AI Combat Assist Mod

[nullspace]

What is this mod?

The AI in CIV is not a very smart tactician, and it is easily taken advantage of by the human player. In fact, fighting the AI is probably the easiest way for the human player to get ahead of the AI despite its production bonuses. This is a mod for the epic game of CIV 3 Conquests that aims to help out the AI by changing two areas of combat where the computer is completely clueless: Armies and Bombardment. Armies have been made more easily available and weaker, so that the computer players build them and use them, and they are not afraid to attack the human player's armies. All land bombardment units have been reworked as regular units with high attack, and low defense and movement (it can't be too bad, this is how CIV 2 did it). I believe that this removes two aspects of combat that are exploitable by the human, and replaces them with elements that the AI can use well. In all, it makes war more dangerous for the player.

Download and Installation

The AI Combat Assist Mod makes no changes to graphics or sound, so it is very fast and easy to download and install (only one 30KB file). Download the file from the end of this post, and place it in the Civilization III\Conquests\Scenarios folder. Then start up Conquests, select Civ-Content, and pick the AI Combat Assist Mod from the list. All the options for a regular epic game are available.

Documentation

This is my first mod, which is one of the reasons I chose not to mess with anything besides the main QE file. The main drawback of this is that the civilopedia does not reflect the changes in the mod. So here they are:

Additions:
Warlord Leadership: Small wonder, requires Polytheism, costs 60 shields, allows the city to build armies. It does not require a victorious army. Armies cost 60 shields each, and you must have 4 cities for each army.

Honorable Leadership: Small wonder, requires Chivalry, costs 90 shields, same effects as Warlord Leadership.

National Leadership: Small wonder, requires Fascism, costs 120 shields, same effects as Warlord Leadership.

Timber: Strategic resource, required for catapults and trebuchets. It is visible from the beginning of the game and appears in forests and jungles. It can be exhausted and reappear elsewhere. It uses the graphic for sugar (just because it looks like a leafy plant), and the bonus resource sugar has been removed.

Changes:
Armies: Cost 60 shields and hold only 2 units. The pentagon allows them to hold 3 units. Otherwise, armies are unchanged from the normal game.

Catapult: 3/1/1, 30 shields, requires mathematics and timber. Wheeled.

Trebuchet: 5/1/1, 50 shields, requires engineering and timber. Wheeled.

Cannon: 8/2/1, 70 shields, requires metallurgy, iron, and saltpeter. Wheeled.

H’wacha: 10/2/1, 70 shields, requires metallurgy, saltpeter, and the Koreans. Wheeled.

Artillery: 13/3/1, 100 shields, requires replaceable parts. Leaves craters when pillaging.

Radar Artillery: 28/6/2, 120 shields, requires robotics and aluminum. Leaves craters when pillaging.

The Pentagon: Same as before, but now it also requires Military Tradition.

The United Nations: Same as before, but now it also gives the “Improves army strength” ability that used to belong to the military academy.

Military Academy and Sugar are removed from the game.


Testing/Feedback

I’ve tested the mod, and it works. The AI builds, loads, and fights with and against armies. It builds the changed units and uses them, depending on the techs and resources it has available. The AI still isn’t a tactical genius, but when you see a SOD of infantry and artillery with a few armies on top enter your territory, you should be frightened!

I’d very much like any comments or suggestions about this. It’s real easy to download and play, so try it out. Everything in it is listed above, so even if you don’t want to play a whole epic game, let me know if anything sounds dumb. If anybody likes this mod, I’d be willing to go a bit further and make or find graphics for the new wonders and resource and write the new civilopedia entries. I was also thinking of making a similar enhancement to naval combat by adding some fighting ships to the ancient and medieval eras. So, any criticism is welcome.

The Download

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/AICombatAssistMod.zip

 

[unscratchedfoot]

I can't say I like the army weakening idea but it sure needs some work on it. Too bad firaxis just doesn't write in some common sense code for the Ai to use armies and fight them. Let's see if other people test your mod and maybe it is a good idea until firaxis gets around to fixing it.

