AI+ v13.1

[Azmodanrom]

i'm playing now a game with AI+ turned off, and the AI is developing it;s cities quite nicely and not spamming cities

 

[Lord Yanaek]

I kept a distant eye on this thread for some time now. Just want to react to some recent discussions (sorry if this has been discussed, as i said i kept a distant eye so i haven't read everything)

• Making AI Kamikaze their units might seem like a good idea, but i doubt it's really a good idea. It's basically what they are doing with their Apostles (so if really you want to make them more suicidal in their attacks, maybe it's a place to look if you didn't already). However it makes defending against even large packs of theocracy's powered apostles very easy as all you have to do is camp your holy site (where your Apostle regenerates pretty fast) with a Debater Apostle and watch them suicide all their apostles on yours. Very cost effective way to reinforce your religion. I often find it harder to defend against a missionary rush as i have to actually attack them, then rest for some time while the survivors can spread their religion. If every unit was acting like an Apostle, sure you would see more attacks, but the AI would just loose waves of units one after the other and totally cripple themselves with War Weariness.
• The willingness of AIs to sign peace as soon as they loose some units might also be linked to War Weariness. Even if they have lots of units left, maybe they are already low on amenities and want to stop the war before their cities spawn too many rebels. You might want to try adding a modifier that reduces War Weariness for AIs. However i would be careful with this as you don't want to get the opposite extreme where they refuse peace unless you give them all your cities even thought you are continually beating the crap out of them as they did in Civ5, it was very annoying and now with War Weariness (again something to keep into consideration) it might make the game totally unplayable for the human on higher levels (if you loose battles, you loose ; if you win battles, you loose)

Something i considered while discussing damage in the strategy sub. Maybe the AIs ability (or inability rather) to actually take down cities, especially early might be linked to a different damage formula for cities, or at least walls. Early in the game, walls have only 50 HP but it takes quite some attacks to bring them down. The preview usually shows a "major defeat" even if the unit will definitely survive, maybe because walls take less damage due to the formula used. What if the AI "looks" at the numbers before deciding to attack, and choose not to attack because they will deal much less damage than they take, but out of 50 health rather than 100?

 

[georgjorge]

I'm already preferring this mod to the vanilla version. AIs seem to make a very decent amount of units and settle more quickly. But the upgrading of AI units still doesn't seem to work every time (though better than in vanilla) - in my latest Deity game, I still have city states running around with Catapults and Warriors in 1800AD, while some of the AIs have Musketeers and Knights (still better but not exactly threatening). I also didn't get attacked once (I went for culture victory) throughout the whole game even though my immediate neighbours were denouncing me and my army consisted of a handful of Archers from the very beginning of the game. Just some feedback that might be helpful.

 

[Magil]

I kept a distant eye on this thread for some time now. Just want to react to some recent discussions (sorry if this has been discussed, as i said i kept a distant eye so i haven't read everything)

• Making AI Kamikaze their units might seem like a good idea, but i doubt it's really a good idea. It's basically what they are doing with their Apostles (so if really you want to make them more suicidal in their attacks, maybe it's a place to look if you didn't already). However it makes defending against even large packs of theocracy's powered apostles very easy as all you have to do is camp your holy site (where your Apostle regenerates pretty fast) with a Debater Apostle and watch them suicide all their apostles on yours. Very cost effective way to reinforce your religion. I often find it harder to defend against a missionary rush as i have to actually attack them, then rest for some time while the survivors can spread their religion. If every unit was acting like an Apostle, sure you would see more attacks, but the AI would just loose waves of units one after the other and totally cripple themselves with War Weariness.

Well, ideally they won't be throwing themselves one or two at a time against a unit that heals for ~50 HP every turn. Theological combat also lacks the various modifiers that can influence normal combat, like, a Debater Apostle is basically the end-all religious unit. There are no "end-all" normal units because everything has a counter (ideally). Your horsemen may fare well if it defends on hill against swordsmen, but what about archers or spears? If the player is forced to attack (as a ranged unit forces them to), then the unit doesn't heal. I think the Debater Apostle sleeping on a Holy Site isn't a very good metric to use, since theological combat is so basic compared to normal combat.

