AI suggestions

[EldrinFal]

As for slow down, LOL I sometimes think I mod too slow compared to everyone on the team.

What?! You've got to be kidding! You're a modding MACHINE dude. You're nick should be HydroMACHINErx!

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

To be the Devil's Advocate here; I don't play with Rev On and so in my Non Rev games the AI handles the C2C buildings just fine. As I reported before the empires in my games are not stricken, shriveling Empires because of massive Rev hemorrhages but vibrant strong opponents. So it's really a Rev problem.

Why? Because the premise that Rev is built on was for a more Vanilla BtS game. Less tech, less buildings, less Wonders than what C2C has. If the Rev team had 1st played C2C (or RoM) Then built REV, I'm positive you would see a better mesh between the 2 Mods. But that's not how it happened. So to say that C2C is the problem is putting the cart before the horse, imho.

Maybe (being the advocate again) Rev players should play a game or 2 of Non Rev C2C and then compare apples to apples.

As for me, once WW and Pacifism gets fixed properly, the AI is a strong opponent in C2C sans Rev and with those fixes will be even tougher.

Edit: @ Hydro,
I understand you completely and I like your take on how things interact, but that part of your statement I quoted just struck me as very odd. Also sometime the game dictates which buildings you can/need to build vs what you would Really like to build to see what new avenues you've created. I'm a Fan of your work, but sometimes I just need to say Whoa, slow down a bit you're moving too fast. Do you understand where I'm coming from? I think you do.
JosEPh

I play with rev on and in most cases the AI is doing fine with large and strong empires, until they go to war with me and I beeline taking out their capital. Then they fall apart. I also don't have the unhappiness problems you seem t have.

On another note since Hydro made us all use the minimum population to build buildings I have not specialised my cities beyond turning on unlimited wonders and building all the wonders I can in my capital because it is the only one large enough to build them. The limits also mean that I do build almost the buildings in every city because there is nothing else to do.

 

[Hydromancerx]

On another note since Hydro made us all use the minimum population to build buildings I have not specialised my cities beyond turning on unlimited wonders and building all the wonders I can in my capital because it is the only one large enough to build them. The limits also mean that I do build almost the buildings in every city because there is nothing else to do.

I do think the minimum population limit on buildings have helped the AI in building the buildings they need first before the buildings they could live without. Before there were so many buildings available for them to choose, but now there are far fewer to choose when first building a a city. Thus the AI is forced to make better choice since it cannot make the other restricted buildings yet.

 

[JosEPh_II]

[qquote]DH wrote:I also don't have the unhappiness problems you seem t have.[/quote]

Probably so, as I like to keep the Redfaces and under control at all times. It maybe a Pavlov reaction from my initial experiences with REV. And it has colored my style of play.

But seriously the WW is too much in the Mod right now. Hydro did reduce the WW from the Market chain at my suggestion and I appreciate that. But coupled with the Gov't Civics I prefer it's still too much. I understand the reasoning but don't agree with all of it. I honestly think that No Gov't Civic should ever give more than 25% WW and Fascism should never give a -50% to WW but only -25% (of course this is using the assumption that Fascist Gov'ts are warmongers). In the last version I had went into the Civ4CivicsInfo.xml file and reduced the Gov't Civics as I've outlined. The game, for me anyway, played much smoother and some of the AI actually adopted Democracy and Federal. Whereas before that only 1 or 2 AI would even use Republic. The rest stayed on Monarchy or below.

And Pacifist Civic is still too strong too. In my current game with 7 AI, 5 have already switched to Pcft and I'm sure that the remaining 2 will do so also as soon as the get the Tech that enables it. Shaka of All the AI leaders should Never adopt Pcft. Goes totally against his LH Traits, same for Monty and Hyanc (sp?). When a Civic is so strong to cause a leader to go against his traits then imho it's unbalanced and OP.

But these are topics not strongly tied to AI improvements (although I do think they would help the AI play better).

