Ninakoru
A deity on Emperor
Again, while looking to mod some AI behaviours, wanted to know why AI is so fond of tradition/piety and later aesthetics, why liberty, exploration and commerce are rarely seen?
Lets explain how the AI choose the next policy when has enough culture:
There's a wheight value calculated for each policy branch, and another for each individual policy. This wheight is calculated based on the policy flavor, multiplied by the current AI leader flavor of that policy flavor type, plus some values that modify flavors based on AI current grand strategy.
For opening a branch, all the containing policies are wheighted and added, then reduced to 22% of the value. In practice an opening branch usually has a much lower value than the individual policies.
For all the possible options (branchs unlocked and policies inside of an opened branch), the system get the two higher value and randomize witch option will get, with higher chance on the most valued option (all this is quite important).
On the leader flavors, unless random personalities is selected, the have a preset value and a variance from +2 to -2 in each game, in each flavor type.
There are four grand strategies, Culture, Domination, Diplomacy and Spaceship. There are many variables to decide witch grand strategy the AI will follow, but basically:
- Theres a bias based on the leader flavors, but usually not decisive.
- By default, fall into the culture strategy.
- Domination get more relevance if the AI meets other leaders and have them near, and any negative interaction with those other leaders.
- Spaceship is only meaningful once the AI complete apollo program.
At the beginning, most of the leaders will follow culture grand strategy, with occasional diplomacy/conquest and no one will follow spaceship early (I didn't see it on my testing)
Each grand strategy affect leader flavors in policy selection, some key values:
- Domination give +2 offensive, +1 expansion.
- Culture give +2 wonder, growth and culture, -2 expansion and spaceship, +1 religion.
- Diplomacy give +2 gold and +3 diplomacy.
- Sciente give +2 science, +3 spaceship and -5 religion.
About policies, some key knowledge is:
- Each policy has 20 in a flavor, or splited into 2-3 flawors usually in multiples of 5. Rationalism has usually a sum of 22, ideology tenets have much higher values from 33 to 66.
- Liberty is mostly expansion, tradition is mostly a split of culture/growth and the only ancient with wonder flavor. Honor is mostly offensive and military training, and piety is religion flavor.
Knowing all this, and doing some calculations:
AI will have usually Tradition and Piety as first options if he's going culture (most of the time). Going domination there's a preference on Honor or Tradition/Liberty. Going diplomacy, there are not clear preferences.
Once higher tier policies unlocked and finished a branch, Aesthetics is king on culture strat, and Patronage is relevant in the diplomatic path. If goes spaceship, rationalism is prevalent (usually doesn't count much because by the time is a great options is already filling 2 branches, witch is the maximum, and once ideologies are open, will clearly go for the tenets instead).
There are two big loosers here: Commerce and Exploration, witch are rarely seen. Why? because there's a little mess in the policies: Wagon Trains in Commerce and Treasure fleets in Explotion have a Flavor of 1 instead of 20 (gold in both cases), so the possibilities of being selected are quite low, even if the leader has a nice gold/naval flavor value.
TLDR: The fondness of the system on culture, plus the big modifiers that mostly benefit tradition and piety, marginalizes the use of honor and liberty for the AI. The two failed values in Commerce and Exploration leave them as rare policies for the AI.
Finally as the system works, there is no real preference on higher tier policies witch are more powerful, over the ancient ones witch are of much less use once in the mid game, Exceptions are Aestherics and Patronage.
Hope you find it useful/interesting!
Lets explain how the AI choose the next policy when has enough culture:
There's a wheight value calculated for each policy branch, and another for each individual policy. This wheight is calculated based on the policy flavor, multiplied by the current AI leader flavor of that policy flavor type, plus some values that modify flavors based on AI current grand strategy.
For opening a branch, all the containing policies are wheighted and added, then reduced to 22% of the value. In practice an opening branch usually has a much lower value than the individual policies.
For all the possible options (branchs unlocked and policies inside of an opened branch), the system get the two higher value and randomize witch option will get, with higher chance on the most valued option (all this is quite important).
On the leader flavors, unless random personalities is selected, the have a preset value and a variance from +2 to -2 in each game, in each flavor type.
There are four grand strategies, Culture, Domination, Diplomacy and Spaceship. There are many variables to decide witch grand strategy the AI will follow, but basically:
- Theres a bias based on the leader flavors, but usually not decisive.
- By default, fall into the culture strategy.
- Domination get more relevance if the AI meets other leaders and have them near, and any negative interaction with those other leaders.
- Spaceship is only meaningful once the AI complete apollo program.
At the beginning, most of the leaders will follow culture grand strategy, with occasional diplomacy/conquest and no one will follow spaceship early (I didn't see it on my testing)
Each grand strategy affect leader flavors in policy selection, some key values:
- Domination give +2 offensive, +1 expansion.
- Culture give +2 wonder, growth and culture, -2 expansion and spaceship, +1 religion.
- Diplomacy give +2 gold and +3 diplomacy.
- Sciente give +2 science, +3 spaceship and -5 religion.
About policies, some key knowledge is:
- Each policy has 20 in a flavor, or splited into 2-3 flawors usually in multiples of 5. Rationalism has usually a sum of 22, ideology tenets have much higher values from 33 to 66.
- Liberty is mostly expansion, tradition is mostly a split of culture/growth and the only ancient with wonder flavor. Honor is mostly offensive and military training, and piety is religion flavor.
Knowing all this, and doing some calculations:
AI will have usually Tradition and Piety as first options if he's going culture (most of the time). Going domination there's a preference on Honor or Tradition/Liberty. Going diplomacy, there are not clear preferences.
Once higher tier policies unlocked and finished a branch, Aesthetics is king on culture strat, and Patronage is relevant in the diplomatic path. If goes spaceship, rationalism is prevalent (usually doesn't count much because by the time is a great options is already filling 2 branches, witch is the maximum, and once ideologies are open, will clearly go for the tenets instead).
There are two big loosers here: Commerce and Exploration, witch are rarely seen. Why? because there's a little mess in the policies: Wagon Trains in Commerce and Treasure fleets in Explotion have a Flavor of 1 instead of 20 (gold in both cases), so the possibilities of being selected are quite low, even if the leader has a nice gold/naval flavor value.
TLDR: The fondness of the system on culture, plus the big modifiers that mostly benefit tradition and piety, marginalizes the use of honor and liberty for the AI. The two failed values in Commerce and Exploration leave them as rare policies for the AI.
Finally as the system works, there is no real preference on higher tier policies witch are more powerful, over the ancient ones witch are of much less use once in the mid game, Exceptions are Aestherics and Patronage.
Hope you find it useful/interesting!
