Some comments on the AI

[Lone Wolf]

Yes, but I think that some rpg elements are in order. Still, I think that good civs and evil civs should clash more often.

I agree re the rpg factors. I wouldn't want Varn declaring wars to and fro at his friends because it'll be profitable. In fact, I think he (and some other honorable characters) shouldn't be able to plan war at Pleased (why his nowarprob at Pleased is 80, anyway? That's the lowest value at that level for all FfH and BtS leaders!)

Now, when it comes to Good-vs-Evil, or the behaviour of pragmatic characters like the Hippus, Calabim, etc - bring it on!

 

[Econian]

AI Smarter and More Aggressive

I was playing last night as the Sidar with WM7.42 and I saw something I haven't seen in a long time. The Calabim attacked me and they did it intelligently. Early in the game I stole a worker from them. About 100 turns later after the Illians had cast their worldspell, halting all production and research, they came with a stack of 10 bloodpets promoted to combat V. I was completely outclassed and if it weren't for a couple of lucky hits I got in from my 2 horsemen, I would have been toast. I had 3 horsemen and 6 warriors with only a couple of promotions.

The AI before has not been very aggressive, even on Aggressive AI setting, but this move surprised me. They even picked the perfect time to come at me, when production was halted and I couldn't produce any more defenders. I wonder if this attack during Stasis was on purpose or if it was coincidental?

 

[Skyre Noktis]

Coincidence. The AI usually picks out its targets quite a long while before actually launching an attack (so well before the Illians cast their world spell, probably), and Stasis doesn't have any effect on its decisions. It just managed to make you think it was being intelligent, which is half the battle, really.

Strange they'd come at you with Bloodpets rather than (at least) Moroi, though.

 

[Econian]

I don't think they had Bronze Working yet so they came with the Bloodpets. It was around turn 110 or so. The SOD had just taken out a barb city and came for me next. That many Bloodpets promoted to combat V should have been more than sufficient to take me out.

 

[Sephi]

the new power calculation for units seems pretty good in general. I have a question about power values for promotions. I have given the faerie race promotions -1 base strength. What power values should I give the promotions? Also, is there a guideline for a Powervalue a Unit should have? I plan to look through the stuff in the modules and adjust the values there if it hasn't been done already.

 

[Skyre Noktis]

Anything that affects strength (including elemental strength and affinities) or movement is taken care of automatically. Power values are needed for anything else. I used the "Combat" promotions giving a 20% bonus as a starting point when I added values for the stuff in the base mod.

Power values are mostly based on strength, with slight adjustments for other things. Use similar units as a starting point. You should ignore any free promotions the unit gets when calculating the power value, and assume it has no weapons (weapons and other promotions are added automatically to the base power rating).

 

[Sephi]

thanks, will update the values. I think the effect of promotion is a bit too strong currently. Created three units in worldbuilder

Swordsman (Strength 4), no promotion: power 64, combat odds against swordsman with Promotions 24%
Swordsman (Strength 4) with trait promotions from weevil (combat+raider): power 125
Woodgolem (Strength 6), no promotion: power 116, combat odds against swordsman with Promotions 72%

I lowered modifier from combat1 to 12 and from commando to 7. Now Strength 4 swordsman has 64, with promotions has 90, and Woodgolem with no promotions has 116.

Adding another combat promotion to the Strength 4 swordsman then gives him 109 power and 40% combat odds against the 116 power swordsman. What do you think of the tweaked values?

 

[Skyre Noktis]

It's not the promotion that's too strong, it's the effect of squaring the power value at the end of the calculation that ends up exaggerating the effect promotions have on the unit (as well as the effect base unit power has). Of course, not squaring makes the differences between strong and weak units too small. The way Civ IV's combat system works makes the true value somewhere in between, but I'm not sure of the best way to calculate it for a generic case, i.e. when not battling against any specific unit.

Just lowering the power of the promotions isn't really a fix to this because things that affect unit power directly, and the differences between the base units themselves, are still bigger than they should be. Combat I effectively increases both attack and defence by 20%, so 20% is the right value for it to have. It's the scaling that's off.