Be aware that making artillery a usual unit is a cardinal error. With a 13 attack, artillery is stronger than those lame-looking early tanks in the original game and therefore the Ai will only build arty and no tanks. Once modern armor comes out (if you are still playing unmodded civ3) the Ai will stop building arty and only build tanks. Basically, the Ai only builds one type of offensive unit with no variation at all regardless of price or other stats (another programming deficiency by firaxis).

So I say make arty as arty but the army mod may be worth considering to reduce the exploit by humans. You can flag "build a lot of arty" for each civ in the editor so that it occasionally uses then offensively.

Overall, the AI is even weaker in conquests than in the vanilla civ3 thanks to the way it avoids attacking strong defensive units and stopped using armies and arty. In vanilla civ3 I flagged build a lot of arty and saw stacks of up to 10 arty being used offensively by the AI on diety level.

 

[nullspace]

Thanks for the reply, unscratchedfoot, that's the kind of criticism I'm looking for.

Be aware that making artillery a usual unit is a cardinal error. With a 13 attack, artillery is stronger than those lame-looking early tanks in the original game and therefore the Ai will only build arty and no tanks. Once modern armor comes out (if you are still playing unmodded civ3) the Ai will stop building arty and only build tanks. Basically, the Ai only builds one type of offensive unit with no variation at all regardless of price or other stats (another programming deficiency by firaxis).

You don't need to worry about that, tanks have an attack rating of 16, so the AI builds those when it has motorized transport and the strategic resources it needs. I checked to make sure the AI does not exclusively build the new units. It prefers swordsmen over catapults, knights over trebuchets, cavalry over cannons, and tanks over artillery. The "prefered" unit comes later or requires different resources, so you usually see regular units as well as the new artillery units. I'm not sure about modern armor and radar artillery since I haven't tested that far that since the last change, but I think it will prefer the MA.

You can flag "build a lot of arty" for each civ in the editor so that it occasionally uses then offensively.

I guess I'm looking for a more drastic change. A smart player can build a big stack of bombarders, attack units and defense units, and this stack can kill anything with almost no loss. Winning a war with no loss seems against the design of the game, and it's certainly not someting the AI can do. I wanted to take this ability away from the human player and make the AI more potent on the offense and the counterattack. I think the changes in the mod do this.

Thanks for your input, I'll keep the build preferences in mind.

 

[Psyringe]

This is an interesting mod, although I unfortunately won't have the time to test it, I've got other priorities right now. But I hope that others will. And I'd like to thank you for your posting, which taught me some interesting things - e.g. I did not know that the AI can be made to build armies if you make them cheaper, and even use them.

Your idea regarding armies sounds great. As it is now, armies are an AI exploit, therefore I rarely build them. Your ideas brings them back into play.

Im unsure about the artillery change. It's very unfortunate that Firaxis did not code the AI in a way that it can use artillery at least halfway effectively. Your change tries to fix that, but in the course of doing that, takes a whole feature out of the game. (Arguable of course, because you add something as well.) On first glance, this sounds too much like a crutch for me - I think that I'd prefer playing with vanilla artillery, and just don't build much of it, because I don't want to exploit this AI weakness. But then again, I didn't play your mod, and playing it might change my impressions.

It's also possible that your change just opens new exploiting possibilities, e.g. building large stacks of cheap artillery and using them as exclusive offensive units, stacked with some strong defenders. I haven't checked your unit values thoroughly though, you probably already prevented that.

I'm curious whether you tried different settings and what the results were. For example, have you tried different costs for the armies? Have you tried to change other settings of the armies, like movement or the blitz flag? If yes, then many modders could profit from your findings.

 

[unscratchedfoot]

nullspace, I'm going to try your army idea in a mod. It sounds really good. But I won't make the arty like that cause that isn't arty in my opinion and the Ai will either not build it or only build it if you make it a normal offensive unit. In civ2, arty was an exploit when used with railroads cause I just used a stack of arty, moved it up to each enemy city and blasted out all the defenders with it so I only played civ2 a couple of times before giving away the cd.

Thanks for the army idea. Have you tested it any more?

