Aggressive AI = The Real Civ?

[FrancisMarion]

You're not listening. What you're saying is true if and only if you are going for a Domination or Conquest win. These are the only circumstances underwhich playing with Aggressive AI is necessary. Why? Because the default AI thinks this is a turn-based historical simulation with a war mechanic, not a wargame that has a history mechanic. If you play the game like a wargame, then that's your lookout, not the AI's.

Here, look, play the game on your normal difficulty with the default AI and go for any win other than Domination or Conquest.

If you plan to go to war at any point during the game, Normal AI setting is easier.

 

[Bad Brett]

I must really suck at this game, because I find it real challenging to "slaughter" the AI's on Deity, even with copper near my capital.

 

[Lurking Liu]

If you plan to go to war at any point during the game, Normal AI setting is easier.

Wrong. Normal AI is only easier if you plan on making war your only strategy. The AI still builds enough units to adequately defend itself unless you're rush, rush, rushing. If you've got 15 Axemen and you've only just researched Iron Working, then you're rushing and you should be playing Aggressive AI. But if you're not playing the Zerg civ, you'll still be challenged and even lose.

EDIT: Come to that, the AI builds enough units to adequately defend itself and give you a run for your money on the offense.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I think this is a pretty biased and crappy point of view. I'm tired of following this logic that somehow the best game is a multiplayer game, and that the perfect AI must play like a human. While we're about it, why not get rid of diplomacy too? Why should the AI do stupid things like care about religion? All it should care about is trying to win in any way it could. It should also gang up on the most powerful civ. Welcome to the nostalgic world of Civ2!

Personally, I hate having to fight wars the whole game. It makes the game draggy and more tiring to play, especially when I'm busy with real life. If I find that I'm steamrolling the AI most of the time on a difficulty level, my reaction would be to move up a level. So what if I can still rush a neighbour relatively easily? The AI's bonuses on a higher level means it will still be a challenge to keep up with the rest. And who says the AI now are helpless? It loves to spam units as much as it can and whip units like crazy when attacked, which partly accounts for the slower teching.

I'm sorry. I don't think Aggressive AI = the real Civ, and I despise the term "sandbox" AI. It's not the first time that someone has implied some sort of an ego problem on the part of players like me, that we only play to win. The fact is, I win maybe 50% of my games now, even though I play with the "sandbox-oh-so-generously-dumb" AI. I just picked a difficulty level that will still pose a challenge to me.

I've been putting a lot of thought into this thread as I'm reading the posts, and although I'd like to put it a little more gently than Aelf, I have to agree. I've been playing on Noble with Aggressive AI on and I'm still steamrolling my enemies. However, when I try to move up to Monarch, I get my ass literally handed to me on a silver platter when it comes to teching and gold. I have to continuously build armies and end up going to war for my allies. I am sort of a war-mongerer, but i'd rather have a challenge maintaining a tech lead and gold in the coffers while building a force necessary to invade other civs (who will have larger armies anyway given the higher level.)

I have not yet tried to move up a level and turn off the aggressive AI. I will definitely try this on my next game as it may prove to be the combination I need to move up.

 

[winddbourne]

Well said. As I've petitioned before, a very simple option to add would be a "random AI aggression level" option ot go along with random AI selection and random AI personality options. The argument about which AI is "harder" is silly, one is no harder than the other if you know what they do, and can use the appropriate counter-strategies equally well. In other words the problem is predictability. If you just make the aggression profile of each AI (separately) random, you've removed most of that ability to predict & thus use those canned optimal strategies.

I haven't read past this yet but I had to reply, sorry if what I say is a repeat. But the predictablity option is why I keep pushing for multiple AI's. Sometimes people don't understand me, so I'm probably not explaining myself well. But what I mean by an "AI" is a specific playstyle used by the computer, things they are good at, and strategies they generally use.

Having more than one playstyle for each AI is a good thing. Then you never know what they are actually going to pull off.

 

[SickCycle]

I never played WoW.. I did play Asherons Call though, and we use to say the same thing Except it actually did take skill.. unlike WoW.

You could max a characters lvl at 126 but they kept earning xp so it really didnt mean anything but anyway, we use to level up characters to 126 then throw them on ebay and people would pay 300$-3,000$ dollars for the character and end up selling them a couple months later b/c they couldn't leave the lifestone for more then five minutes.. It was hilarious.

