AI Bonuses

[Txurce]

The reason for the AIs poor performance is Palaces no longer give 5, and gold can't be used to buy wonders. AIs generally prioritize food in the capital, so it has lower production for AIs than old versions.

In v151 people were saying the AI never gets wonders. If a 25% bonus means the human can never get wonders now, we can try a middle ground like 10%.

Other than something being broken, nothing is less enjoyable than poor AI performance. I would think addressing this by returning more hammers to the capital would come first, and resultant potential balance issues second.

(In my one experience, the 25% bonus makes the AI competitive in the early game. It was by no means OP.)

I agree that the city default focus is a problem. For example, it will prioritize a 2 food 1 gold coast tile over a 3 production 2 gold mined riverside Gold tile, as long as you have a happy empire. This is clearly giving the AIs problems, particularly early in the game when the empire is really happy. They will never be competitive for wonders when they are working all the coast tiles first.

This is an annoying aspect of the City Manager, and an excellent point with regard to the AI. And adjustment here, if possible, could really help the AI. (Boosting their gold some other way, if needed, should be pretty easy.)

 

[Dunkah]

I think that this is one of those things that if it can be accomplished would make a great deal of difference when it came to difficulty levels.

I am just getting to the point in my games where I check this. In the past I simply left the city manager on auto pilot and went from there.

It wasn't until I started watching one of theose You Tube videos that I started micro-ing my Civs. But currently I do it at the beginning of the game then as my Civ gets larger I ineveitable get distracted and stop. Unless of course I want to hurry a wonder or choose to keep a city after conquering it.

So by making the AI focus on the City Manager for higher difficulty games and less for lower difficulty games would make a big difference difficulty wise and would have precedence due to the fact new players very rarely micro their cities.

 

[Thalassicus]

I find that default focus really hates production tiles

I might be able to change this. I'll investigate.

 

[rfxmills]

Like Gamewizard I've had the governor ignoring gold mines with a market and a mint in the city when we're harvesting over 30/turn. Default focus appears to be food focus with added specialists while you're happy. I think making it slightly more balanced (but still primarily weighted towards food) with the other yields will make a big difference to the AI, and humans who don't change focus!

 

[Seek]

I suspect the AI bonuses are fine as they are now - there is a bug which massively nerfs the AI's production, culture and science (see "Giant AI bug" in the bug reports forum). Once that is fixed we'll be back on track.

 

[Txurce]

I suspect the AI bonuses are fine as they are now - there is a bug which massively nerfs the AI's production, culture and science (see "Giant AI bug" in the bug reports forum). Once that is fixed we'll be back on track.

Agreed - or, more specifically, there's not much point in diddling with the bonuses until we see where we stand once the bug is fixed.

 

[Thalassicus]

It's better to make a quick change so the game is playable but buggy, rather than wait for the weeks it might take to isolate a bug.

 

[Seek]

Agreed. I wanted to make sure everyone was aware that it was a bug - rather than design choices - that has been making the AI so feeble recently.

 

[Thalassicus]

In v152.11 I fixed a bug causing lower than intended AI yields. To balance that I halved the per-era production and science bonuses, and raised the wonder bonus back to 75% (from 50%). I also removed the workers AIs start with. I updated the table in the original post.

 

[lordrune]

Cool! Looking forward to giving the new beta a go - the recent ones have been a bit haywire

Edit: Playing on Prince level - went with a usual expansive strategy, building 3 cities, three warriors and a scout two workers, monuments libraries etc. Was rushed by two AIs on turn 68, they'd out-teched, out-expanded, and the Aztecs came at me with 6 jaguars + archers.

Maybe I need to drop down to warlord to give myself a chance?

 

[Lmaoboat]

I started on Classical Era and Warlord today, and some Civs were finishing the Pyramids and Stonehenge by something like round 17. I took two rounds to get my settlers into position, but I straight went for the wonder building policy, cut down a forest, and was playing as Egypt, but they managed to build it when I was, at best, halfway done. I had some kills and forests in the initial area, and some stone, but I held off on improving that since I wouldn't have enough money for that event that comes up.

