AI+ v13.1

[clack]

I've heard the feedback before on v8, although it wasn't my experience. In v9 it'll definitely not be the case that it underexpands. It's supposed to expand way more than in vanilla.

Good day! When you release the 9 version? I am sure that many people do not want to start playing without your mod (and with new patch).
Thanks for the reply.

 

[opezdl]

it seems that v8 works fine with latest patch, however i havet test much so far..

 

[virtualpolitik]

Very nice mod. A must have at this point, I can't imagine playing without it... the vanilla AI is just limp noodle in so many respects, whereas with your mod, AI is aggressive, and can actually stay ahead of me in tech on the higher difficulties. Great job.

My one area of concern is the AI's tactics in war. In vanilla they barely ever kill my units, let alone take a city, no matter how many advantages they have... so your mod is certainly a step up. However, the AI is still not really threatening.

A few ranged units cleverly positioned, a chokepoint, or just having walls... any of these things can apparently throw the AI into a useless morass of indecision. It would almost be better if they just swarmed onto the closest city, disregarding all losses, and just brute forced it. I hope you will invest some time into improving their AI in war, especially on the attack. The AI is great at spamming units, so if it was less concerned about avoiding all losses and more concerning about taking objectives, it could help a lot!

Again, kudos!

 

[Siesta Guru]

I just had an idea I wanted to share!

Since the AI prefers melee units, and since it seems capable of taking cities BEFORE walls show up... what if you gave every melee unit the same capability as if it were next to a battering ram?? Then the AI units would always be able to do damage to walls, even with just melee units! (additional ranged and siege units would help too, obviously) but what do you think of this idea? Walls would mainly just add extra hit points to a city, like it probably should be.

That might be a decent way to help them. Unfortunately I don't think that's moddable without the game code. And with it we could probably do more effective things.

Good day! When you release the 9 version? I am sure that many people do not want to start playing without your mod (and with new patch).
Thanks for the reply.

Probably this weekend, if I end up happy with the tests. You can still play with v8 though, the patch doesn't seem to have broken it.

A few ranged units cleverly positioned, a chokepoint, or just having walls... any of these things can apparently throw the AI into a useless morass of indecision. It would almost be better if they just swarmed onto the closest city, disregarding all losses, and just brute forced it. I hope you will invest some time into improving their AI in war, especially on the attack. The AI is great at spamming units, so if it was less concerned about avoiding all losses and more concerning about taking objectives, it could help a lot!

Yeah making them more fierceless, almost 'dumber' in a sense, is basically my main goal for the tactical combat before we have game code access. Of course I need to be careful all the time that it doesn't devolve in the AI going on single unit suicide missions either nor declares war on sight 100% of the time, so it's a tough balancing act, especially with the limited tools.

 

[clack]

Siesta Guru
Well, we will wait for the weekend. Thank you for your work!

 

[Reffie2]

I've played v8 with the latest winter patch. Unfortunately it does break my game slightly. The AI doesn't go for peace treaties ever. Once they declare war with another AI, they stick with it till one of them is removed from the game. They will negotiate with the human player, but other than that the wars just continue forever.
I play on deity with marathon speed.

I'm looking forward to version 9 bytheway.

 

[Siesta Guru]

I've played v8 with the latest winter patch. Unfortunately it does break my game slightly. The AI doesn't go for peace treaties ever. Once they declare war with another AI, they stick with it till one of them is removed from the game. They will negotiate with the human player, but other than that the wars just continue forever.
I play on deity with marathon speed.

I'm looking forward to version 9 bytheway.

Yeah I've noticed this appearing in v9 too this morning. I think it's one of my changes interacting for immortal/deity weirdly with the winter patches change to trade deals. It'll be fixed in v9, but if you want to change it manually meanwhile, remove this line in core.xml and this problem should disappear:

<Row ListType="ABOVE_EMPEROR_DIPLOS" Item="DIPLOACTION_MAKE_PEACE" Favored="false"/>

 

[Reffie2]

I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

EDIT: Removing that line works perfectly. The AI never declared war on me though. In vanilla I'm expecting a surprise war especially on deity. It's not that I have the strongest army, but maybe I got lucky with their second agenda's.