We would camp them at the lifestones and just smoke them for fun, someone I use to know actually would do that constantly with his rerolls that were half there level till they resold the character for half what they bought it for and then he'd buy it and sell it at the high price again.

We were geniuses, I know..

 

[hecubus]

I never played WoW.. I did play Asherons Call though, and we use to say the same thing Except it actually did take skill.. unlike WoW.

But if you've never played it, how do you know it takes less skill than the other game you used to play? OH! That's right, you used to play it so it must have taken skill.

I think you've proven my point, thanks.

 

[axident]

Agg AI isn't necessarily harder, if you are prepared for it. I wasn't in my current Emperor game (Big and Small, Normal speed, Std size, Islands mixed in, no vassal states, Agg AI, else default).

Charlie was the Monty of the game and amassed a giant army and pummeled Maya into peace. I was trying to tech up and even won the Liberalism race and got to musketeers first, as Napolean.

Then my world came crashing down as Charlie DoW on me and three massive stacks marched on one of my best cities which I had designated a future Ironworks city. In normal games, on standard maps, several CG crossbowmen, a few musketeers, and some pikes can hold off most enemy stacks long enough for reinforcements to save the day. But Charlie's army threw over a hundred units at me in a short timeframe: many cats and trebs, followed by mass waves of CR-promoted macemen, elephants, crossbowmen, and even some longbowmen for good measure. Muskets are too damned weak and I couldn't get to Rifling fast enough, so I eventually ceded the contested city to lick my wounds... only to have my OTHER neighbor, Hammurabi, attack. I was able to hold off his army, but it weakened me and it wasn't long before Charlie re-declared on me and captured another city. I had just gotten to Rifling and switched to Nationalism and built and drafted a heavy volume of Rifles, some of which I parked in a forest next to the recently-captured city and got to Woodsman III and then recaptured that city.

Eventually my huge volume of riflemen wore down Charlie's army to the point where Hammurabi dogpiled onto him. I didn't have enough siege to retake the original city I lost to Charlie, but I pillaged enough and killed enough of his units to get him to sue for peace and throw me back my own city.

I teched up and eventually overran Charlie with artillery, MGs, rifles, infantry, and then tanks, with the rest of the world to follow.

If I had to do it again I would have spammed more units and Charlie would have DoW on someone else. But that's pretty much all that would have changed; Agg AI is still pretty stupid, as it proved by attacking my riflemen parked in the forest outside of the city that I had recently lost, when there was no need to do so. I hadn't played Agg AI in a long time. Most Emperor games I do great in all eras of wars.

 

[MarkM]

I don't see the value of random levels of aggression. I mean if you randomly got a few normal AI next to a few Aggressive AI... you'd just end up with a lot of dead normal AI and a few Aggressive AI with nice big empires.

Perhaps you would in some cases (I would argue in others you might not, because if those non-aggressive AIs don't' get attacked right away -- the aggressive AIs are busy with other prey -- maybe the tech lead they build up means THEY eventually become the nice big empires (with really advanced units instead of a lot of them). But the point is to increase variability and unpredictability of the experience, isn't it? Doesn't this do that? And if you think the point is more simply for it to be harder, and you believe what you wrote would always be true ... wouldn't "a few Aggressive AI with nice big empires" be harder to beat than a lot of Aggressive AI with small empires??? Wouldn't this possibility partially defeat the canned strategy of beating the Aggressive AI, just survive the early eras and come & get them later when they are hopelessly outteched? If they can get to be big enough, maybe they can keep up in the tech race just through sheer size of empire (vs. quality of infrastructure).

Aggressive AI doesn't means every one is a bloodthirsty killing machine. It means that warlike civs will kick ass, and peaceful civs will have larger armies to defend themselves from said warlike civs. Random Personalities changes this around.

With Random personalities and Aggressive AI, the AI aggression is still random because each leader has the personality of someone else. The aggression of any given AI is determined by their personality. Therefore, with random aggression, Gandhi may be a bloodythirsty killing machine one game, and docile the next.

"The aggression of any given AI is determined by their personality." I'm willing to bet that this statement by you is simply not true. Again I ask you (and I see others have asked), how do you know these things?