JosEPh

 

[JosEPh_II]

On the Subject of REV and AI, I came across this settingfrom this File(...\Caveman2Cosmos\Assets\Config):

<list id="TurnsBetweenRevs" key="TurnsBetweenRevs" type="int" default="8"
				values="1,2,3,4,6,8,10,12,15,20,25,30,40,50"

With the Longer game speeds used for C2C (Marathon, Snail, etc.) 8 turns between revolutions is imho too short of an interval for the AI to handle properly. Every eight turns would make it were you would have AI's going into revolutions seemingly "all the time" as has been reported by many Rev players. Why not use a larger number? I think 30 would be more realistic and less taxing on AI and player. Maybe even 50 if you're playing on Snail or slower. In fact maybe the entire range, "values" needs to be extended to 100.

If it was 50 to 100 game turns between revolutions I personally might be more inclined to use it. Maybe.

But changing this value to a higher # should help. Just my opinion though.

JosEPh

Edit: This line has an error in it.

<list id="HappinessModifier" key="HappinessModifier" type="float" default="1.0"
				listType="float" values="0.00,1.10,0.25,0.50,0.75,1.00,1.25,1.50,1.75,2.00,2.50,3.00,3.50,4.00,5.00" format="%.2f"

The 2nd value should be 0.10 not 1.10. Might not mean anything since the default is "1.0".

But that brings up another ?. Why is the default "1.0" when the values are 2 decimal place values (ie, 1.00)?

Edit2:

<list id="BarbCivMaxCivs" key="MaxCivs" type="int" default="-1"
				values="-1,0,1,2,3,4,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45"

Wouldn't this eventually cause problems by allowing too many Barb Civs to occur? With an Unlimited # that -1 allows it can cause CTDs. Because without special .dlls for extra Civs it's been proven that if you exceed 48 AI, plus the 1 for Barbarian, Plus Player you exceed the core BtS game limit for # of Civs (50)the game was designed to handle. Afforess and Zappara (among other modders) had to get a handle on this when they 1st tried to incorporate REV and Barb Civ into the RoM/And Mods. And it can cause the game to crash.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

On the Subject of REV and AI, I came across this settingfrom this File(...\Caveman2Cosmos\Assets\Config):

<list id="TurnsBetweenRevs" key="TurnsBetweenRevs" type="int" default="8"
				values="1,2,3,4,6,8,10,12,15,20,25,30,40,50"

With the Longer game speeds used for C2C (Marathon, Snail, etc.) 8 turns between revolutions is imho too short of an interval for the AI to handle properly. Every eight turns would make it were you would have AI's going into revolutions seemingly "all the time" as has been reported by many Rev players. Why not use a larger number? I think 30 would be more realistic and less taxing on AI and player. Maybe even 50 if you're playing on Snail or slower. In fact maybe the entire range, "values" needs to be extended to 100.

If it was 50 to 100 game turns between revolutions I personally might be more inclined to use it. Maybe.

But changing this value to a higher # should help. Just my opinion though.

JosEPh

Edit: This line has an error in it.

<list id="HappinessModifier" key="HappinessModifier" type="float" default="1.0"
				listType="float" values="0.00,1.10,0.25,0.50,0.75,1.00,1.25,1.50,1.75,2.00,2.50,3.00,3.50,4.00,5.00" format="%.2f"

The 2nd value should be 0.10 not 1.10. Might not mean anything since the default is "1.0".

But that brings up another ?. Why is the default "1.0" when the values are 2 decimal place values (ie, 1.00)?

Edit2:

<list id="BarbCivMaxCivs" key="MaxCivs" type="int" default="-1"
				values="-1,0,1,2,3,4,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45"

Wouldn't this eventually cause problems by allowing too many Barb Civs to occur? With an Unlimited # that -1 allows it can cause CTDs. Because without special .dlls for extra Civs it's been proven that if you exceed 48 AI, plus the 1 for Barbarian, Plus Player you exceed the core BtS game limit for # of Civs (50)the game was designed to handle. Afforess and Zappara (among other modders) had to get a handle on this when they 1st tried to incorporate REV and Barb Civ into the RoM/And Mods. And it can cause the game to crash.

Those are the settings you can choose in the BUG mod, I think. I also believe that all numbers are adjusted for game speed. It is the numbers that appear in the list you can choose from. Although I can't find them on the BUG screen so I could be wrong.

