A Better AI.

[karlis]

Probably AI could also sometimes on random mood swings go for blitzkrieg?
It is well known that players tend to defend their borders better than insider cities. So Ai could try to bypass strong border cities and move inland with some fast units.

 

[Thyrwyn]

Better AI civs use the warmongering variables stored for each leader to make more decisions, so the personality of each leader can have an even bigger effect on decisions such as when to go to war, when to accept peace, how much to value peace, and so on.

That explains Shaka's behavior in the last several games in which he has started near me: he keeps showing up at my doorstep with stacks of 6-8 archers and declaring war before I have managed to research 2 or 3 techs. The last was a Monarch game as Hatty (no horses at all within 30 tiles of my capitol) - that ended poorly.

 

[DrJambo]

Blake and Iustus.
I played with the latest build and I saw that Even when the AI is going to capture a City, and he brings tons of trebuchets(35 in my case) he doesn't attack with lot of them. and after the turn ends he keeps the trebuchets near the city so I caould easily destroy them.

Yep I've noticed this too.

 

[Wodan]

BTW I've been looking into the overlapping more. Have just opened up worldbuilder and looked at all the AI city site placements on the entire planet for this latest game with the 12-9 Better AI. (It's 500BC or so.)

With one exception, every single one of the AI cities have overlap.

Is it just me? It just seems strange for the AI to overlap when there are gaps and perfectly good unused tiles on the other side.

Wodan

 

[HardCoder]

Yes, this is really a tricky situation. I will see if I can get it to work a bit better.

-Iustus

Especially considering that emphasizing production seems to go all out for food if the city isn't near its happy cap.

 

[kettyo]

Jettio, you simple do not know or even read pach notes. Try trade yourself and compate with original game.

Simular trade in original game tend to bring about 2 times bigger + for fair trade then in 2.08.

You could be right but i can easily achieve pleased attitude with tech trading with even the latest Blake/Iustus AI.
I don't really remember Warlords 1.0 techtrade but it might gave too much pluses for trade bribing.
In the latest BetterAI i could get something like +4 with a single techtrade in the AI's favor for some degree on Noble. It often changes attitude rating up by one.
So nothing to really miss here i think.

I'm a bit confused about starting locs.
I remember in 1.0 Hatty starting in the Tundra and the such but i'm not sure if something was really there about starting optimization just i don't remember that.
I pass that to others

 

[kettyo]

Better AI civs use the warmongering variables stored for each leader to make more decisions, so the personality of each leader can have an even bigger effect on decisions such as when to go to war, when to accept peace, how much to value peace, and so on.

Don't you say you're using the warmongerrespect values for decision making?
I've set this to 0 for all leaders so i'm screwing up AI decisions?

 

[kettyo]

I see the new governor works like filling the city up with population first if possible and only after go for mines and cottages.
So i crippled myself by building farms in advance which i used to do before because governor took citizens from mines to the new farms getting my production to fall.
So with the current governor you have to careful with advance improvement of your city area.

I don't know if it could be done anything with it or it's good this way just have to adapt to it.

I think the current emphasize buttons could be better if they worked like a different governor approach for different kind of cities not just focusing on one specific goal.
I suppose most of us use 3 kinds of cities generally.
Farming cities for specialists, production cities with lots of mines, watermills and forest, and commercial cities with lots of cottages.
It would be the best if there would be 3 different governor code for the 3 basic city types and we could choose which kind of city we'll develop out of the given one and choose the corresponding governor to apply to it.
But maybe i just make things too complicated.

 

[Mutineer]

I allready argue that warmonder respect is absolutly nessesary balancing feature. it's making it less lickly for warmonders to declare war on each other and get locked in unfinnable war for ever, why peacemonders run away.

 

[kettyo]

I allready argue that warmonder respect is absolutly nessesary balancing feature. it's making it less lickly for warmonders to declare war on each other and get locked in unfinnable war for ever, why peacemonders run away.

I disagree.

1.) Because peacemongers build a lot less units their power rating will be lower than another warmonger and warmongers will hate the peaceful regardless of the warmongerrespect setting so if they can choose they will
attack a peaceful and will attack another warmonger only if there is no better attack option, no easier target.

2.) In many games there are only warmonger kind of AI civs (or at least in your continent) which will mean with warmongerrespect a most surreal universal friendship / brotherhood of the warmonger AI civs no matter there are nowhere peaceful or racionalist rivals. So there must be a good possibility for warmongers to attack each other at least under different religion if there's no easier prey on the horizon.