I don't know all the details of how the CIv AIs are specifically programmed, but as I wrote earlier, I have programmed AIs before (both decision tree pruning and neural net). I assume that the different AI personalities in civ are a result of different weightings applied to the same AI ruleset (determining probability of a decision path being chosen). In other words, maybe gandhi has a higher weighting towards peaceful pursuits in the probabilities. But the options (the choices the AI can make) are still the same, it's just that one personality is more likely (has a higher probability, as a result of a weighting multiplier) to pursue one path than another one may. Everything I have ever read in these forums supports that conclusion, in fact dj_anon is publishing these weighting factors in his excellent reference sheets.

A different AI (aggressive or normal) is not just an other set of multipliers applied on top of the same AI! To call this a different AI instead of just anew set of personalities is a ridiculous claim. Reading what Blake has written, I think he has done exactly what he claims he's done, he has written a different AI implementation. I have no reason to believe he's lying. If you do, I still say: much of what he claims the aggressive AI does can't just be explained by different personality weighting multipliers!

This is why I say your apparent claim equating Aggressive AI gandhi to standard AI Alex is silly. That's like saying a woman bodybuilder has the same physical strengths and weaknesses (upper body, lower body, etc) as a more typical man. Uh, no ...

---

Anyway, other than winddbourne, who I think also recognizes that the key to improving the game experience is not necessarily increasing absolute militarism, just increasing variability and unpredictability, it doesn't look like my idea of random AI algorithm usage setting (random type of AI used) is gathering much interest

 

[Atwork]

I'm playing a game now on Emperor difficulty and non-aggressive AI. Gilgamesh has a city with more than 90 units in it. Further, he has several other cities with at least 20 units. Does Gilg's approach to civ approach what might be considered unit-spamming? I think so. I really wish that unit support costs would increase exponentially as the game progresses to cut down on the ridiculous numbers of units. I have played games with aggressive AI and the necessity of unit spamming is even more repetitive, tedious, and time consuming. I love warring and placing units, but less units usually means being forced to prioritize and to make tough strategic choices.

 

[phungus420]

Yes, please do continue to ignore my actual point.
If I had any interest in continuing to play with the Aggressive AI option, I would indeed move up a level.. But why should I when the regular AI provides me with a suitable challenge on my current level (and would probably tear me to shreds if I moved up)? I think my problem is that I'm terrible at pulling off axe rushes, and you know what? I have no plans to remedy that any time soon.

Sounds like the default AI is a good game for you. It's an option that's there for a reason If it plays the game to your tastes, then by all means use it.

My point was that in Game Theory Terms, the use of the rush, or war, is going to be the best use of your if you play the default AI. The reason I personally, and alot of players like the aggressive AI is that we know this, and being the helpless min/maxers we are, we can't stop ourselves from using the rush tactic to it's full effect, and winning too easily. For me the default AI forces me into a wargame, that's something I think alot of people fail to understand. The Agg AI forces me to adapt, and frequently this means my natural warmonger tendencies are curtailed, as I'm aware my investment wol't give me good returns, and may just be squandered in war, meaning I should build instead. Agg AI has forced me into going for (and getting) a cultural victory, this has never happened to me playing default AI. It's why I like Agg AI. If you're not simple minded like me, and you can play a builder game in default AI, more power to you. As I said it's an option that is there for a reason.

 

[FrancisMarion]

Yeah if I could contain myself normal AI would likely be harder, but when I see my neighbor has a bunch of nice poorly defended cities... it's hard to resist.

The only thing that keeps me in check is the threat of losing more than I would gain which Aggressive AI gives me and Normal AI does not. Now apparently Solver's patch has the Normal AI building more units in the beginning, so I might want to check that out to see how it compares.

 

[Bad Brett]

phungus420:

What I don't get is, how can you win so easily? Sure, you can build 15 axeman and slaughter one or two opponents early on, but then what? If you keep the cities, maintenance will make you broke. War weariness makes it even worse and after a while it stops you from producing new weapons. I only play on Emperor, but I still find it quite challenging to keep up a good economy during an early war. Do you actually win all these games on Deity using this tactic?

Personally, I think that a good AI should NEVER EVER defend itself against a Civ that obviously cannot afford a war. If you can't resist the temptation of DoW, that's your problem, not the AI's.

