AI is programmed to home in on the player and that is why the moat pops up. Also, why I end up with so many troops sent to explore or seek and destroy running around in circles in my base.

On another note, I got around to a test game using raging barbarians, eternity speed, huge map, 29 AI and me (all at nobel). Turn 51, 11286 BC... The raging barbarians neanderthalls kill their first AI off 1 player. This is in no way 6-5000 BC as the Neanderthall spawn times, as was mentioned.

Again you may have fixed that or changed that now, in the test version.

A lot of changes in the SVN to the spawning including rate, density, and types of plots they spawn from. There used to be big issues with the Neanderthals amassing in great number, but I haven't seen that with recent changes even on Raging Barbs, which should double the spawning. So I think much of your issues are addressed in the SVN.

Keep in mind that the amount of spawning is also based on the amount of Features/Bonuses/Terrain that you have on your map; the ones they spawn from. I varied that in my recent changes from what it was originally with them spawning from 2-3 bonuses only.

Feel free to get yourself connected to the SVN to experience the latest changes, though it does come with the risk of sometimes being buggy. The next official release may be still be a few weeks away.

I think I'll stay out of the SVN for now... v17 is stable enough I can actually get past industrialism now (previosly a v10 player).

I played through a raging game (29 AI plus me, 6 survived the Neanderthal rush), its nice except one thing. I got too many animals at one point, over enthusiasticness on my part, but I was mainly after generals, and bankrupted so it started deleting units. I deeply question the results. First it took down anyone with more than 3 xp... totally ignoring the massive pile of animals. Lets see 15 odd lions or the deployed and in combat rogue with 40 odd xp... rogue it is. :clap:

I'm not sure if this is an intended punishment system... nasty suprize that was, or if its a lottery and animals are totally ignored... but the traditional, stoning prize, style lottery seems made of malignance and pain.

However, should the animals be excluded method be our method, I can think of a way to nuke any AI's army by just donating animals at it until it only has animals. Open borders.... kill them with kindness.

So RNG god mocking me or silly budgeting procedure?

One thing i have been noticing alot lately (playing with barb world) is that the civ builds lots and lots of units, which is nice, but the POP stays at pop 1 for over 500-700 turns?? Just seems weird?

One thing i have been noticing alot lately (playing with barb world) is that the civ builds lots and lots of units, which is nice, but the POP stays at pop 1 for over 500-700 turns?? Just seems weird?

Barb AI places very low priority on anything but military (always has). Recent civic changes mean that you need a LOT more food early on to grow, so the barbs never really get enough.

Barb AI places very low priority on anything but military (always has). Recent civic changes mean that you need a LOT more food early on to grow, so the barbs never really get enough.

Shucks, because i like (most of the time) where they build their cities and i really like taking over them, but if only at POP 1, then they ALWAYs get razed, and i dont like that part, "I'm Just Sayin."

Shucks, because i like (most of the time) where they build their cities and i really like taking over them, but if only at POP 1, then they ALWAYs get razed, and i dont like that part, "I'm Just Sayin."

We can give barbs a growth multiplier that only applies to them if you like.

We can give barbs a growth multiplier that only applies to them if you like.

As long as its ONLY barbs and not too much, then i say go for it, as long as they at least grow to POP 2 everything is fine after that.

btw, on a the mod side of the house can you take alook at almost all of The_Lopez's NEW dll/modcomps, some of them look pretty good? BUT only when YOU have time, and only then, thx.

I think I'll stay out of the SVN for now... v17 is stable enough I can actually get past industrialism now (previosly a v10 player).

I played through a raging game (29 AI plus me, 6 survived the Neanderthal rush), its nice except one thing. I got too many animals at one point, over enthusiasticness on my part, but I was mainly after generals, and bankrupted so it started deleting units. I deeply question the results. First it took down anyone with more than 3 xp... totally ignoring the massive pile of animals. Lets see 15 odd lions or the deployed and in combat rogue with 40 odd xp... rogue it is. :clap:

I'm not sure if this is an intended punishment system... nasty suprize that was, or if its a lottery and animals are totally ignored... but the traditional, stoning prize, style lottery seems made of malignance and pain.

However, should the animals be excluded method be our method, I can think of a way to nuke any AI's army by just donating animals at it until it only has animals. Open borders.... kill them with kindness.

So RNG god mocking me or silly budgeting procedure?

If I remember correctly the main choice is distance from a city and upkeep cost. Animals have no extra upkeep cost, rogues do.

If I remember correctly the main choice is distance from a city and upkeep cost. Animals have no extra upkeep cost, rogues do.

Subdued animals are great people as far as the AI is concerned. It will never trash GPs I don't think.

Since I did the work to allow new unitAIs to be added without losing backward compatibility a month or so ago, maybe now is the time to use it to split off a UINTAI_SUBDUED_ANIMAL which behaves like a great engineer for the most part but is not somethign the AI is too afraid to trash?

Subdued animals are great people as far as the AI is concerned. It will never trash GPs I don't think.

Since I did the work to allow new unitAIs to be added without losing backward compatibility a month or so ago, maybe now is the time to use it to split off a UINTAI_SUBDUED_ANIMAL which behaves like a great engineer for the most part but is not somethign the AI is too afraid to trash?

Great, just after I went through and made sure all were UNITAI_ENGINEER.:mischief:

Good idea:goodjob:

Great, just after I went through and made sure all were UNITAI_ENGINEER.:mischief:

Good idea:goodjob:

Well, it needs some DLL work so not today. I really want to crack this CTD that some people are seeing before embarking on anything else.

We have an interesting choice made repeatedly by the strongest nation aside from our team in the world, the decision to enact a naval heckling war against us repeatedly. Is this just to try to slow us down?

He brings a minimal amount of troops in on transport galleons and then quickly gives up on further efforts (and even when he CAN drop them off he chooses not to... huh?)

Bringing this up here as it is at least somewhat relevant to the thread topic...

I mentioned this is another thread, but with the AI unable (or unwilling??) to delete subdued units, it is ending up suffering setbacks in the early game.

In the autoplay I ran for 500 turns, my nation went completely broke, units were on STRIKE, and my research rate dropped to 0% because of all the subdued hawks and eagles I possessed. Progressing another 50 turns after that to see what the AI did achieved nothing more than 50 turns of stagnation.

I cannot imagine this is an isolated incident. But it's one the Player avoids by deleting units, where the AI cannot/does not/will not.

So either the AI needs some capability to deal with this drain:

Delete units when it evaluates them as too costly for the benefit
Delete units when :science: slider drops below 10-15%
Delete units when treasury hits 0 :gold:
Gift the units to another nation
Offer to sell the units via diplomacy


Or we need some new action/command for subdued animals that the AI can make use of:

Butcher animal for :food: or :hammers:
Rush production for MINIMAL benefit (+1 :hammers:)
Sell the unit in a city for a small :gold: return
Sacrifice the animal at a Sacrificial Altar or Temple for +1 GPP

Continuing my autoplay, I'm seeing more issues with the way the AI handles things.


City spamming is still occurring despite the penalties to happiness. My Civ has 13 cities and still using Chiefdom, which means all cities beyond 6 cause +3 :mad: each. ALL cities are :mad: and AI STILL making Settler units at several cities!
AI has my Civ making and maintaining a large number of units despite money problems.
Noticed in the Financial Adviser that it shows a lot of :gold: for Unit Maintenance, but for Military Unit Maintenance it listed 0, despite the 41 military units it says there are.


Other statistics about this game...

Current year 0 AD. Turn 900
Nation: Zulu (tend to get them a lot on Random pick)
Speed: Snail. Difficulty: Prince.
Map: Planet Generator, Huge, Tropical, Low Sea
Other Settings: Play Now (whatever those defaults are)
Total Cities: 13, Sizes 10/8/5/4/3/3/1~
Current Gov't : Chiefdom (have not gotten Despotism or Monarchy yet)
So far only 1-2 Classical Age techs discovered, and some not yet researched from earlier eras.

I've managed to effectively stun lock all the Civs on my contient. What is happening is that I took two other Civs capital as my first two expansions and torched a third one. This made me the biggest on block and at that point I was scary and only like 3 techs ahead.

Now with me as the uber threat they started making unit after unit in panic... and then noticed that everyone had big, big armies so build more units to compinsate. So the rest of them are in an arms race they can't win... and is building so very many units they are out of :gold: for any research percentage... and building more and more so they end up deleting troops from upkeep issues... which lets them get enough :gold: to research for a turn or six before the cycle repeats.

Its so bad they are all just finishing researching megafauna domestication and I'm on machinery.

Continuing my autoplay, I'm seeing more issues with the way the AI handles things.


City spamming is still occurring despite the penalties to happiness. My Civ has 13 cities and still using Chiefdom, which means all cities beyond 6 cause +3 :mad: each. ALL cities are :mad: and AI STILL making Settler units at several cities!
AI has my Civ making and maintaining a large number of units despite money problems.
Noticed in the Financial Adviser that it shows a lot of :gold: for Unit Maintenance, but for Military Unit Maintenance it listed 0, despite the 41 military units it says there are.


Other statistics about this game...

Current year 0 AD. Turn 900
Total Cities: 13, Sizes 10/8/5/4/3/3/1~
Current Gov't : Chiefdom (have not gotten Despotism or Monarchy yet)
So far only 1-2 Classical Age techs discovered, and some not yet researched from earlier eras.


I need a save game from a turn in which the AI decides to found incorrectly (auto playing the next turn doesn't found another city from the posted save game). Not sure when the last city was founded but that is the turn I need to debug if you still have the save game for it from your autosaves. Or if you take some older save game and auto-play it again to re-find such a case that would also work. Trying to go forward in the debug version is not really possible (takes approx 10-15 minutes per turn), so if you could pin it down for me that would be extremely helpful.

I HAVE been able to find out why its BUILDING more settlers in your save game (that save game records a value of -17 settlers in existance, which is obviously incorrect, and screws up the inhibition of new settlers). However, that doesn't explain why it would found cities anyway even after building the settlers. I also don't know how that number gets to be negative, but I'm searching for that.

