BtS AI - Is it better?

[Moquia]

The slower teching is due to two main factors, Espionage Spending, and drastically reduced bonuses. The AI has dropped about 2 levels in terms of bonuses from Warlords, so if you used to be a Noble player, play on Monarch (where it will have similar bonuses to the Noble difficulty on Warlords) and tell me it's teching slower.

I also so think some of the AIs are building citys too fast, getting them stuck in high maintenance. Maybe they still think they got the high bonuses . If you only look at teching speed I think Emperor is like Prince (NOT Noble) now, thats my experience after 6-7 games on huge maps.

 

[martin031]

In the handful of games I played, I have come to the same conclusion that in the early stages the AI is slow to build a military past a few archers. But when they do last to the middle ages they are much more powerful. Also I think that checking "Agressive AI" option really helps them out.

In my current game (Monarch, Hemispheres, Agg AI, 7 civs) I was able to rush Russia because I had copper in my capitals cross. After that I went for India to my south. By this time, Ghandi was able to make mixed stacks and counter attack very effectively. I ended up having to wage 3 wars against him to take cities and relieve cultural pressure on the ones I wanted to keep. Even then, I could not take him out completely because he actually used his siege weapons garrisoned in his cities to damage my stacks outside his walls. Very nice. After the last war ended, I resigned myself to the fact that It would be to costly to attempt to wipe him off the earth, so I settled for dividing his empire. For a few hundred years the relations on the coninent were peaceful all around (with Hanibal sharing the same religion and peacefully expanding).

Now I had a slight tech advantage on the AI and was rolling along to cannons and grenadiers in expectation of an assault on Hanibal who had become cautios against me in part due to the close borders modifier. So I spammed units in my production cities and about ten turns before I was going to attack, Hanibal went first and quickly took three cities with mixed stacks of crossbows, crossbowmen, macemen and knights with siege weapon support. It was frustrating, but now I will never take the AI for granted again, that they will wait for me to make the first move.

In my previous game with the same basic settings,except for no AGG AI, I was able to wipe all competition off my coninent before ever making contact with the other AI's, consolidated the land and was a huge lead when I met the other civs.

I know this is a small sample size, but the AI seemed much better with agg AI on. I think it will now be a must for me going forward. Mainly because I do not like to war monger so much, but If I do, I want them to be a challenge.

As far as the pillaging goes, Hannibal and Ghandi both pillaged the heck out of my country side while we were at war, and the troops never stood around. But this was also at a stage past axe/chariots. They also were continually using spies against me even when we were at peace and had good relations.

 

[martin031]

Also one thing I noticed that I never noticed in warlords (maybe it happened, don't know) is that once relations with Hanibal dropped to cautious he began to escort his workers with a small mix of troops (usually a elephant and pikeman) in his cities on my borders. Very cool.

 

[Weltschmerz]

As someone who plays primarily for domination victories, I've found it to be more difficult so far. I played on Noble for a long time, but moved up to Prince with the Warlords expansion. My skills may not match some of the demigods on this site <g>, but I've gotten a 50k victory on Prince and have a pretty good feel for the game.

Because it was my first try on BtS, I played my first game on Noble, playing as Holy Rome. I took my time developing to get a feel for the features, starting my first war against Napoleon around 900 AD once I got my UU and trebs, and created a few stacks of each (I usually use 6 ground troops and 4 trebs in each stack for early wars, plus a rover stack to intercept reinforcements.

I had my behind handed to me.

I can usually make a quick strike on two or three border cities before they can assemble a defense, but in this case the nearest city was 4 squares in. By the time I arrived, he had already moved in a reinforcement stack. No prob, I took it out, moved in the rest to take the first city which had only 5 defenders. Mostly War Elephants, so with my UU I wasn't worried. I took two turns to demolish his cultural defenses and went to send my trebs in to soften up the troops, and lo and behold the stack had grown to 10. He was sending in everything he had to defend a mediocre border city!

