K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

[karadoc]

I've noticed that AI doesn't care much about spreading his Corps to his permanent ally's cities especially when they're not on the same landmass. I've seen AI spread Corp (Creative Constructions) to all of his cities, to all other cities sharing continent with his cities, but not to any of his permanent ally's cities although almost all of them are on a continent 2 tiles away.

Ok. Thanks for mentioning that. I think that will be fixable (as long as I remember to get around to it).

Thanks for the latest update!

I have an idea for a future feature.

Preserve improvement: A way of telling your automated workers to not change the improvement on a particular tile.

I know you can do this globally, but generally that's not desirable. I just want a way to stop my workers building workshops etc in the middle of an elaborate irrigation scheme, cutting off irrigation to a whole bunch of farms elsewhere. When this happens, I manually take control of some workers to change the offending tile back to a farm, but another worker will change it back a few turns later.

Not sure how you would implement this but perhaps either:

- Add worker action "preserve improvement", which can be executed by a worker on any given tile, but would not take any movement points (it should allow for building of roads and railroads, however)

- Improve worker AI to take account of the effect on farms that are irrigated by a particular tile, before changing the tile away from a farm

Having something like that was one of the main features I wanted when I first started K-Mod. (I talked about it here, and here.) I still think it would be good, and I'm sure it can be done; but I still probably won't do it in the near future... The main reason is that I think it would be a bit technically tricky (certainly achievable, but probably a lot of work to get the interface right, and to avoid OOS and stuff like that). I feel like my time would be better spent improving the AI for workers, to help the AI as well as automated workers. There's still a lot of room for improvement there; but none of these things are easy tasks.

If I had to think of 2 balance changes that would really improve the game I would look at lumber mills and machine guns. Right now machine guns are vulnerable to cavalry, which I think is wrong. In Civ we see the advantage swing from the defender to the attacker and back again, and it's a cycle. I believe Firaxis meant for MG's to bring in a new defensive era, as they did in real life. These defensive windows make the game more interesting (like when longbows appear), otherwise every game would end with catapults. MG's do a good job of stopping infantry, they should also get a bonus vs mounted units, that way you need artillery to take them on. The fact that they lose to cavalry just means I never build them and if the AI ever does I just laugh at him and storm his MG's with my horses.

The other change that I think would add to the game would be allowing lumbermills earlier on, that way people wouldn't always chop everything... there would be an interesting strategic decision to be made. They could be allowed at guilds, for example, or machinery, or engineering. Does the AI ever build them, by the way? I don't recall really seeing any in AI lands.

I generally agree with your reasoning for those two buffs. There are just a couple of things that make me reluctant to change them. For machine guns vs cavalry, my reluctance is that Military Tradition is a dead-end tech, and so cavalry need to be good to make it worthwhile. Whereas railroad is an excellent tech for a range of reasons, regardless of how good machine-guns are. Machine-guns could use a buff for flavour reasons, but they are still useful as they are. My concern is that if I give them a bonus vs cavalry then it might short-circuit cavalry out of the game... On the other hand, cavalry are pretty strong anyway. I'm considering giving machine-guns +25% vs mounted, as you suggested, and also buffing West Point somehow to compensate. (It seems like everything is always getting buffed... I guess that's 'power creep'.)

As for lumbermills... if lumbermills came with Guilds, they'd be a very powerful improvement. They'd outclass workshops and watermills; which are the only non-hills productivity improvements available. Having lumbermills come sooner wouldn't just make people think about keeping forests, it would become one of the most used improvements of that era. A few people have said that all their forests are usually gone by the time they get lumbermills. Maybe I'm a bit unusual, but I tend to have a few forests still around when I get replaceable parts. I like to keep forests when they are in the overlap of fat-crosses, so that two cities can have the health bonus. Maybe that's just me though.

I've been play-testing both of these changes, but I'm still not really sold on them. I generally only like to make changes when I think it's clearly going to make the game better. These changes seem fine, but there are minuses as well as pluses - and I can't really tell if it's better or not.

---

It seems like there's an endless list of things that can still be improved... and I'm working more slowly on it than I was in the past. At the moment, the main thing I want to do is fix some of the issues with the citizen assignment. (I've improved it a bit already since the current version, but there's still a couple of things I want to change.) After that, there are some problems in the AI's tech evaluation and their use of workers that I wanted to fix... but I'm not sure if I'll put those changes in the next version or not. I think my planned changes the to tech evaluation will need some play-testing.


That reminds me...

