AI Happiness... (G&K)

I have just finished playing a game as France on prince, and one thing that REALLY bothered me is how the AI (especially Rome) had overly abundant happiness. Iv'e always noticed this, but this game was ridiculous. I captured 3 of Korea's cities and had 5 of my own (plus one puppet,) and after that war my happiness was hovering around 0 even with tons of luxuries, tons of happiness social policies, and happiness wonders. Rome on the other hand had more base cities than me, and conquered like 5 of Korea's cities, Attila's empire, and one of Spain's cities, yet they had a 100% approval rating? Really? There must be something here that gives the AI an unfair bonus to happiness on prince. Does anyone else have this problem, and is there a way to fix it? Thanks.

AI is set to play with Chieftain bonuses. In other words, the "level" field is Chieftain in terms of bonuses (more or less).

To change that, you need to change a line in GlobalDefines.xml, I think it is AI_HANDICAP or similar, from "CHIEFTAIN" to something else (I tried "PRINCE" once, but it makes the game easier obviously). If you don't plan on going to the higher levels, and plan on only enjoying a game with a more level field, then change that line to PRINCE and play on King/Emperor, so that at least your handicap bonuses for the AI kick in and help the AI a little.

This is normal. The AI receives large bonuses, particularly to happiness, regardless of the level on which you are playing. The AIs aren't too clever, so they have o get those bonuses to make it up.

Personally, I'm not sure why the bonuses are necessary. People say it's because the AI needs the help. Clearly, this isn't the case. When you see the list of happiest civ's, and the civ's doing ICS have 30-50 happiness, that's not evidence of a civ that needed help.

Demonstrably, the AI actually is aware when it's getting low on happiness. Just watch your puppet civ's. Just watch when a colosseum is recommended in the produciton panel.

When it comes to war, the AI isn't so hot. When it comes to diplomacy, it's kind of insane. But infrastructure and expansion? Seems capable enough IMO.

Basically AI plays on Chieftain happiness because the AI doesn't know how to cash rush buildings at all. (First thing a human does if low on happiness is cash rush happiness buildings in low production cities.) There's other things the AI is poor at due to this (national wonders), but happiness is more noticeable.

There are a couple of mods (VEM / GEM) that both teach the AI how to cash rush and also place the AI happiness to normal.

steveg700 said:

Personally, I'm not sure why the bonuses are necessary. People say it's because the AI needs the help. Clearly, this isn't the case. When you see the list of happiest civ's, and the civ's doing ICS have 30-50 happiness, that's not evidence of a civ that needed help.

Demonstrably, the AI actually is aware when it's getting low on happiness. Just watch your puppet civ's. Just watch when a colosseum is recommended in the produciton panel.

When it comes to war, the AI isn't so hot. When it comes to diplomacy, it's kind of insane. But infrastructure and expansion? Seems capable enough IMO.

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The AI probably gets enhancements to infrastructure and expansion because it fails miserably at diplomacy and war. If they didn't get those boosts, the difficulty levels would probably be much easier.

Nah, they'd be slower in popping new cities every other turn, but their unit production bonuses and capacities will still be intact, which means they still can spam as many units as they need to.

And given that they still have some happiness boost ala King or even Emperor, its still perfectly possible for them to fill the map with their bloated cities and start pumping out carpets of units.

It makes me sad to think about the amount of happiness the AI has... In an early patch of Vanilla Civ V I had a runaway Persia in my game who had 200 extra happiness! Guess how many cities he had? One, two, ten, twenty? Guessed wrong. Billions and billions; too many to count.

I wish VEM/GEM didn't break tooltips and add colossally to turn times... Nor prevent loading from within the game, but I understand that's an issue with all mods.

Greizer85 said:

I wish VEM/GEM didn't break tooltips and add colossally to turn times... Nor prevent loading from within the game, but I understand that's an issue with all mods.

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On a quick tangent, I’ve asked over on the VEM/GEM thread why it doesn’t allow you to load from within the game and the response I got was that it was something that happens with all mods. But I’ve played with plenty of mods (InfoAddict for one) that still allowed me to load from within the game, so I’m not buying that answer.

