A Better AI.

[Iustus]

hi sorry if this has been covered in the thread, only to page 7 so far (glad the difiiculty discussion is ending). Is there a way to verify that a mod is loaded when i click the advanced>about> the mod name says none.

I did extract the one dll to my warlords\customassets folder, am i supposed to extract the \BetterAI folder with the dll in it??

Take a look at my post here in this thread about installation.

The pic from that post:

From another post, mod install:

You can tell if you have it installed correctly if you see "=== Better AI ===" in the score breakdown (this is an old picture, it now shows the build date as well).

You see the score breakdown by mousing over your player name in the 'scoreboard' with the alt key down:

I will see if Blake can get those pictures posted in the first post of this thread.

-Iustus

 

[Blake]

1/1
When playing as an expansive civ and building a worker at start, the auto-governer prefer using 3F tile instead of 2F 1H, which should be better in any case. (on cap square only 1H)

Thanks, fixed.

Slight worker bug. The workers are great at running away from barbarians and enemy ai when im at war with them. When I built the great wall my workers thought they were invunerable which is true except when they are connecting some of my citys with roads.

*I am Invincible!*

That's a pretty bad bug I'm surprised it happens.


Ok other bugs:

AI not defending interior cities properly: The AI should now always beef up defenses of important cities, especially in a defensive war, it also puts more weight on actual visible hostile enemy units.

AI units getting baited out of cities: The AI should now use it's strength in the open rather than it's defensive strength in the city when deciding whether or not it's safe to leave.

 

[Bursk]

Sorry, Blake, are you saying that these bugs are now fixed in the currently unreleased build? If so, do you plan to release a quick bugfix version?

 

[Uncle_Joe]

OK, after a bit more play, perhaps its possible that the AI are building too many troops now? In particular the 'aggressive' AIs seem to be choking themselves with troops.

In my last game (Epic, Custom Noble, Standard, 7 Civs) Shaka, Peter, and Monte were all pretty weak but with hordes of obsolete units in each city (like 10-12+ in each). Meanwhile, Asoka, Victoria, and Cyrus were cranking along pretty well. They were pretty well defended too, but not nearly as ridiculous as the others.

At some point massed obsolete units just become a liability. Stacks 10 to 12 Trebs and Cats arent going to accomplish anything when everyone has Infantry and Artillery (outside of providing experience anyways...) yet the AIs still continue to stockpile them rather than switch up to trying to tech a bit.

Also, AI production, while much improved, still lags in the late-game. Granted I'm a production hog, but the AI has little chance of a Space Race victory with production totals around 180...its just not enough to be able to build the components in a reasonable time. Meanwhile I have 450+ (although my GNP is pretty far behind).

I think its fine if some AIs are playing the tech-race, but it doesnt seem that any of them really favor production. They either spam Cottages or Farms with little else (ie, no Lumbermills or Workshops to increase production).

But all in all, the AIs are playing a MUCH stronger game. I think that with some tweaking and bug-fixes from where you are now, its a fantastic accomplishment. Great job! Looking forward to the next build...

 

[HardCoder]

I think its fine if some AIs are playing the tech-race, but it doesnt seem that any of them really favor production. They either spam Cottages or Farms with little else (ie, no Lumbermills or Workshops to increase production)

I don't know if the AI even builds lumbermills under normal circumstances. Usually all the trees are gone by that time, and the AI pretty much chops everything new it finds.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

I don't know if the AI even builds lumbermills under normal circumstances. Usually all the trees are gone by that time, and the AI pretty much chops everything new it finds.

Exactly. And if it doesnt build Workshops/Watermills to compensate, then its late game productivity suffers. For me, I'm willing to accept losing some early game hammers in order to have late game power.

I'm not saying that that is the optimal way to go, but it seems that none of the AIs value hammers all that much. Its either Commerce or Food (for Specialists). And my observation is that it results in a weaker AI in the long-term. I just dont see how the AI would 'win' the game that way. Some shoot for Cultural Victory now (an awesome addition), but with the low hammer production, a Space Race victory is very unlikely.

As an aside its also very easy to beat the AI to late-game Wonders since the AI takes FOREVER to build them in its cities. I struggle to get the early game Wonders, but its easy to get Pentagon, Rock n Roll, Broadway, Space Elevator etc even when I'm behind in the tech race because the AI just cant build the large hammer items in a reasonable time when its production is low.

