AI Idiocy

Duuk

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The AI seems utterly incapable of dealing with civil wars and revolutions.

Could I suggest one crutch be that after a revolt is triggered, the remaining cities in the empire be given a temporary boost of happiness? Anything to tone down the failure of the AI empires.
 
Finding the right balance between rebels being a real threat and several AIs managing to hold large empires together to challenge a good human player is a ongoing process in this mod. In my games and tests (usually on Monarch), several AIs manage to put together large empires with some avoiding serious confrontation and others successfully dealing with revolts when they appear.

Balkanization of some areas is definitely an issue and something I'm working on. To a large extent, these kinds of splits are necessary during a revolt, so we're looking at ways to greatly increase the chances that for many types of revolts, either the rebels win and capture most of the motherland's territory, or they lose/reconcile their differences and the original civ keeps most of its original borders.

The next phase for the mod is a complete overhaul of the Revolt system so that revolts can be better handled after they've begun. As you pointed out in another thread, religious differences are often the cause of early permanent schisms and these will also be bettered handled by new events for driving other religions from your territory under Theocracy.

What difficulty, map type & size, # of civs do you normally use?
 
I normally use a tiny map, PerfectWorld, start with 3 civs.

I've seen a "successful" civil war a few times (where a new civ manages to essentially eliminate the parent), but quite often I've noticed that when a parent civ starts the spiral of civil war, it will often collapse into degenerate wars throughout the game.

I'd suggest:

Happiness boost after a revolt is put down. Perhaps even giving no unhappiness in a city for 20 turns after conquest if same culture (ie: recapture).

Reduced risk of revolt with a jail.

Inquisitor unit (theology -> scientific method). I really, really feel this is vital.
 
I think it would be so much better to teach the AI to cope with revolts, as humans do, rather than to give them some crutch...
 
I can see why you're so adamant about religious issues now ... the effects of religion really don't scale evenly with map size. I don't think I'd ever simulated a tiny map game before, it's really a very different experience.

With only a handful of civs on the map, and only space for 3-4 real civs worth of cities, one or two civs are certain to found multiple religions. On larger maps or maps that start with fewer civs than normal, there's extra space to expand if a civ loses some territory in an early religious dispute. With the maps you're playing, there's little chance to replace territory lost and, as you know, these religious disputes are completely crippling. Revolts seem both more prevalent and harder to recover from on such small maps (one or two cities are a serious loss if you only have 4) and, since there are only 2-3 other civs beside yours, you can easily be left with only one (or even no) real opponent.

I'll definitely work to improve support for smaller maps, and the ability to purge other religions from your territory under Theocracy is definitely in the works, which will help. In the mean time, you might get better results shifting up to small maps and you can also decrease the prevalence of religious splits by changing the odds the AI accepts city requests for changes in state religion or religious civics:
ReligionOdds = 25
Somewhat artificial perhaps, but it will help on these smaller maps while I'm working on better fixes for the long run.
 
Actually, I play with a 33 boost to religion acceptance for that very reason.

I know you have a resistance to allowing an inquisitor, but perhaps merge bmarnz's Inquisition mod in and have it default to "Off", so that people that play on smaller maps for a quick, one-afternoon game have the option?

I know I'd greatly appreciate it.
 
A couple of questions regarding the AI behavior with revolution.

1. Is it possible to increase the "value" of happiness and health to the AI? I have found an effective strategy can be to simply knock out happiness and health resources and use spies to foment unhappiness, eventually leading to a revolution within your enemy's empire. It would be great if the AI understood it should do the same thing to me more frequently.

2. Is it possible to increase the likelihood that the AI will raze a city? I notice they very rarely raze cities, leading to a lot multicultural empires with frequent revolutions (also makes it easy to create unrest via spies as above). If they are willing to deploy a huge force to stay in the city, they can usually hold onto it with the "city garrison" bonus, but this is often not possible. On the other hand, I understand that if I have no culture in a city and cannot commit troops to hold it, it is only going to cause trouble in the end, so I just raze it and found a city there when I have the chance.
 
A couple of questions regarding the AI behavior with revolution.

1. Is it possible to increase the "value" of happiness and health to the AI? I have found an effective strategy can be to simply knock out happiness and health resources and use spies to foment unhappiness, eventually leading to a revolution within your enemy's empire. It would be great if the AI understood it should do the same thing to me more frequently.

2. Is it possible to increase the likelihood that the AI will raze a city? I notice they very rarely raze cities, leading to a lot multicultural empires with frequent revolutions (also makes it easy to create unrest via spies as above). If they are willing to deploy a huge force to stay in the city, they can usually hold onto it with the "city garrison" bonus, but this is often not possible. On the other hand, I understand that if I have no culture in a city and cannot commit troops to hold it, it is only going to cause trouble in the end, so I just raze it and found a city there when I have the chance.

1. It is certainly possible, but I have to find the right places to make the change. The most logical one is defensive, ie having the AI keep city population low if there is an elevated RevIndex ... doing this well is time consuming, it requires understanding the existing AI logic and how it can be tweaked for the new mechanisms of Revolution. Better BTS AI is a product of my looking into the AI for exactly this kind of purpose :)

After the defensive side, I don't yet have a good idea how to best have the AI use the mechanisms of Revolution deliberately on offense. Tweaking the existing behavior for spy targeting and mission selection is definitely on my list to investigate. Requests from would be rebels will also make this a bit easier, that's on the roadmap for Revolution 2.0 (target end of Aug release).

2. AI city razing is one thing I have looked at, it chooses to raze or not based on a number of factors including culture and distance to other cities in its empire. I wouldn't want to dramatically increase city razing though, maybe small changes plus better to teaching the AI to make build/garrison decisions based on Revolution factors.

Thanks for the thoughts!
 
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