AI build prioritization of ships

[Wodan]

I don't know why Louis was building so many triremes, but he already had a dozen of them, facing my frigates, and had all 4 of his coastal cities churning out more.

And, not only that, he was researching Optics, and began making caravels as soon as he could.

Compared with his situation... getting slowly conquered via land, he should have been churning out musketeers or something.

Wodan

Edit: he had just conquered Kush from me, which is why it's making a Granary. The 4th city I mentioned was off screen on the east coast (on the other side of a big north-south continent). The next turn I took Kush back, and then I moved down to take Lyons and Paris. The whole time, he kept making triremes and caravels. Gave my 4 frigates about 15 XP each.

I was blockading those ports, so maybe he thought he had to break the blockade.

 

[Bhruic]

Do you have the savegame to go with that?

Bh

 

[IronCrown]

Yeah, AI reacts completely hysterical to naval threats. Defending their land should always take precedence.

At this point I think it's an easy exploit to just send some privateers a couple of turns before you attack. That way you won't face many ground troops.

 

[Wodan]

Do you have the savegame to go with that?

Bh

I could probably dig one out. Is a save that important? This situation is easily re-creatable.

Bottom line: the AI loses a couple of food resources and some trade income. BFD. Meanwhile, on land, the AI is losing cities.

Wodan

 

[Bhruic]

It's not really that easy to recreate, and I don't feel like playing a game until I get to that state. I can test a few things to see if I've figured out what's causing it, but for confirmation, I'd need to see if the AI changed its builds - which is where the savegame would come into play.

Bh

 

[H&K]

Well.... Not sure, but if Lusis only had one Iron, that would be being used to make Knights wouldnt it?
And so he couldnt make anything other than triremes and archers?

 

[Wodan]

It's not really that easy to recreate, and I don't feel like playing a game until I get to that state. I can test a few things to see if I've figured out what's causing it, but for confirmation, I'd need to see if the AI changed its builds - which is where the savegame would come into play.

Bh

Well, ok. Here it is.

Wodan

 

[Bhruic]

Yeah, the "problem" area is where I thought it was... At one point the AI checks to see how many Attack/Pirate ships it's training, in order to determine if it should build more. That check isn't working properly. If I bypass it, it'll go back to building more useful builds. But bypassing it completely isn't good, I'll have to see if I can get it to do the check properly.

Bh

 

[Wodan]

My gut feeling is that "bypass" isn't a word we like. More friendly words are "prioritize" and "determine".

Anyway good luck.

Wodan

 

[Bhruic]

Yeah, bypassing it would be bad. I mean, it's a good check. Basically it's saying "if we've got naval attackers in the area, let's build some naval defenders to take them out". Which is a good call. The problem comes in when the naval defenders are vastly inferior to the naval attackers, and don't attack. So it continues to build more naval defenders, assuming that it needs them.

The best way to get around this would be to have the AI able to calculate the attack strengths of the attackers vs its best ship, and if they aren't close, then to skip building them. But I haven't found any function that would be able to do that. Second best would be to de-prioritize (to steal your word) building ships - except that if the ships can actually win against the attackers, building them is a decent call. Third best would be to put some kludgy "check how many ships we have compared to the number of attackers, and stop at a certain percentage". As kludgy as it is, that's probably the best I'll be able to do - presumably Blake can manage something more effective for the next actual patch.

edit: Ok, that's what I ended up doing, posted the result in Solver's thread - not sure if he'll include it or not, as it's somewhat hacky.

Bh

 

[hoopsnerd]

Don't worry, that's not a bug... it's "Caligula Syndrome" - a new feature - the condition in which the AI does whatever is in it's worst interest.