 

[Txurce]

That's very odd, since the AI may actually have a production handicap on Warlord.

 

[lordrune]

That's very odd, since the AI may actually have a production handicap on Warlord.

Well, admittedly in very early turns, I was clearly the bottom score in my game on prince setting - and when I go with a balanced liberty-based expansion, that just doesn't happen. I quit when the Aztec jaguars swarmed my capital city. I've never had my arse kicked so bad in a Civ 5 game.

 

[Pep]

In my latest test game (normal speed, Emperor difficulty) I've used FireTuner to control AI players and see what are they doing. What I've found is that AI players are receiving distinct bonuses in their capitals . I've attached 2 images: Copenhagen and Delhi. The complete table for all the Civs in my game is:

|Copenhagen|Delhi|Berlin|Cusco|Madrid|Istanbul|Onondaga
Culture|3|2|2|2|3|2|2
Gold|12|6|8|6|12|6|6
Production|6|3|4|3|6|3|3
Science|6|3|4|3|6|3|3

It's very odd, as the bonuses of Copenhagen and Madrid nearly double (except in culture) that of Delhi, Cusco, Istanbul and Onondaga. Berlin seems to be an special case. Maybe the bonuses are related to Civs personalities?. Also I don't know if these bonuses are appropiate to Emperor level. They only appear in Civs capitals.

Another thing I've observed: all AI cities are set in standard citizen management focus. As standard citizen management focus tends to favor specialists, AI cities will grow slowly once they have enough specialist slots. Also buildings construction will take a long time, because standard citizen management focus favors food over production. So AI can only compete with humans in their capitals (due to the handicap bonuses).

 

[Txurce]

This is really interesting, and I look forward to Thal's view of it.

With regard to AI population, none of this hurts it in the bottom line. Two to three AI civs per game routinely dwarf my own growth (which is maximized).

 

[Seek]

Maybe it's the ancient ruin thing, where ARs within 7 tiles of AI caps get automatically absorbed?

 

[gunnergoz]

I know something is happening because on occasion I've met AI players in turn 1 or 2 and they already have double the income per turn that I do. With Thal's mod I typically see an per turn income in the first few turns of 13-15 gold, whereas the AI's I've met frequently are over 20 according to the trading screen.

 

[Thalassicus]

That's the "capital yield per turn" on the AI bonuses chart. It replaces the vanilla method of giving AIs a lump sum of techs, gold, and culture on turn 0.

I have not found a way (yet) to control city focus.

 

[Pep]

That's the "capital yield per turn" on the AI bonuses chart. It replaces the vanilla method of giving AIs a lump sum of techs, gold, and culture on turn 0.

I have not found a way (yet) to control city focus.

Ok. Now I get it. From the OP:

AI capitals have (difficulty - 2) bonus yields. They get 25% less if not militaristic, and 50% more if they scored poorly on the worst AIs poll.

Analyzing my post http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11496830&postcount=34: I'm playing on Emperor, so difficulty = 6. This implies base and = 4. Berlin is militaristic (4 ) while Delhi, Cusco, Istanbul and Onondaga are normal (-25% of 4 = 3 ) and Copenhagen and Madrid scored poorly on the worst AIs poll (+50% of 4 = 6 ). quantities are X 2, while quantities seem to be / 4 , rounded up.

What I don't like so much is the "worst AIs" buff. I think it's very overpowered. As you can see from my chart, "worst AIs" receive double bonus on Emperor when compared with non militaristic AIs. This is huge at the beginning on the game. Also, being the "worst AIs" concept too subjective, IMO it would be better to remove the +50% buff. Don't you think so?

 

[rfxmills]

What I don't like so much is the "worst AIs" buff. I think it's very overpowered. As you can see from my chart, "worst AIs" receive double bonus on Emperor when compared with non militaristic AIs. This is huge at the beginning on the game. Also, being the "worst AIs" concept too subjective, IMO it would be better to remove the +50% buff. Don't you think so?

When did the worst AI capital buff come in? I don't remember seeing it in any of the change logs or posted in the forum. I know it's been edited into the OP, but that doesn't get flagged as new information.