Report Questionable AI Behavior

They say a picture paints a thousand words.

Turn 525: Persepolis.jpg

Here is Persepolis, holy city of Zoroastrianism and capital of Persia, 524 turns in to a snail paced game. He's not been in any wars, and there's no barbarians around. The rest of his cities are little better.

It's Darius running the show. What he's playing at I have no idea. He doesn't have much of an army, so I don't understand what he could have been building all this time.

As you can see, he's desperately racing up the religion tree. Why? He clearly has no intention of actually building anything from it.

This is a particularly extreme example of what I am seeing constantly in enemy cities. They're just not building anything like enough infrastructure.

Turn 527: Persepolis2.jpg

He's decided he doesn't want the shrine any more, and has started building an apiary. In the adjacent city, he just stopped building an apiary and started building a school of scribes.

Turn 537: Persepolis3.jpg

He's given up on the apiary, because he desperately wants an explorer far more than he desires the apiary's point of food. The nearby city has given up on the school of scribes and is building an apiary again.

The terrifying thing is, as pathetic as this Persian empire is, it's halfway up the score table.

Turn 552 he finishes his explorer, and gets back to the apiary. The apiary that he desperately needed to finish some time in his first 100 turns.

Exactly what the problem is, I'm not sure, but it would certainly help if he'd focus a little more on production, and stop changing his mind constantly. An empire like this might as well simply not have turned up to the game.
 

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They say a picture paints a thousand words.

Turn 525: Persepolis.jpg

Here is Persepolis, holy city of Zoroastrianism and capital of Persia, 524 turns in to a snail paced game. He's not been in any wars, and there's no barbarians around. The rest of his cities are little better.

It's Darius running the show. What he's playing at I have no idea. He doesn't have much of an army, so I don't understand what he could have been building all this time.

As you can see, he's desperately racing up the religion tree. Why? He clearly has no intention of actually building anything from it.

This is a particularly extreme example of what I am seeing constantly in enemy cities. They're just not building anything like enough infrastructure.

Turn 527: Persepolis2.jpg

He's decided he doesn't want the shrine any more, and has started building an apiary. In the adjacent city, he just stopped building an apiary and started building a school of scribes.

Turn 537: Persepolis3.jpg

He's given up on the apiary, because he desperately wants an explorer far more than he desires the apiary's point of production. The nearby city has given up on the school of scribes and is building an apiary again.

The terrifying thing is, as pathetic as this Persian empire is, it's halfway up the score table.

Turn 552 he finishes his explorer, and gets back to the apiary. The apiary that he desperately needed to finish some time in his first 100 turns.

Exactly what the problem is, I'm not sure, but it would certainly help if he'd focus a little more on production, and stop changing his mind constantly. An empire like this might as well simply not have turned up to the game.


I noticed this two, that is the production of buildings nad units. It seemed like in my games every two to 5 turns the aI would change its mind on what to build not sure why or what was going on.
 
Your right, the AI is changing it's mind too often. This is because Firaxis forgot to scale a production AI check with gamespeeds, which will be fixed in the next version...
 
I've just been watching an AI Civ that was previously doing decently destroy itself though lead and tobacco. Between the two it has gotten itself a -4 health penalty (including the -1 for having lead with a potter's hut.) for its entire empire, pretty much stalling it in it's tracks. A player would be smart enough to remove the resource from it's network, or not build a road to it in the first place if they did not have enough health to spare.

Lead's drawbacks seem to rather outweigh its benefits, especially in the ancient era, so perhaps the AI should avoid mining it? An AI Civ that starts with mining and near to a lead node will pretty much never be heard from again.
 
I have tried a few game with Barbs on and a few with Barbs off. The AI seems to be doing much better without the Barbs.
 
I've just been watching an AI Civ that was previously doing decently destroy itself though lead and tobacco. Between the two it has gotten itself a -4 health penalty (including the -1 for having lead with a potter's hut.) for its entire empire, pretty much stalling it in it's tracks. A player would be smart enough to remove the resource from it's network, or not build a road to it in the first place if they did not have enough health to spare.

Lead's drawbacks seem to rather outweigh its benefits, especially in the ancient era, so perhaps the AI should avoid mining it? An AI Civ that starts with mining and near to a lead node will pretty much never be heard from again.

Lead used to be much worse Health Penalty-wise (RoM 2.8), without providing any sort of bonus (lead's only penalty is at the Potter's Hut with a -1 Health, but also provides a +2 Commerce bonus). The issue is that Tobacco ends up with too many Health penalties too early; removing its initial -1 Health would help. Also, I have to ask if the AI is building Health Buildings? I heard from others that the AI is having issues with City Improvements, as in ignoring them, and choosing to spam units; this leaves the AI with poor cities and in debt.

However, I agree that if it was possible for the AI to plan potential Health and Happiness, it would perform better.
 
Lead used to be much worse Health Penalty-wise (RoM 2.8), without providing any sort of bonus (lead's only penalty is at the Potter's Hut with a -1 Health, but also provides a +2 Commerce bonus).

Are you sure? The lead in the game I'm playing has a base -2 health penalty, before the additional penalty from the potter's hut. So far as I know I'm not using anything that would change that from AND 174.H settings.
 
I have a real problem with some "questionable" AI behavior. Namely, that it's sheer idiocy, stale repetition, and blatant predictability.

Every single time a new civilization emerges from barbarians near my civilization, they get A WHOLE :):):):) LOAD OF FREE UNITS, and they ALWAYS go to war with me.