Also Rev wont go over the maximum number of civs. It checks for that before trying to create a new civ.

 

[Necratoid]

Bit of a random thing I noticed with worker/gatherer Ai's in version17... I had just convert a gather to a worker and sent it to help a gather with a mud path. After the worker started building the path I noticed that gather had 4 turns left on the mud path and the newly assigned worker had 8.

As far as I can tell from this workers and gathers can't stack jobs. I remember complaining about how workers kept building and rebuilding the same thing on the same square a few months back... do workers/gathers have some random tag that explains city/country of origin like combat units do? I was stealing gathers from two different AIs. So if their is such a tag then it would explain why work units act like this. Work unit from country X are one unit type, from country Y another unit type and perhaps ones you make yourself a third.

If true this explains so much. Different work units are concidered different unit types instead of one type unit. After a while each country would end up with several clusters of unit fighting each other. At least gathers and workers are this way apparently.

version 17 used.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Bit of a random thing I noticed with worker/gatherer Ai's in version17... I had just convert a gather to a worker and sent it to help a gather with a mud path. After the worker started building the path I noticed that gather had 4 turns left on the mud path and the newly assigned worker had 8.

As far as I can tell from this workers and gathers can't stack jobs. I remember complaining about how workers kept building and rebuilding the same thing on the same square a few months back... do workers/gathers have some random tag that explains city/country of origin like combat units do? I was stealing gathers from two different AIs. So if their is such a tag then it would explain why work units act like this. Work unit from country X are one unit type, from country Y another unit type and perhaps ones you make yourself a third.

If true this explains so much. Different work units are concidered different unit types instead of one type unit. After a while each country would end up with several clusters of unit fighting each other. At least gathers and workers are this way apparently.

version 17 used.

There is only one gatherer unit but I think I saw that a gatherer is not a worker unit in the XML.

 

[Necratoid]

Okay I was wrong I was on version 10 there... I hate navigating Windows 7's file tree... I'll tell you if I see it this again after I manage to get some workers past the wall of Neanderthalls. At least the gather thing is apparently valid.

 

[Koshling]

Koshling:

Here are the saves where I am seeing the AI overexpand. The big offender is the Assyrians, who for some reason still haven't converted to Despotism despite have 13 cities! The saves are all Max Compat, and were made using the SVN, between Sept. 18th and 20th.

Finally got round to looking at this in more detail, an I've made some fairly serious changes as a result:

1. Reworked happiness calculation to no longer weight by city size (net unhappiness in a small city is at least as bad as in a large city)
2. Always happy cities (whether via wonders or civics) no longer contribute to the calculation
3. A secondary check on the happiness state by the settler itself is now made in addition to the settler building checks that cities were making

Most importantly of all, I also overhauled the whole AI whether-to-change-civics routine in several ways:

1. It no longer seeks to normalize all civic values so as to be able to compare them across the entire spectrum of possible civics (this was problematic because of outliers with extremely large or extremely small values and lead to a lot of distortions)
2. It now looks ahead in the tech tree to determine if there are other advantageous civics in the near future that should cause it to hold off for now
3. It no longer uses an artifical countdown before it even considers a civic change. It will now check every time it gets a tech at least
4. Fixed major bug with the calculation of unhappiness for foreign culture

Hopefully these changes will lead to more sensible behaviour both on city founding, and on civic swapping. I have not yet pushed these to SVN as I have a bit more testing I want to do first, but once I do (tomorrow I hope) please be on the lookout for any strange behaviour in regard to civic swaps the AI makes.

Edit - changes now pushed to SVN

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The AI does not seem to understand the new sea improvements I added. At least I have never seen them build a becon to improve a reef.

 

[Koshling]

The AI does not seem to understand the new sea improvements I added. At least I have never seen them build a becon to improve a reef.

If you happen tom have a convenient save with a work nearby an improve ale feature post it and I'll take a look see.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Is there any way to change the AI worker (also auto worker) habit of building forts everywhere?

 

[strategyonly]

Is there any way to change the AI worker (also auto worker) habit of building forts everywhere?