 

[Morgawr]

• Making AI Kamikaze their units might seem like a good idea, but i doubt it's really a good idea. It's basically what they are doing with their Apostles (so if really you want to make them more suicidal in their attacks, maybe it's a place to look if you didn't already). However it makes defending against even large packs of theocracy's powered apostles very easy as all you have to do is camp your holy site (where your Apostle regenerates pretty fast) with a Debater Apostle and watch them suicide all their apostles on yours. Very cost effective way to reinforce your religion. I often find it harder to defend against a missionary rush as i have to actually attack them, then rest for some time while the survivors can spread their religion. If every unit was acting like an Apostle, sure you would see more attacks, but the AI would just loose waves of units one after the other and totally cripple themselves with War Weariness.

I agree, they totally kamikaze their apostles w/o any regard to health points and that is broken as well currently. Devs need to fix both military and religious combat AI. If an apostle is below x HP they should either use up their final charge or go back to nearest holy site to heal.

 

[Leodim]

Another solution, make the AI behaves as barbarians AI since barbarian AI is like CIV's V or copy the AI algorithm from Civ V first for the time being before they found a way to fix !

Why not try, but how?
You know it's possible?

 

[Leodim]

I think I forgot to add the screenshot from the game I used for tests Spain(red) is AI.
They should be able to crush my units pretty easy or at the very least kill a lor of them, each turn, but no, they just lost because never attacked with melee (or nearly never, always at full health etc). I didn't even loose a unit even though when they attacked they did about 70dmg and me 15, but then they healed/moved.
So yeah, while kamikaze to a city is too dumb, kamikaze on a one-turn-basis only on war units, would still have been better for him (dumb but less dumb)

As I said, either plans cant be changed from a saved game even with a new declaration of war OR the AI doenst take the output of a fight into account (WTH?!). I say this because with my test with -60 def everywhere (= all unit one shot all unit), even with a new declaration of war, AI doesnt seem to be much more agressive towards my units. Might need some more tests though.

EDIT : and this screen is also showing the -57 (-60+3) def malus I used to test if AI would attack more.

 

[georgjorge]

Just wanted to say keep up the good work!

With everybody talking about "conquering the nearest AI with three Archers and a Warrior" even on Deity, I decided to try that with the mod on. I attacked a very close AI pretty early, as soon as I had my three Archers and a Warrior - and on the third turn of the war I already faced three Chariots (or whatever those units unlocked through Wheel are called) as well as three Warriors. And there were more to come, so the war stalled out pretty hard - I took the city but it wasn't worth it at all. That's exactly as it should be!

 

[kt-0]

It's probably already been suggested, but @Siesta Guru could you consider adding versioning numbers to the download file, and the in-game mod name? That way we can quickly tell whether we have the latest version, when comparing the numbers to this post.

Thank you!

 

[Ferocitus]

Another solution, make the AI behaves as barbarians AI since barbarian AI is like CIV's V or copy the AI algorithm from Civ V first for the time being before they found a way to fix !

They re-wrote the code from the ground up, so just bolting the Civ5 AI engine onto
Civ6 is not a simple matter of copy, paste and recompile.
Devs time would be far better spent on improving the specific AI for Civ6 instead
of piddling around with Civ5 code that is no longer relevant.

There was another comment by someone who wants Firaxis to "use a neural net" because
that would improve the AI.
Do people imagine AI is like a modern version of the Turbo button?