Hi Karadoc,
a few days ago (with 1.42b) I had a strange bug near the end of a looooong game on GEM with the 48-civ patched version of your mod.
Suddenly after I got master of the second biggest force in the world (they had 52 cities, I had 142) their former vassals broke free.
When I wanted to vassalize them too, I clicked on the button to let them offer their vassal conditions. Then the GUI updated the list with one of my cities, a huge GpT and a research tech, which was immadiately followed by a message box, that only one civ may offer things for a peace treaty. When I close this box, the negotiation dialog closed too.

When I just click on vassal state offer without asking what they want for that, they simplay ignore the offer. Other civs which were not a former vassal of the 52 city civ would vassalize without any problems.

So...
- Clearly the civs wanted to vassalize to me ( <5 cities compared to 142 cities, and a long war)
- Somehow instead of offering me cities and GpT, the dialog switched and make them demand something from me
- dialog got confused and opened message box which indicates that offers and demands got mixed up.

This might have something to do with
- 48 civs
- world size of GEM
- current city or army size
- vassalizing as an ex-vassal of a civ which vassalized to me

I think this problem is probably caused by an overflow in the AI's evaluation of the trade. i.e., the AI thinks ending the war is so valuable that the value number loops past its maximum and becomes negative.

I was reminded of this because I've known for a long time that the way the AI evaluates peace-making trades is a bit bogus. Sometimes the value is way way off; particularly in the end game. I've had AI declare war on me, lose a big stack, then give their best cities for peace, essentially forfeiting the game. It needs work.

 

[Zholef]

As for lumbermills... if lumbermills came with Guilds, they'd be a very powerful improvement. They'd outclass workshops and watermills; which are the only non-hills productivity improvements available. Having lumbermills come sooner wouldn't just make people think about keeping forests, it would become one of the most used improvements of that era. A few people have said that all their forests are usually gone by the time they get lumbermills. Maybe I'm a bit unusual, but I tend to have a few forests still around when I get replaceable parts. I like to keep forests when they are in the overlap of fat-crosses, so that two cities can have the health bonus. Maybe that's just me though.

I've been play-testing both of these changes, but I'm still not really sold on them. I generally only like to make changes when I think it's clearly going to make the game better. These changes seem fine, but there are minuses as well as pluses - and I can't really tell if it's better or not.

You could allow lumbermills with Guilds on riverside tiles only. That would be historically accurate and would make chopping those tiles slightly less of a no-brainer. As for the relationship to competing tile improvements: Workshops with Caste and SP are even better than lumbermills with railroads. You don't see a problem with that? For me that's just one more reason to chop everything clean. Frankly, I don't see why workshops have to be so powerful. Doesn't their true greatness lie in the fact that you can build them just about anywhere? Watermills, on the other hand, are, if anything, underpowered themselves. They're so weak, in fact, they might as well become available at Replaceable Parts. Until then, building farms on watermillable tiles is virtually always better.

While we're on this subject, have you considered giving the commerce bonus to lumbermills and forest preserves that are only on a river's corner? If farms and workshops get the bonus, why shouldn't lumbermills and forest preserves get it too?

On a different matter: In a recent game I observed some strange behavior. Mansa Musa offered to give me Drama, Sailing and Monotheism plus 230 gold for Feudalism. He also would have given me Drama and Monotheism plus 350 gold or Drama and Sailing plus 375 gold, but only Drama plus 330 gold.

 

[Zacar]

I'm considering giving machine-guns +25% vs mounted, as you suggested, and also buffing West Point somehow to compensate. (It seems like everything is always getting buffed... I guess that's 'power creep'.)

I haven't played too much at such late eras, but on paper that era seems fine to me. How weak are MGs against cavalry, exactly? The numbers don't look that bad, although cavalry has that awesome retreat chance. If the retreat part makes cavalry unusually strong, would reducing the base strength by one be enough?

A few people have said that all their forests are usually gone by the time they get lumbermills. Maybe I'm a bit unusual, but I tend to have a few forests still around when I get replaceable parts. I like to keep forests when they are in the overlap of fat-crosses, so that two cities can have the health bonus. Maybe that's just me though.

I probably don't play optimally, but I like to keep forests around to balance health if possible, and also keep all forests (except on hills) around (to-be) production cities.

It seems like there's an endless list of things that can still be improved... and I'm working more slowly on it than I was in the past.

