Persia's +1 to Movement during Golden Ages?

How does the AI perform during Persia's Golden Ages with an additional point of movement?

The combat AI has serious difficulty with maneuvering. I'm not a fan of the AI bonuses of Immortal and Deity, as I feel they sort of force the player to play a very limited game in order to compete. I can do it on Immortal (haven't tried deity), but I don't enjoy it as much; so I play on emperor with the Buffed AI mod ( http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=504220). This mod makes emperor about as difficult as immortal, but in a more interesting way.

I'm thinking about experimenting with giving the all the AIs the Persian Golden Age bonus to movement by default. I'm hoping this bonus of +1 to movement could be a way to "level the playing field" between the player and the AI; but I haven't played against Persia much. Do you notice a significant improvement when fighting the Persians during one of their golden ages?

I'm also not sure what would be the easiest way to implement this. I thought maybe editing the CIV5traits.xml file by copying that part of the Persians bonus to all civs; then deleting it from whichever civ I choose to play as that game. but so far this hasn't worked. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

It's been a long time since the RNG resulted in Persia being in one of my games at all.

In Vanilla, Persia was one of the better AIs; but that often has more to do with the flavor combos than the UA.

Edit: And two hours after I posted about how I haven't seen AI Persia in a long time it turns out he was already in my current game, I just hadn't discovered him yet when I posted.
I'm not seeing any of the pyscho AIs so its looking like it won't be until ideological wars break out that I'll be able to compare Persia with whoever they end up at war with.

No, the AI would still suck at maneuverability though it might be marginally better. The reason being, it bottlenecks itself because it can't think ahead. The AI doesn't think: "Oh, I'll move that one there, and that one there, it just moves them in order as far as it can, if you, as the human, do this you'll have the same problem where you waste turns getting cannons in (or can't at all...etc). It also has no concept of moving a unit to replace with another to reposition. this is why you get random units stuck and weird embarkment behavior and this wouldn't change at all.

I can think of some simple tactical fixes for this, but it must be more complicated then I'm thinking to code, bc the developers aren't dumb. What I would've done is

#1: Allow AI to actually reposition
#2: stop moving in melee/horse when you have the first layer of a city surrounded to leave room for range.
#3: allow AI to make decisions hex by hex, meaning an archer can move a square, then reevaluate, etc, for each hex. Essentially, this would fix the being able to not fire after moving problem which comes from the fact that the AI only makes one decision and then moves the unit and it doesn't consider bombarding unless it is already in range. This would allow it to change its mind as territory is revealed too.
#4: Do not embark at all within range of a city unless the unit has a water buff like marines/war canoe.

Uh, actually I feel like the AI does a pretty good job with Persia.

Playing against an AI Persia is always a major pain when they are in a Golden Age, because units (like Immortals) can pop up seemingly out of nowhere. I have lost many a unit to a surprise 3-movement attack.

However, I feel like AI Persia is often a little too formulaic. In many games, they will often declare war the instant a Golden Age starts, and are a little too eager to sue for peace as soon as the Golden Age ends. So the fact that their war strategy is tied so closely to whether or not they are in a Golden Age, makes them very predictable.

Halcyan2 said:

Uh, actually I feel like the AI does a pretty good job with Persia.

Playing against an AI Persia is always a major pain when they are in a Golden Age, because units (like Immortals) can pop up seemingly out of nowhere. I have lost many a unit to a surprise 3-movement attack.

However, I feel like AI Persia is often a little too formulaic. In many games, they will often declare war the instant a Golden Age starts, and are a little too eager to sue for peace as soon as the Golden Age ends. So the fact that their war strategy is tied so closely to whether or not they are in a Golden Age, makes them very predictable.

Click to expand...

This sounds encouraging. I'm going to try my next game with all AIs having the +1 movement bonus. Now I need to figure out the easiest way to implement this.

For anyone who's interested, I just uploaded a tiny mod to steam workshop that gives all AI units +1 movement. It's simply called, "+1 movement for all AI units."

I'm about to test it for the first time.

Hope it's good!

Arcaian said:

Hope it's good!

Click to expand...

Thanks.

I'm having some trouble getting it to work. Land AI units are still showing only two movement points; not three.

Additional info about the base game and Persia:

In my current game, Persia is dead last in several categories including science (World Congress just advanced to Industrial era)
No wars have broken out yet; but I think the barb settler I saw in a barb camp near Persia may have originally belonged to Persia.

So if your mod is giving half the Persia UA to every AI, I hope you've given Persia an additional bonus in your mod.

joncnunn said:

Additional info about the base game and Persia:

In my current game, Persia is dead last in several categories including science (World Congress just advanced to Industrial era)
No wars have broken out yet; but I think the barb settler I saw in a barb camp near Persia may have originally belonged to Persia.

So if your mod is giving half the Persia UA to every AI, I hope you've given Persia an additional bonus in your mod.

Click to expand...

I guess that the Persian +1 to movement during golden ages is only really useful for wars. Your current game suggests that the +1 to movement during golden ages is not often very useful for non-military units. They may happen not to have any settlers during their golden age (even if they did, settlers with a movement of 3 could make very little, if any, difference; and workers with an extra point of movement during occasional stretches of the game (golden ages) probably makes very little difference. To get the most out of their ability, Persia should probably only war during their golden ages. To not do so would be sort of like attacking a civ with The Great Wall just before it becomes obsolete with dynamite, as waiting would result in an extra point of movement during the war; just like Persia waiting to war during their golden ages.

I'm hoping though that an additional point of movement for military units during war makes a substantial difference (the combat AI really needs it against a human opponent). but in your current game, if Persia is already dead last in almost everything, even when/if they finally become involved in a war, it may be too late for the movement bonus to make a noticeable difference.

edit: I'm not sure, but Persia might receive +1 for their golden ages on top of the +1 to movement that all AI units receive with this mod. So their standard land units would possibly have 4 movement points during their golden ages... maybe over-powered.