Barbarians and AI Expansion

I've always felt that the barbarians hurt the AI much more than the human player, which is why I avoid settings like Raging Barbarians. Even though it would be quite fun initially, I'd be left with poorer AI opponents later on, after the rampaging.

But, I've been autoplaying a bunch of games to observe some things, and I'm shocked by how often the AI loses settlers to the barbarians. This almost never happens with the human player, but with the AI, I can almost say it's common.

In a standard game, you'll easily see 3-4 captured settlers between turns 40-50. You can even find a few earlier sometimes for the civs that fast expand. What's worse is that the AI doesn't even go after those camps to get their unit back.

Players often complain about how slow and stagnant the AI is, among other things. This is definitely one of the issues contributing to that. Behind the fog of war, those AI's actually are building settlers and trying to expand, they're just getting owned by the barbarians.

I got a kick out of this one when I saw it and took a quick screenshot:



Third time's a charm? Nope. At least Poland managed to take back one of them and settled their 2nd city. It only took maybe 20 to 25 turns to do so.



Granted, the issue is exacerbated here because of the land formation that Poland was placed on. It only allows for two land paths to move in and expand, creating a barbarian gauntlet to run through.

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Besides making the AI smarter with these sort of things, and I know some players would hate the thought of this, but what if some additional rules were thrown in to help the AI in this situation? Such as, barbarians won't attack an AI settler. Most of it will be going on in the background anyway, and it would help ALL the AI's to get up and running faster during the early game.

Just think about how devastating it would be to lose your first settler that early. Most would just reload the game or start a new one, if a mistake like that was made early on. I believe few players would continue the game, say, "That's XCO... err... Civ, baby!", and keep playing while trying to rescue it before it becomes another worker for the AI.

If changes were to be made, a good starting point would be to ensure that AI settlers are escorted. From what I have seen, the barbs snare most AI settlers without a fight.

And, early in the game, I have declared war on an AI, then camped on his border, only to snare settler after settler which he sends out undefended. This is wonderful for making sure that Alexander suffers a handicap from which he may never recover, but it is a bit disappointing.

Yeah, the best solution would be code the AI to better escort its valuable settlers (even if they're cheaper for the AI to produce).

But, I guess that hasn't been achieved yet. So, a simple and straightforward approach (I assume, anyway) would be to code the barbarians so that they can't attack AI settlers.

Though, this still doesn't prevent an aggressive player from taking advantage and capturing those settlers, as you pointed out. And to prevent that would be going a bit too far, as it would clearly and directly affect the player's game experience and lead to frustration.

Perhaps the AI needs to learn to fog-bust more and park units in locations to prevent additional camps from spawning, and to also gain vision to make sure the area is clear of any real threats before taking the chance to send a lone settler out.

Though, it should simply always escort and not try to pull off any fancy maneuvers. Another important action would be to know when to stop or back away if a real threat of barbarians is revealed, and send reinforcements ahead of the escorted settler first.

I don't think AI settlers should be immune to barbarians. They should play by the same rules.

Players often complain about how slow and stagnant the AI is, among other things.

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I'm not sure who ever complains about this. Unless you are playing on a low difficulty, the AI will always out-expand and out-tech you and the barbarians won't make much of a dent in their progress.

Rohili said:

I don't think AI settlers should be immune to barbarians. They should play by the same rules.

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Well, that already isn't the case.

Rohili said:

I'm not sure who ever complains about this. Unless you are playing on a low difficulty, the AI will always out-expand and out-tech you and the barbarians won't make much of a dent in their progress.

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We're out there.

Though, I was unclear above, and when saying slow/stagnant I was referring mainly to the topic: expansion during the earlier phase. And to be clearer, it isn't all the time and something that happens to every civ each game; no.

I typically play on either Emperor or Immortal. All standard settings. No mods (ironically). If I'm in the mood for a very militaristic game, I definitely go Immortal. Yeah, it isn't Deity, so I guess it's still low.

The autoplay above was on Emperor.

Also, another things folks tend to complain about lately is aggression. If the AI wasn't so wasteful at times with its settlers, perhaps it would be in a better position sooner and more often, which may lead to more aggression earlier than usual.

those "free" settlers are fair game. I once have a scout sniped a few unprotected barb captured settlers. After the barb had secured a captured worker at the camp, the barb will send unescorted workers/settlers in the open. The ironic thing is that the ai will not prioritize them, but instead go after some roaming barbs.

The funny/sad thing is that the barbarians are escorting the captured settlers, so the programming can exist to get computers to escort settlers.

Barathor said:

Yeah, the best solution would be code the AI to better escort its valuable settlers (even if they're cheaper for the AI to produce).

But, I guess that hasn't been achieved yet.

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I wonder if the inability to escort caravans is a related problem? If so, perhaps when they fix that issue (and it does need fixing) they will also be able to address the AI settler/escort problem.

With all due respect to the many players here significantly more proficient than myself, anything that gives me a fighting chance of having somewhere left to found a third (or sometimes even second) city is all to the good. Some civs (I'm looking at you Hiawatha) seem to get 6 or 7 cities founded before I found my second as it is. Perhaps any such mod as proposed should come with a checkbox option, as raging barbs does.
I'm not very good at Civ, that's all I'm saying!

I think they changed that. Before settler should be scorted always, but that could lead to a settler waiting forever to get the scort to found the city. Now sometimes the settler go out alone, I don't know what are the conditions, but happens, sometimes they lose the settler on the process.

If you think about it, you can do the exact same thing. I sometimes you don't want to wait to an escort and you send the settler alone, and if you have bad luck enough you can lose your settler. It's true that AI doesn't have any perception of danger, but I don't see adding more cheats to the AI is the solution.

Ninakoru, I had that thought in my mind as well. I think I remember seeing patch notes or something related to expansion and not having to wait for escorts. I'll have to dig it up. I think also, at that time, the tweak worked alright and the AI dug the spurs into the civs a little harder, but maybe something was changed in BNW.

Indeed, I do the same thing often. Though, I usually have lookouts around and only do so if the chance for any threat is very low. Though, I never just send them out into the wild alone. If I lost them, I'd hate to have start a new game (since I'm silly and don't like to reload).

EDIT: Here it is: v 1.0.2.13 11/1/12

Changes to AI settling:
Expand the ring search.
Flatten the value of rings a bit so that tiles in the further rings are worth a bit more.
Make the default preferred spacing further for players not going for extreme expansion.
Lower the value of tiles a bit so that the AI is a bit pickier about settlements.
AI will try to reclaim lost settlers and builders.
AI will no longer wait forever for a settler escort.
Minor tweak to settlement location.
More aggressive offshore expansion.