EDIT: Probably should have read the post better, because I don't think this is quite what you're getting at. A Sword with Combat I has effective strength of 4.8, which will come out as 96. Wood Golem's 6 strength would give it a power rating of 144 if not for it being vulnerable to fire, which lowers it significantly (perhaps too significantly?). That and the bonus for commando puts the Sword at a higher rating. If anything, I'd make fire vulnerability have less of an effect. Commando *should* be considered powerful, even though it doesn't affect combat odds themselves.

 

[Sephi]

yeah, some of the situational promotions probably have too high values. Usually not a problem unless they are race or trait related. The problem with Commando is that all units get it, even the ones who will never use it. Currently Raider Trait gives a Bonus to Power of 44% (compared to base) which given the current AI lack to use Commando effectivily seems a bit high.

I have tested ipower^1.4 instead of ipower^2.0 for the promotions and that seems to be a bit more in line. Combat V unit has 2.6 times the value of an unpromoted unit instead of 4 times.

 

[Skyre Noktis]

Yes, situational promotions are the difficult ones because they require some knowledge of your opponent's army to accurately rate. Being vulnerable to fire isn't a big deal unless you're against the Sheaim or your opponent has mages with fireballs. The Bannor's free guardsman promotion is another one - it's very useful in the late game, but not at the start when there are no assassins around yet.

The only way to handle something like that would be to calculate separate power ratings against each opposing civ, which would be confusing and not really worth it.

 

[Econian]

Something has Changed

Something good has changed with the AI since the last update to WM7.42. It used to be that I could sit around and build up until I was ready to attack with my SOD. The AI would never initate an attack, so minimal defense was needed. Now the AI is declaring war when I am not ready. That's just SWEET, I love the unpredictability of it!

After I beat off the Calabim (see above), the Balseraphs came at me about 20 turns later with a stack of 12 highly promoted hunters. I had about half a dozen warriors and about 12 minimally promoted horsemen. I couldn't attack into the hunters with my horses because of terrain, so they came in and whipped me (2 movement). Their initial attack took out most of my guys. I killed off the hunters, but with heavy loses. About 30 turns later the Balseraphs came back with another SOD and finished me off with a stack of swordsmen.

The AI used to almost never initiate war declarations, or if they did, they didn't follow up with a substantial attack. I would be sitting at the bottom of the power ranking with nothing to worry about, now I have to think and struggle, it's great.

I wonder if I hadn't stolen a worker from the Calabim earlier, if they would have still declared war on me. On my next game I'm going to not steal a worker and see if anyone declares war on me. The Balseraphs may have declared on me because the Calabim talked them into it, both were evil.

The AI units are showing up with wayyyy more promotions than they used to, I think the Occasional Promotions module may have something to do with that. They are much harder to deal with now.

 

[Seven05]

Something good has changed with the AI since the last update to WM7.42.

Indeed, and it is very good

I've been watching the Doviello completely destroy the Hippus in my latest game, taking a city almost every other turn. The Amurites decided to dogpile on the Balseraphs as I was fighting them to expand my borders and about half way through their way the Clan attack the Amurites.

Now, at about turn 250 (yeah, not even late game yet) the Amurites have been displaced from their original cities into their recently conquered cities and the Khazad and Elohim are fighting the Clan over the old Amurite cities. The Hippus are holding on to their last city that the Doviello can't get to because the Bannor are in the way.

I only have two civs that aren't doing much. The Lanun haven't been aggressive at all (Hannah) and the Illians (Auric) are quite large but they've been pretty peacful, mostly because they're buddies withthe Doviello and the Doviello have cut them off from the rest of the world by conquering the Hippus.

I haven't had a game like this in a long time.

