AI+ v13.1

[Siesta Guru]

Hey Siesta, I've been using the latest version of the mod along with the NQ modpack (ties together the tech tree) and noticed better strategic play from the AI in terms of district and unit building. So I think the issue with the districts has been resolved by the latest mod version, but also that the vanilla tech tree is one of the problems resulting in poor AI planning.

I now have a game with v8 and Omnibus 1.2 Enhanced (not Complete!) - and I see AI is better, much better with districts and buildings!
Also, AI does religions, too - I play the 4-leaf map, standard speed and now I cannot win easily with reliigion... OK, I could have won it perhaps around turn 100 but barbs killed my missionary... and now Spain turned back his cities to his religion and declared a Holy War on me... time to see how AI does war... (I have not much army at the time of declaration, no city walls either...)

Great to hear your initial observations seem good. Will await further feedback and see if there's more to do. Might start looking a little at the agendas soon if no big problems arise.

I installed this mod today hoping to play it with my friends and as soon as we started a game my friends started getting desync'd after every turn. So we decided to turn it off until we could figure out what was wrong.

Ah yes, the multiplayer aspect of it still seems non-functional for now. Don't think there's anything I can do about it at the moment, we'll have to wait for some core game updates for that I'm afraid.

This is great, gonna give it a try tonight.

What is your plan when the new patch comes out? Assuming there's a 60 day patch hopefully a week or so from today (pure speculation of course), the core files will be altered again. Since the DLL and xml etc files all interact together to affect AI behavior, and you don't exactly know what they changed in the DLL, we all go back to playing vanilla patched version at that time, right? How do you reevaluate all your changes at that point?

Yeah if a big patch hits, I would recommend just turning it off for a bit. Like the fall patch, I don't expect too much will change that requires significant changes on my end, but we'll see. I'll end up just retesting most of it and would hope to get a quick compatible version out.

Ok, siesta looking through files i think there may be mistake in military file in the strategies files there seems to be a double of the same strategy type but one with mistype what files did you change as well just looking through for bug or other things that may not work for whatever crazy reason. Posting the lines in that section of the xml file so you can see it for yourself cuz im confused a bit of changes.

<Strategies>
<Row StrategyType="STRATEGY_WAR_IF_STRONG" NumConditionsNeeded="2"/>
<Row StrategyType="STRATEGY_AM_STRONG" NumConditionsNeeded="1"/>
<Row StrategyType="STRATEGY_AM_STRONK" NumConditionsNeeded="1"/> <!-- This one here is what im confused about is it mistake or is functioning code not sure -->
</Strategies>

Hah, no that's intended. Sounds like I should change the wording on that. The 'stronk' strategy is basically just a 'super strong' strategy.

Yeah i agree it is an issue i added the uncivilizedguys immersive eras as well just to test it and see if it helped the AI at all its huge, I am currently working out new tech tree to hopefully solve this problem while not eliminating strategic diversity for the human players and AI a like. This was problem in 5 as well though them pucking dumb techs so it is a universal problem lately. They did ok in 4 ish anyway after a few DLC's, so this may be another thing to wait for DLL and a DLC maybe?

Yeah I've been thinking of and working on an improved tree myself for a sideproject. There's quite a few things in there that are either annoying for ai, cause strange imbalances (chemistry beeline), and have weird flavor implications (modern ships without shipbuilding, some airplanes without flight, crossbows with archery etc). Might be worth pooling our ideas and those of maddjinn together to create the best thing we can.
Personally feel the civic tree is much more reasonable, but that could also use some work I suppose

 

[tm1681]

Can you use AI+ on a saved game if you hadn't used it at the start?

 

[Horem]

No.

 

[tm1681]

Thanks! I figured as much but I just wanted to double-check.

I started a game as Pericles where my five closest neighbors are city states and I ended up with most of a continent to myself, and I figured it's just too good to pass up even with vanilla AI.

 

[Naatje]

First time I use this mod, so sorry if I say something that have been asked already or something dumb.