 

[terranu1]

Playing with AI+ V6 and I quickly noticed that while the AI's go on a rampage with war declarations on me, they even bring superior units but never manage to take my towns.
I've had one town without walls or army inside, being surrounded by 5 of Congo's unique units that were way stronger than my sumerian carts. I thought if I should just let the city die, since there was no way I could defend it but then I just rallied like 6 of my carts closer to the city ,even managed to get one inside and at that point Congo retreated and gave me a favorable peace offer, not even loosing any units. I couldn't even atack his units, I'd do maybe 15% dmg while taking at least 40% every hit.
For about 3 turns my city was surrounded and defenseless yet he never attacked it.
Japan, from whom I've taken one small city at the begining of the game, still declares reconquest war on me every 30 or so turns, (marathon play), I suppose as soon as the code allows it to.
He already declared like 4 times reconquest war, brought double the number of units, some slightly superior, surrounded my capital and the city that was theirs..and then...sit...while I was playing chess with my warcarts, slowly chipping his units until loosing 3 or 4, he always gives me a very good peace offer.

This mod seems to have made the AI even worse.
The AI does get to be much more aggresive but also extremely...cautious at the same time. I've had my capital surrounded by more than 8 units of both Congo and Japan, early game, no walls. I had like 5 warcarts and thought of ending the game but out of curiousity I played some chess with my carts, managing to kill 2 or 3 units while the AI kept going back and forth, never actually atacking my capital, despite he could have taken it down in one or two turns then going after my carts with still plenty of units left.

I guess it somehow goes overboard with it's calculations. Like he knows he can take my town but knowing he's surrounded by my units and if a few of his units could die the next turn from the damage taken by atacking my town so he doesn't do it anymore, unless it's completely safe and I make no moves to defend.
But he behaves the same even with much more superior units.

 

[terranu1]

Ok I did something, edited some data in military.xml and behaviour.xml and suddenly the AI got much better at fighting. As in, he actually killed 2 of my units when I didn't expect him to and overall I had to be much more cautious as he kept luring me with one or two units then showing up with chariots and trying to finish me off. He seem to fight more often now instead of running, whenever there's a chance he can inflict damage to my units without dying, even if he looses a couple units in the long run, it's actually trying to wage a war.
Don't remember exactly all changes, if anyone is curious, I decreased lots of 55 values to 40 , 25 to 20 and increased lots of "at war enemy city" priorities by 3 points ,while decreasing slightly other priorities .Here the files.

Also I noticed a very "human" behavior from Rome who is at war with my friend, France. In the first war they had, I backed up France and sieged one of Rome's city on my border.
Now they declared war on France again and Rome, for some reason sent 4 arches to occupy the hills on the short border we share, as if trying to setup a defense, in case I try to pull the same move. That was awesome.

 

[V. Soma]

Ok I did something, edited some data in military.xml and behaviour.xml and suddenly the AI got much better at fighting. As in, he actually killed 2 of my units when I didn't expect him to and overall I had to be much more cautious as he kept luring me with one or two units then showing up with chariots and trying to finish me off. He seem to fight more often now instead of running, whenever there's a chance he can inflict damage to my units without dying, even if he looses a couple units in the long run, it's actually trying to wage a war.
Don't remember exactly all changes, if anyone is curious, I decreased lots of 55 values to 40 , 25 to 20 and increased lots of "at war enemy city" priorities by 3 points ,while decreasing slightly other priorities .Here the files.

Also I noticed a very "human" behavior from Rome who is at war with my friend, France. In the first war they had, I backed up France and sieged one of Rome's city on my border.
Now they declared war on France again and Rome, for some reason sent 4 arches to occupy the hills on the short border we share, as if trying to setup a defense, in case I try to pull the same move. That was awesome.

Well, I played a quick game with your AI+ and the Omnibus Complete mod - on the 4-player leaf map, quick, emperor
I was USA, built Stonehange and won religiously in turn 88... uhh, that was way too easy,

AI had NO religion, the 3 AIs built a total of 2 districts... also very few buildings...
AI France had 4 cities, AI Rome had 5, AI Scíthia had 1city+1cs conquered...

