AI Changes/To-Do list

[Seven05]

Ok, here's a list of reported, known and fixed AI (computer controlled opponent) issues and the to-do list of AI changes for the next version. I'll keep this first post updated so please review it before posting.

1.94 AI Issues:

• (Fixed for 1.95) Improve spawn rate of Barbarians on non-standard world sizes
• (Fixed for 1.95) Tweak/Clean-up Unit AIs
• (Fixed for 1.95) Remove combat strength from non-combat units (sappers, merchants)
• (Fixed for 1.95) AI makes poor unit production choices, excessive siege units
• AI makes poor choices for unit actions, chariots defending/attacking cities
• Babylonia too demanding (see post #2 for test update)
• Phoenicia too spiteful if help isn't offered (see post #2 for test update)

AI To-Do list (1.95 or later):

• Tweak aggression as needed
• Adjust AI personalities for "memory" effects & delays
• Enhance diplomacy options including making unreasonable demands
• *Possibly* Define better regional animosty/friendship
• Improve AI use of merchant vessles/trade barges
• Improve AI understanding of unit bonuses & penalties
• Improve AI unit build priorities (smart variety, not so random)
• Improve AI response to siege (attack the attackers, reinforce)
• Improve AI handling of increased maintenance
• Improve AI ability to form war alliances
• Improve Barbarian AI (attack/pillage choice and target choice)

Feel free to post any issues, observations or requests for the AI here. I can't promise that we'll be able to fix everything but we can try.

[Seven05]

Since I have the #2 post I'll use it for test versions. The CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.xml files goes in your Civ4 Installation\Mods\The Ancient Mediterranean\Assets\XML\Civilizations folder. If you're comfortable with copyign and pasting files it should be pretty easy

The following test version requires TAM 1.94 (or 1.941), the changes from 1.94 are:

• Reduced chance & frequency of Babylonian tribute demands
• Reduced penalty for refusing to help some civs
• Tech trading slightly easier
• Increased some positive bonuses for trading

Updated July 24th

[AndreasS]

Please change the Great person graphics for 1.94. Its really ruining the ancient feel of the MOD to see those modern engineers walking arround....

I'm telling you again, because Thamis meant it was an easy change, but you just forget to do it all the time......

Another small estetical fix I recommend, is the Sid's tips for the tech. Polytheism. It still says this tech founds Hinduism.......

[Seven05]

While I agree, I'm working with the AI primarily. So if you have any issues or suggestions/request related to AI behavior then I can help

[sapon]

Originally Posted by Seven05

While I agree, I'm working with the AI primarily. So if you have any issues or suggestions/request related to AI behavior then I can help

Seven05, first off you've done an outstanding job improving TAM and thank you. Is there a way to improve the AI's cooperation in launching wars? I would love to see the Carthaginians and Viriato launch an attack on Rome simultaniously etc.

[Seven05]

Well thanks, but you won't see any of my efforts until 1.94 is released, hopefully the "new" AI won't make me any enemies here

I can add that to the list. There is some cooperation built-in already, most commonly seen in the form of "dog pile" war plans by the AI. The AI also does have code in place to actively request other AI civs to join them through normal diplomacy AI. With my recent changes to aggression levels, AI relationships and diplomacy you should see some wars with multiple AI civs involved, sometimes on both sides which can be a lot of fun to watch. Unfortunately the stock code has a lot of random variables that make war allies fairly rare.

Anyway, yeah, I'll add it to the list and we'll see how violent things get when 1.94 is out and I have some more feedback. The fun bit for me is the change to the way the Aggressive AI game option works, now it applies a negative modifier to everybody (among other things), not just human players, so you get some intense wars with that enabled.

[baptiste]

Here is a list of some remarks/suggestions not included in Seven05 report :
- cultural victory made hard with Ius Civic available very late. Civil Laws could be sooner (after Republic ?) without imbalancing the game.
- roman legionary commando capacity is too powerful once road building is discovered. Well used by human player, they are imo much too powerful.
- free religion with holy empire sounds strange and gives few interest to theocracy. Either you could make civs hostile to this vote or put this option out of the votes.
- few buildings allow artist, unless you are under patronage, it is very difficult to have artists. Some wonders and garden could allow to make artist specialists.
- few spiritual civs. teuta/viriato/boudicca are quite weak with their capacities, they could could become also spiritual without imbalancing the game
- trade barges and merchant vessels are too powerful imo, they should give less gold. AI do not uses them properly.
- too few late wonders. colossus could come with seafaring. riches of kroisos could come with commerce.
- plutocracy is by far under aristocracy. plutocracy could become medium upkeep and aristocracy could become medium or high upkeep.