I have brought that up before, but from what everyone was saying "so what." That was the answer i got before, i dont like it, later on because the opposing civ comes in with Mounted units and ONLY goes for the forts and takes over that part of your territory and resource to go with it

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I have brought that up before, but from what everyone was saying "so what." That was the answer i got before, i dont like it, later on because the opposing civ comes in with Mounted units and ONLY goes for the forts and takes over that part of your territory and resource to go with it

You mean you don't station defensive units in them? No I mean that the AI builds forts inside the working area of a city when there are other things to build. For example it will build a fort on forest rather than a lumberjack. This is probably down to the bonuses a fort gives being larger than the bonuses a lumberjack gives.

 

[strategyonly]

You mean you don't station defensive units in them? No I mean that the AI builds forts inside the working area of a city when there are other things to build. For example it will build a fort on forest rather than a lumberjack. This is probably down to the bonuses a fort gives being larger than the bonuses a lumberjack gives.

Yeah, i never use defensive reinforcements on forts (sigh), but thats just me.
But that is exactly what i meant, i am bad with words. But does the worker consider over , over etc? Whats the determining factor(s)?

 

[Koshling]

Is there any way to change the AI worker (also auto worker) habit of building forts everywhere?

Yeh easy to inhibit it in the auto-build. Will need a bit more work to incraese the AI intelligence about wher to build them for it (but worthwhile at some point)

 

[Necratoid]

Here is one thing that must be added...

Thou Shall Not Build Forts in the First Ring Around Thy Cities.
and...
Thou Shall Not Build a Line of Forts Stretching From the Sea to the Fort in the First Ring Around Said Cities.

On a different note, I think the Leader Trait Spiritual needs to be nerfed badly. I'm playing on Nobel with Rev on and the top AIs are always a Spi Trait leader that has two or three times the amount of cities (usually ending up at 8-9 for the middle of the road and 15-16 for the Spi Leader) and has only 1-2 Revs a game every other AI is shedding colonies and rebels at 7-8 tops in the medival period. Double size and stable is broken.

On a more whining note, (with out checking manually) somehow said Spi Leader can expand at a few hundred turns in an eternity game... at a point I'm surrounded by a moat of Neanderthalls... which isn't resolved without abusing rogue invisiblity. That AI has to be bribing the Neanderthalls to form moats around me.

If they aren't bribing slope heads they are somehow all building tribes with enough protection to cross a Neanderthall moat and defend it... and then managing to keep up in Sci with a Sci Trait Leader.

End of Whine.

 

[Koshling]

Here is one thing that must be added...

Thou Shall Not Build Forts in the First Ring Around Thy Cities.
and...
Thou Shall Not Build a Line of Forts Stretching From the Sea to the Fort in the First Ring Around Said Cities.

On a different note, I think the Leader Trait Spiritual needs to be nerfed badly. I'm playing on Nobel with Rev on and the top AIs are always a Spi Trait leader that has two or three times the amount of cities (usually ending up at 8-9 for the middle of the road and 15-16 for the Spi Leader) and has only 1-2 Revs a game every other AI is shedding colonies and rebels at 7-8 tops in the medival period. Double size and stable is broken.

On a more whining note, (with out checking manually) somehow said Spi Leader can expand at a few hundred turns in an eternity game... at a point I'm surrounded by a moat of Neanderthalls... which isn't resolved without abusing rogue invisiblity. That AI has to be bribing the Neanderthalls to form moats around me.

If they aren't bribing slope heads they are somehow all building tribes with enough protection to cross a Neanderthall moat and defend it... and then managing to keep up in Sci with a Sci Trait Leader.

End of Whine.

Why not build from coast? Around the city I agree (it provides FAR too good a tile to attack from if taken).

 

[JosEPh_II]

That AI has to be bribing the Neanderthalls to form moats around me.

Maybe an AI close to you has Neanderthal Embassy and is making neander units to hem you in?

It's never occurred to me to build a line of forts to a landlocked city to give said city a passage to the sea. Wow! I usually don't build Forts because I don't use the Civic(s) that grants them Hammers or Gold.

JosEPh