Also, since this mod is meant to make the AI more competitive. In civilization 4 (and maybe 5), the AI had a modifier called "You are trying to win the game." That line breaks immersion for me, but it is a good strategy to gang up on the number 1 civ. Sometimes one AI is just steamrolling and no one attacks him ever.
I play on huge maps so I can't be everywhere at once.

 

[Siesta Guru]

Siesta Guru updated AI+ with a new update entry:

v9

- Significantly increased AI ability to take both unwalled and walled cities through the following changes:
- They get much less distracted by enemy units and don't run all over your territory
- They won't retreat nearly as fast
- They'll now usually bring the correct siege weapons necessary
- Fixed a bug that made it very unlikely for late-game city attack operations to start.
- These changes mean civs will now occasionally end up completely taking over entire other civs and can sometimes...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Siesta Guru]

So, I'm pretty excited about the improvements in this new version. The AI is almost starting to look competent now, some of the main problems it had in combat are now gone

Here's some screenshots that show what you may end up seeing in your games

Immortal Sumeria takes over (a prince level) Germany entirely + a danish city, creates a massive empire and has mechanized infantry in 1720
http://puu.sh/sZKgQ/6ad6a33652.jpg

Immortal Tomirys taking over a walled capital of another immortal player in the modern era (might've also been on emperor)
http://puu.sh/sZXon/c769bbe93a.jpg
http://puu.sh/sZXQ5/2d062c97ef.jpg

Not everything is happy and sunshine still though. Although it's better at taking walled cities now, it's by no means amazing. The worst part of it is now that it still doesn't actually fire with its ranged/siege units half of the time for some mysterious reason. Some of the changes in v9 have also shifted it from ignoring the city completely, to often ignoring the units around it a little too much. It definitely feels much better/scarier now, but still does often look odd.
It may also be a little too good at taking cities now, often resulting in AIs clearing out 70% of the city states in early game.
The AI is also still terrible at selecting policies, and there doesn't seem to be anything I can change here. It usually sits on the wall production speed improvement the entire game for example.
There's also some struggling with maintenance, especially late game. Meaning you occasionally find a civ that doesn't have a single unit because it can't afford any thanks to -20 gpt based only on building maintenance. Not sure what to do about this one either. There's no way for me to check whether it's running out of gold and adjust weights appropriately. I'm very tempted to just reduce building maintenance, but not sure if I should go there yet.

 

[lax123]

in my current testgame on emperor: funny how after like 25turns 3 city states have been conquered by AI

 

[Real SciPio]

yup...city states are falling all over the map. early game

 

[Lion King]

Hi Siesta,
Thanks for the update, AI really became much more aggressive and even started taking cities in Industrial era (haven't seen this before in ANY mods, how did you achieve this?).
I run couple of AI only match (Pangaea map, one on Emperor, one on Prince, 10 AIs; other mods - AI siege help and 8 ages of War/Pace) and here are my observations:

1. Settling
AI settles much better in terms of speed and territory cover. However, in 80% of cases it builds cities 3 tiles away from previous city. I am not sure this is much different from the original, but it would be better if they prefer at least 4 tiles.
In terms of selecting places for settling - in general it is fine, just sometimes places are a bit odd (like one tile away from the river), but that's ok.

2. District building
AI builds districts quite well now. although I see that culture districts and entertainment districts are less popular than all others. It's kind of makes sense in connection with increased military focus but still would be good to increase AI preference towards them slightly. On the positive side: I have seen non-Roman AI building aqueducts (although it is rare), it is really cool!