I need a save game from a turn in which the AI decides to found incorrectly (auto playing the next turn doesn't found another city from the posted save game). Not sure when the last city was founded but that is the turn I need to debug if you still have the save game for it from your autosaves. Or if you take some older save game and auto-play it again to re-find such a case that would also work. Trying to go forward in the debug version is not really possible (takes approx 10-15 minutes per turn), so if you could pin it down for me that would be extremely helpful.

I HAVE been able to find out why its BUILDING more settlers in your save game (that save game records a value of -17 settlers in existance, which is obviously incorrect, and screws up the inhibition of new settlers). However, that doesn't explain why it would found cities anyway even after building the settlers. I also don't know how that number gets to be negative, but I'm searching for that.

I've been doing Max Comp saves along the way so I have one from an earlier period I can autoplay up a bit at a time. Do you need the turn where the AI actually PLANTS the new city? When it sends the settler out from a city? Or when it starts to build a settler?

Continuing my autoplay, I'm seeing more issues with the way the AI handles things.


City spamming is still occurring despite the penalties to happiness. My Civ has 13 cities and still using Chiefdom, which means all cities beyond 6 cause +3 :mad: each. ALL cities are :mad: and AI STILL making Settler units at several cities!
AI has my Civ making and maintaining a large number of units despite money problems.
Noticed in the Financial Adviser that it shows a lot of :gold: for Unit Maintenance, but for Military Unit Maintenance it listed 0, despite the 41 military units it says there are.


Other statistics about this game...

Current year 0 AD. Turn 900
Total Cities: 13, Sizes 10/8/5/4/3/3/1~
Current Gov't : Chiefdom (have not gotten Despotism or Monarchy yet)
So far only 1-2 Classical Age techs discovered, and some not yet researched from earlier eras.


Have you posted the Game set up Options that you selected, and Bug Options? How many AI? Size and Type of Map? Game Speed? If so I missed them.

JosEPh :)

Have you posted the Game set up Options that you selected, and Bug Options? How many AI? Size and Type of Map? Game Speed? If so I missed them.

JosEPh :)

I hadn't. But I will now in that post above. :)

I need a save game from a turn in which the AI decides to found incorrectly (auto playing the next turn doesn't found another city from the posted save game). Not sure when the last city was founded but that is the turn I need to debug if you still have the save game for it from your autosaves. Or if you take some older save game and auto-play it again to re-find such a case that would also work. Trying to go forward in the debug version is not really possible (takes approx 10-15 minutes per turn), so if you could pin it down for me that would be extremely helpful.

I HAVE been able to find out why its BUILDING more settlers in your save game (that save game records a value of -17 settlers in existance, which is obviously incorrect, and screws up the inhibition of new settlers). However, that doesn't explain why it would found cities anyway even after building the settlers. I also don't know how that number gets to be negative, but I'm searching for that.

Save posted. Founds city on next turn.

I hadn't. But I will now in that post above. :)



Save posted. Founds city on next turn.

Oops. x >= y...x <= y - much the same really!? er...

I had a test the wrong way around. Pushed the fix to SVN - should stop city founding when it's a really bad idea!

The "Play Now" vs Custom game uses standard BtS settings and may not recognize added "Options" that a Custom game provides. So your C2C option for City Limits may not even be used, or turned off.

I quit using the "Play Now" a long time ago when RoM was still young, because it produced "different" results than using the Custom Game setting. (Boy was that a while ago, going on 5 years now :shake: )

JosEPh :)

The "Play Now" vs Custom game uses standard BtS settings and may not recognize added "Options" that a Custom game provides. So your C2C option for City Limits may not even be used, or turned off.

I quit using the "Play Now" a long time ago when RoM was still young, because it produced "different" results than using the Custom Game setting. (Boy was that a while ago, going on 5 years now :shake: )

JosEPh :)

That may be true. But I do know that ALL of my cities were in revolt, so I think it's likely the anger penalty for too many cities was included.

Noted though. Next test I won't be using Play Now :)

Oops. x >= y...x <= y - much the same really!? er...

I had a test the wrong way around. Pushed the fix to SVN - should stop city founding when it's a really bad idea!

Just reporting back that your fix appears to be operating properly. On my autoplay game tonight my civ stopped at 4 cities. There was a little anger because of the number that caused 1 city to get :mad: but the AI wasn't continuing to expand.

Regarding the stockpiling of subdued animals, that also seems to better: I didn't see ANY stocked at the cities on a brief check. But I also had another Civ nearby which could have contributed to keeping the animal pop. down.

I found an apparent AI Error involving large stacks of units in the Prehistoric Era.

The AI playing the Hittites has a rather large stack (see screenie), which it just mills about outside it's cultural area. I have seen this multiple times with my subdued animals, so I'm pretty sure that this is not normal.

EDIT: I'm using a very recent SVN revision (1130ish)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=306209&stc=1&d=1320615997

306210

Still getting this ALOT: Barbs all in a bunch and dont go anyplace? It has been over 300 turns since i noticed the city there, and all i have in the nearest city for fortification is two units in my cities? Plus again the POP is still at 1?

Still getting this ALOT: Barbs all in a bunch and dont go anyplace? It has been over 300 turns since i noticed the city there, and all i have in the nearest city for fortification is two units in my cities? Plus again the POP is still at 1?

The barbarian Ai hasn't been touched really ever since I started on the mod, so I doubt is is a new issue, though I guess something about the other game changes may have triggered it. Not sure I'll be able to spend time on it - I'm a bit pressed for time on completing what I said I would for v19, so it will likely have to wait.

In all my games the AI starts losing the tech race after a while. From my experience I'd say it's mainly due to having way, way, way too many units and thus a lot higher costs, resulting in lower tech %.

It's more pronounced when the AI has a player nearby. Could be AI player as well but that I can't say.

Attaching a save game where one can see how the AI has and builds too many units.
Oh, and Mod folder is C2C, not Caveman2Cosmos.

Cheers

@BG,
Have you tried setting the stack limit to say 10? It's in the BUG Options.

I set mine to 10 and at 1928AD out of 9 players I only rank #5. I do not see the AI overproducing units with the stack limit on. I'm struggling to keep up tech wise. I have just passed the leader in # of cities owned. And I'm at war with 2 AI.

JosEPh :)

Stacking isn't the problem. Siam with so many units they have to run at 5% science is.
I always set stacks to 12.

Khmer also had problems with science until I took out most of their units (some 100 turns). Of course I also took over their cities so now they have trouble again, for other reasons.

Been at war with Siam and Khmer since start. Those were the two near neighbours I had. Running on Eternal I have so far killed a total of 1125 units from both, most from Khmer. And I've only just reached Medieval Era and am 991 turns into the game.

Both of them were ahead of me in Tech for a long time. Passing them was easy. A couple of unknown civs are still ahead of me in tech but since I've gotten a few religions and a Great Doctor I know it's not by much they are ahead with.
Had they not gone for as many troops as they have they could have had better units to fight and defend with rather than a myriad of worthless units I just kill.

Cheers

This current game is the 1st time I've set stack limits. I jut have not noticed massive build ups....yet.

JosEPh

Does the ai seem able to play competently without massive stacks?
And what is the max size you are using?

Stack of 12. The AI seems to be able to play with it. Just comes with several stacks instead. Defend Only units don't count towards the limit either and most of the time the AI has a few healers along too, thus getting more than 12 in a stack.

Cheers

EDIT: Changed to 20 on Koshling's recommendation.

Cheers

Koskhing, we've been over AI and Civic Changes a few times. It might be slightly better but that's not saying a lot. It's still bad enough that playing on Deity the main reason I can catch up with the AIs early run-away is because they change Civics too often.
With the new Snail and Eternity Speeds this is even more so. However often the AI re-evaluates Civic choices it is way too often, and still throws them on switching "back" to earlier and worse Civics. It's not seldom I see AIs switching between the combos Prophets/Despotism and Divine Cult/Monarchy.

In current game 1280BC Carthage switched to Church/State Church/Despotism. Bad choice, and too little time between.
Before that it was 1306BC (26 turns earlier) that they switched to Open Borders/Divine Cult/Monarchy.
1332BC (26 turns earlier) they switched to State Church/Despotism. Again a bad choice, bad!
1403BC (71 turns before) they switched to Monarchy. From here on they shouldn't even have looked at anything earlier.
1439BC (36 turns) it was Interpreters. At least they didn't change this one...

It's been riddled with bad Civic changes the whole game from the 3 AIs I have contact with. Why go back to a "worse" civic, and multiple times?

The rest of the AIs must be experiencing similar Civic decisions. Sure, this game I might have limited the AI to 1 starting Tribe instead of 2, but I should still not have caught up with the AIs in the early Classical Era.
I know I was behind the AI (Most Advanced didn't even have me in it in the early Ancient Era) but now, already, I'm caught up and in second place in Most Advanced. I'm betting most of this is due to both bad Civic Choices as well as switching too often on the AIs' side of things.

I'll supply you with the save at current point (and later point depending on how much more I've played it) if you want it.

Cheers

EDIT: Just checked the GNP. All three have lots and lots of anarchy periods and in the last 700 years I've gone from roughly half of two of the AI's (equal to one) GNP's to equal to the highest one and roughly 120% higher than one and 4x higher than the struggling one.

Cheers

Koskhing, we've been over AI and Civic Changes a few times. It might be slightly better but that's not saying a lot. It's still bad enough that playing on Deity the main reason I can catch up with the AIs early run-away is because they change Civics too often.
With the new Snail and Eternity Speeds this is even more so. However often the AI re-evaluates Civic choices it is way too often, and still throws them on switching "back" to earlier and worse Civics. It's not seldom I see AIs switching between the combos Prophets/Despotism and Divine Cult/Monarchy.