 

[Blake]

Sorry, Blake, are you saying that these bugs are now fixed in the currently unreleased build? If so, do you plan to release a quick bugfix version?

Traditionally (well within the short tradition of this project) we do release a bugfix build a few days after each main build.

 

[HardCoder]

Blake,

As another poster stated I do think there's a problem with the AI sallying units from besieged or threatened cities. One or two units will dart out of a city and commit suicide into the attackers, or mysteriously run off to do something else, and what was an imposing half dozen longbows becomes a couple longbows and a couple of catapults. I'm not sure that's the "baiting" behavior you describe.

 

[phungus420]

Good to hear the positive feedback :b:.

It looks like this building is reasonably good meta-balance wise (as in the AI doesn't play a severely disbalanced game). I suspect that this build will be the basis for the first stable release - bugfixes and minor tweaks only. There are problems with city attacking and there are problems with naval invasions and there are still problems with declaring war, no doubt, but gotta draw the line somewhere.

I have to agree, while I always wanted the AI to be capable of achieving a domination victory (and this build doesn't do that), this build feels like a finished product. It has some minor bug fixes, and I'm experience mass delay, like Modern era delay in the Renessainse, or the baiting bug (put please keep the AI's ability to sally forth, it's just that now if you split the stack with a 1 warrior bait unit, the AI thinks it can take the 1 unit stack, and ignores the main stack), they are little bugs that can be fixed. I as an end user will be happy if you tweak this build to set as the Better AI 1.0 release. It's a solid build, and I hope Fireaxis uses it like the original AI fixes, and does some AI bonus tweaks with it.

Any chance that when 1.0 is done, you'll continue on to create a later version that can achieve a domination win?

 

[HardCoder]

the baiting bug (put please keep the AI's ability to sally forth, it's just that now if you split the stack with a 1 warrior bait unit, the AI thinks it can take the 1 unit stack, and ignores the main stack)

Oh, that makes sense, that seems to be exactly what it's doing. It doesn't understand the whole threat.

 

[Elhoim]

Altough the AI is making a GREAT job managing units, in my last game it made a BIG mistake:



As you can see, it left a sieged city with only one defender in order to try to kill a chariot. Of course my praetoriands captured the city with ease.

Apart from that, and some very little strange city placements, the AI is doing a great job!!

 

[phungus420]

Altough the AI is making a GREAT job managing units, in my last game it made a BIG mistake:

As you can see, it left a sieged city with only one defender in order to try to kill a chariot. Of course my praetoriands captured the city with ease.

Yeah, as noted, you can bait the AI with a weak unit to have the defensive stack sally out. I would expect this is because the AI does not (or maybe cannot) differentiate between the two threats, and analyzes each. The baiting is definitely an exploit that needs fixing. Hopefully it can be fixed and still allow the AI to sally out, that's a huge improvement to AI defense, and is a major part of what makes the 1/1 build such a huge step up from previous better AI builds.

 

[klokwerk]

I definitely agree with the latest posters, the game has now more a 'finished product' feeling thanks to your latest build, Blake and Iustus.

A big thanks to you, I just played one of my most exciting civ games ever. Many AI wars on monarch, many vassalizations, great and difficult wars, it was really nice. I got Churchill, I managed to kill Gandhi easily (poor defense, small bug there), but then I had to fight the Mongols because they were becoming too powerful. Aztecs used this as an opportunity to attack me, it was well played from him. I managed to vassalize the Mongols anyway, and I thought I was cruising for an easy victory from there.

But no, Isabella, which was then attacked by Monty, decided to become a vassal of her buddhist friend Mansa Musa et voilà, Mansa is now first again. So I have to decide what to do, helping him to kill Monty, or helping Monty to kill him.

Good points :

- relatively frequent wars and vassalization
- AIs take other AIs'cities
- AIs are not bad at waging wars, much better than before 'BetterAI'
- wonders are built when they should. I managed to grab a small number of them and was often beaten at others, as I should

Bad points :

- defenders shouldn't leave their cities without high odds to survive and when they leave they should leave more defenders in the cities
- some builders cities are still left defended too poorly (only 1 or 2 defenders). More generally, AIs look a bit optimistic about their defense... It's all about threat assessment I guess
- powerful and warmonger AIs should be even more aggressive. Easy preys should be attacked more frequently. AI should exploit their weakness or vassalize them, like humans do. Powerful AIs should aim for domination / conquest.
- naval defense and offense still seem broken

Ideas :

- AIs should be a bit more aggressive when they just got their unique unit. It's often a good time to attack.
- some AIs could try to get a diplomatic win, by making most populated civs to like them. It looks hard to code, but you did it so well with the cultural victory...