It might be fun to work on some specific part of the code, but I'm afraid of everything being too interrelated there.. and no one likes to setup the environment required for building things. Ideally, if some nice part of the AI would be modular enough, different people could make modules / write code against a simple API and the implementations could then be empirically compared. Though, that assumes that the main goal would be to create a good AI, which might not necessarily be a fun AI (?).

commerce bonus to lumbermills and forest preserves that are only on a river's corner

If lumbermills are deemed too weak, this is very reasonable.

You could allow lumbermills with Guilds on riverside tiles only.

For my playstyle this would be reasonable, as I usually get Guilds fairly late. Lumbermills probably take a long time to complete too. Actually I might not have completed the construction of all riverside lumbermills before I research Replaceable Parts.

Workshops with Caste and SP are even better than lumbermills with railroads. You don't see a problem with that?

I don't know if I have ever even played with Caste system, and that result seems a bit strange, but I think it is also rather restricting (no health from forests, two locked civics where SP requires some research and caste causes unhappiness vs eman) and as such not a real problem.

On the topic of civics, I actually consider Serfdom less attractive in K-mod because of the nerf.. though this consideration may once again be more emotional than optimal.

 

[Charles555nc]

1. Speaking of improvement, is there a way to get the AI to more choosey about its heroic epic? (Like a minimum city production to be built) and a minimum excess food for the national epic? This can make a huge difference than if the heroic epic is built in a low food/low production city.

It would be nice to see the AI leave more active land for their capitals as well (sometimes nearby cities can take away a large amount of the capital's land). Just saw a size 7 AI capital surrounded by size 13 cities.

2. I dont know how people feel about a 5% to 10% bonus vs mounted could be put into the Drill Promotion series for a buff for trained machine guns, while making sense (drilling to prepare to resist a cavalry charge). Gunpowder units and archer units with drill would also make sense...expertly drilled longbows destroyed french cavalry in the hundred years' war, gunpowder units waiting to shoot until the cavalry is within effective range, for example.

3. I make a lot of changes to stuff in my own version of K-mod. Resource bonuses max at +50% towards production, for me, makes the game much more interesting, and less piling of wonders. Walls and castles are pretty silly easy to build with access to stone etc etc.

Some wonders are too strong to me, The Great Wall increases in great generals can be insane, 2 whole trade routes from the Great Lighthouse, Notre Dame giving 2 happiness on a continent is worth an insane amount of money, the Apostolic Palace giving 2 hammers per religious building...

And on the weak side, the Hagia Sophia could allow for the free choice of labor civics (an early emancipation could be very cool) and drop down the other bonus to only +25% worker speed. The Statue of Liberty seems perfect for repeating the Hanging gardens same, +1 population per city (the statue as a big advertisement for immigration).

Also, after a certain tech point, shouldn't Wonders provide +3 great people points from +2 (to make newer wonders power relative to old wonders since you have old wonders for a longer time)? Kmod is very loyal to the original game, I just think this balance stuff is interesting.

4. One thing Ive been trying to balance is island nations vs continents by buffing the Moai Statues, harbors/custom houses providing some production (since production is not reflected in trade), I even just changed Serfdom to help island nations, and to get the AI to use it more.
Serfdom +25% worker speed
+1 gold for farm, fishing boats improvement
+1 hammer for pastures, camps
-1 gold for Towns

That would make sense in the context of Japanese/English serfs right?
Still trying to decide if serfdom should be medium or low upkeep though, probably medium.

5. I find that a value of 550 is better in the bbai_AI_variables_globaldefines for "Minimum city site value that the AI will consider settling". Probably not a big effect from 600 though lol. Some cities with a bunch of tundra but access to some fish with and a single hill are still worth getting, especially with additional trade routes.

6. I spent a lot of time testing and rewriting the terrain file, of the things I changed, I made it so that capital starts are much more even value wise. One reason capital starts have a wide range is that certain resources cant be placed on forested tiles, for example. Another interesting change I made was that it is more likely that you and the ai, have a horse or copper near your capital, as having no defensive resource could easily be a game killer, and I buffed the chariot to be better for more than only vs axemen so a couple spearmen couldnt make your early chariots fairly worthless (increased chariot cost to compensate). My jungle provides half a forest chop when chopped.

7. Increased AI leaders build unit rates, so that the AI doesn't burn out in the middle of wars, currently having fun slugging it out at 36. Made close borders a more negative influence, so people will be more likely to conquer neighbors first, instead of more distant profitless wars. And the ai will react more negatively to culture pushers, or founding a city too near their borders in hopes of blocking them. Slightly increased the positive relations boost of trading a tech with the AI.