In current game 1280BC Carthage switched to Church/State Church/Despotism. Bad choice, and too little time between.
Before that it was 1306BC (26 turns earlier) that they switched to Open Borders/Divine Cult/Monarchy.
1332BC (26 turns earlier) they switched to State Church/Despotism. Again a bad choice, bad!
1403BC (71 turns before) they switched to Monarchy. From here on they shouldn't even have looked at anything earlier.
1439BC (36 turns) it was Interpreters. At least they didn't change this one...

It's been riddled with bad Civic changes the whole game from the 3 AIs I have contact with. Why go back to a "worse" civic, and multiple times?

The rest of the AIs must be experiencing similar Civic decisions. Sure, this game I might have limited the AI to 1 starting Tribe instead of 2, but I should still not have caught up with the AIs in the early Classical Era.
I know I was behind the AI (Most Advanced didn't even have me in it in the early Ancient Era) but now, already, I'm caught up and in second place in Most Advanced. I'm betting most of this is due to both bad Civic Choices as well as switching too often on the AIs' side of things.

I'll supply you with the save at current point (and later point depending on how much more I've played it) if you want it.

Cheers

EDIT: Just checked the GNP. All three have lots and lots of anarchy periods and in the last 700 years I've gone from roughly half of two of the AI's (equal to one) GNP's to equal to the highest one and roughly 120% higher than one and 4x higher than the struggling one.

Cheers

I will need a save from the turn in which bit makes such a switch on end turn please.

Press enter to end turn. During the end turn things Ostaneco of Carthage does his patented bad! civic switch.
Alright, not his originally but in this case it is.

Cheers

Double Post, I know, but do have another save game illustration a problem with the AI and evaluation where to keep Defensive units.
Where my bunch of units are now standing just inside Carthage's Capitol BFC I have just taken out, oh, probably 20-25 Town Watchmen, a 5-10 Archers, and 15-20 War Dogs.
Being able no, and not before, to see his Capitol and the units there I find that he has all of 1 Light Swordsman, 2 Javelineers, and 2 Town Watchmen.
I was counting on getting to the hard fight now, not have it behind me. More, and better, defense should have been stationed in the City itself, and not to mention what even 5 Town Watchmen extra would have done for his Crime Level there (apart from also having extra defense in cities).

Cheers

EDIT: He did move a number of units in for the next turn but without the extra 25% from fortifying it'll be an easier fight.

Cheers

Double Post, I know, but do have another save game illustration a problem with the AI and evaluation where to keep Defensive units.
Where my bunch of units are now standing just inside Carthage's Capitol BFC I have just taken out, oh, probably 20-25 Town Watchmen, a 5-10 Archers, and 15-20 War Dogs.
Being able no, and not before, to see his Capitol and the units there I find that he has all of 1 Light Swordsman, 2 Javelineers, and 2 Town Watchmen.
I was counting on getting to the hard fight now, not have it behind me. More, and better, defense should have been stationed in the City itself, and not to mention what even 5 Town Watchmen extra would have done for his Crime Level there (apart from also having extra defense in cities).

Cheers

EDIT: He did move a number of units in for the next turn but without the extra 25% from fortifying it'll be an easier fight.

Cheers

It's a tough balance. It very deliberately keeps units just outside the city on defensive terrain to prevent an attacker easily occupying good defensive spots adjacent to the city to attack from (and to a lesser extent to improve it's surveillance). The problem is that as it starts losing units there it tends to replenish them, keeping a percentage back in the city. Keep killing them and the percentage outside the city drops, so it replenishes it, until you eventually wind up with it reaching the point it feels it cannot move any more units out of the city.

This behaviour is reasonable, and good tactics in some cases, but it needs to be tweaked so that it only does it if the result is that your (visible to it at least) units cannot attack it's resulting stack on defensive terrain without expecting to suffer losses at least equal to (and probably significantly greater than) those of the defending stack. I'll see what I can do about said tweaking.

In regard to the anti crime units - the AI knows nothing at all about that mechanic yet. That is why I requested it was not put on until after the v22 release, because I knew i wasn't going to have time to add any AI for it for a while. Will be done sometime before v23 is about all I can promise.

*nods* Sound reasoning, in most cases. In this case I could attrition him down with a few units on the defensive hill (99+%) until his big units were gone and I could attack his units there en masse.

About -crime units: Since most, if not all, of them already have bonus in city defense and no where else can't a quick fix be to set them to AI City Defender tactics?

Cheers

*nods* Sound reasoning, in most cases. In this case I could attrition him down with a few units on the defensive hill (99+%) until his big units were gone and I could attack his units there en masse.

About -crime units: Since most, if not all, of them already have bonus in city defense and no where else can't a quick fix be to set them to AI City Defender tactics?

Cheers

I think they are, but the city defense AI allows units beyond the bare minium the AI wants to alwasy keep IN the city to move into its surroundings (still leashed close to the city to be able to go back) and occupy defensive points (as you are seeing it do). Adding a little AI code to notice anti-crime and bias towards those staying in the cities will be easy - I just need to get around to it is all.

Talking of AI behaviour on defending close to city tiles: I have a save where Ai has stationed 3 or 4 units in city and about 35 on a hill 2 tiles away (see persia in example).
They sit there and wait.. for nothing.
Aside 10 axes and some dogs, AI brought 23 slingers to defend the tile and kills itself with the costs of this (wasn't it tweaked so AI wouldn't build too many troops anymore to commit economical suicide?
In same savegame Mongolia - strangely - did not build too many troops while korea and persia and a lot of european nations did.

I also see that once AI tiles have been pillaged by barbs and there are still barb cities nearby they tend not to improve the tiles again... like forever... so instead of using their HUGE stackes to put 2/3 units on every pillaged tile (even if it has no good defense bonus) and then send gatherers/workers there they just keep stacks big on one tile and ignore the plots (to check that behaviour see the bison resource in korea in same save).
I mean what is AI thinking? They (korea, persia) have incredible stacks and the barb cities nearby only 3-5 units defending them.

Even if Persia or Korea would calculate to lose half of the stack they could easily attack and expand or lose and rebuild but have more gold for science in teh meantime as maintenance is gone.

Instead, they build troops again and again but never trigger the attack, as I suppose the first attack calculation is too low for them (do they consider that a dmaged enemy is easier to kill, so they could calculate the chances of first fight, remmeber the hitpoints the enemy would take, substract it from the value of the unit to simulate fight two etc. if four defenders were in there this would have to be done four times to get the chances for the secound round fighting the best defender with the new values) .

It also seems that Korea doesn't calculate to send it's magnificently promoted general to attack with the main stack? So there are a lot of synergies but sometimes AI can't knot the lose ends together to be effective (yet).

I think this save can actually help a lot to improve the AI a lot, if you play with some variables, like what value is needed that actually AI triggers attacks on nearby barb cities.

I know I already told you about the boat bug and you said you would look into it. So just a little follow-up: several hundred years later after my canoe blocked their coastal waters the Koreans still have not built a canoe or raft, so just to let you know the bug doesn't solve itself during the game.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=11312952#post11312952

Check out post 962 and further post by the same author on time reduction for AI turns etc.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=11312952#post11312952

Check out post 962 and further post by the same author on time reduction for AI turns etc.

Already looked at, and in practise made very little difference. The problem is that he has sped up some very basic routines to go twice as fast, but those routines were only 1% of the total time, so twice as fast was a net 0.5% speedup.

The best way to attack speed optimization is to profile the entire call tree in the contxt of actual save game turns to see what routines are consuming the most time, and then concentrate on those routines (and I've been doing this since v15 - the current DLL is around 5 times faster than the one we had then for the same game position at scale [large, populated map]). Part of the problem with this is that the Civ4 engine profiler isn't very good - one of the first things I did was write a replacement profiler (last June or so) to enable this approach.

Until VERY recently (literally a few days ago) AI unit path-generation calculations were the largest time consumers, but I have now got that down below a couple of other contributors (AI diplomacy and city-turn-calculations aboue joint top now), so I'll be moving on to the new hot-spots next (probably not until v23, as I want to do a bunch of AI work in the next few weeks).

Already looked at, and in practise made very little difference. The problem is that he has sped up some very basic routines to go twice as fast, but those routines were only 1% of the total time, so twice as fast was a net 0.5% speedup.

The best way to attack speed optimization is to profile the entire call tree in the contxt of actual save game turns to see what routines are consuming the most time, and then concentrate on those routines (and I've been doing this since v15 - the current DLL is around 5 times faster than the one we had then for the same game position at scale [large, populated map]). Part of the problem with this is that the Civ4 engine profiler isn't very good - one of the first things I did was write a replacement profiler (last June or so) to enable this approach.

Until VERY recently (literally a few days ago) AI unit path-generation calculations were the largest time consumers, but I have now got that down below a couple of other contributors (AI diplomacy and city-turn-calculations aboue joint top now), so I'll be moving on to the new hot-spots next (probably not until v23, as I want to do a bunch of AI work in the next few weeks).

Ta for the detailed explanation, as usual you have the issues well in hand.:goodjob:

kinda off topic but is it possible to be able to right click, move cursor here ( so i can see what a stack of units consists of horizontally across the bottom of the screen)

Because they are listed vertically I can never see it properly.
Is there a way to do this now maybe with the BUG option thingy

kinda off topic but is it possible to be able to right click, move cursor here ( so i can see what a stack of units consists of horizontally across the bottom of the screen)

Because they are listed vertically I can never see it properly.
Is there a way to do this now maybe with the BUG option thingy

I don't think we can control the location/style of hover texts, only their content. AIAndy may know more on this one. If you can think of a more useful way to precis the information within the existing box style however, we an definately modify the content that goes into it.

BTW - we need a 'UI suggestions' thread.

can you have hover texts within hover texts? maybe just a simple list which can be expanded by individual hovers (:lol:)
Or maybe even like the shift hover when your looking at your survival odds of attack and it gets expanded by holding down the shift key.

can you have hover texts within hover texts? maybe just a simple list which can be expanded by individual hovers (:lol:)
Or maybe even like the shift hover when your looking at your survival odds of attack and it gets expanded by holding down the shift key.