I sent in my second stack and finished him off, but by now I was significantly weakened. I pulled everyone into my new city to heal and regroup, sending reinforcements from my other city. By the time I went to the second city, he had filled it with crossbows to counter my UU, but I decided to throw in all my trebs and give it a shot (I had even numbers + trebs)...I won, but was in even worse shape and my production from WW had slowed to a crawl. The third city slaughtered me.

This is the first time I've seen the AI adapt so quickly (after the first battle) and bring in the best counter. It also seems much more intelligent about using it's cats/trebs first to soften your stack, previously they would leave them to sit in their cities until I attacked half the time. Also, quite often on Warlords when a border city was outnumbered, they would actually withdraw and regroup farther back...here Napoleon immediately sent everything he had to defend one border city, to beat me back out of the gate.

One other thing: He never asked for peace, despite the fact that my three city battle took around 40(!) turns, and I had the Statue of Zeus to increase his war weariness. My cities were so unhappy I was down to a couple of workers each in them, but I kept going because I wanted to at least get the cities on either side of my first conquest to give it room to expand. Usually the AI will ask for peace when the WW reaches a certain point (except Monty sometimes), but this went way over anything I'd seen.

Granted, it was my first game, and I'll adapt. If there were bugs in the AI strategy, I didn't see them. I moved back to Warlord and my second game is going more smoothly, but I've never had my a** handed to me in a Noble war like that before, since if anything I tend to overprepare. But, hey, challenge is a good thing, so I'm not complaining. I just need to play smarter.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

One other thing: He never asked for peace, despite the fact that my three city battle took around 40(!) turns, and I had the Statue of Zeus to increase his war weariness. My cities were so unhappy I was down to a couple of workers each in them, but I kept going because I wanted to at least get the cities on either side of my first conquest to give it room to expand. Usually the AI will ask for peace when the WW reaches a certain point (except Monty sometimes), but this went way over anything I'd seen.

You don't increase war weariness during battles on tiles where you have the largest share of culture. Since you are invading deep into the AIs land, it probably has 0WW. He can keep fighting around those three cities you captured for the next 1000 years without any war weariness. The Statue of Zeus is powerful for defenders but useless for attackers. Building the statue denies your opponents but won't affect them unless they fight you on tiles they don't dominate culturally. Its a meh wonder for warmongers.

I'd love to see the AI come with a "give us our cities back or we will kill you research forever" peace request in cases like this.

 

[IronCrown]

I'm quite sure that's wrong. War Weariness does increase with every battle.

 

[Weltschmerz]

Robert, if that's correct it's very interesting. I always thought WW was just a reflection of your citizens unhappiness at the length of the war...in which case there should still be unhappiness, although I can see it being higher when the war is in your own backyard, so to speak.

 

[IronCrown]

There is an article somewhere on this forums where someone who has looked at the code explains WW. It increases with every battle. The increase is lower if the battle is in foreign territory, but there still is an increase.

It's true however that WW does not increase as long as no battles are actually fought.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

War weariness doesn't increase in "defensive" battles which means battles on tiles where you have more culture than any civ. There is an article explaining the mechanics in the strategy section. (too lazy to find the link)

You can fight a war which lasts the entire game but have no war weariness if you never fight outside areas where you are culturally dominant. Usually, players fight offensive not defensive wars so the war weariness increases with every battle.

Off-topic aside:

I don't think the AI looks at your GNP and GDP as well as power for peace negotiations but it should. If they have enough espionage points to see your demographics, they should be able to say "Your citizens are rioting due to your unjust war; give us reparations to end this fight." If the tables were turned, I certainly would demand them unless threatened on another front.

The AIs peace negotiation logic isn't very good and is very susceptible to blitz tactics. The AI will sign peace treaties after my stack has been decimated taking a final target city with a stack that could easily retake the city and push back the offensive on the conquered city's doorstep. Its too easy to get peace on your own terms after starting a war.

 

[jkp1187]

Firaxis is aware of the espionage scaling problem on Marathon level, and will fix it in the next patch.