8. One way to balance keeping forests around, vs chopping, is to make it less deadly to keep a forested tile near a city, because once the enemy gets in that forested tile, they get that +50% or +75% defense (forested hill). I changed the barrage promotion to provide a +5% hill attack and a +10% forest/jungle attack per level. So a barrage 3 catapult or whatever would have +15% hill attack, +30% forest/jungle attack to burn out those pesky campers. In real life, armies would not want to hang out inside a forest for a long time because a larger army could surround the forest and starve them out...or at least cut off their supply lines.

 

[ThorHammerz]

Some wonders are too strong to me, The Great Wall increases in great generals can be insane, 2 whole trade routes from the Great Lighthouse, Notre Dame giving 2 happiness on a continent is worth an insane amount of money, the Apostolic Palace giving 2 hammers per religious building...

Wonders are wonderful

Although if you are looking for more levers to balance out your wonderful wonders (or your plain dull buildings), you could consider changing their trade route yields (similar to customs house/harbor).

Personally imo, the game doesn't have quite enough hammers for smaller cities or cities founded on flatter land devoid of mineral resources (apart from coastals, since they provide so much food/commerce, reasonable trade-off), so Apostolic Palace is well used to make sure wide sprawling empires can actually finish their items within 10 turns each

 

[Zholef]

If you think all those wonders are too powerful, then you're probably playing on a difficulty level that's below your skill level. Try moving up and you're likely to find that most wonders aren't even worth building most of the time.

 

[Charles555nc]

Wonders are wonderful

Although if you are looking for more levers to balance out your wonderful wonders (or your plain dull buildings), you could consider changing their trade route yields (similar to customs house/harbor).

Personally imo, the game doesn't have quite enough hammers for smaller cities or cities founded on flatter land devoid of mineral resources (apart from coastals, since they provide so much food/commerce, reasonable trade-off), so Apostolic Palace is well used to make sure wide sprawling empires can actually finish their items within 10 turns each

I gave forges +2 hammers and +20% production (from 25%) and something similiar for factories, just to make slavery less of a requirement in low production cities.

Btw: re serfdom giving +1 gold for fishing boats, check out :
http://medieval-castles.org/index.php?cat=37

 

[ThorHammerz]

I slapped on bonus flat commerce/yields to buildings that normally give only %yield as well.... makes them actually worth building even if it's not in your capital/core cities .

Attaching a larger amount of tech yield changes (i.e. Astronomy giving +1 food to fishing boats) to improvements helps ramp up the game nicely as you advance into later eras (although at the risk of unintentionally creating a runaway snowball situation), maybe some happiness/health/extra trade routes as well. Speaking of trade routes, attaching bonus trade route yields (especially foreign-only-bonuses), or extra (global or city-only) trade route to buildings and wonders will amplify the consequences of diplomacy and war (and subsequently trading - for open borders): gives greater incentive to friendly with geo-politically strategic Civs instead of whoever is on the other side of the map, and punishes excessive warmongering with a greater economic penalty (as the loss of trade with Civs who are now angry at you is going to take a very big toll on commerce).

One thing I find to improve the AI performance somewhat is to make sure every leader has values for each type of flavor (same goes for buildings/techs), this ensures that Isabella is not researching say, only religion techs and is still lacking crap like currency or something into the late medieval era; its not really an issue on smaller maps due to tech trading and tech brokering - thanks Mansa! - but far more noticeable on larger maps (and essentially every 'this-is-not-a-pangaea-map'); also allows the AI to be a bit more flexible and diversified in terms of what buildings they get - often times you will notice the AI to only have 2-3 buildings, then spam units while mauling their own economy with the unnecessary unit maintenance, when they could be improving tiles and building more useful buildings.

 

[Zacar]

How would it affect the game if absolute culture gave defense on all tiles and not just only on city tiles?

 

[DarkLunaPhantom]

I hope I am not annoying you with this, but in this new version (1.43) some vassalage info is still missing.

When player A capitulates to player B and then player B forms permaallinace with player C, vassalage info disappears. It might be that this only happens when team number of player A (the original master of A) is changed to team number of player C (the one who is not the original master of A), because that is the situation in my game, I haven't checked what happens when it is the other way around.

 

[karadoc]

The Great Lighthouse is situational, but in cases where most cities are coast it is probably the most powerful wonder in the game at the moment; particularly on larger maps. It can add quite a lot of trade-routes, and if those trade routes are to overseas foreign civs, that can be a huge economic boast. I can't think of any other wonder that can be so powerful. I think it would be closer in power to other wonders if it only added 1 per city instead of 2; but I don't intend to change it. I kind of like how The Great Lighthouse effects games currently. (I already increased the construction cost, a long time ago.)