These comments are done after 19 games in 1.9x under prince/monarch difficulty, all with marathon speed (3 domination/conquest victories with rome/carthage, 11 cultural with many different leaders, other are time victories). I don't make any historical comment, but mainly game balance suggestions. I didn't tested emperor but i guess it becomes very hard to have any kind of victory unless you play Rome for domination/conquest victory.

I think it would be very useful to have Large maps, the huge ones creating barbs problems and the other ones being quite small.

[Seven05]

Kind of the wrong thread, I'm only working on the AI... well, primarily working on the AI. So I added the part about the AI use of trade barges & merchant vessels but the rest is beyond the scope of this thread. Try adding non-AI reports & suggestions to the new 1.94 thread or making a new thread for specific topics so they don't get burried.

[schlappi]

I have had funny experience with AI unit movement in my last game. I was playing Makedonian, the Civ i was at war with were the Lydians. He declared war on me, but due to my superior fleet Kroisos was unable to have his units cross the sea. What happened now? The AI decided to move his (quite big) army across eastwards and north around the black sea, and since this area is unhabited and quite woody it took quite a while...
In the meantime i gathered a strike force to capture and raze some of his cities, until finally his lands lay in ruin, but he was not willing to make peace (due to his assaultforce still moving)... even though our population's war-wearyness was rising and rising

In general, AI attacks are laughable, even if the opposing forces exceed mine by far, the many small and a few huge stacks, leaving enough time for my units to recover after an assault are poorly coordinated. It's like i choose a target and move via right-click to the other edge of the map.

Maybe it is possible to force the AI to use waypoints, where the units gather again after drifting apart due to different unit speed and/or starting points, barbarians, cultural borders expanding etc etc... and reconsider the best possible and reasonable way...

Same goes for mountain passes, i just need to place a single strong unit into a pass and can be sure the AI will take the long way around.

Not sure if such a thing can be modified, it would certainly rock though

[darkedone02]

can you please add this in your list of to-dos? make some custom music for every dipomancy screen and also custom music to listen to for all ages. I will be gladly happy if you do. BTW, your mod is awesome and i like it.

[thamis]

Originally Posted by darkedone02

can you please add this in your list of to-dos? make some custom music for every dipomancy screen and also custom music to listen to for all ages. I will be gladly happy if you do. BTW, your mod is awesome and i like it.

I've always wanted to look into it. I've got lots of great music, but it's copyrighted material. I'll look into Creative Commons to see whether there's any open license music there.

[Seven05]

Quick test update added to post #2.

[baptiste]

About terrirorial development.

On huge maps (*) the AI is extending territory very fast, really killing economy. This way, they fall far behind in tech. They are frequently building one (or more) very far city, making things even worse. Unless you play in Emperor+ games, it is very easy to have a terrific tech advance and crush them later.

If something could be done to help AI as to develop more smartly, it would be nice.


(*) especially fertile crescent and huge med map, not the greece one because of barbs

[thamis]

I've been playing a test game with Agamemnon right now, on Prince level. I always made sure I had good relations with Rome, and they were pleased with me for most of the time. Nonetheless they refused to trade techs (ever) and were very reluctant to open borders with me.

In general it's good that there aren't many open borders, but on the other hand they are required for trade barges... Your friends should be willing to open them.

On the other hand I also noticed that the AI will give you open borders when you are fighting a war against a mutual enemy. Good.

On tech trading: It's good that it's been reduced, but I think it may have been reduced a bit too much.

On trade relations: I noticed that whenever you trade with anybody, ALL other AI says "you've been trading with our worst enemy." This is weird, as they are normally simply "cautious" towards the supposed "worst enemy" that I traded with. I think they shouldn't demand break of relations unless they are "annoyed" with that civ.

Religion still has a pretty strong function, I saw a -4 for religion once. Too much IMHO. -3 maximum.

