AI Happiness

[Unseelie]

I've been playing the new versions of GEM for a while, and I've started noticing that by the classical age, there are some AI with something like 50 happiness.

I thought one of the features of AI rebalance was to put them on even footing with the player in regard to happiness. Has that changed?

 

[Dunkah]

Are you seeing aggressive AI's with that kind of Happiness?

Generally if you are playing peacefully and keeping expansion to a non REX type of playstyle you can get some pretty high Happiness scores. Some of the Culture type victory condition players will have that kind of happiness easily. ex. Kamehameha, Ghandi.

Now if you see someone who is REXing or rapidly taking over half the world with high happiness there is probably a problem.

I have had happiness scores in the 100's on Tall Empire Peaceful games.

 

[Brannock]

Are you seeing aggressive AI's with that kind of Happiness?

Generally if you are playing peacefully and keeping expansion to a non REX type of playstyle you can get some pretty high Happiness scores. Some of the Culture type victory condition players will have that kind of happiness easily. ex. Kamehameha, Ghandi.

Now if you see someone who is REXing or rapidly taking over half the world with high happiness there is probably a problem.

I have had happiness scores in the 100's on Tall Empire Peaceful games.

By late game? Sure. But in the Classical era? No, not really. I regularly see 30-40 happiness by 600 BC when the happiness report hits - for every AI except myself.

 

[Karhgath]

I've often seen AI with 50+ happiness less than 50 turns in. Difficulty gives high bonus to them and they always try to trade resources instantly, plus they invest in city states early as well because they have more gold. That all adds up.

When I play and get the happiness popup in ancient era, I usually hover around 6-8 and most of them have 40+ happy faces.

But usually, late game, I get 100+ in a tall empire and they are much lower.

They also get some golden ages pretty early compared to you.

 

[Unseelie]

Since they start with workers, I can see how they might get to such happiness before I've gone much beyond building palaces, what with their instant trading.

Do the AI ever try to trade resources with the player?
I have only ever had them ask for one for free.

 

[Eiger2112]

I noticed the same thing... I am barely scraping by and staying happy, expanding whenever I can. They have like 30-50 happiness somehow. Are they not expanding fast enough? Maybe they're not prioritizing settlers? They've been made more difficult for US to make, but maybe that makes them EVEN more difficult for the AI, and they keep getting pushed down the queue?

They don't seem TERRIBLY behind in number of cities: they can have 2-3 when I have 5-6, which only accounts for maybe 10-12 happiness. City size, I'm not so sure about.


Cheers, Eiger

 

[Thalassicus]

AIs should have the same happiness and unhappiness sources as human players. The difficulty level does not affect AI happiness. You can use the tuner to take over one of the AIs, and see where they are getting their happiness.

 

[Bernd-das-Brot]

AIs should have the same happiness and unhappiness sources as human players. The difficulty level does not affect AI happiness. You can use the tuner to take over one of the AIs, and see where they are getting their happiness.

I did look and found out that they do get heavy boni as expected.:eek

Version 1.13.3, Immortal, standard-game, turn 33:
Egypt: +18 happy, 25 happiness total.
They get +12 from buildings: 2 Palaces and another +8 from capital-building.
+12 from difficulty.
They would get +1 happy per luxury, if they had one.

Unhappiness is reduced to: "Because of the game's current diffficulty level unhappiness is produced 40% less than usual." Means: +2,4 per city and +0,6 per citizen.

Japan had exactly the same boni.

I think some kind of unhappiness reduction or happiness-boni on higher diffculties are okay, if not even necessary for the AI to build new cities.

 

[mystikx21]

I figured they got a heavy population reduction. Looks like more per difficulty still as well than the human? The latter is fine. I don't think 40% less anger is ideal, but something there would be okay.

Edit: They're not supposed to be getting those bonuses at all however, based on the handicaps file. Something isn't working right with those changes seems like. They should be getting no more than 15% bonus to unhappiness on immortal by default, and get no bonus according to the mod.

 

[Ahriman]

I did look and found out that they do get heavy boni as expected.:eek

Version 1.13.3, Immortal, standard-game, turn 33:
Egypt: +18 happy, 25 happiness total.
They get +12 from buildings: 2 Palaces and another +8 from capital-building.
+12 from difficulty.
They would get +1 happy per luxury, if they had one.

Unhappiness is reduced to: "Because of the game's current diffficulty level unhappiness is produced 40% less than usual." Means: +2,4 per city and +0,6 per citizen.

Japan had exactly the same boni.

I think some kind of unhappiness reduction or happiness-boni on higher diffculties are okay, if not even necessary for the AI to build new cities.

Great catch! That definitely sounds like an issue.
Though... if we fix it, are we going to dramatically weaken the AI?

 

[Karhgath]

Even with that much happiness, I never saw a case of the AI over expanding a lot early, they do it in renaissance when they decide to steamroll all available spots.

However, they get much more golden ages than the human.

In my current game, I just researched Astronomy and I am top 3 in points, I have 7 cities, 28 happiness on King and I am DEAD LAST of 22 civs in happiness (leader has 81).

 

[mystikx21]

I've rarely seen the AI's happiness dipping below 30-40 for most of the game (late game they can tend to drop off by founding a lot of small cities). If it becomes a problem (if we can fix this), we could increase the happiness related flavors for buildings/civs.

The bigger problem is typically getting the non-expansionist civs to expand a little more and soak some of that up.

 

[Stalker0]

Though... if we fix it, are we going to dramatically weaken the AI?

My thought exactly, we currently aren't screaming for an easier AI

 

[Dunkah]

Yes but I'm not really thrilled with this. No I don't want the AI weaker but I don't want the AI to be able to do things I cannot. I cannot expand like tha AI does. And it does annoyingly. Anything to remove that!

 

[albie_123]

Yeah, just played a game and had the AI all with 20+ happiness by turn 50.

 

[Eiger2112]

I was curious about something recently, googled, and found this page:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/difficulties

It states that on TOP of any bonuses the AI gets for YOU choosing a HARDER difficulty, THEY play at Chieftain level. So even if GEM modded out a lot of the handicaps, wouldn't they still get all the bonuses from playing at an easier level? That might account for a lot of the happiness.

And I object to a machine intelligence being happy AT ALL... they should be purely logical and emotionless like Spock! Synthetic Monotone Voice: "I just gained a resource. This will benefit my society, and allow my people to grow faster and work harder. This is good."

Cheers, Eiger

 

[mystikx21]

So even if GEM modded out a lot of the handicaps, wouldn't they still get all the bonuses from playing at an easier level? That might account for a lot of the happiness.

- That could explain it yes.

We could probably still modify it out by adjusting for the chieftain effects with penalties per difficulty as needed. Happiness seems to be the only one that's worth noting however as 40% is a huge advantage. Building/unit costs might also be of interest, but they're not as extreme.

I had thought there was an AI handicap effect in GK that's supposed to deal with the chieftain effects but apparently, like many things, it doesn't do what I thought it does.

 

[Stalker0]

My take would until we find other ways to significantly improve the AI's performance we should leave this alone, it would nerf the AI too much.

 

[mystikx21]

The AI having 30-50 happiness for most of the game reduced to having 10-20 doesn't sound like a huge nerf, but I agree it's not a high priority fix. At least now that tradition's opener isn't 2x.

 

[ExpiredReign]

Does the AI even work properly with the Happiness that they get?

Last night in my current game Ethiopia and Austria both came begging for 'Sugar'.

Ethiopia had 91 Happiness and Austria 97!

I haven't the opportunity to check what they are producing but if they are that focussed on Happiness something seems awry.