How do I make AI work in custom scenarios?

[Fredgerd]

So I'm almost done with a scenario I've been working on, but there's one thing that still makes the game unplayable. Almost none of the AI seems to work.

Things it does:
AI players will make a city in their start location with the settler they receive at the beginning of the game.

AI will research default technology (painfully slowly since it doesn't manage its funding)

AI will contact and attempt to trade with players who come within their Illuminated area.

Things it doesn't do:
Produce anything besides wealth and wonders in cities (no units or improvements are made).

Automated workers skip their move as a default.

AI players neglect to even fortify the spearman they receive at the beginning of the game. They just leave it standing on their city square.

Anyone know how to fix this??

Thanks in advance.

[tom2050]

The settings in your BIQ have to be causing these problems. On the units page, you must have the appropriate options selected for a unit to have an AI strategy. For example, attack/defense land units need load and capture selected, then either offense or defense strategy selected.

Workers must have all worker/engineer actions selected (except build city) and the terraform AI strategy selected to be able to actually do anything in game.

Cities may not be building any units if they have no AI strategies. AI will usually build offense, defense, artillery, bomber, fighter, naval, or transport units based on the AI strategy selected.

Otherwise, check Civilzations tab to make sure that 'build never' is not selected for these units. But there are too many variables to go through without actually seeing it. Conquests does have a handy help file included in it (Civ3ConquestsEdit.chm), you can just click and open it. It's useful for basic stuff.

[Fredgerd]

How do I set default AI for cities? is that build often??

[tom2050]

There have been tests done to determine how AI decides what to build... but in the end, AI will build what buildings it wants to build in it's cities.

On the Civilization tab, there is the 'Build Never' and 'Build Often' lists that you can use. Build Never definitely works, and AI won't build what is selected most of the time. Build Often you should not have many selected here, 4 at most or it confused the AI. But all tests done have not seen how Build Often makes any difference.

You can also use Flavors (on the Flavors tab used in conjunction with Improvements and Wonders 'flavors' section) to make AI build things more or less. Flavors are somewhat confusing if you have just started using the editor recently... so I wouldn't worry about them, they are not very useful in general situations.

AI will always build 'defense flagged units' that are cheapest first. Then it usually builds what it thinks is best according to w/e algorithm it uses. Ozymandias thread on 'what the AI builds' has a wealth of info in it on this type of stuff.

You have to make sure that buildings are available to be built, they may require a gov't (if it is set to be required for that improvement). They also may require an advance or another improvement/resources.

[Fredgerd]

What would be good examples of things to put in build never other than wealth obviously

[tom2050]

Most of the time, Build Never should not be needed, because it would be putting AI at a disadvantage, while human player will still build those.

There are some useful things for this in a scenario, e.g., a nature civ only autoproduces a hurricane, and you don't want it building anything, you could put Build Never for everything except for wealth; so it doesn't have unnecessary units.

Did you find anything in your BIQ file that could be causing the above problems?

[Fredgerd]

ya I didn't know how any of this stuff worked, thanks.

The only thing now is that the AI doesn't know how to pour excess money into science and other stuff.