 

[Mutineer]

No intentional changes were made to reduce the distinctiveness of each personality.

The one area that was somewhat changed is that AIs are less willing to give away all of their money in trades. Now, you can argue that this is an improvement in their intelligence, in that they now realize that that money can be used to run at a higher research rate. Or you can argue, as I think you are, that this change makes it harder for the human player to tech trade, ruining the tech trading aspect of Civ4. I do not feel that it goes too far on this point, but I am certainly willing to discuss it.
-Iustus

About money.

In order to remove Old civ strategy of buying tech when they become cheap enogth (From many prerequisites, many civ know them) insted of self researching them Firaxes greatly devalue money.

So, buying tach for money stop to be a valid startegy and become economically bad.

As alternative use of money trade it become posible to sell your own tech for money to fiel you own research.

This strategy was only posible to use on higher levels, where AI had some money. Now, AI begin to use money to run deficit research. What does it mean? It mean that money now become complitly useless. It can not be used to by tech or send civ to war, as AI does not value money mach and you never can get any money out of AI.

Please, do not tell me that it is inrich the game. Making Feature complitly useless never inrich the game.

You forgot to do balancing act. If AI know how to use money well then you should increase value of money, so, one can actially use this feature.


One can not make changes with out looking on inderect conciquences of them, and I am sorry to say from discussion there no one ever think about system as a whole befor making changes.

 

[scu98rkr]

Mutineer from the sound of it you are playing at quite high levels ie Emperor. From the sound of it you are almost using an AI exploit to fund your research.

ie the AI doesn't realise that by buying new techs at more gold than there worth hes actually just funding your research.

The point of Blakes Mod is too improve the AI, so the AI plays more like a human, so that all CIVs are equal not so all the AI's play one way and the human player just exploits their failings.

I personally dont play at Emperor level. From the sound of it Blake has managed to remove one more AI exploit, which is the whole point of this mod.
If you can no longer play at Emperor drop down a level simple.

 

[Iustus]

New Build 12/12 on sourceforge

release notes:

Starting Point Changes:
- Rewrite of minimum distance stuff to make it more flexible.
- Players should not start very close together.
- Players should not be jammed into unusual spots.
- Changed the food bonus normalizer to be fairer on very dry starts.

AI Production Changes:
- The AI will train workers much more readily on Prince and lower difficulties.
- The AI will attempt to grow to a sensible size before stalling growth for workers/settlers.
- The AI will be less likely to build useless lighthouses.
- AI wonder building madness toned down - the AI will still build wonders early but not so obsessively.
- The AI will be more sensible when it comes to whipping (or not whipping) wonders.
- the AI will build less cultural items in the top city, saving it for the
weaker cities when pursing cultural victory

AI Research Selection Changes:
- Worker techs valued much more sensibly, the AI takes food into account.
- The AI recognizes bonuses which will soon be included within their borders.
- Fishing value is more context-sensitive, much less valuable inland.
- Founding a religion is valued more if it's the next tech rather than 2 techs away.
- The value boost from wonders/buildings is somewhat capped to reduce "Masonry Obsession"
- Techs which give a civic may be valued more (particulary Bronze Working and Monarchy)
- The AI will pursue strategic resources (ie weighting Iron Working more if it fails to get Copper or Horses).

War Changes:
- AIs will prefer going to war with neighbors, they will be very unlikely
to go to war with a target that is very far away

Strategic Changes:
- AIs with favorite civic preventing religion spread will be less likely to
pursue cultural victory

Misc Changes:
- Autoworker now improves food resources with higher priority.
- Autoworker should do a better job of roading things up.
- AI are more flexible and will attack with smaller stacks in the earlier eras.
- Fixed a bug with Coal trade value.

-Iustus

 

[Nay]

I openly admit that i did not read through 43 pages before posting, so please do not get upset if some(every)thing of the following has already been mentioned.

.) City placement.

Its not fun to play against 8 opponents 4 of which have chosen to settle in the eternal ice with 1-3 workable tiles, thus effectively not taking part ib the game.
I think it cant be hard to add a line of code that says "do not settle unless city can realilstically grow above 15 while producing hammers" (although im not a programmer, so it actually may be hard).


.) civs refusing to end war.

Civs tend to not end a war unless you take one of their cities.
Despite breaking their 100th unit on your walls, they still refuse to let it be.
Something along the lines of "If, after 20 turns you made absolutly NO progress (i.e. taking a single city), consider peace. rebuild army and come again when you feel ready."


