AI+ v13.1

[Siesta Guru]

You mentioned in the Civ Flavour Deity thread that you can use some help with some stuff, will there be any stuff that's basically working on xml and nothing else? Because I wouldn't mind helping out, but I have almost zero programming experience. I do know the basics of programming though, I just don't have the willpower to learn a language. But if there's something easy, I could do that.

Yes, just simple xml-esque changes, tweaks and testing is going to be one of the most time demanding aspects and help in that area will be very welcome.
It shouldn't need any programming knowledge, though it'll probably help. I think it'll probably actually end up being easier to make changes in lua than it was in xml. It won't require as much bulky text, allows more complex behavior without weird hacks, and it'll be easier to see what a change will end up doing.

 

[Abd121]

20 hours of testing I figured exactly the problem with the A+.

the AI builds an absurd amount of units. which is nice until you realize that they've run themselves dry with upkeep costs... the only times when I've seen the AI have any money is after a war that cost them all their troops, which is not exactly a viable outcome... another thing is that they spam cities way too close, they can never build tall because they refuse to give themselves any room to grow.

there are more things to iron out but those 2 are the most problematic IMO

 

[V. Soma]

I had a science win with Russia on Europe map - Scotland was leading in science and made the first two phases of Space projects, and then somehow forgot to finish...? Can it be that AI drops aim to make science victory...?

EDIT:

I checked the save from before end and I see Scotland was building something at one of the spaceports so... maybe just too slow...? (Norway and Spain was also going for science victory)

I think AI just is not smart enough to speed up space project building:
I had:
- GP Carl Sagan to finish off Mars Habitation (or what the most expensive one is called) in 1 turn...
- gov. Pingala in the city promoted up to Space Project buff
- aluminium and uranium
- gov. plaza Royal Society and then builders to help project every turn...

I guess AI doesn't use many of these...

 

[Morgawr]

@Siesta Guru , any chance you can release a hot fix to increase commercial hub desire (assuming making the AI conscious of unit costs and managing their finances properly is not possible) prior to releasing your full new version? The self bankrupting seems to be the most obvious thing crippling the AI (I also observe in all my games) and possibly the easiest to fix as well?

 

[Siesta Guru]

@Siesta Guru , any chance you can release a hot fix to increase commercial hub desire (assuming making the AI conscious of unit costs and managing their finances properly is not possible) prior to releasing your full new version? The self bankrupting seems to be the most obvious thing crippling the AI (I also observe in all my games) and possibly the easiest to fix as well?

Sure, here's a slightly changed version with a higher desire for gold (and somewhat higher science). Do you guys mind doing some of the testing for me here to see if it's any better? I've run a couple of AI only games, but don't have the time right now to play games myself.

Note that it's actually not easy at all to stop it from bankrupting itself, that's been an issue throughout development. The core problem is that on higher difficulty levels, it just ends up with so much production, that it's inevitable that it'll build too many units. It just can't get enough gold to pay for the maintenance. Of course some extra commercials do help, but I'm pretty sure the issue won't be fixed entirely. I might not even be able to stop it from doing that with lua either, without resorting to having it just always declare war when there's too many units.
They should've honestly just added some kind of maintenance reduction for the AI on higher difficulty levels.

Hope this'll adress your concerns too @Abd121

@V. Soma Yeah, the AIs always been beyond awful at that last leg of the space race. It doesn't seem to hurry projects, it doesn't prepare high production cities for its spaceports etc. It gets there eventually.. but way too slowly to be any real threat.

 

[Morgawr]

Sure, here's a slightly changed version with a higher desire for gold (and somewhat higher science). Do you guys mind doing some of the testing for me here to see if it's any better? I've run a couple of AI only games, but don't have the time right now to play games myself.

Thanks, will try my next game with this version and see if I notice a difference.

 

[Abd121]

Do you guys mind doing some of the testing for me here to see if it's any better? I've run a couple of AI only games, but don't have the time right now to play games myself.

sure, Will try it in my next game

 

[qqqbbb]

Does AI pursue disabled victory types?

Does AI know how to use governors?

How do I make AI not care about city states or religion?

Latest patch made changes to siege units. Does it affect this mod?

 

[civfnaticfan]

Dear Siesta , i am eager to tryout the Al+ hotfix you pass to Abd121 , i extract the file and put it inside my mod folder, however when i extract , i see another Ai+(v1) within the folder , can i assume that civ vi will use the Ai+mod file dated 17/2/2018 and not the one dated 19/11/2016 ?
So far into this Ai+ mod deity, ai is very aggressive against CS , but they ignore building walls fast, and change their attitude to you to friendly pretty easily other than the neighbouring civs.

 

[Siesta Guru]

Does AI pursue disabled victory types?

I'm afraid so

Does AI know how to use governors?

Badly. It doesn't seem to really care about cities loyalty, but the fact it's moving them around suggest it's at least doing some kind of thinking (not exposed to modders)

How do I make AI not care about city states or religion?

You could maybe turn city state war declarations off entirely by deleting the diploaction for it. Haven't tested
Religion: Set the pseudoyield for Great Prophets to 0 and set the holy site district to favored=false. That should probably do it, though you may also have to reduce the faith yield desire.

Latest patch made changes to siege units. Does it affect this mod?

Not entirely sure which change you mean, but siege units still work fine

 

[Siesta Guru]

Dear Siesta , i am eager to tryout the Al+ hotfix you pass to Abd121 , i extract the file and put it inside my mod folder, however when i extract , i see another Ai+(v1) within the folder , can i assume that civ vi will use the Ai+mod file dated 17/2/2018 and not the one dated 19/11/2016 ?
So far into this Ai+ mod deity, ai is very aggressive against CS , but they ignore building walls fast, and change their attitude to you to friendly pretty easily other than the neighbouring civs.

