AI Difficulty Bonuses (details)

Hi all,

I am a first time poster on these forums and new civ player as of about a month ago. In moving up the difficulty levels, I would like to know exactly what bonuses the AI has. These are usually pretty transparant in modern games, but Civ 5 seems to be opaque.

I see the chart here: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/difficulties
I also know that the AI always plays on Chieftan difficulty, so they get the bonuses on the first chart.

But, it is still very unclear to me exactly what all of those modifiers mean AND more importantly, which one of those modifiers are unused by Civ 5 (because apparently, the devs said that some are not used, even though they sound like they would modify the game).

1. Has anyone poked around in the game files and figured out which of these modifiers are actually used in in-game equations? (e.g. tech trade known modifier was clearly a relic from back in civ iv w/ tech trading; now that there is no tech trading, I assume this number is completely unused).
2. Many items in the top box seem to affect the AI in relation to the human player, not the AI civilization itself who plays on this difficulty. So, what does "the AI plays on Chieftan difficulty" actually mean? For example, "tech num options considered" is the modifier used to limit the non-optimal choices the AI has. I read this as "if the player plays on chieftan, the AI will consider its 4 most optimal research options and make a random choice amongst them; if the player plays on prince or above, the computer will make a random choice between only its top two most optimal choices". But, what does it mean to say the AI plays on Chieftan? Will they always have 4 options (note: more options are bad, since by definition the 2 additional options are suboptimal to the first two) even if I play diety?
3. Also, if AI really always plays on Chieftan, you should NEVER see any barbarians in their territories in the first 60 turns. I seem to recall seeing barbarians attack AI civs very early, but I could be wrong.
4. What is the difference between World Train Rate and Train Rate?
5. What is "attitude change"?
6. What is the "per era modifier"? I can't even hazzard a guess as to this one.
   

Anyway, from my questions, you can tell I don't fully believe that the AI always plays on Chieftan and gets all those listed bonuses (some of which would even be difficult to apply conceptually to the AI). Besides that one line of handicap code (which we're not sure how it even applies to the game), which bonuses in the first chart have we actually confirmed that the AI gets from being on Chieftan? I may be wrong, but I think only the happiness bonus has been confirmed?

Thanks in advance.

AI plays with chieftain happiness, that's why they don't have happiness issues
I think they also play chieftain "against barbarians combat bonus", but I'm not sure
But mostly, when you play settler and chieftain the AI gets penalties, warlord is the most "normal" between AI and player, and above the AI gets bonuses for everything, like scouts and settlers at the beginning and workers, and they build faster and improve faster and get beakers per turn and I would say faith too.

The attitude change means that they are more aggressive the more you level up

Thanks, so the attitude change goes from 2 on settlor, to 1 on chieftan, to 0 on warlord, and -1 for the higher difficulties. Does this mean the AI would not be any more aggressive than on Prince? (given similar relative army sizes, borders, etc at a given point in the game).

Also, does this mean that most items on the top box do not apply to AI? (so far, it seems like only barbarian bonus and happiness applies).

Wondering if any modders here have looked into how these constants are actually used by the game.

adwcta said:

Thanks, so the attitude change goes from 2 on settlor, to 1 on chieftan, to 0 on warlord, and -1 for the higher difficulties. Does this mean the AI would not be any more aggressive than on Prince? (given similar relative army sizes, borders, etc at a given point in the game).

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I don't know what 'aggressive' means, in terms of the attitude setting in the game and the later levels- but I do know that they have gotten a boost to how fast they tend to expand beyond Prince difficulty, and the AI settlers have been given new orders on the frequency and priority for their construction, how far away they will settle, and what kind of land they will settle on. They build a lot more settlers, a lot earlier and faster, they will often travel a long ways before building a city, and they often don't give a rip if the land they settle on sucks or not. All of which is now more likely to get them in your face faster and hence to pit them at war with the human player faster- definitely making them seem more aggressive. This extra aggressiveness in King and beyond may not be due to the AI's attitude stat, but just to new internalized code for AI settler construction and behavior.

Also learning and have a (sort of) related query. In my current game we are still at about 100BC and yet one of the AI players has just reached the Medieval Age. I'm wondering if this is some sort of handicap thing? I am at a low difficulty level, been pumping developments at science, yet still not close to going Medieval on my opponents as of yet.

An AI beelining can do it pretty quickly.

There are two 6-tech paths to Midieval in G&K:

• AH & Archery => Wheel => Mathematics => Currency => Guilds
  
  
• Pottery => Calendar & Writing => Philosophy & Drama & Poetry => Theology

In vanilla, it's only 4 techs: Pottery => Sailing => Optics => Compass

If you are diverting to pick up other luxury techs (e.g., mining, masonry, trapping), you're going to get there later than a beelining AI.

And, on handicapping, the first level where the AI gets a tech head-start is King (Animal Husbandry, so the AH ==> Guilds path is only 5 techs at King & above).

Browd said:

An AI beelining can do it pretty quickly.

There are two 6-tech paths to Midieval in G&K:

• AH & Archery => Wheel => Mathematics => Currency => Guilds
  
  
• Pottery => Calendar & Writing => Philosophy & Drama & Poetry => Theology

In vanilla, it's only 4 techs: Pottery => Sailing => Optics => Compass

If you are diverting to pick up other luxury techs (e.g., mining, masonry, trapping), you're going to get there later than a beelining AI.

And, on handicapping, the first level where the AI gets a tech head-start is King (Animal Husbandry, so the AH ==> Guilds path is only 5 techs at King & above).

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Thanks - I thought you had to have all the techs in the previous era to get the message - learn something new every day

Oh, no. Once you research your first tech in an era you are "in" that era, even if you have unresearched techs from two or more eras ago (on pangea maps, I may not research Sailing until I'm in the Atomic Era).

Browd said:

Oh, no. Once you research your first tech in an era you are "in" that era, even if you have unresearched techs from two or more eras ago (on pangea maps, I may not research Sailing until I'm in the Atomic Era).

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Thanks - makes a lot more sense than what I initially thought.

Now I can leave off researching stuff I don't need for my evil plans - that's a whole new perspective for me *phew*

DavisonACT said:

Thanks - makes a lot more sense than what I initially thought.

Now I can leave off researching stuff I don't need for my evil plans - that's a whole new perspective for me *phew*

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Only up to a point. Before too long you'll come to techs that you have to learn that require all of those forgotten, ignored earlier techs to be fully researched. If you get farther into the game, anyway. If you are just doing a rush domination game and don't expect to get to the industrial era, then I guess you could forget some.

By the time you are backtracking to pick up the earlier era techs, they will be much less expensive (techs get less expensive as more AIs that you have met have researched that tech) and can often be completed in 1 or 2 turns. That is particularly nice when some CSs have announced a technology quest, since you can rack up 5-6+ techs pretty quickly.