AI can't play late era start?

[Snuffleupagus]

I wanted to try some starts in later eras to get some modern era war going, and I'm really enjoying it, however, the game seems easier.

I could just up the difficulty (I play on King), but the AI seems to be acting different.

Most notably the AI doesn't seem to build many cities to fill in empty spaces. In my usual games at least one or two AI's will sprawl out with cities everywhere. With an industrial era start the AI will leave huge swaths of land untouched turn after turn...

Is this part of the plan? does the AI work different with late era start? Will upping the difficulty help this?

 

[The Mad Russian]

I have no issues when I play Future Era starts, which I do 98% of the time. The game I am playing now, Spain expanded to be a brutal giant and took out 3 opponents on our continent. Egypt migrated to smaller islands off of their coast and even on to my continent. As did the Inca. So they definitely know how and where to expand, at least they did in that game

-Mark

 

[Spatzimaus]

Is this part of the plan? does the AI work different with late era start? Will upping the difficulty help this?

Yes, yes, no.

Certain parts of the AI are flagged in era-dependent ways. For instance, if you start in the Industrial or later, city-states simply won't have access to the AI behaviors that cause them to produce enough workers to improve their terrain. While they still might produce a worker by random chance, this generally limits the AI's ability to improve its terrain, and if the CSs can't hook up resources for their allies then it greatly changes the balance of the game. This can be easily modded, and the devs have recently modified this one a bit to be less absolute.

Additionally, most AI behaviors are on/off, with fixed values (the Flavor code) when they're on. An AI might decide it wants more Settlers, but the Flavor values of the Settler are set down at Ancient Era levels, meaning if you start in a later era the AI will be far more likely to produce another Infantry than another Settler, even if it thinks it needs more cities. This is a natural consequence of the Flavor scaling.
The easy way to fix this would be to mod in additional Settler-style units in later eras, which can be given progressively higher flavor ratings. The AI would then expand as quickly in those later eras as it did in the early ones... which, of course, would then be bad for any game starting in the Ancient as the AI would continue to crank out settlers long after it ran out of city sites to use them on.

 

[Snuffleupagus]

Yes, yes, no.

Certain parts of the AI are flagged in era-dependent ways. For instance, if you start in the Industrial or later, city-states simply won't have access to the AI behaviors that cause them to produce enough workers to improve their terrain. While they still might produce a worker by random chance, this generally limits the AI's ability to improve its terrain, and if the CSs can't hook up resources for their allies then it greatly changes the balance of the game. This can be easily modded, and the devs have recently modified this one a bit to be less absolute.

Additionally, most AI behaviors are on/off, with fixed values (the Flavor code) when they're on. An AI might decide it wants more Settlers, but the Flavor values of the Settler are set down at Ancient Era levels, meaning if you start in a later era the AI will be far more likely to produce another Infantry than another Settler, even if it thinks it needs more cities. This is a natural consequence of the Flavor scaling.
The easy way to fix this would be to mod in additional Settler-style units in later eras, which can be given progressively higher flavor ratings. The AI would then expand as quickly in those later eras as it did in the early ones... which, of course, would then be bad for any game starting in the Ancient as the AI would continue to crank out settlers long after it ran out of city sites to use them on.

That makes sense! I've also noticed that the AI civs don't seem to build many workers. When I conquer their lands, they are always super undeveloped.

But if this is a matter of flavor and randomness, it shouldn't happen everytime, so I'll keep trying. I really enjoy the later start games. thanks.