A Better AI.

[icemanjsg]

I'm not an Idiot mine is 100% in the custom assets i have replaced it and when i hover the cursor over my name in the game i dont see the better ai?

However, if i have replaced the customdl thingy in C:\Documents and Settings\....\My Documents\My Games\Warlords\CustomAssets ?

Are you positve if you don't see the betterai its not running when you replace?

 

[darrelljs]

when i hover the cursor over my name in the game i dont see the better ai?

Just hovering isn't enough, you have to hold the ALT key down. Make sure you hold the ALT key down before hovering too, it won't work if you just press ALT while hovering.

Darrell

 

[jkp1187]

A side effect of this is that its harder to get 'allies' in a war later in the game. Previously you could bribe AIs to attack an enemy with you and they would often provide sea harassment and occasional invasions. Now I usually get a 'we would have nothing to gain' response unless they share a border. This prevents the ability to bribe the AI (which indeed WOULD provide something to gain!). IMO, relax the restrictions overseas wars a bit more.

In my last game (1/1 build, Carthage/small/9 civs/Techtonics), Mehmed launched a late-game amphibious invasion of (rather distant) Korea (I'm talking around 1990AD), taking Seoul and burning Wonsan. (There were maybe 4 continents and several assorted smaller islands, some of which were isolated from the others on this map.) During my war with the Americans (which occurred toward the end), I didn't have trouble bribing Caesar and Napoleon into DoW'ing Roosevelt, too, even though they, too, were on the other side of the world from him.


I am not really seeing this "sally bug" that another poster referred to earlier. I've noticed that if I have a weak unit, the AI will tend to try to pick it off, but I've not seen it leave a city ungarrissoned while I was attacking.

I think that the AI is building an effective defense force. An attacker really has to develop his own "dagger" force to succeed, instead of throwing together an ad hoc force, which was sometimes possible in the 'vanilla' versions. Perhaps the AI needs to build an equal force of offensive units, and use them more effectively (i.e., more use of artillery to counter invading stacks?)

 

[Uncle_Joe]

During my war with the Americans (which occurred toward the end), I didn't have trouble bribing Caesar and Napoleon into DoW'ing Roosevelt, too, even though they, too, were on the other side of the world from him

Oh I know its certainly possible to see invasions, but honestly I no longer feel a 'threat' from distant Civs as I once did. I can routinely turn down their requests and demands and run relations into the ground and its very rare for them to DoW me. In the past, I knew that even if they wouldnt be overly successful, even a limited war would slow me down.

I am not really seeing this "sally bug" that another poster referred to earlier.

I haven't seen it either in 3 games played (although I havent done a lot of long-term sieging either...usually one turn of bombardment and then the overrun.

 

[Wodan]

Fascinating... I just paid my buddy Brennus to help me fight off Cyrus. Much to my surprise, I see Brennus send over a stack of cats with a few escorting longbows. And, I mean a stack. About 15 cats, with 4 longbows. Amazing. He's doing exactly what many humans would do.

BTW he appears to be totally ignoring his UU. I don't have a huge problem with that, because his UU is marginal, and the cat/longbow tactic is pretty proven.

Wodan

 

[jkp1187]

Oh I know its certainly possible to see invasions, but honestly I no longer feel a 'threat' from distant Civs as I once did. I can routinely turn down their requests and demands and run relations into the ground and its very rare for them to DoW me. In the past, I knew that even if they wouldnt be overly successful, even a limited war would slow me down.

Okay, I understand what you mean there. I was expecting Mehmed to DoW me in the last game -- I was on the cusp of a spaceship win, and according to the power graph he was stronger than the rest of the world combined. I had a huge navy; he had a huge navy and army. If he'd been able to land in force on my home island, he might have stopped the spaceship win (although I spread out the parts-building to several overseas holdings, so maybe not.) Still, the wiser AI decision would've been to attack me even if our relationship was "pleased" (versus his "annoyed" with Korea -- who was also building a spaceship, albeit slower.) I breathed a huge sigh of relief when he went after Korea. Mehmed was right across an 'English Channel' sort of body of water from me, whereas Korea was halfway around the world.

I suppose it made sense to the AI, since our relationship was cordial, and everyone seemed to hate Korea....

I haven't seen it either in 3 games played (although I havent done a lot of long-term sieging either...usually one turn of bombardment and then the overrun.

