Smart AI artillery usage suggestion

Has anyone tried this? I know that the AI tends to send captured artillery units to combat in some of my games...

I've got an idea that might finally solve our problems and help the AI use its artillery units. What if we could help the AI get units with a foreign nationality and upgrade to an artillery?

I suggest to make the front line attacker of every era be able to enslave into a defender like unit that would run home after being captured, then upgrade to an artillery. Now upgrading to an artillery is the tricky part. You dont want a ridiculously disproportionate army with artillery, so give the artillery upgrade to be the army ability (not flag). This will take away A/D values you dont use anyway, then proceed to making a normal artillery unit.

You will need to get rid of vanilla army units and lower the amount of cities required to build an army to 1. The army number will act as a logistics capability for their artillery and it will have a cap limit on that artillery unit.

This has a huge branching potential!!!! Since after cap you and the AI might have a lot of extra useless units waiting to be upgraded at their host city, you could originally make that useless unit upgrade to lets say a cruise missile, then the cruise missile to an army.

What will happen is when cap has not been reached, the cruise missile upgrade will be automatically bypassed, and only artillery units will come from the upgrades till cap is reached, then the upgrade will go down 1 tier and begin upgrading to missiles after cap.

This also could fix another problem the AI has that it rarely builds missiles, or if u want the AI to build other kinds of units instead of insisting in only building tanks. All you gotta do is give those units in the branching an impossible factor to build from the que list like I dont know giving it 9999999 shields req to build, or 999999 population or something, or making the pre-artillery unit cost a lot to upgrade so they dont immediatly go upgrading all their units to missiles or something. We just have to be creative when it comes to that.

I would love to see someone trying this out as i try it as well.

And of course Im trying to replicate this and for some reason my game is crashing -_-

UPDATE: I had the king flag and army flag clicked by accident hehe. No more crashes.

Also I'd love if anyone could help me with this issue. The 'Army' flag makes my units look like crap. The colors are off. What can i do to fix that? Thanks

Insofar as "helping" the AI with artillery goes, you might want to have a look HERE and possibly http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12199075&postcount=63.

Insofar as Army units go, I know that they use a different palette scheme than regular units, but someone else will have to help you with the details There is, after all, a reason why I occasionally call myself the, "Resident Village Gfx Idiot."


Cheers,

Oz

Haha! Thanks for the links. It seems every time you are close to finally fixing the game without breaking the code some other major problem arises. One day Oz one day someone will finally do something really crazy that will help us all bypass the AI dumbness...

The links are very very interesting and important! I can imagine that by using different techniques maybe what i want to do for artillery could be achieved! If im pleased with the results im gonna post a report!!! I'd love to fight an AI thats smarter and harder than just having to make it cheat to be able to beat me.

So far i've increased the difficulty of my AI by changing the economy of the game giving a number of free units depending on the government type. 1v1 isnt a big deal but play on a map with 31 civs and the moment they start making alliances against you, you will feel the pain of those free units+their paid units x the number of civs allied against you. I've actually had to surrender and drafted out of need a couple of times already.

Well im gonna go back to reading some more info from those links.

UPDATE:

After reading the other links I've come up with a polished idea from my original one. I think the best and easiest way to go would be to give certain offensive units the enslave ability. The enslaved unit would have to be something that would act like a worker and run like a chicken to a city. Since the enslaved is a foreign national it will make for a nice artillery unit since the AI sends them out to the battle field. I would also add the blitz ability since it helps even more with my goal of AI using arties, and makes them stronger to make up for their lack of numbers available to each civ since i will also cap it with the following:

*Here is how my artillery would work:

1-Upgrade chain would be: From worker like enslaved unit to --- useless disband option only unit to --- Army checked (not flagged) unit with artillery flag.

I tested the army already and it works normally as an arty, but acts as a cap to the unit amount. I would just have to fix the palette issue. The point of the upgrade chain is so that while armies could still be built, the upgrade will skip the 'useless unit' upgrade and become an artillery.

The point of the useless disband only unit is so that when the army cap has been reached the AI upgrades to it and disbands freeing up map space, and reducing possible lag.

I would also remove vanilla armies and any way of generating them, and reduce army support to 1 city to allow for more artilleries. Now i got 1 problem to solve. The disposable unit upgrade originally i thought to make a 'king', so it is not available thru the build que, yet available to everyone, so it could appear as an upgrade. Maybe if i make just a blank unit with no flags, and only option to disband the AI wont build and take away the need to flag as king which unfortunatly are not disbandable!?

Im gonna build this up and test it and I'll let u know if it works. It sure would beat having the AI using arty from 4 squares away like mentioned on previous linked posts or having the AI mass hundreds of them without any downside.

Regarding the garbled colors in the army-unit: In order to make it possible to indicate how many units the army has loaded, a special colormap is used where 64 color indexes are reserved for this purpose (the arrows in attached image).