Notre Dame is pretty good, but it isn't 'great lighthouse' level good. It's quite costly if you don't have stone (and it's good that stone pairs with some good wonders), and by the time you get it the game is getting close to phase where is harder to get than . The Apostolic Palace is a weird one. The bonus is really a big deal; but that isn't just for the civ who builds the palace... so there's some interesting dynamics there. Some people like to switch to an obscure religion just to build their own personal Apostolic Palace that no one else gains benefit from. That can be a powerful strategy, but it takes a lot of planning and resources. I think it deserves to be powerful. Also, you can't really prevent your religion from naturally spreading anyway, since K-Mod allows some natural spread to cities which already have religion.

How would it affect the game if absolute culture gave defense on all tiles and not just only on city tiles?

The other short answer is "a lot". The short answer is it would make defence easier and offence harder. One thing worth keeping in mind is that cultural defence in cities can be bombarded away, whereas presumably cultural defence on ordinary plots could not be bombarded. So I suppose the bonus would need to be quite small, or else a lot of other balance adjustments would need to be made to compensate. (One idea for balance updates would be to give some units a generic +xx% bonus when attacking, on any plot. I'd like to give a bonus like that to submarines, but it doesn't exist in the current xml, and I don't feel strongly enough about it to add it... This kind of bonus would probably be suitable to a bunch of other units as well though. Berserker is one that comes to mind.

I hope I am not annoying you with this, but in this new version (1.43) some vassalage info is still missing.

When player A capitulates to player B and then player B forms permaallinace with player C, vassalage info disappears. It might be that this only happens when team number of player A (the original master of A) is changed to team number of player C (the one who is not the original master of A), because that is the situation in my game, I haven't checked what happens when it is the other way around.

I just looked into this briefly. Strangely enough, I didn't see anything that would cause the vassal info to disappear in those conditions; but I did notice something which might be at risk of producing other kinds of bugs.

The way vassalage currently works in that situation is a bit weird. The vassal team starts with one master, but when that master signs a permanent alliance, the vassal team is updated so that both the old team and the new team are its master. (At one stage I was intending to change the internal workings to be more intuitive and efficient, but I decided it wasn't worth the time, since it already 'works'.)

From my brief look at the mouse-over info stuff, it looks like it should still show the vassal info correctly when this happens, because it checks every team to see who's a master and who's a vassal. It should still find the right team and show the info. However, in some other parts of the code, the game assumes that there is only one master team, and thus when it identifies a master team it stops looking. If it happens to find the wrong team first, then that would be bad. I don't think this actually causes any bugs right now, because when a team loses its last member, all vassals of that team are set free (of that team). So I don't think there is any way for a team to have two masters indefinitely - only for a brief time while teams are being reassigned. But I might add some extra check or something to try to deal with it anyway.

In any case, I didn't notice anything that would cause the missing info problem. Are you sure that the vassal is actually still a vassal?

[edit]
It's possible that when the original master team becomes empty, certain vassalage info gets messed up. For example, the capitulation status is cleared, and the cache of the master's power is cleared. The code has an awkward combination of parts that assume there is only one master, and parts that allow any number of masters; so when the vassal is freed of one master (the empty team), the game updates a stack of values that will erroneously effect the new master as well. What a mess. I'm pretty sure there are bugs in there, but it isn't easy to tell exactly what the end effect will be, or how best to fix them.

 

[Charles555nc]

The Great Lighthouse is situational, but in cases where most cities are coast it is probably the most powerful wonder in the game at the moment; particularly on larger maps. .

In my game I made the great lighthouse provide +5 gold per turn and dropped down the other bonus to +1 coastal trade routes. The 5 gold doubles like culture does after 1000 years. This way, the Great Lighthouse is better early game, and weaker late game. Just something to think about.

 

[Zacar]

Good point on bombardment. Still culture and defense would go thematically very well together. Especially if culture is deemed too weak (or simple) and/or the game is deemed too offense-happy. Of course I'm not entirely serious at suggesting it, as it is rather radical, but merely playing with the idea.

I think the gameplay situation with wonders is fine. There are some stronger ones, and many that I at least feel being weaker, though a lot of them may be useful in some situation.

From the (main) point of view of K-Mod I suppose the relevant question is: How much the AI pays attention to its situation when building a wonder? In other words, does it first decide to build a wonder and then pick the best one (bad) or does it decide to build something and build a specific wonder if it is estimated to be useful enough (better)?