I made a little test with the last version, I was pretty happy with the early part of the game, they expanded with settlers, made wars, one big war on mid game and even eliminated one faction. But at the end is the same, although something better, the units get outdated of the current era, I guess that is something really hard to fix.

I don't know if it will be of any help, but from the gameplay that I made (continent map, immortal diff, 4 civs, no barbarian units). The faction that had less units and was not too much behind on the tech tree was the one that got updated their units faster. Brazil was owning all the other factions, and was in the modern era (the first one to enter this era) with warriors units yet, not a single unit upgraded, only the new recruited ones. At one point of the game some barbarian appeared near the capital of one civ that was conquered by brazil on early game and nearly destroyed half the army of Brazil due to the difference of eras.

I don't know if would be possible to do or if maybe it can help on some way. But wouldn't be posible to do that the AI would upgrade their units automatically without cost or resources if he has the needed tech or lower the costs? I don't know if the impact on the game would be worse yet this way, but I feel like I would be more okay with this than playing an end game against civs that are fighting with units 2 eras behind them.

I feel like this AI try to take into account too much things, and that lead to dead ends easily or easy ways that they miss something to keep progressing. Maybe a dumber AI would give better results. The AI will never be able to do the same decisions as an human player with that many things that can happen in the game.

 

[reee]

hm so your game Ai do more one town? WTH is bug on my games? is oder my mod is buged- TestofTime v1001? some one try play it?

 

[Gort]

Are we getting any closer to resolving the AI's inability to take cities in the late game? It feels like they can capture unwalled cities, or earlier walled ones if they bring a ram or tower, but once those are obsolete and every city has walls, conquest stops dead.

 

[reee]

can we get some cheat bost on Ai like made siti faster you and made unit more you and begining boost in wariot and setller pls

 

[Naatje]

hm so your game Ai do more one town? WTH is bug on my games? is oder my mod is buged- TestofTime v1001? some one try play it?

My game they made settlers pretty fast,. Maybe the map is giving you problems, from my tests with this mod I could see that the maps with more narrow paths, the AI had more problems to place the settlers down. On the other mpas I didn't have that problem.

 

[Siesta Guru]

Brazil was owning all the other factions, and was in the modern era (the first one to enter this era) with warriors units yet, not a single unit upgraded, only the new recruited ones.

I don't know if would be possible to do or if maybe it can help on some way. But wouldn't be posible to do that the AI would upgrade their units automatically without cost or resources if he has the needed tech or lower the costs? I don't know if the impact on the game would be worse yet this way, but I feel like I would be more okay with this than playing an end game against civs that are fighting with units 2 eras behind them.

I feel like this AI try to take into account too much things, and that lead to dead ends easily or easy ways that they miss something to keep progressing. Maybe a dumber AI would give better results. The AI will never be able to do the same decisions as an human player with that many things that can happen in the game.

The non-upgrading aspect is in almost all cases caused by them not having the resources, techs, or money to do it. The AI is surprisingly money starved most of the time, even on deity. The bugs just aren't nearly as big as on civ 5 deity.
The diplomatic window may make it seem like they're doing fine on gpt, but that's because it doesn't seem to subtract the maintenance costs for whatever reason.
Your AI cheating idea may be a workable model, although itd feel rather unfair I think. Sadly, I won't be able to force this for the AI only without the DLL.

Overly 'smart' AIs that make themselves less competent through too many decisions are definitely a thing. The settler operations in this game are a good example, as it ends up getting very indecisive about what it wants to do. Archery not being teched is a similar problem, where it plans too much, making it prefer techs that have followups. So far I've mostly tried to make the AI more 'solid' too, as in, less jumpy back and forth decision making. Very limited by what I have access to though

hm so your game Ai do more one town? WTH is bug on my games? is oder my mod is buged- TestofTime v1001? some one try play it?