If you use a unit with a "normal" colormap as army, the game will treat the colormap as if it had reserved colors, and this is the reason the units colors are messed up. You need to do some serious work with Flicster and Gimp (or another graphic editor) to replace a "normal" colormap with a special "army-colormap". It's difficult, but possible. The easiest way out is to find a unit that already has the special army-colormap.

In case you didn't know: To upgrade an army, the city must have both a barracks and a building that allows it to produce armies.

If you find a way to make the AI use artillery more actively, I am sure many would be very grateful. Keep us updated on your testing progress, please.

Sigurd

Thanks for the info Jorsa dang i didnt know it was that hard I'll see how i can do this.

UPDATE:

I come back defeated! The AI is more incompetent than i thought. Unless this somehow could be done it might not happen:

1-Tell the AI for X unit that the attacking strat for the 'OFFENSE' flag IS NOT ATTAcKING, but BOMBARDING, so instead of moving close to engage head on it would just move in range to bombard.

2-Somehow telling the editor that an 'Army' ability flagged unit CAN attack and defend instead of going gray. This is to limit the artillery numbers since the artillery will have to be flagged for 'Offense' and likely become the only unit the AI would wanna build.

The artillery flag itself is doomed!!! Its completely useless. It acts as if artillery was a worker or something, so i dont have any hopes of it being fixed somehow. This is why i think we must play with the 'OFFENSIVE' strat flag.

As of now the only really real way to use artillery is by making them be auto-produced, and strong 'Offensive', but weak 'Defensive' units which im not a fan of :/ STILL its better than vanilla strategy which is disgusting.

Hi, ZergMazter. I am late to this thread but have actually done many previous tests with some of the ideas you discussed here. The AI is not good about updating Army units, as they will not often take the time to send units to the appropriate city that has the 'Build Army' flagged wonder. And as you stated, units with the Army ability can not be given offensive or defensive strategies.

As far as the enslave or capture option goes, this is not reliable either. The AI sometimes uses it because the artillery units are already outside of cities, but they are just as likely to have them retreat to a city. The real bone of the AI artillery problem is that they are reluctant to bring artillery our of friendly cities, and they will usually retreat when an enemy unit comes within 2 spaces.

The only functioning artillery I've been able to make is in a scenario. The artillery units have a bombard range of 8. The AI not only uses them, but will consistently move them (along with a 3 unit escort) out of their own cities and towards enemy cities to bombard. They will even move across large (50 tiles) distances. I'd put no money on them ever loading the things on a boat and attacking across a continent, though. In the future, I'm going to try a method similar to your suggestion, with the total number of artillery limited by the Army ability, with this long range to see if it would be feasible in an epic game.

You know Antal was making a lot of progress and i think he can fix the game, however as of lately his patches dont work any longer at least for me since my game version is from steam. Its a mess right now and many people's game broke due to an auto-patch.

Blows dust off...

I think, that I may have some success in KI handling their artillery.

I have given them a low defence value, so that they have hitpoints (also reduced) and the blitz ability (but still only one movement point).

After these change I was able to observe at least the French to use first a catapult against the Byzantine in their long, bloody and unsuccessful siege of Naissus...



... and later an artillery against me at my beachhead at Bordeaux.



I know that the French got more artillery, but by now they seem to use only one (the same?) in both sieges.

Please note, that artillery units now can no longer be captured, as they will make a stand when attacked. As several nations have now their own artillery types, I do not see this as disadvantage. Only immobile Cannons are now be able to be captured.

EDIT Afterthought: It can not be a captured catapult, as they can no longer be captured and the Byzantines (the only nation with a city on the french island) have got the Fire Catapult instead. So it has to be a french build unit.

The game is on monarch level.

Unfortunatly they still do not use the faster Horse Artillery, Camel Artillery and Towed Artillery. They do not have the blitz ability.

But they love large immobile artillery pieces. In Tours or Avignon is at least one Dora Railway Gun, that takes long range shots at Bordeaux...

Interesting. You might be about to unlock something here. I'd get really excited if they begin transporting more artillery to attack. Immobile artillery sounds interesting too. I'm getting a few ideas now.

Bro keep posting lol. Do you have a copy of your mod? I've looked at some people's mod like Civinator's and learned from them. I do play them once in a while as well, but I got a thing for my own custom rules lol.

IF wanted, here is a Link to a Tutorial I made in 2005 that deals with Converting Game Units To Army Units:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=124735

Thank you Vulkadon. I had seen that file a while ago, but forgot to download it. I never remember the author.

Sorry, no further luck with the artillery.

After one of my Dreadnoughts silenced the offensive artillery piece, only the Dora in Tours continued firing.

When I mopped up France I found 3 Artilleries and 2 Grand Batteries barricaded in their cities.

