AIs and unit costs

[Cowardly Maggot]

Hey, so my brother and I wanted to have a game with some seriously angry AIs but didn't want to resort to high difficulty levels because we don't like the strong tech and wonder building imbalance and the tendency for AIs to be angry only at humans. AI vs AI carnage is great. I should mention that we are playing in multiplayer mode, which perhaps has some effect on how the difficulty levels are applied.

So we proceeded to modify CIV4HandicapInfo.xml under the difficultly noble, which we play at. We set iAIUnitCostPercent to 50 and iAIUnitSupplyPercent to 25. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that this did not result in double as many troops running around destroying things.

So I have some questions about how the AI will handle this situation.

1) Do the changes make units cheaper?
2) Do the AIs simply spend more time building other things?
3) Will this at least allow the AI to rebuild its army more quickly when suddenly they find themselves underarmed?

 

[Lone Wolf]

Yeah. I want for the AI in RFC to build more units, since I think that Rhye went a bit too far with making AI build less units through the SDK. Will the modification of these XML parameters put the AI's on the track I want?

 

[jdog5000]

1) Do the changes make units cheaper?
2) Do the AIs simply spend more time building other things?
3) Will this at least allow the AI to rebuild its army more quickly when suddenly they find themselves underarmed?

The two things you modified reduce how much gold the AI has to spend on support for its units. Those two settings do not effect the hammer price of units at all.

Reducing unit support costs will make the AI willing to build more units when it's at war, as there are some limits based on cost for offensive units. However, it's typically only dominating civs which run into these bounds, civs which are just getting by or in close wars normally lose units too fast.

You might want to try out the Aggressive AI setting. You'll see lots of wars, AIs will build lots of units, and there's no built in anti-human bias anymore. However, keep your own power rating up, or you'll look like a ripe target and it might feel like they're all out the get you.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Those two settings do not effect the hammer price of units at all.

Is there a hammer price modifier?

 

[Cowardly Maggot]

Both of those settings modified only gold cost?

I do play with aggressive AI setting, all the time. Good fun! Also your recent change to allow the AIs to start multiple wars makes me happy. However I was looking for a little more terror.

I have to second the question from Lone Wolf, how can I change the hammer cost?

Also to be clear, once aggressive AI is set, the AIs don't treat humans special regardless of the difficulty? That does make higher difficulty more appealing, but I don't really like it when the AIs steal my wonders and out-tech me by cheating.

 

[Jaybe]

iAITrainPercent should adjust your AI unit production costs.
Just as iTrainPercent adjusts everyone's unit production costs in GameSpeedInfo.xml.

The way I prefer to give the AI bonuses is with the advancing ages. As I advance, my superiority in production & economy grows, so I set (in HandicapInfo.mxl) iAIPeEraModifier in the -2 .. -4 range. Gives me an even start, but helps the AI as the game progresses.

iAIPeEraModifier: AI only, percentage calculated as (100% -(AIPerEraModifier * era)), multiplied by food needed to grow cities, civic upkeep costs, production costs, unit support costs, unit supply costs, unit upgrade costs, inflation rate, war weariness.

There are 7 eras: Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, Modern, Future

 

[Lone Wolf]

iAITrainPercent should adjust your AI unit production costs.

Really? Thanks! Some of names of these variables are confusing...

Apparently, Rhye made AITrainPercent at the middle level of 3 to 110 and at the harderst to 100. I see now why RFC AI's are easier to conquer then AI's in classic BTS.

 

[Cowardly Maggot]

Hey thanks Jaybe thats helpful to know.