In my last game on emperor, I conquered three cities with a Keshik rush, but that was enough to make me research gunpowder while the other guys were building spaceships. You make it sound so easy all to the time. Please tell me, how do you do to wipe out the entire world on Deity?

 

[phungus420]

Haha, no I'm not that good. Relatively speacking I mean. My actual difficulty level is Emporer as well, since you want to know. The whole difficulty thing is kind of a side track conversation, because I find it wierd how easy Monarch level is for me, yet just how dang hard Emporer is. I loose most games I play with Agg AI on, and the couple of default AI games I tried I was able to easily win with it off (due to early rushing). But it makes no difference what level we're talking about. Could be Warlord difficulty for all it matters. The point is that, as I said in terms of Game Theory, your hammer investment to payoff is just huge if you invest in units with Agg off (assuming you're competent with warring in civ, which most noble+ players are compared to the AI), with it on, it's not so clear cut.

Anyway if you don't believe me just try it. Use an early axe or chariot rush your next game, and see what a catapulting jump it gives you. Then try it with Agg on, I think you'll see that with Agg off rushing is always the optimal strategy as well. But with it on, you can't be sure (though often times it still is).

 

[aelf]

phungus420:

What I don't get is, how can you win so easily? Sure, you can build 15 axeman and slaughter one or two opponents early on, but then what? If you keep the cities, maintenance will make you broke. War weariness makes it even worse and after a while it stops you from producing new weapons. I only play on Emperor, but I still find it quite challenging to keep up a good economy during an early war. Do you actually win all these games on Deity using this tactic?

Well If I want to win, I'll set it to monarch. If I want a challenge, that I still haven't beaten yet (I suck I guess), I put it at Emporer. Usualy 12 civs, standard size fractal. My axe rush always gets beaten back, perhaps I need to jump on the choprush earlier, like I do in multiplayer. If I turn agg AI off though, I can always axe rush.

Ya, I always beeline Monotheism, couse I like the religion, but this slows it down alot. Regardless though if I'm going to spam Axes early, I'm going to "warn the AI" and turn Agg AI on so that the AI doesn't have a hand tyed behind it's back.

This is your answer, from another thread. It's nothing bad, but the settings at which he plays evidently favour rushing. In my experience, rushing does not by default make an Emperor game easy on normal AI on standard settings.

I am making no comment on Aggressive AI itself, as I have promised myself.

 

[Grimus]

Great writing phungus, very enlightening. Your theory pretty much spells it all out I believe - pretty much what has been said before, but with a more personal outlook.

If you're gonna rush, and if you're going to take advantage of the AI by spamming units... you'll have a more challenging gaming experience on Aggressive AI, where the AI does the same as you and you have to find alternative ways of winning, or at least other strategies to compliment your warmongering.

Like you said, some players are purely competative and opertunists - they can't control themselves from NOT rushing the computer when it dares defend itself with a paltry amount of units. They just beg to be destroyed.

On the other hand, if you don't like the warmongering style of play, and you can control yourself from taking advantage of the AI, you'll have a much better, more competative game on Normal AI since the AI will be exploring other means of victory as you are, and will give you a run for your money!

 

[PieceOfMind]

Agressive AI is not equivalent to unit spam AI.

The differences between it and sandbox AI are more subtle.

 

[aelf]

Agressive AI is not equivalent to unit spam AI.

The differences between it and sandbox AI are more subtle.

Perhaps you do not understand the subtler challenge of what you call sandbox AI.

 

[DrJambo]

Perhaps you do not understand the subtler challenge of what you call sandbox AI.

aelf,

I watched a lot of your excellent challenge games which you did here at CFC and a lot of them involved some degree of early rushing. Whilst these were done in Warlords and Agg AI in Warlords was not particularly fair or well done, the Agg AI in BtS might be more suited to give a challenge to this style of play.

On that note, have you considered just running a challenge game using Agg AI on BtS? It would make a great example in itself, particularly regards the pros and cons of BtS Agg AI, which is actually very different from Warlords Agg AI.

 

[jimbob27]

I always play with agressive AI...... and it's gotten a lot better in BTS. If I was playing as an effective warmongering civ..... I'd often have to bump up my difficulty level 2-3 places, just so the AI can keep up with my warmongering. With the Romans, I could beat large maps on Immortal. Things have gotten a LOT better since BTS.