BtS AI - Is it better?

All,

Mind you, I have only played three games so far (and not to completion since I am just trying new strategies and checking out the new features) but I am beginning to wonder if the AI is better then Warlords.

I usually play Prince so I stayed with that level (I know it isn't that high but it usually gives me a good challenge). Anyway, when I played on Warlord, I usually am fighting until the end and sometimes I lose to the computer. From what I have seen of BtS so far, I am leading early on and it seems like I am pulling away at a steady pace.

Last night, I was attacked by Stalin and since I was void of copper and horses, I had to use archers to try to stop his chariots. I did ok and eventually researched Iron Working and found some iron down south. The whole time while I was building a mine and road to iron, Stalin had a handful of chariots sitting around my towns and he didnt destroy any improvements. He had the opportunity to destroy my farms, quarry and cottages yet he just sat in between my two cities not doing a thing. Eventually I got iron and built spearmen and took out most of his chariots and I started to move against him and destroy his improvements.

Has anyone else noticed this behaivor? Or is this just an odd game? It seems the AI uses some of his economy to build espionage points early on while I have yet to do it (and really do not see a reason to). Has anyone seen a reason to use part of your economy on ep?

Thx
jonpfl

There are quite a few threads on this subject already...

But it's really confusing. Some people report the AI making great moves and using brilliant tactics, while others report them sitting idly in the player's countryside doing nothing. Very strange.

Unfortunately, I'm among the latter. Once I was attacked by surprise right out of ships, and lost three cities. But it turned out that the attacker had only brought cannon-fodder. Other than that, I've not seen any military move by the AI worth mentioning. And I'm now playing two levels higher than I used to in Warlords...

The AI is much better in BtS. The idle stacks you see are due to the AI calculating it's better to wait than to attack considering your forces and theirs.

I had a 30 boats simultaneous sea invasion against 3 different cities of mine located in different parts of the worlds, it looked well planned and well thought, so yes I'm quite happy with the AI right now. I never felt so much playing against a real human.

Now you're right a few things still need a bit of tweaking (spies, corps spreading, maybe too many suicide attacks...), but all in all let's thank Blake for his awesome work !

(And I'm pretty sure he'll improve the AI even more in the patch to come )

klokwerk said:

The AI is much better in BtS. The idle stacks you see are due to the AI calculating it's better to wait than to attack considering your forces and theirs.

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Well, but should it not at least go for pillaging if it can't take the city? If its attacking force is not even strong enough for that, then it shouldn't have attacked in the first place. In that case it should retreat.

Sitting idly in enemy territory is not a viable tactic under any circumstances. The AI gets no advantage from it, instead it pays higher costs for unit supply, and the stack is vulnerable to the player's counter-attack.

But I'm also optimistic that Blake will further develop the AI and those glitches will disappear eventually. I know he can do it, let's hope Firaxis continues to pay him for that so he remains motivated

klokwerk said:

The AI is much better in BtS. The idle stacks you see are due to the AI calculating it's better to wait than to attack considering your forces and theirs.

Click to expand...

I have no problem if the AI uses a stack to sit on an important tile to deny you a resource but the stack that was sitting around was in between two cities (within my cultural border but not within a fat cross). And to top that off, it was a stack of two or three chariots so they do not get a defensive bonus!

At that point in time, I did not have horses or copper so I had no way to counter attack. All I had were archers so I would think the AI would move around my civ and pillage my mines/farms etc.

After awhile, I finally finished iron working and got a settler out and found an iron mine so I could counter him pretty quickly. Of course, the AI could have tried to counter my attack by pillaging my iron mine but he never tried that as well.

I never remember Vanilla Civ or Warlords NOT pillaging anything. I realize the AI cannot be perfect but I was hoping they would at least try their best to pillage instead of sitting around in your territory doing nothing.

My experience: Early on, the AI is easier to take out. Why?
1) The AI doens't get the production bonus it used to in Warlords.
2) The AI goes for the longer term strategy or Religions and tech trading vs. total conquest early on, and also doesn't defend itself very well early on, as it is working on infrastructure and peaceful expansion.
3) As a human player, you're more apt to go the military route early on, and look for an oponent near you that you can take out early. This is directly opposite of what the AI is doing, and unless they have the protective trait, you can easily run them over with a handful of early axemen.

However, once the AI gets into the early middle ages, you'll be facing a problem you never saw in Warlords...Pikemen actually escorting catapults, supported by Horse Archers or War Elephants, and Macemen for the assault, occassionally, you'll also see Crossbowmen.

I was once attacked by a force of Greek Phalanxes, War Elephants, and Crossbowmen. I was able to herd his forces away from his initial target by loading it with Swordsmen (the AI had beaten me to Crossbows...), archers, and spearmen. Here the AI did a calculation and moved on to look for an easier city. Fortunately for me, this stack didn't have horse archers or I wouldn't have been able to do what I did...which was move my army from city to city until I could execute a pincer move on him.

I have never! needed to execute a pincer in this game before. When I got Paricles army in position, I hit him from three sides...so ok, I guess it wasn't really a pincer move, but I had him blocked to the east by Chokonu (chinese UU) and to the west by Chokonu, and I hammered him from the North with my army of swordsmen and then with my Chokonu. In the end, I lost many units, but I did annihilate his army, and shortly there after, Paricles aggreed to peace.

I find myself routinely maneuvering and considering different strategies than I used to.

Since BtS, I've exclusively played on the Terra Map setting, because I wanted to experience the colony concepts, so I find myself routinely surrounded by aggressive opponents.

I think the AI's strengths and the importance of EPs is map-driven. If you're isolated, you don't need EP's, but if you're facing infiltration attempts from 4-6 opponents, then you need EP's, unless you love rebuilding granaries, barracks, walls, forges, mines, farms, etc...Additionally, the AI can steal technologies from you if your EPs aren't high enough to make the cost too prohibitive for them.