The issue I am more concerned about is aerodromes - I've seen Sumeria building two of them (no air units seen due to maintenance issue), however none of the other civs built them.
Could you please add higher flavour for aerodromes so each civ would at least have one or two? Aviation is a huge part of the modern warfare and it is completely missing now.
The similar thing applies to neighbourhoods - I don't remember seeing them.
I know that by the time aerodromes and neighbourhoods come in research, many tiles already will be occupied by improvements, but it will be great to see if AI can substitute one of their least productive tiles with these districts

3. War behaviour - early-mid game
It is awesome! Looking on the map I had a feeling of reading ancient history book - lots of war, cities taken easily (I saw AI taking 3 cities from one civ), base rush (2 civs tried to take each other's capitals). Overall, really cool.

4. War behaviour - late game
It is clearly much better - I saw cities falling in Industrial era, especially when AI has relatively modern siege weapon (at least bombards). I noticed several strange things:
* You would expect AI yo be more aggressive with difficulty increasing. However, I see the opposite - on prince level AI is much keener to attack city in siege situation comparing to Emperor level.
I suspect there is some preference towards unit preservation on higher difficulties or some other strategy. I've yet to test Deity but I suspect to see something similar to the Emperor level.
* Sometimes AI surrounds city with units and.... does nothing, mb just pillage. I suspect that AI might be waiting for siege weapon/ranged unit or just doesn't believe it can take city. Is it possible to write a trigger activating "attack city" or "zerg_rush" operation once city is sieged.
* Late game cities are way too strong - some cities can reach defence strength of 90. Even if you surround it with tank and infantry corps/armies, you won't be able to take it without artillery/bombers. And tbh this is not in line with modern history - cities were taken easily if they were not defended.
I can understand why AI isn't triggering attack - he can lose 3-4 units while trying to take it. I think city strength should be reduced even more in late game (other eras are fine) to 70-75 strength. Is it possible to do this amendment?
*AI doesn't really use balloons/medics, which adversely affects siege ability/unit preservation.

5. Maintenance problem
It is very odd issue happening in the late game when AI loses all his units and his lands are spawned with rebels. However, I am not sure this is the AI+ mod problem - in one of my games I had empty treasury and at the same time was losing money (about -7gpt). Then something happened (prob spy stole money) and I had -200 gold per turn and -15 amenities in all my cities. I expected gpt level to come back next turn but it didn;t happen - next turn I had the same -200gpt and got -30 amenities in my cities. I am not sure what exactly the issue was but if AI had something similar, this led to him losing all army and still suffering gold losses.

Overall, v9 is much better than v8 and can be really enjoyable. Siesta thanks again for great work!

 

[Klazart]

Brilliant stuff! Looking forward to testing it out!

 

[Fimbulvetr]

individualization.xml, line 384: you forgot to close that xml tag.

If I remove all traits (MILITARISTIC_CIV to SEMI_RELIGIOUS_CIV) from all leaders, will they still behave normally or are those traits required? As far as I can see, a civ without special abilities should perform just as well without them but I'm not sure.

And two questions about minor.xml

    <AiFavoredItems>
        <!--Feel free to build these-->
        <Delete ListType="MinorCivDistricts" Item="DISTRICT_CAMPUS" />
        <Delete ListType="MinorCivDistricts" Item="DISTRICT_COMMERCIAL_HUB" />
        <Delete ListType="MinorCivDistricts" Item="DISTRICT_INDUSTRIAL_ZONE" />
        <Delete ListType="MinorCivDistricts" Item="DISTRICT_THEATER" />

        <Row ListType="STD_DIPLOS" Item="DIPLOACTION_DECLARE_WAR_MINOR_CIV" Value="-2"/>

That last line makes war against minor civs less likely I assume?
But why exactly do you delete those rows for MinorCivDistricts, does that remove their ability to build those districts?

 

[Siesta Guru]

in my current testgame on emperor: funny how after like 25turns 3 city states have been conquered by AI

yup...city states are falling all over the map. early game

Hah yes, they've become so good at taking them that it's almost annoying. I hope I can find some further ways to reduce their desire to attack city states.

