AI doesn't seem to colonize
- Thread starter Acoustic
- Start date
Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
My guess:
> The AI, when deciding on whether a hex is good to settle in, calculates the value of each hex and then weights it 12/6/2 based on distance from the intended settler location. (You can tweak that weighting, I think it's in GlobalDefines.xml.) So while it'd mostly value good hexes located one or maybe two hexes away from the centerpoint, it does count out to three (meaning 36 hexes in total).
> But all unexplored hexes seem to have a value of zero. You'll see this yourself when you build your first Settler if you send it to an area you haven't explored yet; the recommended city location can change if you scout the area further right before planting the city.
> Given that, it could just be that while a human player KNOWS there's probably some good stuff in the mists just beyond the coastline, the AI only sees low-value water tiles and whatever happens to be right at the coast. They won't see any locations being of high value until they send actual units across the ocean to scout, but until then, the more local sites (whose areas are fully scouted) will be seen as higher in total value. This might be historically accurate to the era when the European powers came across, but it's not good game balance.
One possible solution is to give more visibility to naval units, allowing them to see deeper into a continent they're moving alongside. But that has other balance issues.
> There's probably also a distance factor in there; on land, you want your empire relatively compact to minimize road cost. While the AI isn't very good at this, often willing to settle across another empire to grab a good spot, I doubt the AI is thinking "when I make that new coastal city, first thing is to rush a Harbor." So if there's a trade route connection component to the AI, it might value cities across an ocean lower than ones on the same continent since it'll see it as being harder to connect to a trade network (as in Civ4, even though it's actually reversed in Civ5, with the Harbor connection costing less than the typical road/rail connection).
> A human would embark a mounted unit or something, send him across the ocean, and scout in force. The AI won't do this because I think the only unit that was given a FLAVOR_RECON value was the dinky strength-4 Scout you start with, which'd be no match for the barbarians of an empty continent. So the solution might be to add FLAVOR_RECON ratings to more units, the ones people typically use for a reconaissance-in-force, but I'm not sure that'd be enough to make the AI want to embark them for a few turns to cross a particularly large ocean. There's also no way to differentiate between a Flavor used on your top-tier military units and one used for an obsolete one, so if you add this to, say, Horsemen, then as soon as the AI starts building horsemen he'll start sending them exploring instead of conquering, whereas the Human might wait until that horseman was too obsolete to use in combat before sending it off to scout and/or die.
A better option might be to mod in some more "explorer" units, later-tech units that have better combat power and more movement. So you might have the Scout upgrade to the Explorer, the Conquistador, the Predator Drone, etc. that all have high recon flavor ratings.
> The AI also isn't good about protecting transports, so the barbarian naval units might just be sinking the scout units they HAVE been sending. One way to fix this would be to tweak the FLAVOR_NAVAL ratings for the various civs, so that they'll prefer to build a few more destroyers and such, which would inevitably knock the barbarian galleys down sooner and make the sealanes safe for scouts.
> The AI, when deciding on whether a hex is good to settle in, calculates the value of each hex and then weights it 12/6/2 based on distance from the intended settler location. (You can tweak that weighting, I think it's in GlobalDefines.xml.) So while it'd mostly value good hexes located one or maybe two hexes away from the centerpoint, it does count out to three (meaning 36 hexes in total).
> But all unexplored hexes seem to have a value of zero. You'll see this yourself when you build your first Settler if you send it to an area you haven't explored yet; the recommended city location can change if you scout the area further right before planting the city.
> Given that, it could just be that while a human player KNOWS there's probably some good stuff in the mists just beyond the coastline, the AI only sees low-value water tiles and whatever happens to be right at the coast. They won't see any locations being of high value until they send actual units across the ocean to scout, but until then, the more local sites (whose areas are fully scouted) will be seen as higher in total value. This might be historically accurate to the era when the European powers came across, but it's not good game balance.
One possible solution is to give more visibility to naval units, allowing them to see deeper into a continent they're moving alongside. But that has other balance issues.