.) taking to the field.

cats are nice, trebs are killer.
make AI build and USE them.
Ai usually comes with (at most) 1 cat/treb, and bombards 1 time/turn, taking ages to achieve anything. in the meantime, i sally forth and cripple them.
Make them build 3-5 siege units per target city (i do) and use them effectivly (break walls in a maximum of 3 turns, then suicide them and send in the rest).


.) build units in response to opponent.

AI usually asks for open borders. they will know which units their future opponent has, so they should build counter-units (we all do).
i see you have horse-archers, so i mass spearme, so you mass axes, soi mass chariots.....


thats all i can think of at the moment.

 

[Iustus]

About money.

In order to remove Old civ strategy of buying tech when they become cheap enogth (From many prerequisites, many civ know them) insted of self researching them Firaxes greatly devalue money.

We have not changed the value of money. A tech will be worth more or less the same amount of money with our mod or without it. (Easy enough to test, at your point in the game, see what tech trades are available). Then add Better AI mod (or remove it), and check again, I would be suprised if there was a significant difference.

So, buying tach for money stop to be a valid startegy and become economically bad.

This is absolutely not true. If you have a ton of cash, you can buy techs for money. The only change is that in the past, the AI would do nothing with the money you gave it, other than try to buy other techs with it (or give it back to you for your techs). Now, the AI will also use that money to fund its own deficit research, making much better use of it.

As alternative use of money trade it become posible to sell your own tech for money to fiel you own research.

This is a bit trickier, because AIs actually use their money, they dont just hoard it and never spend it. That said, if you pay attention, you can easily catch an AI with a bunch of money to spend on something. Good times to do this is when someone finishes a wonder (perhaps they were building and got a refund), when you see one of their great merchants on a trade mission, just after peace, or after AIs have traded for some cash.

This strategy was only posible to use on higher levels, where AI had some money. Now, AI begin to use money to run deficit research. What does it mean? It mean that money now become complitly useless.

I disagree. The value of money has not been changed. The only real change is that in the past, AIs would do nothing with their money, they just sat on it until a trade happened to come along. Even trades they initiate do not start with, "do I have money". They start with, roll a die, if its a 1, ask for a fair trade, if you can find one. What this meant is that AIs would quite often never use their excess cash, it would just be sitting around until the human got around to taking it.

It can not be used to by tech or send civ to war, as AI does not value money mach and you never can get any money out of AI.

This has not changed in BetterAI. You should absolutely be able to buy an AI into war, just as you could before. Better AI civs value money the same as the default game.

Please, do not tell me that it is inrich the game. Making Feature complitly useless never inrich the game.

If the behavior was as you say, then it might be a problem, but I do not think it is behaving in that fashion. Have you actually tried the Better AI dll? If not, I suggest you try it out, and see if it behaves in the fashion you describe. I would like to see concrete examples, with screenshots and save game files, preferably right before the questionable behavior.

At a minimum, take a game you are playing in regular, load our mod, and see if you get different trading choices. If you do, post the screenshots here of the differences.

You forgot to do balancing act. If AI know how to use money well then you should increase value of money, so, one can actially use this feature.

One can not make changes with out looking on inderect conciquences of them, and I am sorry to say from discussion there no one ever think about system as a whole befor making changes.

I can assure you we are careful about balance. There is no question that as the AI behavior changes, becoming 'smarter' it is going to make it harder to get away with some things which were easy in the default game. If you like to play at or near deity level, winning by exploiting the stupid behavior of the AI, then this mod might not be for you. The whole point of this mod is to make the AI behave in a smarter fashion, so that you can go to an easier difficulty level, where the AI gets less of a handicap advantage, and still have a challenging game.

Back to tech trading: if it is harder to exploit the stupidity of AIs to fund your research while gaining nothing out of it, that is a good thing. If tech trading becomes completely removed, that is a bad thing. I believe that we are falling somewhere in the middle, but if that is not the case, I would like to see specific examples.

-Iustus

 

[Iustus]

I openly admit that i did not read through 43 pages before posting, so please do not get upset if some(every)thing of the following has already been mentioned.

.) City placement.

Its not fun to play against 8 opponents 4 of which have chosen to settle in the eternal ice with 1-3 workable tiles, thus effectively not taking part ib the game.
I think it cant be hard to add a line of code that says "do not settle unless city can realilstically grow above 15 while producing hammers" (although im not a programmer, so it actually may be hard).

Better AI already makes significant changes both in starting spots for civs, and their likelyhood of founding those really awful cities when the good spots fill up. They are still going to fill the map, but they are much less likely to found a city on someone else's borders because of some bonus resources, if those resources have so much culture already, that there is no chance of stealing them.