 

[badbonez]

Ok I did something, edited some data in military.xml and behaviour.xml and suddenly the AI got much better at fighting. As in, he actually killed 2 of my units when I didn't expect him to and overall I had to be much more cautious as he kept luring me with one or two units then showing up with chariots and trying to finish me off. He seem to fight more often now instead of running, whenever there's a chance he can inflict damage to my units without dying, even if he looses a couple units in the long run, it's actually trying to wage a war.
Don't remember exactly all changes, if anyone is curious, I decreased lots of 55 values to 40 , 25 to 20 and increased lots of "at war enemy city" priorities by 3 points ,while decreasing slightly other priorities .Here the files.

Also I noticed a very "human" behavior from Rome who is at war with my friend, France. In the first war they had, I backed up France and sieged one of Rome's city on my border.
Now they declared war on France again and Rome, for some reason sent 4 arches to occupy the hills on the short border we share, as if trying to setup a defense, in case I try to pull the same move. That was awesome.

Is this v6?

 

[terranu1]

Well, I played a quick game with your AI+ and the Omnibus Complete mod - on the 4-player leaf map, quick, emperor
I was USA, built Stonehange and won religiously in turn 88... uhh, that was way too easy,

AI had NO religion, the 3 AIs built a total of 2 districts... also very few buildings...
AI France had 4 cities, AI Rome had 5, AI Scíthia had 1city+1cs conquered...

Well I only ever play marathon games (emperor/immortal on large maps 14+ AI's) and, yea , I noticed too in my game there's hardly any districts, 300+ turns into the game. Two AI's have founded religiong and lots of holy sites and theater districts,mostly it's a farm spam and I see AI's with hordes of settlers running around. But as I understood these issues have to do with the other tweaks of the mod that I didn't touch, I was fine with that,that they aggresively settle every piece of land they can grab,I just wanted to have a more warlike AI and it does that as far as I can tell. It attacks you now, whenever there's a chance it can inflict damage without dying or going into red with his units. It's much much more enjoyable.
As I understood the way the AI's play changes alot with map and speed scaling. And that other mod you use might have it's own core changes, as far as the description goes.

 

[terranu1]

Is this v6?

yes

 

[terranu1]

Can this issue be made at least a bit less severe ? (WTH india)
I see AI's moving around with 5 to 7 settlers despite the whole continent being occupied.I took about 4 settlers from Japan alone and pilaged almost 50% of his improvements, only to see him 30 turns later with another 4 or 5 settlers .

 

[V. Soma]

FYI:
I played another game with the very same setup (see my USA game above), only without AI+
I tried the same way: Stonehange and religious win - but some AI built Stonehange in turn 36(?)... (1 turn before me)
wow!

I give it another try...

 

[V. Soma]

So I had another game with only Omnibus Complete ruleset and Smoother Difficulty and 8 ages of War

emperor, quick game, 4-leaf map
I was USA, AI are France, Scythia and Rome

I won a religious game again, in turn 92
Rome had another religion but had no apostle, I had one and that was enough to finish things...

AI did very well:

wonders: me 2 France 2 Scythia 1

AI did well in science, culture (Scythia, France)

they built a lot of buildings : Scythia 18, France 17, me 10

districts Rome: 3 Scythia 2 me 1

Great People Scythia 2 France 2

At about turn 80 Scythia and Rome DoW on France...
Earlier Scythia went for Kandy but couldn't make it, same for FRance on Yerevan

 

[V. Soma]

Game 3: this time same as 1 and 2, but with original AI+ v6

I won in turn 70

Rome DoW on Scythia in turn 48

BC 280 France is in medieval age

turn 70, I win:

buildings: Scythia 7, Rome 6, France 3, me 5

cities: Scythia 4, France 4, Rome 3, me 2

districts: AI near zero: Rome 1, Scythia 0, France 0, me 1

Great People: AI: zero (me 1)

religions: AI zero

OK, I guess turn 70 is too early for things, (quick speed), but still...