The other nations seems to have only immobile cannons (and seem to ignore the more cost efficent "normal" Railway Gun (200 shields, Range 4) in favour of the Dora Monster (400 shields, Range 6)).

And sorry again, there is no copy of my mod available. I have only a slow and unstable internet connection and had tried to upload it several times (on Atomic Gamer ), but each time the upload aboarded within the first hour or so.

I can post the BIQ if you want.

Kirejara said:

Sorry, no further luck with the artillery.

After one of my Dreadnoughts silenced the offensive artillery piece, only the Dora in Tours continued firing.

When I mopped up France I found 3 Artilleries and 2 Grand Batteries barricaded in their cities.

The other nations seems to have only immobile cannons (and seem to ignore the more cost efficent "normal" Railway Gun (200 shields, Range 4) in favour of the Dora Monster (400 shields, Range 6)).

And sorry again, there is no copy of my mod available. I have only a slow and unstable internet connection and had tried to upload it several times (on Atomic Gamer ), but each time the upload aboarded within the first hour or so.

I can post the BIQ if you want.

Click to expand...

The AI NEVER takes Shield Cost into account.

-Oz

I believe that a range of 4 plus will make artillery a little more active.

As it is discussed in the Thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=566739"

I found it more fitting to continue here.

r16 said:

was reading Tom2050's thread on modding captured barbarian artillery in to give AI some sense in using fire support .

Click to expand...

independent from r16, I have also found Tom2050 idea about captured artillery units.

So I have turned my combat engineers from defense/worker into offense/defense/worker units, who are able to enslave enemy units into artillery pieces (or from in game point: they salvage artillery units from the enemy ).

Peasant Milita (Feudalism, 2/2/1) salvage Catapults
Pioneer (Nationalism, 4/4/1, salpeter) salvage Cannons
Combat Engineer (6/6/1, rubber) salvage Artillery

And in my first game with them I have successfully observed the KI using their "salvaged" artillery against each other and I found myself finally also at the receiving end of a spanish Artillery (and I must be totally crazy, as I am glad that Isabella has done it... ).



Not only moved Isabella that gun out of one of her cities and fired it upon my troops in Berlin, she also seems to upgraded it from Catapult to Artillery, as she has conquered Germany during her middle ages.

I have not seen the KI shipping these salvaged guns however.

As only draw back the KI now mass produce the three part-time-worker-units, despite them being weaker then their corresponding regular counterpart (Pikeman, Rifleman and Infantry) at a higher price (same shields, but also one population point).

YESSS!!!



I have set my light Cavalry (Cossacks, Hussars and Lancers) to "salvage" the fast Horse Artillery as their Husarenstück (I do not know a fitting translation, my best guess is "Daring action by Hussars").

Normally they are only slightly cheaper placeholders (5/2/3) in case a player has Military Tradition but no salpeter,

I have also raised their price to be equal with the normal Cavalry/Dragoons. Despite that the KI is now suddenly in love with them. The Dutch seem to have only Hussars, but not the stronger Dragoons (6/3/3 Horses and Salpeter) and Cuirassiers (6/4/3 Horses, Salpeter and Iron), despite being able to build them.

But more important: The Dutch have landed three Horse Artilleries covered by a Line Infantry (flavor Rifleman) next to Lagash. And during the turn after their landing the HA and the dutch fleet have redlined the defenders of Lagash (but they do not conquer the city as there is currently no offensive dutch unit nearby ).

The HA have indian and russian nationality.

I would say, that "salvaged" artillery is working for the KI.

Kirejara,
Several questions-
Can you still build these arty units normally, besides 'salvaging' them?
Are these 'salvaged' arty hidden nationality?
Have you tried making the Hussar or Combat Engineers auto-produced, so the AI doesn't build only them?

Kirejara said:

I would say, that "salvaged" artillery is working for the KI.

Click to expand...

Beware! When AI "salvages" too many artillery, enemy turns may become AWFULLY slow and all AI land units will be tied guarding that artillery.

Takeo said:

Kirejara,
Several questions-
1: Can you still build these arty units normally, besides 'salvaging' them?
2: Are these 'salvaged' arty hidden nationality?
3: Have you tried making the Hussar or Combat Engineers auto-produced, so the AI doesn't build only them?

Click to expand...

1: Yes, they can still be normaly build. In some cases one get a type you can not normally build (Korean Pioneers salvage Cannons instead of H´wacha ), but I think that is acceptable.

2: No, as you can see in the screenshots, the nationality of its owner can be seen. Only their original nationality can be only guessed at F3 under "Captured Units".

3: I am currently turning the Hussars back to normal (70 shields and no salvage). The Combat Engineers building is limited, as they used up population points like normal workers. But I am thinking about a small wonder to autoproduce them with each tech (Feudalism, Nationalism, Replacable Parts).

I have not yet encountered problems with too many KI artilleries. But by now I have salvaged more than all KI together (14 Horse Artilleries and 3 Cannons).