AI unit usage

[inquisitor80]

Does the AI use all the units available? ie. Convicts / slaves / converted native...

i am considering changing the penalties for some of these types in the manufacture of some goods rather than others. example. native may be decent at making rope, so maybe no penalty but making a cannon would be pretty foreign

I don't want to handycap the AI any further so if they don't use them then i can change away, if they do i need to know if the AI can adapt to my changes??

 

[Nightinggale]

From what I can tell, you can change the production like you want to and the AI will figure out what to do with each unit. Remember you can give it a master weaver and it will figure out to use that one to weave while it uses a free colonist for fishing (not reversed). While it has preferred professions, it also look at number of yields produced by a unit. I would recommend to enable cheat to periodically check what the AI is doing to see if it behaves as expected.

EDIT: while I think I have seen some code to estimate AI value for production based on number of yields produced, I can't find the code right now. The AI code is... well let's just say it would have helped a lot if somebody added comments.

 

[Commander Bello]

You can do your changes and the AI will try to determine the best use for the the unit.
As Nightingale indicated already, there may be some weaknesses in the code, though, as the number of yields produced later may be subject to follow on valuation processes.

But in general, you cannot do anything wrong as long as your changes are meaningful.

 

[inquisitor80]

ok, it sounds like my aims won't harm the AI
if what you two say is accurate then it should make the units easier to use for the AI

mostly narrowing what specialized units are good at. they are + for their specialty and - for most other things more negative for things further from their type.

in this case i am treating the convicts, servants, natives and such as just another type of specialist.

i am leaving the Free Collenest as the only generalist. everybody else will have +/- in other categories