AI Bonuses at Different Difficulty Levels

As I've found out, at Prince level AI doesn't have any bonuses. Does anybody know, which bonuses do AI players have at higher difficulty levels?

I would also like to know how they compare to Civ4 BTS AI bonuses.

Check out:

CIV5HandicapInfos.XML

It has all the info you want to know...

Thanks, BomberEscort.

lloxdg do the community a favour and post them here after you check them

As you can see from the xml, the AI gets bonuses at all levels, including Settler.

They're mostly focused on units - eg. half upgrade costs, a tiny fraction supply costs.

From CIV5HandicapInfos.XML

Disreg said:

As you can see from the xml, the AI gets bonuses at all levels, including Settler.

Click to expand...

But on levels below Prince this bonuses are negative. The only thing, which is not clear for me, is "InflationPercent". Does anybody know, what it means in the game? On Prince level this parameter is 90 for human player and 80 for AI. Other parameters are equal. Maybe UnitSupplyPercent is different. But it isn't specified for human player.

It would be great to know the details of what can be affected by the difficulty. I'm guessing that the handicap file is just part of it, and that there might be other differences too, for instance hard coded into the game.

Does this list exist in a more human readable fashion or with detailed explanation anywhere?.. It is hard to read as it is now..

DeclareWar - What does this mean ? On prince and about it's 100% chance AIs will go to war?
WorkRate - I'm taking a wild guess that this is increased worker speed, such that an AI on king will have workers work 20% faster than normal, and an AI on deity will work 100% faster than normal.
Unhappiness% - What is this? Does this mean a deity AI only gets 60% of normal unhappiness from all unhappiness sources? That'll be my best guess anyways.
Growth% - So I guess this means extra food needed to grow. Though it looks strange as it is highest on lower difficulties. 60% less than normal on easiest and 40% more than normal on deity?

I could go on, but wont. Only starting units and techs seems to be really self explaining.

And what happens if you start a multi player game and you have a player on prince, one on king and one on emperor, and the rest AIs. How will settings that boost AI rather than hamper player be set up when players have set up different difficulties?

Seems like the community has a lot to figure out here yet

From my understanding:

DeclareWar: Not sure exactly how this works, but 0 should mean never declares war.
WorkRate: 100% bonus = double rate (like pyramids)
Unhappiness%: 60% of usual unhappiness. (Net happyness = happy - unhappy).
Growth%: 60% of required food to grow a level. This is equivalent to a 67% growth bonus.
Train%: 50% of required hammers to produce units. This is equivalent to a 100% base production bonus (multiplicative with factories.)
Worldtrain%: ???
Construct%: 50% of required hammers to produce buildings.
WorldConstruct%: ???
Create%: ???
WorldCreate%: ???
BuildingCost%: 50% of required upkeep for buildings.
UnitCost%: 50% of required upkeep for unit maintenance.
UnitSupp%: 50% bonus supply, before extra maintenance.
UnitUpgrade%: 50% of required cost to upgrade units.
Inflation%: ???
AdvStart%: ???
PerEraModifier: ???


Also, the start settler, start def, etc. seems wrong, since deity ai should be starting with 2 settlers, while it is listed the same as prince.

BomberEscort said:

From CIV5HandicapInfos.XML

Code:

                S	C	W	P	K	E	I       D
	     	---	---	---	---	---	---	---     ---
UnitCost%	100	100	100	100	85	80	65	50
UnitSupp%	0	0	10	20	30	30	40	50
UnitUpgrade%	50	50	50	50	50	50	50	50
Inflation%	100	90	80	80	80	80	80	80

Click to expand...

I've heard that on Prince difficulty, the AI gets no bonuses or penalties.

Does that mean that the human plays at Prince level? (i.e. Human inflation is 80%, and human UnitUpgrade is 50%)

Sorry to revive dead thread, but I thought this was the most appropriate place to ask this so people know this for future reference.

Edit: to guess an answer the inflation question, it's probably how the AI factors GPT trades. If inflation is 100 (settler), it will happily give you 300 gold for 10 GPT all things the same. If it's 80, it would give you 240 for 10GPT, all things the same.

Sorry for necroing (again) but is there a column I'm missing for AI bonus Happiness? (Not the unhappiness modifier which is 100 on Prince). I swear I have seen AIs with approval ratings much higher than mine from turn 1 on Prince and trying to figure out why.

Wow. I thought it was common knowledge by now that the AI is set to ALWAYS play on chieftain level. Therefore it ALWAYS gets bonuses vs. the Player. Checkout HandicapAI in XML if in doubt.

Cheating you say? Sure, but damn necessary I say

jmik99 said:

Wow. I thought it was common knowledge by now that the AI is set to ALWAYS play on chieftain level.

Click to expand...

I had a suspicion but no, didn't know that, and that's very good information to know in a game.

Smote said:

DeclareWar: Not sure exactly how this works, but 0 should mean never declares war.

Click to expand...

This is definitely wrong I was very surprised when Augustus declared war on me in a settler game. To be fair, I didn't have any units at that time (besides the starting warrior, and a unit I got from a CS).

jmik99 said:

Wow. I thought it was common knowledge by now that the AI is set to ALWAYS play on chieftain level. Therefore it ALWAYS gets bonuses vs. the Player. Checkout HandicapAI in XML if in doubt.

Cheating you say? Sure, but damn necessary I say

Click to expand...

Umm, what?

No. You are getting confused by what level humans play as vs AI.

gladoscc said:

Umm, what?

No. You are getting confused by what level humans play as vs AI.

Click to expand...

No. I'm not getting confused, but I understand that a lot of new players are. Facts are that, contrary to documentation, Prince level is NOT the "even" level against AI. Chieftain level is. If YOU want a bonus vs AI you have to play on Settler(!).

They should really sticky this information, cause the "Prince level AI has no bonus" misunderstanding is coming up all the time. Which is kind of understandable.

Yes, AI plays on Chieftain level.

Find the GlobalAIDefines.xml, find the node written below, and change its value to HANDICAP_PRINCE.


Give it a try, I'm wondering whether the game becomes more balanced and remains challenging at the same time.

If I understand correctly, some of you are implying that after chosing a difficulty, you get the values of that table, and that the AI uses the values of chieftain.

That doesn't seem to make much sense, since settler has penalties and deity has bonuses. It looks more that after chosing difficulty, the AI plays with the mods of that table. I don't know what you mean with AI playing always as chieftain. Chieftain says 100% building cost, and deity 50%. So if you chose deity, the AI is the one getting deity valeus of that table.

kaltorak said:

If I understand correctly, some of you are implying that after chosing a difficulty, you get the values of that table, and that the AI uses the values of chieftain.

That doesn't seem to make much sense, since settler has penalties and deity has bonuses. It looks more that after chosing difficulty, the AI plays with the mods of that table. I don't know what you mean with AI playing always as chieftain. Chieftain says 100% building cost, and deity 50%. So if you chose deity, the AI is the one getting deity valeus of that table.

Click to expand...

You may be wrong. I guess, the PostDefines section overwrites difficulty settings for AI. I checked Happiness and Gold progress with InfoAddict - when I change the value mentioned above to HANDICAP_PRINCE, AI seems to play with same rules to the human player.

There may be another explanation: the difficulty level modifiers are applied to AI default handicap level, so when you see AI gets 50% for something, this means it gets 50% of the default value of Chieftain (or Prince if I modify the default level).