> There's probably also a distance factor in there; on land, you want your empire relatively compact to minimize road cost. While the AI isn't very good at this, often willing to settle across another empire to grab a good spot, I doubt the AI is thinking "when I make that new coastal city, first thing is to rush a Harbor." So if there's a trade route connection component to the AI, it might value cities across an ocean lower than ones on the same continent since it'll see it as being harder to connect to a trade network (as in Civ4, even though it's actually reversed in Civ5, with the Harbor connection costing less than the typical road/rail connection).
> A human would embark a mounted unit or something, send him across the ocean, and scout in force. The AI won't do this because I think the only unit that was given a FLAVOR_RECON value was the dinky strength-4 Scout you start with, which'd be no match for the barbarians of an empty continent. So the solution might be to add FLAVOR_RECON ratings to more units, the ones people typically use for a reconaissance-in-force, but I'm not sure that'd be enough to make the AI want to embark them for a few turns to cross a particularly large ocean. There's also no way to differentiate between a Flavor used on your top-tier military units and one used for an obsolete one, so if you add this to, say, Horsemen, then as soon as the AI starts building horsemen he'll start sending them exploring instead of conquering, whereas the Human might wait until that horseman was too obsolete to use in combat before sending it off to scout and/or die.
A better option might be to mod in some more "explorer" units, later-tech units that have better combat power and more movement. So you might have the Scout upgrade to the Explorer, the Conquistador, the Predator Drone, etc. that all have high recon flavor ratings.
> The AI also isn't good about protecting transports, so the barbarian naval units might just be sinking the scout units they HAVE been sending. One way to fix this would be to tweak the FLAVOR_NAVAL ratings for the various civs, so that they'll prefer to build a few more destroyers and such, which would inevitably knock the barbarian galleys down sooner and make the sealanes safe for scouts.
smellymummy
King
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- Jul 31, 2002
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you will see the AI colonize when it has ran out of room on the current continent/land mass, or if it has a huge threat to its survival. otherwise colonizing is mostly a player exclusive thing
the thought that FoW is limiting the AI has merit here, but i've it seen it myself too many times. the AI can see islands, the AI is clearing the barbs from those islands, and it will not colonize them. its frustrating that it doesn't settle, and even if it can be managed... the next problem is getting the AI to build a proper navy to defend itself
the thought that FoW is limiting the AI has merit here, but i've it seen it myself too many times. the AI can see islands, the AI is clearing the barbs from those islands, and it will not colonize them. its frustrating that it doesn't settle, and even if it can be managed... the next problem is getting the AI to build a proper navy to defend itself
Nice speculation there spatz 
Maybe they don't settle there because they know the risk of building a full fledge city would be costly to there happiness and other sorts? Maybe a colony idea could somehow be implemented to where none of the risks would be there. Of course you wouldn't be able to build anything there, so it would kinda be like a puppet city. Where it's main focus is to make money and get food.
Maybe they don't settle there because they know the risk of building a full fledge city would be costly to there happiness and other sorts? Maybe a colony idea could somehow be implemented to where none of the risks would be there. Of course you wouldn't be able to build anything there, so it would kinda be like a puppet city. Where it's main focus is to make money and get food.
The AI seems to have some weird biases when it comes to deciding where to colonize. I've been experimenting with "water world" archipelago/high sea level scenarios on the hardest difficulties to get a better feel for how the AI handles water. The AI skips over little islands that would be perfectly serviceable city sites with nice resources and beelines to making useless ice cities at the poles. They're perfectly happy to settle marginal locations, so I think they're just coded to ignore small islands as potential settlement sites.
The AI seems to take its time colonizing in general, too. I think this might be because they feel it's too dangerous to embark settlers until they have a chance to build up a galley fleet to sweep the seas of barbarians, and it generally takes them a while to get around to building a navy.
The AI seems to take its time colonizing in general, too. I think this might be because they feel it's too dangerous to embark settlers until they have a chance to build up a galley fleet to sweep the seas of barbarians, and it generally takes them a while to get around to building a navy.
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