Not sure what's going on in your games. Have yet to have that problem myself. I haven't tested with testoftime myself, but I think the creator has used AI+ and would've reported it if there were big compatibility issues like that. What map/difficulty settings are you playing on?
There's a log file called database.log in my games/civ 6/logs which may show you some error messages if serious bugs are happening in any of the mods you're using. May be worth checking that at least

Are we getting any closer to resolving the AI's inability to take cities in the late game? It feels like they can capture unwalled cities, or earlier walled ones if they bring a ram or tower, but once those are obsolete and every city has walls, conquest stops dead.

Not really. v8 made some small improvements, but really I think this is just completely out of reach for pure AI mods. Even with dll access, it would be extremely hard to get it right against a competent player. The game balance surrounding those late medieval to modern cities is just so out of whack that you need perfect play against a player who isn't just a sitting duck. I've had games with 5 bombards shooting at a renaissance city that were unable to outdamage the healing. Even in multiplayer conquests around that time are really rare for land armies equally matched in tech level.
To have any hope of AIs actually taking late game cities, we need several things. Significantly improved AI beyond what can be done through the tools currently available, nerfs to city strength scaling and its healing, and possibly also your change to allow siege weapons to move and shoot.

 

[Boosthungry]

Is it possible to have the AI prioritize surrounding a city with zone of control to put it under siege so cities can't heal?

As a player I always try to begin to move around a city as much as possible while out of range and then on a turn move all my units into the range of the cities attack and then a turn or two of siege followed by a capture. I don't fully know the capability of modding in Civ 6 but is it at least possible to attempt to simulate this strategy?

China declared war on me and came at me with a fair bit of units, but they trickled in and I was able to pick them off easily without losing anything. Granted it was a fight that he wasn't going to win anyway, I had 4-5 units and a city defending against 7-8 units. While he had a decent army comp it wasn't a fight he was going to be able to win, but it would have been nice if he at least killed 1 unit of mine.

 

[Gort]

To have any hope of AIs actually taking late game cities, we need several things. Significantly improved AI beyond what can be done through the tools currently available, nerfs to city strength scaling and its healing, and possibly also your change to allow siege weapons to move and shoot.

Perhaps I'll just add "removes all city defense buildings" to my mod and see what happens. Although thinking about it I might have to instead make them zero cost and zero maintenance as well, for the AI's sake. (and to allow you to get Eurekas and things like the Monarchy housing bonus)

 

[Siesta Guru]

Is it possible to have the AI prioritize surrounding a city with zone of control to put it under siege so cities can't heal?
I don't fully know the capability of modding in Civ 6 but is it at least possible to attempt to simulate this strategy?

What you describe is basically the way both the vanilla and AI+ systems are designed to work because there aren't really any other tools. It gets so distracted by enemy units however that it isn't noticeable in most fights.

Perhaps I'll just add "removes all city defense buildings" to my mod and see what happens. Although thinking about it I might have to instead make them zero cost and zero maintenance as well, for the AI's sake. (and to allow you to get Eurekas and things like the Monarchy housing bonus)

Don't think the AI would build them if you set their effects to 0.
Also I kind of worry it's not really the defensive buildings that are the biggest impactor, it's the moment they tech crossbowmen after having ignored archers. That suddenly blows their city combat strength up from in the twenties to high in the fourties, pushing it out of reach of the melee units of the time. And by the time the first bombards start rolling out to deal with the high defenses, the defenders will be getting field cannons, boosting it into the seventies.

 

[mahgver]

Thanks for taking the time to work on this for us Civ fans! Those lazy bums at Firaxis should be paying you for doing their job!

I just tried out v8 and I noticed the AI building more ranged units (which is good!) and it is more willing to attack and go to war (which is good!) and I even saw it do something I've never seen a Civ AI do before ever.... it landed a naval invasion force of about 6 units, 2 knights, 2 catapults and 2 crossbows! Somehow it was coordinated enough to move a group of units together and land most of them all in the same turn and bring siege units along (instead of trickling units in 1 or 2 at a time like it usually does, or never sending a force across the water at all). Very impressive. They began attacking my undefended capital, but as soon as I moved my field guns nearby, most of them retreated back into the ocean. Whatever you did, bravo! The AI seems a lot less stupid already.