I do, however, believe that the Prince level is too easy for an experienced player. If you played at Prince in Warlords, then you should be playing at Monarch or higher. Additionally, it's been my experience that the ancient era has gotten easier, but that the later stages of the game, where mixed unit tactics are more important, has gotten harder.

I have played one game at Prince with the Dutch on the Terra map and won via diplomatic Victory with a 70k+ score.

The game is functionally broken due to two rather serious bugs. But it has potential; wait for the patch to fix things.

MisterBarca said:

The game is functionally broken due to two rather serious bugs. But it has potential; wait for the patch to fix things.

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Oh goodness, what are these bugs? Is one of them forment unhappiness, I've heard about that and it sounds terrible.

AI is definately worse. Sure it has its shining moments, but when this becomes common, its got issues:



Look at the date, now look at improved tiles. Also this is his only city.

Report that in the bug reporting thread, along with a saved game. Blake would probably want to figure out what is going wrong there, and fix it.

Already did so, was just showing it here because people seem to think the AI is glorious now.

sigmakan said:

Already did so, was just showing it here because people seem to think the AI is glorious now.

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Galciv2 AI also had issues and bugs which had to be iron out especially when Brad add more features. One bug that showed up was when someone used Ctrl N to get a better start the AI wouldn't do anything during the game.
I haven't seen anyone here say it's glorious but only better even with it's problems.

There ARE bugs, but the AI is generally much better, your screenshot doesn't prove anything, except there are a few bugs left...

There's clearly a bug in the governor in 'normal mode' where it puts the city in 'stagnant' mode whereas it could grow the city. I had to emphasize food many times (and the fact that the workers listen to the governor worsens the bug), the governor used to always put my city back in frozen mode.

When this bug occurs on the AI (who uses on the same governor) on his first city, the AI is just 'frozen' forever. Blake will probably fix that soon, it didn't occur in BetterAI so it should be fixed easily...

(I could probably fix these small bugs myself but the first patch will probably be released soon and there's no point making something that Blake would do himself much better).

I don't think the AI is glorious now, but it is WAY better than pre-BtS.

I have noticed the lack of military force in the early era, but I prefer to peacefully expand at the start and then only go to war when I want to expand (I like to roleplay civs).

If you play games past the industrial era, they no longer fall flat on their face. They actually increase production in the modern era, and build units that target your stacks much better.

I do think that for the players that like to war alot, Blake figures that the Aggresive AI setting should be more appropriate (I remember him calling the default AI the sandbox AI)

The AI may be better at waging war, but it is teching much slower now on the same difficulty level.

Moquia said:

The AI may be better at waging war, but it is teching much slower now on the same difficulty level.

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That's right, it's partly due to the huge decrease in the bonuses it receives, and partly due to the more 'prod-oriented' choices made by the governor.

(It could be due to the existing default governor bug which emphasizes production and stagnates growth too, but I'm not sure)

klokwerk said:

There ARE bugs, but the AI is generally much better, your screenshot doesn't prove anything, except there are a few bugs left...

There's clearly a bug in the governor in 'normal mode' where it puts the city in 'stagnant' mode whereas it could grow the city. I had to emphasize food many times (and the fact that the workers listen to the governor worsens the bug), the governor used to always put my city back in frozen mode.

When this bug occurs on the AI (who uses on the same governor) on his first city, the AI is just 'frozen' forever. Blake will probably fix that soon, it didn't occur in BetterAI so it should be fixed easily...

(I could probably fix these small bugs myself but the first patch will probably be released soon and there's no point making something that Blake would do himself much better).

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's really annoying when the governor just stops growing your city even though it's no where near the happy cap. I can't wait for that one to be fixed.

The slower teching is due to two main factors, Espionage Spending, and drastically reduced bonuses. The AI has dropped about 2 levels in terms of bonuses from Warlords, so if you used to be a Noble player, play on Monarch (where it will have similar bonuses to the Noble difficulty on Warlords) and tell me it's teching slower.

It's teching at a pace that is fun however. The tech pace in Warlords was obscene with all the cheats the AI got, and it was used as a measure of difficulty to cover up for an otherwise fairly lacking AI. So much so, that the AI would sacrifice military and other criticalities just to maintain this tech pace. As a result, each game was the same. Now, one can delve into espionage, and finance through corporations. It's more than just tech, tech, tech at all costs. In Warlords this was only strong because the AI had ridiculously cheap upgrades to compensate for the lack of any noteworthy military defence/offence.

DrJambo said:

It's teching at a pace that is fun however. The tech pace in Warlords was obscene with all the cheats the AI got, and it was used as a measure of difficulty to cover up for an otherwise fairly lacking AI. So much so, that the AI would sacrifice military and other criticalities just to maintain this tech pace. As a result, each game was the same. Now, one can delve into espionage, and finance through corporations. It's more than just tech, tech, tech at all costs. In Warlords this was only strong because the AI had ridiculously cheap upgrades to compensate for the lack of any noteworthy military defence/offence.

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And playing with the "no tech brokering" option makes this feature even better because it forces everyone to really earn their techs for the most part. I love this option in my current game - teching is slower for everyone so it's like another way to play instead of epic/marathon speeds because you can get more use from your units. And trading becomes more interesting

I've found the AI much worse in some ways, and a little better in other ways. But for the most part it still seems that the AIs have to cheat to spam out all these units. Now that you have espionage you can look inside their cities and see their production. No way are they churning out those units without cheating - their cities are usually in horrible shape, poor city governor management (worse than before I think). Then again on tactics, I see they do a slightly better job moving stacks aggressively on my borders.