The AI isn't perfect, but it's been enough to beat my formerly Monarch-level skills on Noble level twice so far. Further constructive feedback given in the Bugs forum (with saves, etc.) will probably make it better in the future.

I had to do some fancy footwork with my units to keep from losing a recently-captured city in a war against Egypt recently. It sent a few units to harass my invasion force, forced me to pull back when I wanted to keep going. I had to react to it for a change. That's definitely an improvement.

RoberttheBruce: I believe this is the war weariness article to which you referred.

 

[IronCrown]

Yes, I just found it, too. My mistake, Robert was right.

 

[Ghandi33]

I've been particularly impressed with the AI's use of espionage during war.

My last game I had a nearby neighbor and we had growing tension between us, the AI apparently knew a war would soon breakout. On the AI's turn following my declaration of war on him, he proceeded to sabotage the improvements on my horses and metals denying me use of the resources for the war effort for a half dozen or so turns until I had my workers re-improve them. He almost certainly had to have the spies already in place due to the distances involved. It actually opened my eyes to a new strategy, it's kind of scary to think you could learn something from the AI.

 

[Weltschmerz]

Thanks for the pointer, RTB. I thought I'd read all the strategy articles but I must have missed that one. So Zeus is pointless for an aggressor and only helps if they're coming after you, good to know. Still, it does seem to me that the AI defends more intelligently now.

Attack too, seemingly...I had a situation in my second game where Genghis made a demand that I refused; I had been building an army in preparation for an attack, but wasn't quite ready, so I figured I had a little time before he'd come after me (his territory was quite aways from mine). Quite the contrary, the very next turn he declared war and brought in a big stack that he obviously had been holding just outside my borders before he made the demand. I lost the city before I could regroup and take it back. Not for nothing...it was also my least well defended city and he didn't have open borders to know that, I can only assume I was the victim of espionage. Still, quite interesting coordination of tactics for an AI. Was he just praying for an excuse? Seemed human enough to me.

Also OT...someone posted elsewhere that the Holy Rome UU wasn't so good on offense, better on defense. I learned in my first game the truth of that. I assumed that it would be more flexible and I could get away with less variety in my stack, but once your opponent gets to advanced archery, they get slaughtered; even with City Attack II. Back to the mixed stack.

 

[Seidrik_The_Gray]

1) What level are you all playing on? It's hard to compare apples with apples. Also, I've noticed that certain civs are more warlike, while others are more research oriented.
2) If you're used to defeating the cheating AI in warlords, then you're going to have to play at a higher level. Emperor in BtS, especially for war-mongerers is more like what you saw in Monarch level in Warlords for warmongering. I would, however, submit that if you aren't a war-mongerer, then you'll find the AI more challenging if you try to go for the other victory conditions.
3) I have never seen a frozen AI...but I do always play with the Aggressive AI turned on.
4) Did you regen the map to get a Great Start? I had a game, where my start position was seriously better than every AI except 2 on a Large Terra Map. This allowed me to get every wonder built, even though there was one Industrious AI, and I was the Dutch, being Financial and Creative.

I have a game going now as the Romans under Augustus Ceasar on Monarch, Terra Map, Large. I did rush Axemen and took out my nearest AI in the first 60 turns...poor sob only had one Bowman vs. my 4 axeman stack However, my next competitor, Asoka, was too far to make it financially viable to take him out early on. It is now 1100AD and we have been locked in a war, involving coastal battles between Triremes, and now Caravels, and huge land battles, involving stacks of War Elephants, Chariots, Horse Archers, Longbowmen, Crossbowmen, Praetorians, Macemen, Axemen, Catapults, and Trebuchets.

Rather than just moving my SOD from city to city, I have to deal with his reinforcements and his troops intercepting my reinforcements, and stacks that attempt to retake lost cities...

An earlier poster stated that he thought the AI was still cheating, due to what his espionage abilities were revealing. I can tell you that with 6 good cities, 3 of which are in real nice locations, I am churning out 3-5 units every other turn. India has more cities. In the North, he has his production cities, and in the South (bordering my empire) he has his commerce cities. I admit that I tweaked Rome a little, but that was it.