One problem I did notice was that I'm the only one accumulating great scientist points at turn 110 (immortal, quick settings) with germany, scythia, egypt, china, and 2 unknown civs in the game. This tells me no one is building science districts except me.

 

[Morgawr]

Observations from my first game with v8: (Deity)

- Increased early religion rush vs prev version - CHECK!

- AI a bit more daring with its units - CHECK!

Seeing definite improvements here, thanks for continuing the effort! Around turn 40 Egypt came at my unwalled capital with 5 warriors and a maryanni archer. The Warriors sieged my city and started attacking. They brought it down to ~20%, but once their own health dipped below ~50% they started running away and I killed them one by one with my 3 archers. So still, not master tactician by any means but at least they tried.. They could have easily defeated me for good by letting the wounded warriors attack just one more turn. There should be something in the code that makes them more daring as city defense goes down. Weirdly, the maryanni archer never took a single shot. (Felt too vulnerable?)

A bigger issue is that the AI doesn't defend its cities well. I assaulted China's walled capital with two swordsman and four archers. Couldn't even technically "siege" it. They had a bigger army than me but did not bring any units to the rescue from their other cities! The city fired every turn and their knight camped inside. In 20+ turns I slowly killed the city. I don't know why they wouldn't bring units to save their capital. Seriously, they had KNIGHTS vs my archers, and plenty of them!

And of course the biggest flaw of all still remains - after taking their capital China turned over *4* of their remaining 6 cities. And even uglier than that, I was at war with Egypt again later and even though no city was taken and she had higher military score, she turned over 2 of her cities and her treasury for peace. Intimidating AI is too easy even on Deity and even if you are the weakest and least advanced.. That is just unacceptable. I sincerely hope the devs address that in the next patch.

 

[Naatje]

The non-upgrading aspect is in almost all cases caused by them not having the resources, techs, or money to do it. The AI is surprisingly money starved most of the time, even on deity. The bugs just aren't nearly as big as on civ 5 deity.
The diplomatic window may make it seem like they're doing fine on gpt, but that's because it doesn't seem to subtract the maintenance costs for whatever reason.
Your AI cheating idea may be a workable model, although itd feel rather unfair I think. Sadly, I won't be able to force this for the AI only without the DLL.

Thx for the info, I didn't know exactly what was posible to modify. Do you know if there is some mod or some way to see the resources and/or gold of the others factions on an autoplay game?

 

[Siesta Guru]

Thanks for taking the time to work on this for us Civ fans! Those lazy bums at Firaxis should be paying you for doing their job!

I just tried out v8 and I noticed the AI building more ranged units (which is good!) and it is more willing to attack and go to war (which is good!) and I even saw it do something I've never seen a Civ AI do before ever.... it landed a naval invasion force of about 6 units, 2 knights, 2 catapults and 2 crossbows! Somehow it was coordinated enough to move a group of units together and land most of them all in the same turn and bring siege units along (instead of trickling units in 1 or 2 at a time like it usually does, or never sending a force across the water at all). Very impressive. They began attacking my undefended capital, but as soon as I moved my field guns nearby, most of them retreated back into the ocean. Whatever you did, bravo! The AI seems a lot less stupid already.

One problem I did notice was that I'm the only one accumulating great scientist points at turn 110 (immortal, quick settings) with germany, scythia, egypt, china, and 2 unknown civs in the game. This tells me no one is building science districts except me.

Great to hear! Too bad they ended up just running away again (although maybe they should've against field cannons). Will look into the science districts and see if what you're seeing in your game is a fluke or if it's overall on the low end. I've been seeing some in my games, but maybe not enough either.