It doesn't get expanded - it gets replaced. All that shift does (or other modifier keys) is change the generated hover text to go in the provided hover box. We can certainly use modifier keys, but the 'new' content cannot depend on where the cursor was in the old hover text in any way.

It doesn't get expanded - it gets replaced. All that shift does (or other modifier keys) is change the generated hover text to go in the provided hover box. We can certainly use modifier keys, but the 'new' content cannot depend on where the cursor was in the old hover text in any way.

Have a very basic list of units and with shift it can be expanded to what it is currently.

Another suggestion might be to try and change the format of the list somehow like bunch it up alot more, not have each unit having its own line etc

Have a very basic list of units and with shift it can be expanded to what it is currently.

Another suggestion might be to try and change the format of the list somehow like bunch it up alot more, not have each unit having its own line etc

I think it already says things like 'archer (25)' to indicate 25 archers after the list grows beyond a certain point. I'll look into it at some point and try to tune it a bit. Suggest you start an 'AI obsrvations & Requests' thread for this sort of thing so we have one place to look for outstanding work.

I noticed there is a (stack information) with options in the BUG menu I hadn't noticed b4, you can choose how descriptive the information about a stack of units is with this it seems :)

Press enter to end turn. During the end turn things Ostaneco of Carthage does his patented bad! civic switch.
Alright, not his originally but in this case it is.

Cheers

I've spent a few hours looking at this, and my conclusion is that it's not really as bad a switch as it appears. The main point (correct me if I am missing the point entirely!) is that he switches from Monarchy to Despotism, which looks at first sight like a very bad idea. However, on closer inspection, he's doing this for a reason (debateable how good a one, but the pros and cons are not being badly miscalculated as far as I can see). The reason is that Despotism has better military mods (especially great general emergence) than does monarchy. The big downside is a lot of unhappiness because he is several cities over the happyness limit for despotism, but if you look at his cities they are all in large happyness surplass (20+ - enough to soak up the civic-induced unhappyness).

So anyway, my conclusion at this point, pending further discussion, is that this isn't really a bad switch at all (at least not a grossly bad one). It may be over-weighting the great general emergence, and under-weighting its future growth requirements (which would make the unhappyness worse over time), but apart from that I don't see a major issue in this behaviour.

I suspect that as soon as the war ends he'll switch back, taking an anrachy penalty. For that reason I think the great general emergence should probably be down-played a little (or at least its added weight when in a war compared with when not - right now it considers it valueless outside of wartime, which migth be better as just reduced value). I think a few tweaks are in odrer, but I'm not seeing a major bug...

...discuss ;)

I've spent a few hours looking at this, and my conclusion is that it's not really as bad a switch as it appears. The main point (correct me if I am missing the point entirely!) is that he switches from Monarchy to Despotism, which looks at first sight like a very bad idea. However, on closer inspection, he's doing this for a reason (debateable how good a one, but the pros and cons are not being badly miscalculated as far as I can see). The reason is that Despotism has better military mods (especially great general emergence) than does monarchy. The big downside is a lot of unhappiness because he is several cities over the happyness limit for despotism, but if you look at his cities they are all in large happyness surplass (20+ - enough to soak up the civic-induced unhappyness).

So anyway, my conclusion at this point, pending further discussion, is that this isn't really a bad switch at all (at least not a grossly bad one). It may be over-weighting the great general emergence, and under-weighting its future growth requirements (which would make the unhappyness worse over time), but apart from that I don't see a major issue in this behaviour.

I suspect that as soon as the war ends he'll switch back, taking an anrachy penalty. For that reason I think the great general emergence should probably be down-played a little (or at least its added weight when in a war compared with when not - right now it considers it valueless outside of wartime, which migth be better as just reduced value). I think a few tweaks are in odrer, but I'm not seeing a major bug...

...discuss ;)


If I understand you the AI weighs +X% general vs Yturns of anarchy?
Now, considering you have a medium empire around the time of monarchy, you may have about 1000 {food/hammers/commerce/spy points} which would be missing during anarchy. Switching to despotism takes like what - 6 turns? (at least with eternity) + your stability drops during anarchy --
I really doubt that getting a general a little earlier is worth that at all.

Also, the AI doesn't weigh in on the diplomatic bonus of "royalty should stick together". That could end war easier, getting economy going (more trade, more tech) than switching back to Despotism.

Switching back to older civics should really be penaltilzed a bit, I think. Even if a new civic doesn't pay off immediately, sometimes staying with for some time and avoid anarchy turns is worth it. Think of the lost 6000 during anarchy! If I switch I consider that as the investment I have to make and if & when I would get a payoff that justifies it.

It's not only that but also that the AI switches numerous times, spending a fair percentage of it's time in anarchy switching between various civics. If you look in F9/GNP and show a couple hundred years back you'll see how the AI constantly drops to zero GNP, an indication of being in Anarchy.
In the Event Log you can also see when they switch, and to what, if scrolling down.
This makes me, as not doing Anarchy all that much, able to catch up and blaze past all the AI in tech almost exclusively because of their switching civics constantly.

I'm sending up another save, same game but a little further ahead, where this is even more pronounced and where I have taken over the tech lead, and that by a fair amount, at a time where I should still be trying to catch up.

My point is not only that they switch back and forth but also that they switch too often.

Cheers

@Koshling: Maybe it would be useful if you log the AI civic values and when they decide to switch so people can send you logs about the long term behavior.

If I understand you the AI weighs +X% general vs Yturns of anarchy?
Now, considering you have a medium empire around the time of monarchy, you may have about 1000 {food/hammers/commerce/spy points} which would be missing during anarchy. Switching to despotism takes like what - 6 turns? (at least with eternity) + your stability drops during anarchy --
I really doubt that getting a general a little earlier is worth that at all.

It calculates the civic values so that one unit of the value is roughly equivalent to 1 gold per turn. It calculates the anarchy cost as its GNP X number of turns. Hence these things are comparable. HOWEVER, now that I think about it it should be (GNP + production*<production-to-gold-evaluation-factor>)*<num anarchy turns>, so it probably is under-evaluating anarchy costs a bit.

It does not take account of stability loss during anarchy (probably not a bad idea to add this (when REV is enabled) as you suggest, at least when the switch is not a stability-increasing switch in itself)

The actual way it values Great general appearance rate modifiers is basically as a multiplier to how many units it has. I'm not entirely sure why this was chosen (I guess the logic is that more units imply more fights, which gives the GG modifier more to act on), but I suspect that very large armies are skewing the calculation. If anyone has suggestions for a better way to evaluate the GG modifier I'm all ears (right now all I can think of is using a non-linear scaling on unit numbers so that its more like a log curve)

Also, the AI doesn't weigh in on the diplomatic bonus of "royalty should stick together". That could end war easier, getting economy going (more trade, more tech) than switching back to Despotism.

Interesting point. It doesn't consider that at all. Maybe it should consider it for any civ it is in contact with which its relationship with is either close to neutral (where swings matter most) or at war with (in the hope of ending the war - though in that case it really ought to only count it for wars it wants to get out of, which is trickier to identify)

Switching back to older civics should really be penaltilzed a bit, I think. Even if a new civic doesn't pay off immediately, sometimes staying with for some time and avoid anarchy turns is worth it. Think of the lost 6000 during anarchy! If I switch I consider that as the investment I have to make and if & when I would get a payoff that justifies it.

There is no concept of 'older', nor is it well-defined in tech tree terms (depends on the path you take in some cases). One thing we could consider is retaining knowledge of the last civic you were in (in each category) and penalising a reversal of the last chnage made (i.e. - require a bigger preceived benefit to enact it than would normally be required)

I'm sending up another save, same game but a little further ahead, where this is even more pronounced and where I have taken over the tech lead, and that by a fair amount, at a time where I should still be trying to catch up.

Just for clarification - does end-turn on this save have another suspect switch in it? If so which civ (Carthaginians again?). I ask in advance because one turn running under the debugger is about an hour...

@Koshling: Maybe it would be useful if you log the AI civic values and when they decide to switch so people can send you logs about the long term behavior.

Yeh, good idea. I'll add that (though it won't tell you WHY it values the civic that way)

Ok, here's the smoking gun for 'start as minors' I think:

int CvTeamAI::AI_getEnemyPowerPercent( bool bConsiderOthers ) const
{
int iEnemyPower = 0;

for( int iI = 0; iI < MAX_CIV_TEAMS; iI++ )
{
if( iI != getID() )
{
if( GET_TEAM((TeamTypes)iI).isAlive() && isHasMet((TeamTypes)iI) )
{
if( isAtWar((TeamTypes)iI) )
{
int iTempPower = 220 * GET_TEAM((TeamTypes)iI).getPower(false);
iTempPower /= (AI_hasCitiesInPrimaryArea((TeamTypes)iI) ? 2 : 3);
iTempPower /= (GET_TEAM((TeamTypes)iI).isMinorCiv() ? 3 : 1);
iTempPower /= std::max(1, (bConsiderOthers ? GET_TEAM((TeamTypes)iI).getAtWarCount(true,true) : 1));
iEnemyPower += iTempPower;
}
else if( AI_isChosenWar((TeamTypes)iI) )
{
// Haven't declared war yet
int iTempPower = 240 * GET_TEAM((TeamTypes)iI).getDefensivePower();
iTempPower /= (AI_hasCitiesInPrimaryArea((TeamTypes)iI) ? 2 : 3);
iTempPower /= 1 + (bConsiderOthers ? GET_TEAM((TeamTypes)iI).getAtWarCount(true,true) : 0);
iEnemyPower += iTempPower;
}
}
}
}

return (iEnemyPower/std::max(1, (isAVassal() ? getCurrentMasterPower(true) : getPower(true))));
}

This is returning a measure of the ratio of enemy power to our power, which is used in a variety of ways, but critically it pushes cities into military productiion as a high priority when you fall significantly behind on this measure (all stops are pulled out when it hits 150).