I ended up doing a rather longish seige of Washington when I fought the Americans in the last war. (Just didn't bring enough troops in with the first wave of galleons.) There were some troops shifting around, but nothing major, and certainly none came out of Washington that I could tell. Roosevelt did try to hit me with some seige units (two or three cats at a time, which was good,) but there's only so much that catapults could do against grenadiers and rifles. Once Washington fell, it was just a matter of time before his other three cities went.

ALso -- I am finding that taking on "protective" civs is now doubly annoying, since the AI now spams defenders, and all of those guys are already pretty buff...

I am still playing on Noble, for whatever that's worth. I have so far won a domination, spaceship, and diplomatic (a "true" diplomatic, not a domination by-UN win.) Going to try for a culture then move up to prince....

 

[icemanjsg]

My mistake sorry, thanks for the help it worked!

 

[HardCoder]

Prince, continents, low sea level, etc., I am chugging along in the mid 1800s preparing to pwn the space race. This has been a well played game. I snagged Assembly Line long before anyone else and I am starting to pull by everyone in score. There will be no looking back. Napoleon is welcome to try a sea invasion, not gonna work; I can shrug off any attackers. I notice "hey, those guys are right, the builders like Mansa Musa just aren't getting the techs done the same anymore."

1867: Mansa Musa has won a Cultural Victory!!!

OK

 

[Uncle_Joe]

Yeah, the Cultural Victory AI is pretty amusing. But in the end, I dont think its good to have many Civs attempting this. If you use Spies you can see they are basically stagnant from the time they start their 'culture push'. In my recent games, they are running 80%-90% Culture trying for the win (as one would expect). But the result is that they fall behind in tech and troop upgrades and are quite easy to take out (if you know they are doing it).

The 'Winning' Screen shows who is most in danger of winning a Cultural victory AND the top 3 cities that are doing it. That makes it quite easy to build a quick invasion force and raze those offending cities. Yes, sometimes these cities are packed to the gills with defending units, but the all-out Cultural push usually ensures that the bulk of those units will be obsolete.

Like you, I've lost a game to a Mansa Cultural Victory back when it was first added (I never even thought to check for it). But since then its been quite easy to prevent and in fact, I think it actually hampers some of the usually better Space Race AIs.

The other side effect is that it more or less requires a military response to prevent. There is little hope of playing a peaceful game if someone is shooting for a Cultural win since its very rare to be able to attain any of the other victory conditions before they win (Conquest notwithstanding, but that is indeed, a 'military response'. )

 

[HardCoder]

If' I'd even thought about it I could have had my bosom buddy Shaka attack him - again (I already started that war twice before). Yeah, somehow Shaka and I were two peas in a pod this game. I never attacked/was never attacked by another civ. I normally check the Winning screen regularly starting in the 1800s or so but apparently I hadn't this game. I only saw one Legendary Culture message go by. Maybe his last two cities went Legendary on the same turn, not that it would matter.

It would have been really difficult to take him out if he'd been on a different continent. 1867 is pretty early.

I don't think it matters whether a builder beats you with a Cultural victory or Space Race. Both are pretty humbling.

The 'Winning' Screen shows who is most in danger of winning a Cultural victory AND the top 3 cities that are doing it. That makes it quite easy to build a quick invasion force and raze those offending cities. Yes, sometimes these cities are packed to the gills with defending units, but the all-out Cultural push usually ensures that the bulk of those units will be obsolete.

 

[sveint]

The sally bug is reproducable and hence exploitable. You probably will not see it in a normal game unless you are out-teched by the AI. But go into the world editor and put a warrior down just outside attack range [edit: place it so that the garrison would need two turns to reach it] of a city and most of the defenders will leave to attack it.

I played on monarch and attacked a city garrisoned by longbows and all but one left the city to chase an axeman. They killed the axeman next turn - and I took the city.

 

[tofof]

I have not looked into the custom start point stuff in Smartmaps to see if there are any weird conflicts there, its possible, but not highly likely. I do seem to recall that SmartMaps does some unconventional things as far as map scripts go.

To add some clarification, since I play with SmartMap:

You won't see the benefits of the improved start placements and other map script improvements that betterAI provides if you use the SmartMap map script. It overrides those methods and does its own implementations. However, Smartmap functions identically with or without BetterAI installed, and is just as usable as it ever was.

 

[Zoolooman]

Stalin, meanwhile, is building almost every wonder. (!!) And of course there are now garrisons of 7 longbows on my borders.