Hi Siesta,
Thanks for the update, AI really became much more aggressive and even started taking cities in Industrial era (haven't seen this before in ANY mods, how did you achieve this?).

Thanks for the detailed feedback in your post!
A lot of changes went into it. One of the biggest is solving a bug that made them not even start siege operations in lategame. On top of that I did some work to the behaviortree that makes them focus cities more, to operations to make them retreat less often, and to teams to make thm bring more appropriate siege support.

AI settles much better in terms of speed and territory cover. However, in 80% of cases it builds cities 3 tiles away from previous city. I am not sure this is much different from the original, but it would be better if they prefer at least 4 tiles.
In terms of selecting places for settling - in general it is fine, just sometimes places are a bit odd (like one tile away from the river), but that's ok.

Yeah both of these seem to result from in dll settling code bugs. The 3 tile one is mostly because they still count tiles that are already in someones territory as being worthwhile. The 1 tile river issue seems to be because the fresh water calculation looks at the fresh water availability of tiles on the first ring, instead of the actual spot. Not entirely sure on that one yet, but it would best explain what I've seen so far.

AI builds districts quite well now. although I see that culture districts and entertainment districts are less popular than all others. It's kind of makes sense in connection with increased military focus but still would be good to increase AI preference towards them slightly. On the positive side: I have seen non-Roman AI building aqueducts (although it is rare), it is really cool!
The issue I am more concerned about is aerodromes - I've seen Sumeria building two of them (no air units seen due to maintenance issue), however none of the other civs built them.
Could you please add higher flavour for aerodromes so each civ would at least have one or two? Aviation is a huge part of the modern warfare and it is completely missing now.
The similar thing applies to neighbourhoods - I don't remember seeing them.

Sadly I can't do any fine control of district building for districts that don't have yields/ great person points. So out of the ones you mentioned, only the cultural one is really within my reach.
It definitely does still build all the others you mentioned, but some are indeed too rare. So far I've felt that aerodrome builds were okay, but aqueducts and neighbourhoods are being underproduced. I may also increase cultural district desire for cultural civs a little.

It is awesome! Looking on the map I had a feeling of reading ancient history book - lots of war, cities taken easily (I saw AI taking 3 cities from one civ), base rush (2 civs tried to take each other's capitals). Overall, really cool.

That's great to hear! I've seen a lot of that myself too so was getting pretty excited about this version.

* You would expect AI yo be more aggressive with difficulty increasing. However, I see the opposite - on prince level AI is much keener to attack city in siege situation comparing to Emperor level.

Yeah that point is rather awkward. The reason is pretty simple and hard to avoid though. On lower difficulty levels, the defending player will have significantly less troops. This makes relative differences in strengths bigger, so that they hit the condition of 'minimum odds of success' much quicker, and thus launch more attacks. I haven't found a good way yet to make this better on the higher difficulty levels.

Sometimes AI surrounds city with units and.... does nothing, mb just pillage. I suspect that AI might be waiting for siege weapon/ranged unit or just doesn't believe it can take city. Is it possible to write a trigger activating "attack city" or "zerg_rush" operation once city is sieged.

I'll continue looking at this because it's indeed rather frustrating. But I doubt I can really solve it. The problem is indeed mostly that it's 'waiting' for siege weapons, in the sense that it doesn't feel it can attack full health city walls with melee units.

* Late game cities are way too strong - some cities can reach defence strength of 90. Even if you surround it with tank and infantry corps/armies, you won't be able to take it without artillery/bombers. And tbh this is not in line with modern history - cities were taken easily if they were not defended.

Agreed. Those information age cities are nearly impossible to conquer, and that doesn't seem very historical. If anything it became much easier during renaissance to take cities, rather than harder. I'm considering just removing the strength scaling based on population to make it a little more bearable, but it'll mean most cities have exactly the same strength.

*AI doesn't really use balloons/medics, which adversely affects siege ability/unit preservation.