The problem here lies in this part:

int iTempPower = 220 * GET_TEAM((TeamTypes)iI).getPower(false);
iTempPower /= (AI_hasCitiesInPrimaryArea((TeamTypes)iI) ? 2 : 3);
iTempPower /= (GET_TEAM((TeamTypes)iI).isMinorCiv() ? 3 : 1);
iTempPower /= std::max(1, (bConsiderOthers ? GET_TEAM((TeamTypes)iI).getAtWarCount(true,true) : 1));
iEnemyPower += iTempPower;


Minors have their value divided by 3 (so they are less important than civs you are 'seriously' at war with, which is good)
Things are normalized by dividing by the total number of civs you are at war with, BUT this count does NOT include minors

The result is that in a game with lots of civilizations that are easily contactable (think GEM Europe) every Civ contributes with the only normalization being the minor-divide-by-3, so in a symmetrical situation where everyone is a minor, if any more than 3 are in mutual contact they will all think they are behind at what are actually equal force levels.

This is ok to a limitted extent (you really DO have multiple enemies, even if they are only enemies in a weak sense), but it doesn't scale well. In my GEM game I was in contact with 18 other civs before I even got canoes, so you can see how that looks (everyone sees power ratios around 1/6th and madly tries to build their way our of it - classic arms race, but amped up!).

I'm going to fiddle with this later today to try to improve it (I'm thinking counting minors as one third in the divisor as well as at 1/3 of their power in the numerator as now).

Another wonderful progress! :clap: Continue at this speed and the estimation of 1 year of isolation for a new engine would shrink to 1 month ;-)


Aside the reason of the build-up of the minor armies, have you also found the bug(?) that some Ai stacks are not triggered to leave city and attack?

At least the doomsday stack of barbs in the save (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=318658&d=1334074715) I posted in the 'tips and tricks' thread does not attack - and in my game of Japan before that I saw non-attack attitude with Korea as well (not that they didn't build canoes but also they didn't attack a barb city that was nearby and had like 4 Atl-Atls in vs korean stack of 20 axes + general that refused to storm the barbarian site).

I think a few days ago I speculated that AI would not calculate the battle 4-5 outcomes deep so it's not estimating the (average) possible situation after having sacrificed like 4-5 units (or even half the stack) -- so it seems high losses are avoided but no city is taken or even attacked//but even high losses would mean more money for science while rebuild etc..

The save I provided might actually show you when you could get the right value because at that time the barb stack would start to wander to my city, I suppose^^

Another wonderful progress! :clap: Continue at this speed and the estimation of 1 year of isolation for a new engine would shrink to 1 month ;-)


Aside the reason of the build-up of the minor armies, have you also found the bug(?) that some Ai stacks are not triggered to leave city and attack?

At least the doomsday stack of barbs in the save (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=318658&d=1334074715) I posted in the 'tips and tricks' thread does not attack - and in my game of Japan before that I saw non-attack attitude with Korea as well (not that they didn't build canoes but also they didn't attack a barb city that was nearby and had like 4 Atl-Atls in vs korean stack of 20 axes + general that refused to storm the barbarian site).

I think a few days ago I speculated that AI would not calculate the battle 4-5 outcomes deep so it's not estimating the (average) possible situation after having sacrificed like 4-5 units (or even half the stack) -- so it seems high losses are avoided but no city is taken or even attacked//but even high losses would mean more money for science while rebuild etc..

The save I provided might actually show you when you could get the right value because at that time the barb stack would start to wander to my city, I suppose^^

I haven't got around to looking at that save yet, but I should do so in the next couple of days I hope.

Has anyone noticed the AI tendency to suicide units into Warlords? I have seen that parking a Warlord unit on a square adjacent to AI territory inspires lots of attacks even when the units are clearly outmatched (like Guard Dogs vs. a Warlord Colonel). This is really good for the Warlord for generating XP and Great General points, but not so good for the AI.

Has anyone noticed the AI tendency to suicide units into Warlords? I have seen that parking a Warlord unit on a square adjacent to AI territory inspires lots of attacks even when the units are clearly outmatched (like Guard Dogs vs. a Warlord Colonel). This is really good for the Warlord for generating XP and Great General points, but not so good for the AI.

It doesn't like hidden nationality units, but it really shouldn't attack with very poor odds. Do you have an illustrative save?

It doesn't like hidden nationality units, but it really shouldn't attack with very poor odds. Do you have an illustrative save?

Try this one. I have a huge stack of units including two Warlord Corporals near Cahokia. If you end the turn (Shift-Enter), Deganawida is going to suicide 5 Trebuchets into them. The Warlords take no damage.

Just for clarification - does end-turn on this save have another suspect switch in it? If so which civ (Carthaginians again?). I ask in advance because one turn running under the debugger is about an hour...

No, just for demonstrative purposes showing that during the past 200 turns on Eternity every AI nation has had at least 2 Anarchy from switching civics periods, some up to 7 times, some spending almost 25% of their turns in Anarchy.

Cheers

I haven't got around to looking at that save yet, but I should do so in the next couple of days I hope.

Ah cool, thx!

Btw. In the same game I only got the cities that are not attacked by barb stack because of a Ai flaw I think. half of Tupi army suicided on a scout with very many promotions and a general nearby who also had 10 promotions I think.

So the scout had many first strikes and was on wooded hill, I also had a tracker and a thief nearby to kill the units AI didn't suicide right after as the scout was not able to attack himself.. but if the Tupi just had waited and had estimated the first strikes correctly they should have just ignored the situation and let the one tile occupied by me - after all they had several other tiles to work...(thx to deer*6 spawn bug) basicly they should have researched... axes and stuff, well they had no chance to kill those units I had there (thx to amazon cobra) anyway... which leads me to another suggestion: animals should not give xp to generals, it's just too exploitable. -->What about hunting generals, like real master hunter, that get xp from killing animals and give boni vs animals?

I beelined to tracking, when I got to it my wanderers had already farmed the first general and he was promoted quite a bit. //I made the risky move to send my 3 elite wanderers with him in the wild Haast eagle and Moa killed 2 of them and my last wanderer had to rescue general from battlefield until reinforcements arrived. The food and hammers from hunting helped the city to grow to 2 and from there on tracking became visible at the horizon.
To make a long tupi story short, I somehow managed to get the early 2. and 3. city.
After that, while building their economy buildings (I was on 0% science for quite some time) and I had to bribe the previous Tupi capital to stay on my side (steady minor revolts :rolleyes:) at times -yet when they finally wanted to break off, it payed off I beelined to petroglyphs and my superior inca elite was able to seek shelter in lascaux caves which impressed the natives so much that they loved to work for me again^^:king:

In screenie 2 you see my I conquered the first place in GPT, which - yes, I know - is thx to many exploits and minor start bug but it's 2 city AI deity start and I think I can be a little bit proud of me after all. 4070 BC is to be beat now hehe :crazyeye: (what about a monthly C2C GEM HoF lol)

Atm my Moa and Haast Eagle brigades have established at least some defense (est. 1:5) against the stack of doom which got even larger in the meantime (screenie1) and I hope I won't trigger it anytime soon... //at least as long as you don't provide the fix, that is^^

Hope you had a happy birthday! Keep on mastering the art of codeology :goodjob:



EDIT just found a little thing that might add flavour to the game:
When building Lascaux Caves, the a bit sucking underperforming graphics [speaking of glasshouses, I can't do it any better as I suck at 3d-modeling or never really tried it so... :rolleyes:]
should not be displayed in the city if it is not on a hill (+ extension rule: you are only allowed to build if hills are in bfc), but somewhere in the surrounding hills (imagine how it could look like in screenie 4) ---or it might even stick out of a _peak_ now that would look interesting^^

Screenie 3, the general next to the cave brought me to yet another idea: could there maybe be a BUG option that allows you to change the size of your units?

It always bugged me to have so 'large' units and that climaxed when my wife saw me playing civ4 for the first time she asked "why are the units so large compared to the city buildings?... so now, a few years later I am ready to ask for a solution or at least ask for how I can produce that solution...

the idea is like this: You could have the units smaller (and have larger numbers of them at a certain zoom level)
so much like zooming in and zooming out your angle
(which I often do for screenshots) there would be another bar below that which allows you to have the displayed unit larger or smaller (maybe not 100 like the angle bar but 4 positions) and if smaller, at certains steps have their graphics mirrored so larger unit-stacks are displayed^^)? see screenie 5

As I suppose that mirrored graphics would make the game slower, a normal machine could just have it like now and leave the secound slider at lets say (1) all the time and a faster machine could have it at (3) for smaller and more units in the first eras and later maybe switch to (1) when there are generally more units... so it would be a win-win to have that other slider, wouldn't it?

animals should not give xp to generals, it's just too exploitable. -->What about hunting generals, like real master hunter, that get xp from killing animals and give boni vs animals?

I like this idea (file it for the future - wouldn't be hard to do though in principle)

For now I think I'll add a BUG option for whether great commanders can get XP from animals (and default it to NO). What does everyone think about that?

It's not only that but also that the AI switches numerous times, spending a fair percentage of it's time in anarchy switching between various civics. If you look in F9/GNP and show a couple hundred years back you'll see how the AI constantly drops to zero GNP, an indication of being in Anarchy.
In the Event Log you can also see when they switch, and to what, if scrolling down.
This makes me, as not doing Anarchy all that much, able to catch up and blaze past all the AI in tech almost exclusively because of their switching civics constantly.

I'm sending up another save, same game but a little further ahead, where this is even more pronounced and where I have taken over the tech lead, and that by a fair amount, at a time where I should still be trying to catch up.

My point is not only that they switch back and forth but also that they switch too often.