Yea. The amount of defense that the AI prepares is not fun to play against. I used to play Monarch, but now I only play Prince. The problem is that the AI's production is never wasted.

In order to upgrade units, a human must change from science to gold, run a great merchant, or simply spend more production to build new units. An AI upgrades units at something like 1/10th the regular price, so in one-tenth of the time, it can use every hammer at maximum strength.

In fact, for every warrior or archer the AI builds, it *saves* gobs of production. Upgrades are so cheap that it's better to build an ancient era unit and upgrade it than it is to build new units.

I'm not so sure that was fun.

It isn't. These AI upgrades have removed the "idiocy" which made it fun to play at Emperor and Monarch. With the original AI, the competition was finesse and optimization (the human) vs. brute numerical advantages (the AI). Now we've got an AI that gets both finesse and brute numerical advantages, and it isn't always fun to play against.

The cheap upgrades were the last straw, taking invasion from "hard" to "impossible."

I hate the cheap upgrades, the AI production bonus, the constant defender whipping, and the huge preemptive defensive stacks that occur. I play very well, but sometimes it feels as if the AI does the impossible, running war production and building an empire at the same time.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

Well, as I've said before, it takes all of 5 mins to reduce the AI upgrade or production bonuses.

I'd MUCH rather see an AI where I have to remove bonuses than to continually be moving up in 'difficulty' solely by throwing more bonuses at it. Making the AI more efficient means it doesnt need quite the bonus anymore. So reduce your difficulty level or edit the bonuses that the AI gets. Its really not that hard...

 

[sveint]

Given enough progress, the AI should need little or no bonuses....

 

[Blake]

I've made a new set of handicaps, these are actually tuned for the NEXT build rather than the 1/1 build but I'm going to attach them to this post now (I'll upload separately to Sourceforge after the next build is out which should be today or early tomorrow).

AI combat bonus against Animals reduced from 70% to 40% on all levels.
AI combat bonus against barbs reduced from 40% to 25% on all levels.

AI pays 50% for unit upgrades on all levels (vs decreasing to 5% at Deity)
AI pays 50% for unit supply on all levels (vs decreasing to 10% at Deity).
AI pays 80% inflation on all levels (vs decreasing to 20% at Deity)
War Weariness increased (on Deity now 50% War Weariness instead of 20%).
Growth bonuses reduced (on Deity requires 80% to grow instead of 60%).

Prince: Free explore unit removed.
Monarch: Free worker removed.
Emperor: Free worker removed.
Immortal: One less free worker.
Deity: One less free worker.

If you wonder at taking away the free worker - the AI is now very good at training an early worker (including going worker first when appropriate) so it really doesn't need the freebie worker and this will also make early wonders less unattainable for the human.

Other bonuses are left alone, for now anyway. The aim is eliminating the worst exploits of the AI which a human simply cannot do (ie super early wonders, massive unit upgrades, endless war etc).

 

[Powerslave]

I've made a new set of handicaps, these are actually tuned for the NEXT build rather than the 1/1 build but I'm going to attach them to this post now (I'll upload separately to Sourceforge after the next build is out which should be today or early tomorrow).

Thanks for the "official" handicaps, Blake. This should give us a good baseline. You might consider amending the first post to reference the handicap mod. That'll give newer players a better shot at seeing it (hopefully).

 

[sveint]

Thanks Blake, very good work. Looking forward to the next build.

 

[zarakand]

I'm not sure if there is any solution for this, but I just switched my monitor's resolution from 1280x1024 to 1024x768 and am now unable to see the information that crops up when I mouse over an AI's name with alt.

For example, the top half of the information in the left hand panel is off of the screen. I can't go back to 1280x1024 since I'm trying this new thing where I keep the computer monitor at the recommended 18 inches to avoid eye strain. Ever since I found the Better AI mod, I've been spending way too much time playing Civ. Anyway, Am I just SOL?

 

[cf_nz]

I'm experiencing a repeatable CTD in my current game. I started the game with a build from revision 241 and continued it today after updating to revision 247 (as I've merged your code with that of other mods BetterAI may not be the cause of course).

I think it is war related as this is the 2nd crash I've had since restarting this game, both have come several turns after starting an attack. I have saves from the dozen or so turns, let me know if you want any.

I've just downloaded revision 248, I'll rebuild the .dll and see if it makes a difference.