And Sephi, don't forget that you have power values for more than units (and promotions in this mod). When I did the AI work on TAM I was able to get the old pre-BTS AI to be more aggressive and use better stacks by simply tweaking power values of units and buildings. Since the primary function of the power rating is for the AI to determine relative strength when deciding to go to war having a higher power value for city walls, barracks, etc is just as important as an accurate power value for units. In default Civ4 the power values are also very low, if you're using higher numbers (64! for a swordsman!) you may want to go in and kill the code Skyre talks about where power values are squared as you've basically accomplished what that was supposed to be doing in the first place by starting with such high values. Again going back several years and in a different mod, with TAM all I did was make the base unit power match the strength so most units had a power rating of 10 or less. But then we didn't have so many pormotions, spells, etc so it was easy in comparison

 

[Econian]

What happened here?

In my current game I stole a worker from the Balseraph early on. About 90 turns later I took a barbarian city that was between us. The Balseraphs showed up the next turn with a stack of 14 swordsmen that were slightly beaten up from fighting animals and barbs. I abandoned the newly conquered city because I couldn't hope to beat the clowns with my 14 horsemen and 2 warriors. The swordsmen all had combat V and then some promotions. What's up with most of the AI units having 7 or 8 promos? To my surprise, the Balseraph SOD then turned around and went back home. We're at WAR, right? I don't understand what happened here. Were the clowns coming to take the barb city and then when they discovered that it was owned decided to go home? Shouldn't they have at least razed the empty city?

 

[Econian]

Good guys are too nice

Also in this same game, the only evil player in sight is the Balseraphs. There are about 5 good guys and 2 neutrals that I have met as well. Nobody is fighting and it's turn 100. Are the good guys too nice? The evil guys normally are more aggressive. I would have expected at least a couple of war declarations by now, maybe it's just too soon.

 

[Skyre Noktis]

Can't help on the weird "stack turning around and leaving an empty city" issue. I'd need a save game to see what was going on.

In your other game, there's a good chance that the AIs are deciding to go to war but haven't built large enough stacks yet to launch an invasion. This part still needs a lot of work. It's either that or they're all just super-friendly with each other (quite likely if you're not playing with Aggressive AI).

 

[Econian]

The Good guys aren't so nice after all

The Balseraphs did come back about 20 turns after they abruptly turned around and this time, they took the ex-barb city that I again abandoned and they held onto it. I was about to go take it from them when the good guys all ganged up on me.

Around turn 140 or so the 4 good civs around me all decided that my neutral Sidar butt needed a spanking. So I beat off a small stack of 10 dwarven slingers from the Luchuirp and one turn later, a much larger stack of 20 Malakim 6/4 chariots plus 1 archer. The one archer was kind of a pain to deal with, but it slowed down the whole stack of chariots to one movement so I had more time to deal with the slingers. If both stacks had come at the same time, I would have been dead. Or if the chariots had attacked me after I took out the slingers, I would have been gone. Strangely, the chariots never attacked me, they just took hits from my horsemen and tried to heal up before attacking. I ended up with not much left, 6 badly damaged horsemen, 1 axeman, and 1 disciple. I even ended up attacking with my disciple and adept (which I lost at 83% odds) because I was so desperate.

BTW, I am playing with aggressive AI on diety level. The good guys just took their time before deciding to eat me for lunch. The AI is coming at me with smaller stacks than it used to, which is good. It means that they can come at you much earlier than they used to. A dozen good tier 2units can be plenty to deal with. With the newly aggressive AI, I think I might need to downgrade to Immortal for the time being. The days of just sitting back and building up seem to be at an end.

 

[scutarii]

Wish I could add +rep for AI...

When I sieged one of balseraph's cities, AI used his taunting harlequins to wipe out half of my army....

 

[tharg]

I have just been playing an always war game. Marathon (17 civs huge), its around turn 550 and no one has attacked me! Well except for barbarians animals and dragons. Even when I am wandering around in their territory they just sit and wait. That is not one single attack from another civilization’s unit ever (not counting archers ranged attack from inside cities). This is always war!

Ok I have created a rather deadly area around me, by removing all the neighbouring cities, and have tried to minimise contact with other civs (Still to meet seven of them), but still.

 

[Pohlmann]

im not sure if it was there all along but why cant warriors use bronze weapons in the newest release?

 

[Sephi]

that change was quite recently because of balance. there was a discussion on the ffh forum:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=21077

AI doesn't understand always war gameoption much.