 

[Smoking mirror]

A better idea for artillery would be to just reduce the range to zero, increasethe bombard power and slash the price. That way it could only be used deffensivly, alongside other defensive bombard units like longbowmen. The AI loves to use defensive bombard units, its one of its more effective (accidental) stragegies.

 

[nullspace]

As I play my mod more and read the responses here, I like my changes to artillery less and less. I still think that unmodded artillery is practically an exploit for the player, but the changes I've made are just about as bad.

The AI can't handle a unit with high attack and low defense either. Much too often, it will leave them exposed within easy reach of enemy units. I've watched some AI wars where one AI moves a trebuchet into enemy territory, then an enemy trebuchet comes up and kills it, then the first civ kills that trebuchet, and back and forth. On the other hand, the human player can easily march a big stack of them to an enemy city with a few defensive units.

Really, the best type of unit for the AI to use is one with good attack and defense, like the Knight. You know, the kind of unit with no weakness for the human to exploit . If I want to help the AI, I should make sure that a unit like that is availible most of the time. I'm not sure what to do there, but I did want artillery with a big attack stat in the game as something to use against well-defended cities, or as a single unit that the AI wouldn't be afraid to use against armies. Smoking Mirror's idea to make artillery defensive-bombard-only is interesting, but I don't think these units would be very useful. Defensive bombard can only knock off one HP, and it only fires once a round. Even if it has a low construction cost, it still takes the same maintenance as a tank or bomber. It'll probably be tough to get the AI to build them, but maybe I'll try that to see what happens.

As for the armies, I like this change (and the feedback I'm getting about it). I haven't played around with variables on the armies much, but I did check the editor for what can be changed. Blitz and radar abilities can be removed, and the number of cities required for each army can be changed. Of course, construction cost and capacity are things I've already changed. I'm not sure how the movement bonus that armies got in conquests works, the unmodded movement for armies is 1. Also, it might be possible for units to be removed from armies if I check the "unload" ability for the army. I don't know if that would work or if the AI would use it.

So far, I like things the way I described in the first post. Armies can first be built about half way through the Ancient Age. 60 shields for "Warlord Leadership" and 60 for an army is a significant investment, but it's more like a barracks and unit than a wonder. I've noticed that the thing that limits the number of armies I build is the number of cities and not the shield cost, so maybe the cost should be increased. 60 is pretty trivial later in the game when armies are truly powerful. The two later "leadership" wonders are there mostly so that if the first gets destroyed, or you otherwise want to change which city builds armies, you can do so.

Thanks for the replies. I'll keep fiddling with the armies (and artillery too) and see if I discover anything interesting.

 

[unscratchedfoot]

nullspace, I don't think making armies buildable is a good idea. It's better and more interesting to have leaders pop up from successful combat to avoid human exploits. I stopped the Military Academy from building armies and use it as a unit autoproducer. That wonder looks real good so you I reckon you shouldn't delete it from your game. The part I like about your idea is making armies with only 2 units in them. I'm thinking now whether it is a good idea to allow the pentagon wonder making armies size 3? Maybe the pentagon should be made into some type of America-only wonder. At size 3, the Ai gets too skittish about armies.

As for arty, I make due by flagging 'build a lot of arty' for all civs and making arty prices very high (around 300 shields) with slightly better stats and uncapturable with only 1 hp and a mediocre defensive stat. This combo avoids problems with elite arty becoming city defenders instead of infantry as well as avoiding having the human capture arty from AIs. In reality, defenders more often destroy their own cannon before retreating than leaving it to be captured. The AI in my mod sometimes brings arty into the field when attacking and keeps a few units with it for defense. At 300 shields, a human would have to be already winning a game to be able to afford to build more than a few arty at that price. Basically, if one has the excess production capacity to make more than a few arty at that price, its time to start a new game at a higher skill level. I find this is an acceptable compromise until firaxis gets around to fixing this programming deficiency.

Has firaxis mentioned any plans to fix Ai use of armies and arty in a future patch?

 

[Dogmeat]

Wait a minute..
Catapult: 3/1/1: 30 - Wheeled
Swordsman: 3/2/1: 30 - Not wheeled

...Makes no sense to me