 

[Mosharn]

Is anyone playing this over Multiplayer.
I attempted a Multiplayer Lan game last night with 1 other player.

We got roughly 300 turns into the game and We started to get out of sync errors. Everything ran perfect up untill then. You could reload the game and it woudl run a few more turns but would throw the sync error again.

I am also using Smartmap currently to generate my map.

Is there any way I could help debug this or a log file i may be able to tell any extra info on. I am guessing it has something to do with the AI in setting some random value localy and causes the two versions to go out of sync. (This is just a shot in the dark but seems to be something along that line) I am guessing most of you play this in Single Player.

I am using a Modified Difficulty. Basicaly the same as Noble but used Diety to give the computer an extra settler from the start. I am playing on a small map on a 3.8 ghz athlon machine with 2gb memory.

Let me know if anyone knows a fix for this or if you have experienced the same issues using this in a multiplayer game.

The AI was much better from what we had seen. It was alot more agressive especially at crossing water.

 

[jkp1187]

I have noticed that my game seems a little more crash-prone toward the end, although I've just been playing single player...and (unfortunately) I can't say that's a marked difference from the way it was in regular 2.08...or 1.61.... Or 1.0. Or Civ III.

 

[skankerm]

Is anyone playing this over Multiplayer.
I attempted a Multiplayer Lan game last night with 1 other player.

We got roughly 300 turns into the game and We started to get out of sync errors. Everything ran perfect up untill then. You could reload the game and it woudl run a few more turns but would throw the sync error again.

I am also using Smartmap currently to generate my map.

Is there any way I could help debug this or a log file i may be able to tell any extra info on. I am guessing it has something to do with the AI in setting some random value localy and causes the two versions to go out of sync. (This is just a shot in the dark but seems to be something along that line) I am guessing most of you play this in Single Player.

I am using a Modified Difficulty. Basicaly the same as Noble but used Diety to give the computer an extra settler from the start. I am playing on a small map on a 3.8 ghz athlon machine with 2gb memory.

Let me know if anyone knows a fix for this or if you have experienced the same issues using this in a multiplayer game.

The AI was much better from what we had seen. It was alot more agressive especially at crossing water.

I have also experienced OOS errors in multiplayer games almost every game at some point starting with the 12/21 build, before that it was rare if it all. Though I wouldn't have the first clue about fixing it. but it usually starts around the late middle ages and later, never early in the game

 

[Mosharn]

I have also experienced OOS errors in multiplayer games almost every game at some point starting with the 12/21 build, before that it was rare if it all. Though I wouldn't have the first clue about fixing it. but it usually starts around the late middle ages and later, never early in the game

skankerm,

Were you able to continue your game by reloading and just fighting through the Out of Sync errors? Or did you have to quit your game.

Reloads are fairly quick so if we can fight through them and there not happening ever 5 or 10 turns then it would be worth it to just fight through it for the improved AI.

Are you using smart map?

 

[Bursk]

AIs should be a bit more aggressive when they just got their unique unit. It's often a good time to attack.

Fear the Fast Worker Stack o' Doom!

 

[klokwerk]

Fear the Fast Worker Stack o' Doom!

Nice one ! Yeah, this one is an exception. But beware the pretorian rush anyway.

 

[skankerm]

skankerm,

Were you able to continue your game by reloading and just fighting through the Out of Sync errors? Or did you have to quit your game.

Reloads are fairly quick so if we can fight through them and there not happening ever 5 or 10 turns then it would be worth it to just fight through it for the improved AI.

Are you using smart map?

Id usually reload but it would go OOS within 2 turns or so. We would usually start again. no, im not using smart map just regular warlords with betterai. I dont know if it even the betterai causing it directly or indirectly. Just raw 2.08 warlords it might go OOS very rarely but its been much more requent since the 12/21 build, but it appears very random cause some games it goes great with no OOS but once one shows up its seems to keep coming back again