I edited it to prince, I'll see how it helps, thanks

steveg700 said:

Personally, I'm not sure why the bonuses are necessary. People say it's because the AI needs the help. Clearly, this isn't the case. When you see the list of happiest civ's, and the civ's doing ICS have 30-50 happiness, that's not evidence of a civ that needed help.

Click to expand...

The problem is it gets the wrong help, but only because the right help (such as more health for their units) would be even more obvious to the player. The logic is that with more happiness, they'll expand faster, setting the player up for an an encounter with a larger rival later in the game.

For better or worse, there is also nothing in the way of "give the AI this handicap for x, but lessen that handicap if they are doing well with x" (x being gold, happiness, or whatever else), so an AI civ that just happens to have everything right becomes a great big runaway.

I love that little trick of giving the AI Prince handicaps. It can make things a little easy, but it's interesting seeing the AI adapt to their new rules.

There's other things the AI is poor at due to this (national wonders),
Being poor at building National Wonders is a direct effect from their ICS (Insane City Sprawl)

HarvesterofSorr said:

There's other things the AI is poor at due to this (national wonders),
Being poor at building National Wonders is a direct effect from their ICS (Insane City Sprawl)

Click to expand...

Mostly yes, but also if they cash rushed the last building or two they'd have a shot at starting and finishing a national wonder before they build the next city.
In addition, it appears the AI does have in xml a city founding limit; it's just insanely high (or would be at human happiness level).
A mod as mentioned above that "promotes" AI to prince should also include reducing that value.

With the AI's production bonuses, they don't need to rush-buy buildings.

I suppose you could remove the building requirements from the AI's National Wonders, and reduce the ridiculous happiness bonus that they get. It wouldn't be that noticable because the NWs would be destroyed upon capture.

Really though the main issue is the combat AI: no matter how great their other advantages, with a similar tech level a human is going to win out against 7-to-1 numbers if he sticks close to choke points and cities. One downside to removing stacks is that you can no longer easily bring 10 units close to a city... It's both hilarious and depressing to watch the AI's archers mill around after you've slaughtered all their melee units.

This is actually the single biggest issue i have with the boosts the AI gets on higher difficulties.

I am fine with them getting all the other boosts as they need them to compete with a human.

But the fact they can settle/capture and grow huge tall unlimited numbers of cities due to their never-ending happiness is very annoying.

I've been playing a game, as the Inca, that started out badly and has gotten more and more ridiculous, leaving me with two runaway AI civs city-spamming the entire continent. It seems that certain civs seem really "spammy" with cities since i last played (new patch or something?) which is OK--but when they're running 50+ happiness, it really kind of forces you into war and takes all other options off the table.

Yeah it's amazing when I show my friend screenshots sometimes on Deity and they can't believe insane effing number of cities the AI drops and frankly neither can I sometimes(and the fact that City-States have giant armies which they apparently don't in lower levels?).

They not only play on Chieftan but they get more bonuses on top of that with difficultiy levels; IIRC on Deity each city only costs them net 1 happiness so they can(and will) just drop one they want 3 tiles from the last city. It's kind of sad how in war there's no surprise value there; you can extrapolate where their cities just by counting to 3 lol. I can only imagine what the game would look like with this AI back when you only need 2 hexes between cities........

That's why it blows my mind how I almost never see Persia be a runaway despite the fact that he should, theoretically, just curbstomp anyone in the early game with multiple long Golden Ages and a strong early UU and build an insurmountable lead. I just don't get why civs like France and Russia who have no real military advantage early game(before ~t100) tend to be big runaways and yet Persia lags behind consistently. Like I remember once in the early game I saw Gehngis and Cathy were right next to each other. Gehngis went Honor, Cathy went Liberty. Cathy absolutely curbstomps Gehngis. I don't even understand how that works.

Yeah I understand the AI needs bonuses, but the amount of a boost they get to happiness is just completely unecessary. It needs to be toned down, if the AI can hover around 80 happiness with the way they play there is a problem. They should have a happiness bonus, but it shouldn't be completely ignorable for the AI, like it is now