AI got dumb.

A friend and I have started playing a new hotseat game (v.2.71), with the BarbarianCiv, Revolution and TechDiffusion mods enabled (also choose religion and no tech brokering). We are playing a PerfectWorld map, standard size (7 civ's at the start) at snail pace.

We have found that the AI civ's are overly excited about sacrificing their population for production, and will almost immediately slave something out as soon as the population of their city grows to 3. After 500 turns, they are all severely lagging (half the scores of the human players, with everyone playing on Noble).

How can we fix this? Is there some setting we should not be choosing? Can we turn off their penchant for sacrificing their population? Any suggestions for making playable AI opponents would be appreciated.

A few weeks ago I posted in another thread that the AI performs extremly poor/expands very little since RoM2.7.

I was told to play on a harder difficulty level. I now play on Monarch or higher but still at ~1000B.C. I have a higher score than all other AI players. I was switching to world builder every few turns and found out, that hardly any AI city gets above the size of 3.
So the problem ist not insufficient expansion but way to high sacrifices of population

Is this a bug in BetterAI or RoM?

Play at immortal or higher. AI starts with worker, 3 archer/+archery @immortal, and on deity even with extra settler etc.
Also, there is a mod with a harder difficulty level then deity, called "godsmaker" and with a slower speed called eternal. Having changed the settings to higher difficulty can make early game very hard but later it evens out to my experience.

Playing on higher level makes the AI more competitive, but does nothing to address the issue of the AI's overuse of slavery, which is the root of the problem.

This is a bug that has appeared in 2.71, that was not in 2.70, and we are looking for a way to fix it, not just ignore it.

Actually the AI has had a penchant for Slavery since it was introduced way back in 2.3 iirc. (Slavery has been around since Lawrie and Bug Heb started to help on revamping/expanding the Civics)

It's a civic that the AI just doesn't seem to be able to get away from. And it does "dumb" the AI down by retarding it's growth. Growth = advancement and power.

I've also observed that the Start As Minor and BarbCiv option of REVDCM also hinders the AI's development because it throws the AI into a War time operating Mode from which the AI seems to be very reluctant to leave. Throw in the slavery aspect and most AI's are stuck in a rut.

I normally only play Noble level, but by the Classical Era I can see a clear path to victory.

I mitigate this by playing on Huge or Gigantic Archipelago, Lakes Maps, or Custom Continents (using up to 6 continents) and reducing the # of AI to 9 or less. This added room to "Breathe" seems to help the AI build up their Empire to near normal levels. This is of course without either BarbCiv or Start As Minors being used. And I don't use Revolutions either. So I'm basically playing Core RoM.

I wouldn't mind seeing the Slavery Civic go bye bye or at least Drastically changed.

JosEPh

The AI doesnt have this problem for me, but I only play on marathon - Maybe the AI thinks snail is too slow and really really want to speed things up?

AI really does have some addiction to slavery. Today i won another deity game (diplo victory after defeating major opponent and having 50+% population) and decided to put AI 50 auto turns before i went to sleep.

When i woke up i found out AI cancelled capitulation from several of earlier conquered vassals, and turned to slavery/communist/caste civic combo (in transhuman era). 65% culture, 0% espionage and research.

Btw anyone have any ideas why AI cancels capitulation?

I can confirm with playing Emperor or Immortal at Snail speed. AI is seeing Salvery as the Grail of all times. Even in later times I have problems getting my vasals away from Salvery so they get a good economy - only with the success that a few rounds later they are back at Slavery, sacrificing their population

I agree, there should be something done about the AI killing it's pop for a short time boost while ignoring the long term effects.

I dont know if its possible, but maybe make slavery civic obsolete with a tech (emancipation or something like that) or with a UN resolution.

vincentz said:

I dont know if its possible, but maybe make slavery civic obsolete with a tech (emancipation or something like that) or with a UN resolution.

Click to expand...

All the AI's would vote against it...

I disabled "sacrifice" as a hurry method (just removd the <Hurry>.... entry in the xml file containing the properties of the civics) and the AI has improved for me (using a large map on snail speed)

Surprisingly, I don't have that problem... for example, Cyrus has a size 28 ( ) city, and it is the early medieval era. Of course, having several river-side floodplains/plains and a ton of wonders helps...

All the other civilisations have decent sized cities EXCEPT the very small vassals. And I have noticed that the very small vassals have ALWAYS had size problems (often they will be angry at size 3 in the modern age), all throughout the RoM development process...

I am playing at Prince difficulty, and Epic speed if that helps... but the AI doesn't whip unless it is in a BIG pickle, and once it starts, it just never stops, which is the problem...

The AI isn't THAT dumb... but it could be improved by tweaking the AI for whipping population (Say... it doesn't whip if it has 3 or more whip anger??)