Cheers

I've just pushed some tweaks to AI civic evaluation to SVN, which should help (and indeed makes the Carthaginians make a better choice in your save):

Added more exact calculation of anarchy costs. If the switch doesn't return a net benefit in 50 turns (standard speed), taking the entire economy into account, it won't happen, regardless of other factors (which might also make it wait, such as better civics just down the road)
Great general emergence modifiers now scale non-linearly with army size (added benefit drops off progressively and caps at army size of 100 units)
Unhappyness from city limits now calculates on the added assumption that any existing city wants to grow, so happyness is evaluated as if it had 3 more population than it currently does (it already evaluated on the assumption that you want to found <num settlers> + 1 more cities anyway in the not too distant future)

No, just for demonstrative purposes showing that during the past 200 turns on Eternity every AI nation has had at least 2 Anarchy from switching civics periods, some up to 7 times, some spending almost 25% of their turns in Anarchy.

Cheers

Have you ever thought that "Anarchy" itself needs changed? That the penalty for switching a Civic should only stop the Civics {set} "benefits" but Not the cities production/commerce/research/etc. ques/builds?

JosEPh

I like this idea (file it for the future - wouldn't be hard to do though in principle)

For now I think I'll add a BUG option for whether great commanders can get XP from animals (and default it to NO). What does everyone think about that?

Sounds good.

I think we also need to have diminishing returns on GG points from defeating animals eg half points (rounded down) if you already have had two generals, quarter points if you have had 4 and no points if you have had 6.

Have you ever thought that "Anarchy" itself needs changed? That the penalty for switching a Civic should only stop the Civics {set} "benefits" but Not the cities production/commerce/research/etc. ques/builds?

JosEPh

Why? Anarchy represents a period of just that - social chaos and unrest as you change the way you run your society. During that period society breaks down, so all economic activity ceases.

Why? Anarchy represents a period of just that - social chaos and unrest as you change the way you run your society. During that period society breaks down, so all economic activity ceases.

Not really, it's just a game mechanic. Society in any gov't change or societal change (which is what Most civic changes are) does not turtle up and stop. People still buy and sell, make and use things etc.

But if that's too hard a concept never mind.

JosEPh

That's an interesting idea Joseph and I can see what you mean. At least some forms of change in Civics might/should not cause anarchy or unrest though others would.
Changing Government Civics should, while changing Agricultural possibly shouldn't, for instance. Though this might be a better fit in another thread, ideas and discussions perhaps, or an own thread.

Nice work Koshling, as usual. I'll restart my game with SVN and see how the differences play out.

Cheers

the main problem with anarchy is that spiritual trait is super overpowered. Like easily x2 as good as any other one.

But if that's too hard a concept never mind.

JosEPh

Way to alienate the person most likely to actually make any chnages you might want.:eek:

Did not mean it the way you're taking it. I obviously have a hard time summarizing my ideas.

I'll stay out of the way as even my suggestions offend ppl, sorry I apologize.

JosEPh

Talking of AI behaviour on defending close to city tiles: I have a save where Ai has stationed 3 or 4 units in city and about 35 on a hill 2 tiles away (see persia in example).
They sit there and wait.. for nothing.
Aside 10 axes and some dogs, AI brought 23 slingers to defend the tile and kills itself with the costs of this (wasn't it tweaked so AI wouldn't build too many troops anymore to commit economical suicide?
In same savegame Mongolia - strangely - did not build too many troops while korea and persia and a lot of european nations did.

I also see that once AI tiles have been pillaged by barbs and there are still barb cities nearby they tend not to improve the tiles again... like forever... so instead of using their HUGE stackes to put 2/3 units on every pillaged tile (even if it has no good defense bonus) and then send gatherers/workers there they just keep stacks big on one tile and ignore the plots (to check that behaviour see the bison resource in korea in same save).
I mean what is AI thinking? They (korea, persia) have incredible stacks and the barb cities nearby only 3-5 units defending them.

Even if Persia or Korea would calculate to lose half of the stack they could easily attack and expand or lose and rebuild but have more gold for science in teh meantime as maintenance is gone.

Instead, they build troops again and again but never trigger the attack, as I suppose the first attack calculation is too low for them (do they consider that a dmaged enemy is easier to kill, so they could calculate the chances of first fight, remmeber the hitpoints the enemy would take, substract it from the value of the unit to simulate fight two etc. if four defenders were in there this would have to be done four times to get the chances for the secound round fighting the best defender with the new values) .

It also seems that Korea doesn't calculate to send it's magnificently promoted general to attack with the main stack? So there are a lot of synergies but sometimes AI can't knot the lose ends together to be effective (yet).

I think this save can actually help a lot to improve the AI a lot, if you play with some variables, like what value is needed that actually AI triggers attacks on nearby barb cities.

I know I already told you about the boat bug and you said you would look into it. So just a little follow-up: several hundred years later after my canoe blocked their coastal waters the Koreans still have not built a canoe or raft, so just to let you know the bug doesn't solve itself during the game.

I've had a bit of a look at this, and my conclusion is that really it's not addressable by minor tweaking. A few observations:


The AI will only EVER launch attacks on other cities using stacks headed by UNITAI_CITY_ATTACK
The city building logic only builds UNITAI_ATTACK_CITY AI units if it thinks it is reasonably defensively secure AND if its unit costs are not already approaching out-of-control levels
Because this is a start-as-minors game, the start-as-minors issue (which I think I have significantly allieviated) means that NONE of the civs here regards themselves as defensively secure, so they build defensive units until they basically cant afford to build any more. After that point, even if they become defensively secure, they don't initiate any attacks because of the unit finance issue


In terms of fixing this situation a few points:

Having fixed the start-as-minors issue, civs shouldn't get into this hole so easily in the first place. However, in principal it's still a trap awaiting them
The entire AI structure sucks in terms of a strategic level. This is because all build decisions are taken locally, so there is no overall coordination


As I said on my v23 to-do list, the second major thing I plan for this cycle (apart from the pathing changes, which are essentially now complete), is to overhaul unit building, so that units can be requested (contracts advertised to build them) and the best placed city or cities can fulfill them, instead of every city building to its own needs. This means:

Newly built cities can concentrate on economic buildings, and request defense units from already-established cities
More unit-XP specialized cities will be more likely to respond to build contracts, so better using their xp-providing buildings, and resulting in a better promoted army (similarly unit-production bonuses)
Anything in the AI can place unit orders. So small cities can request defensive units and so on, but more significantly in terms of the current topic, a stratgeic overview layer can request attack units independently of any particular city's desire for them. This means we can have a layer in charge of coordinated attack strategy managing attack units on a player-wide basis


Hence, I plan to try to address whatever residual problem might remain here (after the start-as-minors thing is taken away as it hopefully largely has been), after I finish that work, because it will impact it so fundamentally.

On a related note - it would be very useful if you (or someone) could check out a start-as-minors game with the latest changes and see if it behaves any better.

Btw. In the same game I only got the cities that are not attacked by barb stack because of a Ai flaw I think. half of Tupi army suicided on a scout with very many promotions and a general nearby who also had 10 promotions I think.

So the scout had many first strikes and was on wooded hill, I also had a tracker and a thief nearby to kill the units AI didn't suicide right after as the scout was not able to attack himself.. but if the Tupi just had waited and had estimated the first strikes correctly they should have just ignored the situation and let the one tile occupied by me - after all they had several other tiles to work...(thx to deer*6 spawn bug) basicly they should have researched... axes and stuff, well they had no chance to kill those units I had there

This behaviour must be a LARGE bug. The code evaluates the probability of killing the target stack and won't make the attack (from defensive units) without a 70% chance of killing more value than it loses in the process. This SHOULD include both terrain and first strike evaluation. If you can provide a save that illustrates it I should be able to pin it down. Getting this fixed should be a small tweak but it could make quite a big difference, so if I get an example (from anyone) I'll give it priority.

Note - the question of whether it's a wise attack (beyond that it should be winnable) is a separate matter ;) You can suicidal employ decoys against the AI quite effectively currently!

Edit - I just had something similar in my game, so I've diagnosed and fixed it. It may or may not be what you were observing however, so other examples are still welcome.

In my case a German trained dogs unit decided to attack my stack of Theseus (with a bunch of hero super-promotions) stacked with a great commander (+20% and some first strikes), across a river on a wooded hill! It turns out that the reason it did this was to do with the way the tinting is applied to the AI's rose-tinted spectacles! All AIs have a personality value that causes them to think odds are a bit different to what they really are (to make some AIs behave more aggressively than others, and provide some gameplay variance). The issue was that this value was being applied as a straight addative amount to the calculated odds, so for this AI, he would always think he had at least 5% chances of winning in ANY fight. Since trained dogs beating Theseus + his great commander 1 time in 20 is a fantastic expected gain, the AI really likes this attack! Basically this causes the AI to love attacks by weak units against REALLY strong ones. I have changed it to make the AI's personality addition act as a proportion of the calculated odds rather than just adding to them (I also doubled the size of compensate in reasonable cases). So suppose the real odds are 1% - before the AI would add 5% and conclude it had a 6% chance, and attack or not appropriately on the basis of that. Now it will add 10% (the doubling to compensatwe I mentioned) of the actual odds - so final result is 1% + 0.1% = 1.1%. That's enough to make it think twice ;)

Newly built cities can concentrate on economic buildings, and request defense units from already-established cities



Shouldn't newly built cities focus on hammer and/or food so they can grow big enough and produce other buildings faster? If they focus on gold buildings then they will be stuck small and take a long time to produce them. The key to getting new cities up and running is to get them growing and filled with lots of hammer producing buildings.

On a side note sending Merchants and Caravans to new cities can help them build the buildings they need to grow and produce hammers.

Shouldn't newly built cities focus on hammer and/or food so they can grow big enough and produce other buildings faster? If they focus on gold buildings then they will be stuck small and take a long time to produce them. The key to getting new cities up and running is to get them growing and filled with lots of hammer producing buildings.

On a side note sending Merchants and Caravans to new cities can help them build the buildings they need to grow and produce hammers.

Those are economic buildings, at least in the sense I intended. I meant that as 'not military' mostly.

Economic buildings include hammer producing buildings. It's the whole economy build that matters for new cities, not just gold.

Cheers

On a side note sending Merchants and Caravans to new cities can help them build the buildings they need to grow and produce hammers.