It's probably better to just delete the old version. That version is so old that it probably doesn't actually load successfully and so doesn't do anything.

 

[qqqbbb]

Not entirely sure which change you mean, but siege units still work fine

ABILITY_NO_MOVE_AND_SHOOT now belongs to CLASS_SIEGE_SETUP not to CLASS_SIEGE.
There is new AiType: UNITTYPE_SIEGE_ALL.

 

[Siesta Guru]

ABILITY_NO_MOVE_AND_SHOOT now belongs to CLASS_SIEGE_SETUP not to CLASS_SIEGE.
There is new AiType: UNITTYPE_SIEGE_ALL.

Ah yes, thanks. That shouldn't cause any issues with the latest version. But I will have to take it into account for the next

 

[civfnaticfan]

Dear Siesta, i have tried out the hotfix Ai+ and Ai+ v12, the AI in hotfix Ai+ is significantly better in terms of how they wage wars and keep up its military (3 Ai have 1.2k military score while i only have 150). This is a good improvement. Here are 3 observations i noticed in deity games.

(1) A important finding is that in hotfix Ai+, AI DO NOT build city walls at all. For Ai+ v12, one city out of 15 will build a wall. This makes their cities either vulnerable to the human player or to the other computer civs(the AIs civ easily managed to snipe off other AI cities since they do not have walls, even though they have much lower military tech and prowess.)
(2) Siege engines station at their cities refused to fire even if my units is just next to it.

(3) When i have city walls, they will wait a long time before considering attacking it. Without city walls, they are like vultures aiming at my cities.

(4) Ai are still too friendly, even those neighbouring civs. I am not threatened even my neighbouring civs have 10 times the military score than mine.

(5) Barbarians seems to think and wage wars more efficiently, as they ignore how much units you have and bullldozed our city, is there AI code different from the main civs?

Thank you for the patch!

 

[Morgawr]

The AI being too friendly is a big issue indeed but unrelated to AI+ I think. Basically once you declare friendship and later became allies you can stay that way for the entire game without any effort. Nothing will piss them off you can wipe out their religion, ally their friends, break promises etc. When its time to renew friendship, even if there are more negative vs positive modifiers, they accept. Something is bugged or off balance in the code.

Also, except the very early game, it's very common for AI to accept friendship AND alliance the very first turn of meeting them. Again, seems like a bug in the code behind the scenes.. All this on Deity. There seems to be either some large hidden positive modifier or the thresholds for accepting friendship is bugged.

 

[Siesta Guru]

The AI being too friendly is a big issue indeed but unrelated to AI+ I think. Basically once you declare friendship and later became allies you can stay that way for the entire game without any effort. Nothing will piss them off you can wipe out their religion, ally their friends, break promises etc. When its time to renew friendship, even if there are more negative vs positive modifiers, they accept. Something is bugged or off balance in the code.

Also, except the very early game, it's very common for AI to accept friendship AND alliance the very first turn of meeting them. Again, seems like a bug in the code behind the scenes.. All this on Deity. There seems to be either some large hidden positive modifier or the thresholds for accepting friendship is bugged.

Yeah unfortuantely I'll never be able to change something about this part of the code without dll access The diplomacy system can be really wonky, and it's very visible to players, so it's definitely one of the more important sections to have it feel sensible, but alas..

Dear Siesta, i have tried out the hotfix Ai+ and Ai+ v12, the AI in hotfix Ai+ is significantly better in terms of how they wage wars and keep up its military (3 Ai have 1.2k military score while i only have 150). This is a good improvement. Here are 3 observations i noticed in deity games.

That's great to hear! I'll take your concerns into account for the next patch too.
Unfortunately for (4), I won't be able to do much about relationship modifiers and trade deals, but I can get them to declare war. I hope to be ale to find a right balance in it, so that you don't get weird situations where I make it declare war, only for the inbuild AI to offer peace again in 10 turns.

About (5), barbs do indeed play somewhat differently. But the main difference isn't that they're much better at combat, it's that they don't have to care about their own units lives as much. That makes them feel much more dangerous. Humans will also think the barbs are successful after a few unit kills + pillages, while we expect enemy civs to be able to conquer cities.

 

[Siesta Guru]

So I was wondering what you guys thought about something for the next patch.
As it turns out, I can also control city states very well using lua and make them play differently. I don't think anyone would really oppose somewhat smarter city states, but I can also make city states do stuff that feel distinctively unlike city states.
For example, I can make their units cover much longer distances, to for example destroy barb camps or do scouting. I feel like this makes them more powerful, but it's also rather odd. You don't really expect to see random city state units half a continent away from their origin city state. And that also impacts the game quite a bit because you meet a lot more city states.
I can also make city states do things like building trader units. Again, something that helps them, but something which feels rather weird because they don't in the base game.

So here's my question. to what degree would you like to see city states changed? Should I make them as smart as possible, which may make them feel like normal civs playing a one city challenge or should I keep this feeling that they're completely different things?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

having them build traders sounds reasonable, having them send units far away from their city would be weird. You could take a look at city states expanded mod, they change how CS behave a bit

 

[FearSunn]

I would say prime priority should be to fix Major civs AI on all levels (tactical, operational and strategic). Everything else is secondary.

 

[Morgawr]

I am pretty sure CSs already build traders. I too think major civ AI is primary; CSs should focus on maintaining the best defensive military they can not to get invaded and that's it.