No matter what.
 
I believe that was the idea. If that bothers you, turn off Barbarian Civ.
 
Lead used to be much worse Health Penalty-wise (RoM 2.8), without providing any sort of bonus (lead's only penalty is at the Potter's Hut with a -1 Health, but also provides a +2 Commerce bonus). The issue is that Tobacco ends up with too many Health penalties too early; removing its initial -1 Health would help. Also, I have to ask if the AI is building Health Buildings? I heard from others that the AI is having issues with City Improvements, as in ignoring them, and choosing to spam units; this leaves the AI with poor cities and in debt.

However, I agree that if it was possible for the AI to plan potential Health and Happiness, it would perform better.
most general approach for the AI to handle health buildings could be to understand them as food buildings and value them depending on how much food it gains from them. this would mean: if city is healthy ignore them - if not they have same priority as food buildings which should be quite very high. for the calculation of the decision determining food gain the city AI could assume to have 1 more :yuck: then it really has. thus it would build health buildings just before a problem occurs.

interpreting :yuck: just always as -1:food: if it exceeds healthiness level could be a general optimization for the AI code. there should be no other extra code for dealing unhealthiness other then this.

i'm also not sure whether the AI considers the actual gain of constructing a building (just as the BUG display shows the player). i remember that sometimes AI builds something granting a percentual modifier that would not have any effect because the base yield was too low in that city (i think it was a school of scribes). though admittedly for buildings like the lighthouse this might not be the best criteria for deciding whether to build it or not it is still a very good base of decision in general.
 
AI does consider the actual gain of buildings. The actual effect code is also used in AI calculations.
 
I believe that was the idea. If that bothers you, turn off Barbarian Civ.


You don't stop a termite infestation by blowing up your house. The intention is to have civilizations emerge from isolated barbarian cities, yet these civs follow the exact same routine of getting free units (which makes them pathetic cowards) and going to war with any civilization next to them, regardless of any relationship status, no matter how many gifts and concessions are given to them.
 
In the example I gave I was mostly talking about negative health from resources which is more insidious given that it will affect all cities connected to the Civ's trade network. Does the AI consider possible ill-effects from lead/tobacco etc, or does it just grobble up every resource it sees?
 
You don't stop a termite infestation by blowing up your house. The intention is to have civilizations emerge from isolated barbarian cities, yet these civs follow the exact same routine of getting free units (which makes them pathetic cowards) and going to war with any civilization next to them, regardless of any relationship status, no matter how many gifts and concessions are given to them.

I've already explained this, recently even. Barbarian Civ's that get created next to other players will be violent. Barbarian Civ's that get created alone are builder-civ's. The very fact you explored the territory of the barbarians, and sent units in caused them to be violent.

In the example I gave I was mostly talking about negative health from resources which is more insidious given that it will affect all cities connected to the Civ's trade network. Does the AI consider possible ill-effects from mining lead, or does it just grobble up every resource it sees?

The 2nd one, unfortunately.
 
In the example I gave I was mostly talking about negative health from resources which is more insidious given that it will affect all cities connected to the Civ's trade network. Does the AI consider possible ill-effects from lead/tobacco etc, or does it just grobble up every resource it sees?
The 2nd one, unfortunately.
so one could remove all effects from such resource and apply its boni/mali to a building since the code for evaluating buildings by their actual effect is implemented following Afforess statement.

also i can imagine that resources that give negative effects just by possessing them are not popular among players too. so making a building the option of deciding whether you'd like to use the resource or not makes sense.
 
Dont know if this has been fixed in 1.74, but GC doesnt recieve xp when unit get special promo after battle.

Nope - I haven't fixed that in 1.74 - but I just fixed it for 1.75. ;)
Also the AI uses them stupidly sending 1 unit with a GC sometimes. Kinda suicide...

I rewrote GC AI in 1.74 ;)
 
So now I have a nice long tunnel bridge from my main continent in my game with small ones connecting an island chain. However the Worker AI (Missionary AI) seems to see or use it.

The workers never seem to cross it and Missionaries are only getting airlifted to the islands, rather than walking.

Btw, this doesn't seem to affect manual pathing, as I was able to use the Route button to create a road between islands with tunnels in place.

PS. Ignore this if it has been fixed for 1.75 as I have not had a chance to try it, still working on my last game ;)
 
Hello! I'm playing a 1.75 game in emperor level, and AI works perfectly well until modern age... then I've observed those annoying problems:

- AI never builds Filling Factory, I have to add it with world builder if I want a little challenge :(

- AI doesn't build Chemical Plant, Cement Plant nor Fertilizer plant. Only request trade for them sometimes.

- AI doesn't build Aluminium Factory, sometimes request trade for it...

- The most annoying problem: AI does NEVER build any AIRPLANES nor BOMBERS though having the resources to do so (I must add the necessary factories manually with world builder :mad: ) and if I add some airplanes manually, the AI sometimes disband, sometimes distribute them stupidly, and sometimes use them until death, and never rebuild them... :cry:

- Added to these problems, AI does not try invasions of my homeland as usually did in previous ages (which was very interesting and challenging), only attacks sometimes with ships but stupidly, it seems to be like paralized.

I must comment that I've observed this behaviour in previous versions of your mod, but it's worsening with newer ones.

Any ideas? Thanks anyway for your excellent mod, though it cannot be played until the end ( at least for me).
 
Thanks for the detailed report. I'll look into solving AI behavior in patch c.
 
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