Does the Ai even do that? Whenever I spot a Caravan build by the AI it is going to a neighbour to do a trade mission for gold. On the other hand I might just miss the other ones:D

Does the Ai even do that? Whenever I spot a Caravan build by the AI it is going to a neighbour to do a trade mission for gold. On the other hand I might just miss the other ones:D

No it doesn't yet, but this new system I'm planning will easily allow new cities to request caravans or story tellers (or wonder-building cities to do likewise at probably a higher priority)

On a side note sending Merchants and Caravans to new cities can help them build the buildings they need to grow and produce hammers.

Does the Ai even do that? Whenever I spot a Caravan build by the AI it is going to a neighbour to do a trade mission for gold. On the other hand I might just miss the other ones:D

No it doesn't yet, but this new system I'm planning will easily allow new cities to request caravans or story tellers (or wonder-building cities to do likewise at probably a higher priority)

Afforess said he had done this for both hammer and food caravans, the later were not implemented due to my slackness. They are on my list for C2C. It maybe that he only did it for human automation not for AI. He did not get to the entertainment line.

On a side note - getting ready to build a new city is a real "production" since I send out a slew of units with the settler including defense units, story tellers, caravans, missionaries and animals, just to get the city up and running. Which is one reason that I feel that new cities should have some tech based buildings when they are settled not just defaulted by the the colonist/pioneer or by expensive free buildings which ruin the economy of the city eg free libraries.

Your side note is a good example of why I've asked in the Discussion thread if the Sci buildings (eg Libraries) could have their "cost" reduced by 25%. Were cost ~ beaker not as it is now where cost > beaker. I would really like it to be 1 gold cost gives 2+ beakers. Not like it is now where in most cases 1 gold cost gives .75 beaker.

So changing Anarchy to only affect Civics not city production would be a hard thing to do?

JosEPh

not sure if its just GEM map but im past monarchy again with 10+ cities and most of the AI are still on 1 city (immortal) they are clearly retarded cos I even gifted them a bunch of research, went in and manually gifted them all 2 free settlers but they just sent them back to there city and continued to play like chieftain nubs - building research on 1 city.

Also after I restarded this time I spent ages moving all the civs around to make sure they had lots of space. Like i deleted 3 from europe and 3 from middle east, put one in new zealand, one in malasia, another in south africa and another in south america, but it still didn't help :nuke:

not sure if its just GEM map but im past monarchy again with 10+ cities and most of the AI are still on 1 city (immortal) they are clearly retarded cos I even gifted them a bunch of research, went in and manually gifted them all 2 free settlers but they just sent them back to there city and continued to play like chieftain nubs - building research on 1 city.

Also after I restarded this time I spent ages moving all the civs around to make sure they had lots of space. Like i deleted 3 from europe and 3 from middle east, put one in new zealand, one in malasia, another in south africa and another in south america, but it still didn't help :nuke:


If it's like you said you should step up a level and let AI start with 2 cities on deity. Conquer one city and you are even. Don't be afraid of deity start, it doesn't bite.

I think he's saying that the problem is the AI not expanding and thus the game being too easy. I've noticed this in my game as well. Surely even on immortal the AI should prioritize growth. Right now it seems to make some choices which are, frankly, odd.

I think he's saying that the problem is the AI not expanding and thus the game being too easy. I've noticed this in my game as well. Surely even on immortal the AI should prioritize growth. Right now it seems to make some choices which are, frankly, odd.

I agree, an as soon as someone posts an illustrative save I'll find out why. I typically have 4 or 5 problems posted every day to look at, as well as havign my own projects to try to fit in, so I'm afraid I'm not goign to start taking the overhead of producing game states to illustrate problems people are reporting as well, when clearly they already have them in order to be reporting it...

Your side note is a good example of why I've asked in the Discussion thread if the Sci buildings (eg Libraries) could have their "cost" reduced by 25%. Were cost ~ beaker not as it is now where cost > beaker. I would really like it to be 1 gold cost gives 2+ beakers. Not like it is now where in most cases 1 gold cost gives .75 beaker.

So changing Anarchy to only affect Civics not city production would be a hard thing to do?

JosEPh

Would be not trivial, but also fairly mechanical, so not so much hard as a bit tedious. However, I don't personally feel it's a good change, so I'd need a weight of consensus before I'd consider it.

@ Koshling, sorry for posting this issue in multiple threads, it was clearly annoying me :lol:
i posted some saves here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11419505&postcount=4851

I posted the suggestion in response to Snail and slower speed players gripes about the AI being in Anarchy too long, which in turn lends itself to the argument the AI changes Civics too much. I personally on Epic speed do not see either of these problems. I believe it to be a by product of the slower game speeds.

But I've always wondered why anarchy shuts everything down when it just doesn't make sense. I can understand it as a Game mechanic, sort of. But since I don't know the workings of that "mechanic" I feel it's just an arbitrary decision Firaxis made that when you/AI make a change to a different Civic or a Religion the Empire grinds to a halt. C2C has changed many other game mechanics so I suggested changing Anarchy to cope with the perceived problem.

JosEPh

I posted the suggestion in response to Snail and slower speed players gripes about the AI being in Anarchy too long, which in turn lends itself to the argument the AI changes Civics too much. I personally on Epic speed do not see either of these problems. I believe it to be a by product of the slower game speeds.

But I've always wondered why anarchy shuts everything down when it just doesn't make sense. I can understand it as a Game mechanic, sort of. But since I don't know the workings of that "mechanic" I feel it's just an arbitrary decision Firaxis made that when you/AI make a change to a different Civic or a Religion the Empire grinds to a halt. C2C has changed many other game mechanics so I suggested changing Anarchy to cope with the perceived problem.

JosEPh

The AI was further trweaked to reduce (hopefully eliminate, but we'll see) its bad switching a couple of days ago.

But Koshling what if the switchings are not bad? But just super players perceptions?

You have players that think the AI should Never use, say Despotism or other "lower Civics" after Ancient/Classical era. That just isn't right and lays out a predetermined path that everyone (player and AI alike) Must use. Or be chastised for and penalized for doing so.

JosEPh

But Koshling what if the switchings are not bad? But just super players perceptions?

You have players that think the AI should Never use, say Despotism or other "lower Civics" after Ancient/Classical era. That just isn't right and lays out a predetermined path that everyone (player and AI alike) Must use. Or be chastised for and penalized for doing so.

JosEPh

Yes, but I don't think that. As I said in response to Blue Genie the reasons it was switching to despotism were IMO valid ones (though over-weighted somewhat, so not necssarily good in the situation of his save game). There is NO CODE WHATSOEVER that knows ANYTHING about specific civics. It is ALL driven by the effects of the civics, so it is quite impossible to tell it 'despotism is bad' per se. All I do is adjust how much it values different effects. The thing I think Blue Genie was more complaining about was the NUMBER of civic switches, and the going back-and-forth between two repeatedly, which is mostly waht has been fixed by taking better account of the anarchy penalty, and future growth needs.

Okay understood.

JosEPh

@ Koshling, sorry for posting this issue in multiple threads, it was clearly annoying me :lol:
i posted some saves here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11419505&postcount=4851

Oops!

Mea culpa!

I totally broke AI city founding in a performance optimization last week :blush:

Working on a fix now, but I'm timed out for a few hours. Expect a fix to hit the SVN later today (I'll post on the SVN thread when it does)

I agree, an as soon as someone posts an illustrative save I'll find out why. I typically have 4 or 5 problems posted every day to look at, as well as havign my own projects to try to fit in, so I'm afraid I'm not goign to start taking the overhead of producing game states to illustrate problems people are reporting as well, when clearly they already have them in order to be reporting it...

You're right, I should have posted a save.

In the first (Kor Two) the Phoenician AI has a tribe waiting in its capital doing. I suspect that this is because it already has 3 cities and wants to wait until Tribalism to found the 4th. However if you play on and wait until their 3rd city is destroyed (they are at war with the Navaro), you will see the tribe wait there and do nothing for a couple of hundred turns. They also have several hunters who are just sitting in the capital doing nothing, this also continues for a long while.

I have another save from later on in the same, which I think illustrates some other problems but it's over the size limit for the forum, so I'm unsure what I can do with that.

I have another save from later on in the same, which I think illustrates some other problems but it's over the size limit for the forum, so I'm unsure what I can do with that.

Zip or Rar it. Those have higher size limits allowed on the site.

Cheers

Try this one. I have a huge stack of units including two Warlord Corporals near Cahokia. If you end the turn (Shift-Enter), Deganawida is going to suicide 5 Trebuchets into them. The Warlords take no damage.

Found the bug that causes this. It's an error that occurs when calculating expected losses and kills for large stack combat. Fix will be on the SVN later today.

In my current game the AI is now expanding, building hunters and cities and fighting (instead of having massive non-moving stacks). Some great work from Koshling. :)

However I've noticed that AI is very inept at defending its cities outside its capital. In the save below the Persians (to my left) have three cities. The Tibetans are about to attack one of them (Susa) with a moderatly sized army, the city being only guarded by a slinger and stone axeman. However just 3 tiles away there is an army of Persian stone axemen which could easily defeat the attacking force. Yet they just sit there doing nothing while the enemies close in and destroy Susa.

Suggested fix: Some kind of alert from a city in danger. This would call in nearby units to aid in its defence. So when the Persian AI saw the Tibetan army approaching, a 'call' would be sent to nearby units to rush in and defend the city. Maybe this could override the existing instructions a unit had.

I admit that I have no idea how practical this idea is, so feel free to rip it apart. ;)

I've noticed the AI desperately needs some tuning where its selection of promotions is concerned. As a human player, I choose them to fulfill a number of various roles in their stacks and make sure my stacks have every base covered - but, and this is most prevalent in say... Barbs selecting the promo that allows them to go beyond minimum exp for barbarian kills... the ai seems to select on a far more random basis. This is a very big hindrance for their effectiveness.

@T-bird,
Really? Is this early game your posting about?

