Some smarter AI ideas (fastest speeds only).

[Somebody613]

First of all, it's only for speeds where most worker actions and unit production take 1-2 turns, because for slower speeds it becomes impractical or even harmful.

1. Automated Workers always build Forts outside your borders whenever applicable.
Literally, when one gets into the wild and onto a tile that can support a Fort - then auto-BUILD it.
Captures territory AND protects those same Workers from stray attackers that would not walk into a taken territory.
Not perfect, but would be rather pleasant strategically (including making the AI also more competitive through expansion, though my focus is on MY workers and MY territory).
Note that Workers tend to wander outside more often than not anyways - and even more so, if you have any "exclave" (CK2 says Hi) cities.

2. Automated Merge (AI only).
If the city is not in any immediate danger, and there is a technical possibility (dunno how to implement this, though) to merge the specific unit - always build the entire merging stack, then actually merge it to the max.
Probably needs an AI-only action "Wait for Merger", or something - to make the "waiting" unit(s) actually WAIT.
Would increase the AI competitiveness a LOT, I assure you.

I might add something later on, but so far that's it.

 

[Thunderbrd]

1. Automated Workers always build Forts outside your borders whenever applicable.
Literally, when one gets into the wild and onto a tile that can support a Fort - then auto-BUILD it.
Captures territory AND protects those same Workers from stray attackers that would not walk into a taken territory.
Not perfect, but would be rather pleasant strategically (including making the AI also more competitive through expansion, though my focus is on MY workers and MY territory).
Note that Workers tend to wander outside more often than not anyways - and even more so, if you have any "exclave" (CK2 says Hi) cities.

Keep in mind,
1) Forts need to be staffed or you're just giving enemies great positions to capture and have a hard time being uprooted from, so each is like a city to defend in its own right to some minor extent at least. And they can still easily be turned against you.
2) The more land you claim, the less you'll be able to hunt.

2. Automated Merge (AI only).
If the city is not in any immediate danger, and there is a technical possibility (dunno how to implement this, though) to merge the specific unit - always build the entire merging stack, then actually merge it to the max.
Probably needs an AI-only action "Wait for Merger", or something - to make the "waiting" unit(s) actually WAIT.
Would increase the AI competitiveness a LOT, I assure you.

Units currently merge whenever they can. This will naturally cause more to be trained in most cases so that the AI is tending to get max merged units with some frequency. If they go toooo overboard, they'll never stop training units in the later game. The saving grace is that they don't go about it with laser focus to try to make every unit as merged as possible... if they did, they would really dedicate too much production in that direction to be effective. I've not played recently so I have not seen how well they are actually merging up but last I played and last I saw the code, this was pretty much what was happening.

 

[JosEPh_II]

First of all, it's only for speeds where most worker actions and unit production take 1-2 turns, because for slower speeds it becomes impractical or even harmful.

1. Automated Workers always build Forts outside your borders whenever applicable.
Literally, when one gets into the wild and onto a tile that can support a Fort - then auto-BUILD it.
Captures territory AND protects those same Workers from stray attackers that would not walk into a taken territory.
Not perfect, but would be rather pleasant strategically (including making the AI also more competitive through expansion, though my focus is on MY workers and MY territory).
Note that Workers tend to wander outside more often than not anyways - and even more so, if you have any "exclave" (CK2 says Hi) cities.

2. Automated Merge (AI only).
If the city is not in any immediate danger, and there is a technical possibility (dunno how to implement this, though) to merge the specific unit - always build the entire merging stack, then actually merge it to the max.
Probably needs an AI-only action "Wait for Merger", or something - to make the "waiting" unit(s) actually WAIT.
Would increase the AI competitiveness a LOT, I assure you.

I might add something later on, but so far that's it.

Not using Size Matters the AI already does most of this. And quite well too.

The AI workers love to build forts/palisades to block of the human player. I learned how to do the same to them from their actions 1st long ago when Dancing Hoskuld (one of our older modders) implemented Forts. The only thing I did to Forts was to shorten how far away from one of their own cities cultural territory they could place/ build these type "improvements".

In fact in 1 of our MP games T-brd took my action of placing a Fort on his border as an Act of War. And the results from it gave him his nickname C2C War Dog.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The AI, with or without SM, does go out to build forts... I think he was trying to say it needs to do it a lot more. My wife spews about it and is constantly going to war with the AI over it. She really does NOT like the super forts stuff.

 

[JosEPh_II]

The AI, with or without SM, does go out to build forts... I think he was trying to say it needs to do it a lot more. My wife spews about it and is constantly going to war with the AI over it. She really does NOT like the super forts stuff.

It does present some hard choices on expanding your territory or getting cut off from some that you think you should have.

 

[Somebody613]

I'm talking about cases when you are The Boss and not afraid of the AI's invasions (either irrelevant or easily defeated). I'm annoyed there is no Automated ACTION called "Capture Territory" through pretty much the method I described. I'm NOT afraid of it being turned against me (because I'd be using it in situations where it's impossible or irrelevant) - instead, I'm annoyed by how I must always do it MANUALLY, instead of simply automating a few Workers to do the job themselves. THAT is what I was talking about. Not about AI doing it to annoy me - but about MY Workers NOT doing it, lol.

As of merging, maybe, dunno, I never paid enough attention to what I was dealing with, so I might be wrong in this point.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The problem with automating workers to do that is that they won't care if they are protected when leaving your borders. It may be possible to only let them do it when they are protected by attached military units sufficiently, and maybe that's actually how it is now.

 

[Somebody613]

The problem with automating workers to do that is that they won't care if they are protected when leaving your borders. It may be possible to only let them do it when they are protected by attached military units sufficiently, and maybe that's actually how it is now.

That is exactly why I said they should do it only if:
1. It takes them 1 or max 2 turns per Fort. Longer actions ARE dangerous, and I'm not asking for those. Which means it will be ONLY for faster speeds.
2. Make it automatic to activate WHEN they are outside of the borders to begin with. In fact, this is when they ALREADY had wandered off towards an "exclave" of mine UNPROTECTED during the normal Auto-Infrastructure routine. Which they do QUITE OFTEN anyways. This is gonna PROTECT them (by fending off animals, at least), not ENDANGER. I simply want to combine protection AND expansion into one routine action, but the minimum goal is to protect them when they try building a road through uninhabited land from one end of Sahara (or Siberia) to the other (between two of my cities on either end of that), lol.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The problem with automating workers to do that is that they won't care if they are protected when leaving your borders. It may be possible to only let them do it when they are protected by attached military units sufficiently, and maybe that's actually how it is now.

It is unfortunate that while the AI can set units to "auto-protect" the player can't quite. It would be very useful for the default (Civ IV) missionary/corporate exec missions as well as a couple of others.