.) civs refusing to end war.

Civs tend to not end a war unless you take one of their cities.
Despite breaking their 100th unit on your walls, they still refuse to let it be.
Something along the lines of "If, after 20 turns you made absolutly NO progress (i.e. taking a single city), consider peace. rebuild army and come again when you feel ready."

We have made a few changes here, but not as many as you might think. I suspect that you tend to run pretty low on units, making you pretty low on the power graph. If an AI thinks it is much more powerful than you, then it is not going to accept peace until the power ratio changes significantly. That said, if you kill 100 units of an AI, especially if they are all inside your borders, then the AI will definitely think it is losing the war and seek peace. This should be true in both the default game and in Better AI.

That said, I think you will find with Better AI that a civ uses the units it does have better, so when it comes for your cities, you have a good chance of actually losing them.

Just to be clear, while losing a city is a big war cost, it is not more than losing 100 units. It is more than losing 10 units though, perhaps you exaggerated a bit?

.) taking to the field.

cats are nice, trebs are killer.
make AI build and USE them.
Ai usually comes with (at most) 1 cat/treb, and bombards 1 time/turn, taking ages to achieve anything. in the meantime, i sally forth and cripple them.
Make them build 3-5 siege units per target city (i do) and use them effectivly (break walls in a maximum of 3 turns, then suicide them and send in the rest).

Take a look at some of the screenshots posted, big stacks of seige units are if anything too common now. When you see a stack with 20 seige units in it, you are going to panic!

.) build units in response to opponent.

AI usually asks for open borders. they will know which units their future opponent has, so they should build counter-units (we all do).
i see you have horse-archers, so i mass spearme, so you mass axes, soi mass chariots.....

This is a real tricky issue. It does not really do any of this currently, instead it just tries to build pretty balanced stacks that can handle anything. The problem with doing this too much is that it is going to be less nimble than a human to see that things have changed. Humans are really good at seeing a tiny piece and extrapolating from there, AIs are not, they really need to see the whole picture, and we do not want to let the AIs see through the fog to see actually what you have built. Now, you can tell if someone has horses, iron, etc through the trading interface, so that might be one way to weight things, if your opponent is connected with you.

Doanload the latest build and give it a try.

-Iustus

 

[scu98rkr]

Hi I want to play this mod mulitplayer LAN against my house mate.

First let me give you some background information

My housemate is considerable less good than me. To even things up I decided to make him the romans with 7 traits.

I copied and paste the LeadheadsInfo.xml to the appropriate directory in custom assets on both computers and edited it so that Julius Caesar had spiritual,creative,philisophical,charasmatic,financial,organised and agressive.

When I went to play a single player game on BOTH computers I could choose julius caesar and he would have all 7 traits no probs.

However when I went to play a mulitplayer game it would report in the start screen he had seven traits but when loaded would revert to the original 2 traits.

So I thought I'd make it into a mod, So I made a mod folder on both computers and made the correct directories and added the leaderheadinfo.xml file however the same problem occured.

Eventually I just put my modded leadheadinfo.xml file in the C:\program files\firaxis\civ4\warlords\assets\xml\civs folder on BOTH computers. Then I tried a mulitplayer game it reported on both computers that our files didnt match and were modded even though they were exactly the same they just werent original.

However the game ran fine, and Julius had all 7 traits and currently were about 1600 and things are pretty even which is what I wanted.

However I now what to use this mod. Where do I put the .dll for LAN mulitplayer, I tried just putting it straight into the Assets (not custom assets) folder but this crashed the game before it even loaded.

Mulitplayer LAN seems to ignore the custom assets when I try to start a game, as well as ignoring it if I try to load it as a mod.

What do you suggest.

 

[scu98rkr]

also is there any way to tell this mod has loaded once your in the game, (other than the different AI behaviour)

 

[Quagga]

That said, if you pay attention, you can easily catch an AI with a bunch of money to spend on something. Good times to do this is when someone finishes a wonder (perhaps they were building and got a refund), when you see one of their great merchants on a trade mission, just after peace, or after AIs have traded for some cash.

When I'm strapped for cash, I pay attention to the "wonder built in a far away land" messages just for this reason. It works.

In a game I was playing a couple days ago, a Great Merchant wandered into my territory. My first thought was how to stop him, since I didn't want my neighbor to get the cash. Decided against that. Then the GM cashed in. I traded a tech (can't remember what, but nothing great) for 1700 gold. I thought it was a very nice deal.

 

[Newcomer24]

The new build looks really awesome, great work!