Working on this one. Have you by any chance seen them actually build them in vanilla? I'm not sure yet if they even can. Same deal with nuclear weapons.

It is very odd issue happening in the late game when AI loses all his units and his lands are spawned with rebels. However, I am not sure this is the AI+ mod problem - in one of my games I had empty treasury and at the same time was losing money (about -7gpt). Then something happened (prob spy stole money) and I had -200 gold per turn and -15 amenities in all my cities. I expected gpt level to come back next turn but it didn;t happen - next turn I had the same -200gpt and got -30 amenities in my cities. I am not sure what exactly the issue was but if AI had something similar, this led to him losing all army and still suffering gold losses.

There's definitely something funky going on with maintenance. I've seen one sit at -46 gpt without a single unit. I don't really know what made it so much worse recently. It may just be that they're getting bigger cities, so now have more room for buildings. I'm considering just nerfing building maintenance to 1 each, but maybe I should do that in a balance patch instead.

individualization.xml, line 384: you forgot to close that xml tag.

Good eye. It didn't cause the file to crash though right? Might be the comment saving it.

If I remove all traits (MILITARISTIC_CIV to SEMI_RELIGIOUS_CIV) from all leaders, will they still behave normally or are those traits required? As far as I can see, a civ without special abilities should perform just as well without them but I'm not sure.

They should behave pretty normally without. If you delete all of this though, you may see AIs overall underbuild holy sites and theatres.

That last line makes war against minor civs less likely I assume?

That's the idea, but it doesn't seem to do a whole lot. Might experiment with that one a little more.

But why exactly do you delete those rows for MinorCivDistricts, does that remove their ability to build those districts?

The vanilla files included lines that set 'favored' to false for those districts, making them never build them. By removing the lines, they'll now be able to build these districts.[/quote][/quote]

 

[Fimbulvetr]

My confusion with those MinorCivDistricts rows is because that same table also has the following entries for ListTypes:
MinorCivScienceDistrict
MinorCivReligiousDistrict
MinorCivTradeDistrict
MinorCivCultureDistrict
MinorCivMilitaryDistrict
MinorCivIndustryDistrict
with Item set to the appropriate district and Favored set to 1. Are you sure they couldn't build those districts before? I was thinking they could.

 

[ctudor]

for me it doesn't work anymore. i configure the game and when i press Start Game, then i get loading game and it goes back to main menu.

had to revert back to v8

 

[Marek Antoniusz]

Hello, I am wondering is this mod compatible with Test of Time mod?

 

[Siesta Guru]

My confusion with those MinorCivDistricts rows is because that same table also has the following entries for ListTypes:
MinorCivScienceDistrict
MinorCivReligiousDistrict
MinorCivTradeDistrict
MinorCivCultureDistrict
MinorCivMilitaryDistrict
MinorCivIndustryDistrict
with Item set to the appropriate district and Favored set to 1. Are you sure they couldn't build those districts before? I was thinking they could.

In the case of districts its basically
favored = false -> they won't ever be build
favored= true -> they will build these over all others
favored = unmentioned -> they will determine which to build using their normal formula

Minors all had favored set to false for most of the districts (except harbor for some reason). But then got an overruling favored=true set for their relevant types. So industrial city states would force build industrial districts. The entries you mention now are these overruling entries and are only applied to a single city state each, while the favored=false entries were for all city states.
I've just removed the favored=false entries for some of the districts, so that all city states can now build the industrial district etc.

for me it doesn't work anymore. i configure the game and when i press Start Game, then i get loading game and it goes back to main menu.

had to revert back to v8

Did you load an already running game, or start a new one?
Sometimes I get this, and then retrying does the trick. If that doesn't do it, mind sharing the contents of the database.log file in mygames/civ 6/logs right after it went wrong?

Hello, I am wondering is this mod compatible with Test of Time mod?

Not entirely sure. I believe someone said they were, but someone else had some problems with it.