I'm in the ren era and the AI is very adept at it's promo selection. I came across some Rebauldequins that were nearly impossible to take out. They had 4 1st strike plus 40% Str and %'s against mounted, firearm, and melee. I still can't figure out how they got that combo. Bombard elephant and Hvy cannon was the only way to stop them. They chewed up my musketmen like a cow eating straw. Even my own Rebaulds failed 70% of the time against them, cause I had selected collat damage instead of 1st strike.

Now this particular game has been going on since v22 was introduced so the promos have been adapting/changing during it's course. So I don't know about the promos and early eras.

JosEPh

I suppose it could just be the barbs choices are a bit simpler and less well considered.

I've noticed the AI desperately needs some tuning where its selection of promotions is concerned. As a human player, I choose them to fulfill a number of various roles in their stacks and make sure my stacks have every base covered - but, and this is most prevalent in say... Barbs selecting the promo that allows them to go beyond minimum exp for barbarian kills... the ai seems to select on a far more random basis. This is a very big hindrance for their effectiveness.

I've had a quick look, and the barnarians use the same evaluation as everyone else. However, the barb and animal hunter promotions are implemented entirely in Python, so they have ZERO value to the AI evaluatioon routyine (they appear to do nothing at all from their tags, and the actual effect is in Python processing). This makes it starng that the AI ever picks it. I can think of only two explanations:

1) At som point it's the only promotuion available to the unit in question so gets selected by necessity (since it has no tech pre-reqs this seems entirely possible for barbs who don't tch-up the way civs do)

2) The only promotions available all have very low value, so the random element added in the evaluation is sufficient to make this onewin occassionally.

The promotion evaluation routine probably needs some tweaking generally however. For example it doesn't distinguish between different terrain movement promotions, so it will consider tundra and desert movement equally valuable regardless of what part of the wrld it is in.

Hi, I've noticed recently that the AI builds a couple of stacks early in the game and then does nothing? I have 5 AI's at the moment on the GEM map and none of them have moved their units more than 2-3 squares outside their borders. The effect is twofold, they don't build any buildings and don't kill any animals so fall behind in the tech race very early. I'm about 600 turns into the game and already the scores are me on 27 and the AI's all languishing on 16 or 17 points. My city is size 4 and theirs are all 1 or 2 still. I started in the worst spot too!

However I've noticed that AI is very inept at defending its cities outside its capital. In the save below the Persians (to my left) have three cities. The Tibetans are about to attack one of them (Susa) with a moderatly sized army, the city being only guarded by a slinger and stone axeman. However just 3 tiles away there is an army of Persian stone axemen which could easily defeat the attacking force. Yet they just sit there doing nothing while the enemies close in and destroy Susa.

Suggested fix: Some kind of alert from a city in danger. This would call in nearby units to aid in its defence. So when the Persian AI saw the Tibetan army approaching, a 'call' would be sent to nearby units to rush in and defend the city. Maybe this could override the existing instructions a unit had.

I admit that I have no idea how practical this idea is, so feel free to rip it apart. ;)

Yeh, it's pretty bad at that (and it'll make the top of my list sometime soonish I hope). Part fo teh fix is something like what you suggest. A while ago I added a mechanism for units to request help from other units (that's how workers get escorts when they fel they need them for example), so it can b leveraged here too.

In regard to the specific situation in your save, a few observations:

1) The Persians don't currently have visibility on the tile the Tibetan attack stack is in, so they haven't spotted it yet (by the time they do it'll be too late)

2) The stack to the right of Susa is an attack stack not a defensive one (the AI doesn't switch readily between the two roles, especially from attack to defense) and is targeting your city of Pliska. It does have visibility on Pliska (through espionage I guess?) and knows what you have in it. As such it calculates its attack stack is not yet up to the job so it's holding ground pendign further build up.

Obviously there are a number of things that can be improved here (in principal ayway):

Better AI deployment of scouts to have early warning visibility on nearby territory
Easier role switching from attack back to defense when they realise it's needed
Better deployment of defensive troops between cities, favouring those nearer borders


I plan to address all of these, but it's not low hanging fruit, so it'll be a while.

Ok on further examination it seems the issue that the AI is having is it isn't exploring with it's units or valuing "Herbalism" enough.

All 5 AI's on my game have poor research rates in comparison to mine. Their research is between +7 and +14 compared to my +31 which is almost exclusively down to my "myth" buildings. But combine that with my early use of herbalism to make wild mushrooms and berry bushes useful, which the AI isn't bothering to do and I am working 3-4 more tiles each turn now.

Each AI power has roughly 12 Clubmen and 10 Slingers and a tracker in 2 stacks, one in their city and 1 outside but within their borders. Only one AI had any units outside it's borders!

Ok on further examination it seems the issue that the AI is having is it isn't exploring with it's units or valuing "Herbalism" enough.

All 5 AI's on my game have poor research rates in comparison to mine. Their research is between +7 and +14 compared to my +31 which is almost exclusively down to my "myth" buildings. But combine that with my early use of herbalism to make wild mushrooms and berry bushes useful, which the AI isn't bothering to do and I am working 3-4 more tiles each turn now.

Each AI power has roughly 12 Clubmen and 10 Slingers and a tracker in 2 stacks, one in their city and 1 outside but within their borders. Only one AI had any units outside it's borders!

Is this all with the latest SVN (last couple of days)?

Is this all with the latest SVN (last couple of days)?

No, I have v22.1, has it been addressed in the latest SVN?

No, I have v22.1, has it been addressed in the latest SVN?

Yes it has. The AI is significantly imoproved since v22.1. If you have start-as-minors even more so

... the barb and animal hunter promotions are implemented entirely in Python, so they have ZERO value to the AI evaluatioon routyine (they appear to do nothing at all from their tags, and the actual effect is in Python processing). ...

Yes these are new and probably OP, I have hunters with over 200 XP running around. There are no XML tags for this feature so it needs to be python atm. In realty they should only be considered one or two promotions before you get your last promotion from combat with barbarian animals and units.

In my latest SVN game I noticed that hunters were staying in the AI cities leaving all the animals for me. This probably means I need to tweak the hunter line stats.

Yes these are new and probably OP, I have hunters with over 200 XP running around. There are no XML tags for this feature so it needs to be python atm. In realty they should only be considered one or two promotions before you get your last promotion from combat with barbarian animals and units.

In my latest SVN game I noticed that hunters were staying in the AI cities leaving all the animals for me. This probably means I need to tweak the hunter line stats.

No, it means there is an AI bugbof some sort. The AI builds hunters explicitly and once built as a hunter a unit won't decide to go do something else und normal circumstances, so the implication is at they are not being built for that purpose at all for some reason.

Yes it has. The AI is significantly imoproved since v22.1. If you have start-as-minors even more so

Ok, I have the latest SVN version now and it's not made any difference to the AI sending units outside its borders. Still massive stacks firmly stationed within their borders. Not sure if they are researching herbalism or not though? That's with start as minors as well.

Ok, I have the latest SVN version now and it's not made any difference to the AI sending units outside its borders. Still massive stacks firmly stationed within their borders. Not sure if they are researching herbalism or not though? That's with start as minors as well.

Once it gets into that situation it's basically stuck. The fixes avoid it getting into that situation in the first place, but obviously upgrading part way through a game the don't help you much.

Yeh, it's pretty bad at that (and it'll make the top of my list sometime soonish I hope). Part fo teh fix is something like what you suggest. A while ago I added a mechanism for units to request help from other units (that's how workers get escorts when they fel they need them for example), so it can b leveraged here too.

In regard to the specific situation in your save, a few observations:

1) The Persians don't currently have visibility on the tile the Tibetan attack stack is in, so they haven't spotted it yet (by the time they do it'll be too late)

2) The stack to the right of Susa is an attack stack not a defensive one (the AI doesn't switch readily between the two roles, especially from attack to defense) and is targeting your city of Pliska. It does have visibility on Pliska (through espionage I guess?) and knows what you have in it. As such it calculates its attack stack is not yet up to the job so it's holding ground pendign further build up.

Obviously there are a number of things that can be improved here (in principal ayway):

Better AI deployment of scouts to have early warning visibility on nearby territory
Easier role switching from attack back to defense when they realise it's needed
Better deployment of defensive troops between cities, favouring those nearer borders


I plan to address all of these, but it's not low hanging fruit, so it'll be a while.

Thanks for the reply. I realise that it's very easy for someone like me sitting here to find problems and make suggestions and not so easy for someone like you to actually find and implement ways of improving the game. :D

Once it gets into that situation it's basically stuck. The fixes avoid it getting into that situation in the first place, but obviously upgrading part way through a game the don't help you much.

It's a new game? Something's not right as I usually feel like the AI is over exploring, but sinve v22 that's just not happened? Still loads of migratory herds too. :(

It's a new game? Something's not right as I usually feel like the AI is over exploring, but sinve v22 that's just not happened? Still loads of migratory herds too. :(

If it's a new game that was started under the latest (or last few days) SVN and you're seeing this, then post the save together with some commentary on which AIs you particularly see not doing much and I can take a look at what they are doing and why.

I'm also going to enable BBAI logging in the regular build (when you have logging on) so that everyone can generate AI logs while playing and both look at them if curious, or provide them as a starrting point.

I've been noticing that the AI doesn't seem to know what to do with captured Warlord units. What does the AI think it's doing with them? I see many Great Chiefs/Captains hanging around AI cities and eventually get captured by me. I like to hang onto them until I can upgrade them to at least Great Colonel, which is the first captured Warlord that can be settled for +2 XP/unit, then settle them en masse to make a super-military production city.

I have another AI question. I posted my AD 300 Save Game here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11488947&postcount=6015. I am getting "Will Capitulate: Julius Caesar" messages from the alerts, but he will not capitulate if I offer it. I am trying to find a way to get rid of him - "Require Complete Kills" is on, and his only remaining unit is a Great Spy in the city of Havasupai. I am hoping I can use a capitulation to eventually force him to surrender.

Is there something wrong with the "Will Capitulate" messages? Or can Great Spies be caught by other Espionage units?