I play marathon Deity/Immortal, and for all Zap's wonderful efforts, this is not a game past Rifles, and never really has been. It's the AI's hills versus all my tiles, and the AI size 10-15 cities vs my size 25-45 ones, which makes a huge difference with all the trade routes floating around.

In the industrial era, lumbermills are among the most powerful tiles - the AI can't build them, as it has invariably chopped down all it's forests. As for city size, I think it doesn't like growing into unhealthiness, and since it doesn't have any forests, it naturally hits that limit early, and since it doesn't have any forests, it lacks the hammers to build health helper buildings.

I'm also still flipping millenia-old cities that have never built a fish hut, butchery, or forge. Maybe give the buildings to the AI free? Either that or nerf their overwhelming power a bit - once you can trade for the required resources, they are a must have in every city.

The AI likes caste and slavery because they are still overpowered if you can handle the happiness hit (and with one temple giving +2 happy, that's a breeze once you hit medieval - maybe non-state temples should give some bonus other than happiness? Require a special resource from each one to give happiness/health?) as Slavery is like being in a constant Golden Age and Caste is even more ridiculous with the food boost.

The only challenge in this game is surviving a medieval unit rush. There is no late game at all. The AI can (barely) hang on tech-wise via trade routes, but it lacks the hammers to build the more expensive industrial units. And with bombards/cannon (rightly) nerfed, even medieval is much easier. BTW, I'm not sure that the AI knows how to surmount the siege workshop/cannon forge hurdle to even get siege units built...

Zap, you're the most talented mod creator there is, but you need to draft some playtesting/AI training sidekicks for the mod to be playable.

Looks like Better BtS AI team has tracked down a bug from AI's worker actions which makes "AIs stupid" late game when choosing what improvements they should build to plots - Fix for it will be in RoM v2.8 if RevDCM has been updated before it (RevDCM has Better BtS AI included).

Will this help the City Governor in it's decision making?

I'm beginning to believe the City Gov IS a Big reason the AI struggles. Every time you produce a building/wonder/change Civic that allows for a Specialist it goes out of it's way to incorporate that new "allowance". A growing productive city can go to Starvation by building a building, etc., etc, Cause that new "allowance" the City Gov thinks needs to be done Now!

Every turn you can see City tile shift (highlight/dehighlight) from the City Gov "shuffling" Citizen around. I'm really getting a dislike for the City Gov.

And if you the Player turn off the City Gov, build a new work/production and watch it turn itself back on! When I turn it Off I want it to Stay Off!

Now if it does this to the player what damage is it doing to the AIs? If looked into I would suspect this might be a major reason for "Dumb" AI actions.

JosEPh

submarine3141 said:

I disabled "sacrifice" as a hurry method (just removd the <Hurry>.... entry in the xml file containing the properties of the civics) and the AI has improved for me (using a large map on snail speed)

Click to expand...

I tried this, and now the slavery civic no longer allows me to slave things out, and presumably the AI also.
However, the AI appears to lose 1 population and gain a settler. Perhaps it is using slaves (specialists) to do this.

Perhaps it would be better to reduce the AI weight of slavery, so the AI never selects it?
It is currently set to -10, what is the minimum so that AI civs never adopt the civic?

civ_chemist said:

I tried this, and now the slavery civic no longer allows me to slave things out, and presumably the AI also.
However, the AI appears to lose 1 population and gain a settler. Perhaps it is using slaves (specialists) to do this.

Perhaps it would be better to reduce the AI weight of slavery, so the AI never selects it?
It is currently set to -10, what is the minimum so that AI civs never adopt the civic?

Click to expand...

You could switch the hurry from population to gold. Very imperfect solution, alas.

In general, given the increased tile yields and other options available (such as hammers through trade routes), whipping is much more often suboptimal in RoM than in BtS (where it is arguably too strong). Given the inevitable AI issues (i.e. Firaxis has a lot more resources to optimize AI play than Zap does, so the AI will always be less adept at adjusting to RoM than a decent human player), I say RoM would be better off without the availability of a whipping option.

DRJ said:

Play at immortal or higher. AI starts with worker, 3 archer/+archery @immortal, and on deity even with extra settler etc.
Also, there is a mod with a harder difficulty level then deity, called "godsmaker" and with a slower speed called eternal. Having changed the settings to higher difficulty can make early game very hard but later it evens out to my experience.

Click to expand...

Monarch difficulty should be Monarch, not something else because a bug in a mod makes it easier. If there is such a bug, it should be fixed, not circumvented by increasing the difficulty you play to 'even out'

I go into GlobalDefines.xml and change the city range to 4 (since I'm using 3 Plot Radius by Jooyo). I recommend these who don't use that modmod to change city range to 3. It helps the AI slightly more because it gives them a bit more space to grow. Not an outstanding solution but it is a step in right direction, imo.