What I'm saying is that the AI isn't cheating production wise, but that he is micro-managing like a pro...at least in this case. He's at war for his survival, so he is switching to hammer focus, then using slavery to wip a unit, then switching to food to rebuild the lost pop, then hammer, then wip and rince and repeat...all all all of his cities are doing this. Sounds like a good strategy to me. Unfortunately, he will wip his people to death to save his cities. I have seen the AI wip down to a size 2 city from size 12 over a long war to pump out units. (Is that a bug??? Would you do that? Facing the demise of your civilization, what would you do, other than quit the game and start over?)

On the flip side, I've had wars on other games, where the AI knew it was outmatched, and would fall back to defend a few cities. I have also been surprised to find the AI attack my lands behind my armies via routes it had with other civs via open borders agreements.

I even had one experience, where the AI dumped all of its financial resources into espionage points against me in hopes of stealing my tech.

 

[vilemerchant]

The AI might do a few neat little tricks we haven't seen it do before and plays with less bonuses. Turns out however it needed those bonuses as it now techs far too slowly. AI city management and war strategies are also buggy in some areas, damn near broken in others.

 

[Zhahz]

But it's really confusing. Some people report the AI making great moves and using brilliant tactics, while others report them sitting idly in the player's countryside doing nothing. Very strange.

I demolosh noble in BTS (moreso than in Warlords) and seem to be demolishing prince too (which was competitive for me in Warlords) and this is using a leader I wouldn't consider overly dominant (the new CRE/ORG).

I've seen the AI do some smart(er) stuff in combat, but since it seems to do a worse job of managing its land/cities/finances and I still don't like a lot of AI city placement, I'm usually fighting battles where my troops are significantly more advanced. At least on a small hemispheres map, normal speed (and no tech brokering option).

I haven't seen any big stacks yet either (in 3-4 games). The AIs seem to hurt themselves with overexpansion, poor/no tile improvement, and have to be hurting financially. Maybe the AI makes these big stacks when it has less room to peacefully expand or something.

On prince the AIs did a little better than on noble, but not THAT much better.

 

[GoodGame]

The AI in the epic game is very good now. Noble is more challenging now than it was in Warlords.

I'm having serious doubts about the Charlemagne AI scenario though. While they do an ok job of expanding, at Noble, I was able to easily out expand them, outpacing even the pope, and seriously outpace them for papal favor as well. I felt like they were at Chieftain level from earlier Civs, yet I was actually playing Noble.

 

[Warspite2]

I think many of you should play more games of BtS before coming to conclusions good or bad regarding the AI. An AI is a very complex piece of programing especially for a strategy game as huge as CIV4. One can never make conclusions off of a few games played. BtS has just been released a few days ago so I know not many of you could have played much by now, certainly not enough to comment on the AI being good or bad. Come back to this thread in a month or two after playing several games of BtS, then your conclusions could be pretty accurate. So I am not going to comment on the AI yet since I have not had a chance to even see how it plays. Maybe after a month of playing BtS under my belt, I can state my opinions.

 

[sigmakan]

I'd just like to state that something happened in my current game that really gave me hope for this new AI.

I'm building up my army of Phalanxs to go attack stalin. I'm pretty sure he realizes this and starts building up his archers too. As I attack him I see that he just completed the oracle. I thought no big deal. But to my suprise, what do I find waiting for me at Novgrod? Thats right a longbowman. This was at like 250BC. Thats pretty early for an AI to get feudalism no? This was at prince difficulty.

I think once the bugs get worked out, this AI will be great. But right now, its still too flawed, seems rushed. But I have faith.

 

[Da_V_Man]

Well, in my game I had a war with Babylon. It was in the 1st millenium AD, and I was a little more powerful than he was. I declared war on him. He didn't do too much agaisnt me. It was the usual take a city war. He had the units to create a stack or at least counter attack mine (which he did a few times, but I mean the units in a stack, or my beaten units defending a city. I was playing Noble, but I saw noothing better than before.