Seeing definite improvements here, thanks They brought it down to ~20%, but once their own health dipped below ~50% they started running away and I killed them one by one with my 3 archers. So still, not master tactician by any means but at least they tried.. They could have easily defeated me for good by letting the wounded warriors attack just one more turn. There should be something in the code that makes them more daring as city defense goes down. Weirdly, the maryanni archer never took a single shot. (Felt too vulnerable?)

Yeah it'd be very nice if they could see the city health/the progress they're making. In the very worst scenario, which I've seen a few times. Melee units will ignore a 0 health city in attack range. It's one of those things caused by the design of the behaviortree, where 'attack units', 'attack city', 'move forwards', 'move to safety/heal', 'retreat' are basically all their own unique implementations, in which they aren't able to do the actions belonging to the other parts. And the rules that determine which of these they will pick are very simple with almost no control over them. The current v8 version has the move to safety/heal threshold at 30% of a units health. If they were actually at 30%, that's probably what happened. If they were more like 50%, it was likely the operation pushing them all into retreat mode., thinking it could no longer win the battle

A bigger issue is that the AI doesn't defend its cities well. I assaulted China's walled capital with two swordsman and four archers. Couldn't even technically "siege" it. They had a bigger army than me but did not bring any units to the rescue from their other cities! The city fired every turn and their knight camped inside. In 20+ turns I slowly killed the city. I don't know why they wouldn't bring units to save their capital. Seriously, they had KNIGHTS vs my archers, and plenty of them!

Hoping to still make some progress here in the future as I haven't looked that much at it yet. It's going to be fun if I manage to make this somewhat better and the AI goes back to being unable to take any AI cities.

And of course the biggest flaw of all still remains - after taking their capital China turned over *4* of their remaining 6 cities. And even uglier than that, I was at war with Egypt again later and even though no city was taken and she had higher military score, she turned over 2 of her cities and her treasury for peace. Intimidating AI is too easy even on Deity and even if you are the weakest and least advanced.. That is just unacceptable. I sincerely hope the devs address that in the next patch.

Was this on deity/immortal in v8? Guess that means my hopeful change didn't work.

Thx for the info, I didn't know exactly what was posible to modify. Do you know if there is some mod or some way to see the resources and/or gold of the others factions on an autoplay game?

Yes. If you use the civ 5 firetuner to launch your autoplay games, you can see some extra info. You can se their techs and tresurury in the base player tab for example. Ive modified my tab a little to also show gpt, maintenance, science per turn, culture per turn and faith per turn. If you want I can send you that tab.

 

[Morgawr]

Was this on deity/immortal in v8? Guess that means my hopeful change didn't work.

Yes the super lucrative peace deals that feel like an exploit are on Deity. Your hopeful change? I thought peace deals were part of DLL that you couldn't fix.. I was just venting about it. The problem here is that the AI must be either grossly undervaluing its warscore (assuming this concept exists), or grossly undervaluing their cities, or both.

 

[Siesta Guru]

Yes the super lucrative peace deals that feel like an exploit are on Deity. Your hopeful change? I thought peace deals were part of DLL that you couldn't fix.. I was just venting about it. The problem here is that the AI must be either grossly undervaluing its warscore (assuming this concept exists), or grossly undervaluing their cities, or both.

I found out later that gorgo has an agenda that's supposed to stop her from giving all her cities away, with some xml support. I tried ripping the xml part (which doesn't look like it'd stop the deals either) and put it on immortal/deity. But apparently there's more to it than the xml part if it's still doing that. Or maybe it doesn't even work for gorgo. Haven't played enough games against her to be sure. But yeah, that definitely puts the final nail into the coffin.

 

[Naatje]

Yes. If you use the civ 5 firetuner to launch your autoplay games, you can see some extra info. You can se their techs and tresurury in the base player tab for example. Ive modified my tab a little to also show gpt, maintenance, science per turn, culture per turn and faith per turn. If you want I can send you that tab.

yes, I really would appreciate that if you could send me the modified one.