[baptiste]

Originally Posted by thamis

On the other hand I also noticed that the AI will give you open borders when you are fighting a war against a mutual enemy. Good.

You can have +5/+10 relations without acceptance to open border.

I just had a funny example, Agammemnon just offered open borders since we are fighting the same ennemy, even with terrific relations between us (+2 struggle +4 trade -2 religion -3 declared war -1 war ally against him -15 razed cities = -15 total). I made peace with him 10 turns ago, captured 3 cities including capitol, razed many others and he offers open borders

It seems that a common foe is the main (only ?) motivation for open borders.

[Seven05]

Open borders and techs are tied to your relation, the word part not the numerical value (not specifically). Previously everybody would offer/accept open borders while cautious, now most will only offer/accept when pleased. They also enjoy cancelling open borders at the most inopportune time, such as when you have two merchant vessels one tile from the nice big coastal city.

After reading the code in the SDK I see that the AI places a value on open borders, much like they do with techs, bonuses and cities. What happens now is that they will frequently decide that what they gain from open borders is not enough and either cancel them or refuse to offer them. They also are less likely to agree to open borders if they are experiencing financial trouble unless they're at war with a common enemy. Since they don't fully grasp a lot of the changes made to upkeep (they still "expect" vanilla civ4 rules & upkeep) the AI players in TAM are in a perpetual state of financial trouble.

I think the best solution in this case is not to make open borders easier to get & maintain but to allow the merchant vessles & trade barges to enter rival territory (must also set strength to zero or they can't enter cities). And then on top of this making the AI use them which may be possible without too much work. The current state of difficult open borders has an outstanding effect on exploration, contact with other civs and war with disconnected civs so I'd rather not change that.

Some of the work on personailities is also in place so historical trading empires will be more open to trade agreements (Carthage & Phoenicia are good examples). However, all AI is less likely to trade technologys because of the way Civ4 AI values techs, this is also a side effect of the financial issue since one of the most significant side effects is the reduced research rate for the AI when they're broke. Basically they have research at 40-60% if they're doing OK, much lower if they aren't, at that rate they will value techs more making them less likely to offer them and pay more cash in exchange for them.

Vineyards and Caravan houses also appear to be broken, they don't add the gold (I'm assuming that's supposed to be +gold, not +commerce). They AI also doesn't seem to build many of those buildings at all despite inflated flavor settings to encourage it. This leads me to think that the trade buildings are sub-par when compared to other build options. So the production costs are too high or the bonuses are too low otherwise the AI would be building them like crazy when they needed money.

On a related note, this is going to be a very busy week for me so I'll be around the forums a bit, since I can do that at work, but I won't have much time for testing and uploading test updates for you guys to try out until the weekend. Of course now that I said that I'll probably have somethign to upload tomorrow

[thamis]

Gifts... In my game I have been supplying a few of my friends with resources for milennia now (free resources, not money paid back by them). Important resources even, such as iron. All I get (after 2000 years of giving them iron) is "+1 We appreciate that you have supplied us with resources." One even gives me +2... I think that's a bit low, considering that giving resources for free is quite a useful thing to do. Maybe we can increase that bonus to a max of +4?

[Pvblivs]

+4 is too much. If it is the only thing you do for a trade partner it should be max +3 but very very seldom. Just compare it to mutual struggles, traded technologies or other trades etc. etc. +2 is a good mean value I think and +1 the starter.

If you can achieve such good values just from gifting (while not being demanded those gifts) you could easily make a neighbour pleased just by giving him fish and clams even if those are the only health resources he has

[Seven05]

They don't grasp the value of copper, iron, tin and timber since none of them are prereqs for building anything. The only true "strategic" resource is ivory, giving them some ivory will work wonders. Hapiness resources are always good too and the AI understands them

I don't know if the relation bonus for supplying resources is accessible to us in XML, I don't recall seeing it in there so it may be a fixed value burried in the code somewhere. I'll look into it.

[Seven05]

I put a quick test update in the second post, I haven't had a chance to try any of the included changes so it may or may not work well

I made the AI more likely to accept & offer tech trades and adjusted some of the positive "memory" bonuses for trading.

The religion modifiers are all set to +/- 1 or 2, I'll have to dig through the SDK to see why some still give a +/- 3, perhaps it combines the modifiers from both civs.