My personal opinion is that the Oracle is the most powerful wonder in the game - at least if I'm not avoiding great prophets. It is cheap (especially with marble) and gives me potentially a lot of research when the early hectic competition is still going strong. And no one can conquer the benefit away from me, like happens with many of those "strong" wonders listed.

Hanging gardens is an another favourite of mine, as it is one of the rare wonders with a permanent bonus, and also gives a rather rare GP type. It hits my food reserves hard though, which is a very strange side-effect, and probably a result of me not using slavery-tactics.

If barbarians are on (or raging), and depending on map, the Great Wall can be extremely influential. But I don't usually play with barbarians as things seem more balanced without.

 

[Windsor]

The other short answer is "a lot". The short answer is it would make defence easier and offence harder. One thing worth keeping in mind is that cultural defence in cities can be bombarded away, whereas presumably cultural defence on ordinary plots could not be bombarded. So I suppose the bonus would need to be quite small, or else a lot of other balance adjustments would need to be made to compensate.

This change would be quite radical (for kmod), but if implemented it makes most sense to give both the attacker and the defender a bonus based on culture.

A problem with combat bonus based on plot culture (in addition to balance) is transparency. You can quickly see if a tile have a forest, a hill or is riverside. Plot culture otoh isn't as accessible.

 

[Charles555nc]

I just had a situation where I think the Ai was being a genius. It sent a large stack after my easternmost city, while sending 3 well promoted units after my iron on our southern border.

I tried to kill the 3 stack with whatever I had lying around, but only got 2 of the 3 stack.

But instead of pillaging my iron and hurting my war effort substantially, the last guy decided to try killing my even healthed neighboring unit, on a hill, and lost.

Is there a larger priority setting that could be increased so that the ai burns resources before chasing down wounded enemy units?

Still an amazing effort by the ai!

 

[Windsor]

As decent as the kmod AI is, it still mismanages its cities. Ottoman capital 750BC:



Really, it would be nice if the AI just chopped all:

- Grass and plains riverside
- Plains and grass hill
- Grass flat

Leaving only flat plains(non-riverside) and tundra unchopped.

 

[Zacar]

Even if you are right about the mismanagement, you need a better example.

I see a city of size 5 working 5 improved tiles aimed for production. There is absolutely no immediate need to chop those forests unless you know something the screenshot doesn't show. It might be harmful in multiple ways to chop because the workers can be more useful elsewhere and those forests are a ~one-time production reserve for future use.

It's pretty difficult to review the AI from one screenshot, too many ifs because you don't know the whole plan. It might be easier to read karadoc's code and analyze/review it instead.

 

[Windsor]

I strongly disagree Zacar. Early chops are a no-brainer and aggressive chopping would consistently improve the AI. Saving trees for later chops is a niche strategy far above what the AI can plan for. Early chopping is like slavery, its so strong its hard to fail.

The reason why Istanbul is only size 5 is probably partly due to barbs, but also because the AIs haven't chopped a single tile. This leaves the AI working weak plainshills in an already somewhat food-poor capital.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I strongly disagree Zacar. Early chops are a no-brainer and aggressive chopping would consistently improve the AI. Saving trees for later chops is a niche strategy far above what the AI can plan for. Early chopping is like slavery, its so strong its hard to fail.

The reason why Istanbul is only size 5 is probably partly due to barbs, but also because the AIs haven't chopped a single tile. This leaves the AI working weak plainshills in an already somewhat food-poor capital.

I'm with Zacar, it's by no means a no brainer to chop all your trees, and plainshills are weak????

 

[Zholef]

I'm with Zacar, it's by no means a no brainer to chop all your trees, and plainshills are weak????

Well, you're wrong, and I'm saying this as a Civ-player as tree-loving as you'll find. I cringe inside every time I tell a worker to chop, but I've also done the math and run various tests, all with the same results. For the AI it's even simpler because it's too dumb to time chops with techs. For any given forest it has only the option of randomly chopping it verses letting it stay, and the cases in which chopping is the vastly superior move over not chopping are abundant, whereas the cases in which keeping forests is the better move are rare and even in such cases the benefits of not chopping are negligible, unless by "all trees" you meant even those on tiles other than those named by Windsor.

For the AI, chopping forests on those tiles is a no-brainer, and yes, plains hills are weak tiles, at least until Railroad. Before that, they may be strong enough to bother working, but just barely.