Best Civ leader AI?

[LateGameWarMong]

I am wondering what leader (custom mods included) has the "best" AI.
I am not talking traits, but rather behavior.
I've made a mod where one civ has a leader that has every trait, and just about every unit and building is a Unique one...
The idea is to make this civ an unstoppable juggernaut (except, of course, by you).

So far, the best I've managed is to give it monty's behavior, and watch as it war mongers its way to being the dominant power on its continent, owning a large portion of its continent.

Yet I find I often own (or vassalized) my *entire* continent, and the "super" enemy civ, with monty's personality, still hasn't taken even half its continent.

What can I do to improve the AI that leads this civ, that by all measures, should WTH-pwn its neighbors (it often takes out a civ or two, but with 12 civs in the game, this is unimpressive)?

I need a leader AI that is worthy to take all the leader traits, and lead a civ with all UU and UBs!

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Shaka probably has the best AI for a warmonger.

All the creative civs do well too.

 

[Xanikk999]

Shaka probably has the best AI for a warmonger.

All the creative civs do well too.

Montezuma is always a thorn in my side if he starts near me.

You cant ignore your military if any of those jerks starts near you and its hard to buy them off. Monty will declare war on you even if hes pleased with you.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Shaka techs quite well though unlike Monty.

 

[Xanikk999]

Shaka techs quite well though unlike Monty.

In my experience all the war-focused leaders tech really badly they don't balance it well enough especially when they are at war (which is often with these leaders).

Of course i have only tried one game at monarch and am now usually playing prince so my experience may probably be different. Even at higher difficulty levels though i would expect more builder like civs to tech even faster than the warmongers and do quite well against them if declared on.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Shaka is one of the best. He usually techs pretty well because he's focused on getting more land. Monty and a number of the other nutjobs are just focused on seeing blood. Shaka is more opportunistic and seems to try to get a huge empire rather than ceaseless war.

The rexxers can be a real pain, such as Cathy and Joao. If they keep their large empire and develop it they can take off.

Another leader who does pretty well is Gilgamesh. He has AI-friendly traits and is middle ground - techs reasonably and keeps a reasonable military.

Mansa and Huayna Capac, if not killed by a warmonger, can be dangerous late game. Both tech quite well and Mansa is always willing to trade techs.

 

[Nez477]

I'm not super impressed with the warmongers in general. I think they are a nuisance and are the biggest issue sometimes standing in my way to a victory, but in terms of them actually winning games it is rare. Most of the time the non-agressors are the ones teching faster and being able to fend off the aggressive ones (as the post above says).

I'm glad they are in the game but I'm most of the time focused on competing against the other intellectual civs

 

[Ghpstage]

In my experience all the war-focused leaders tech really badly they don't balance it well enough especially when they are at war (which is often with these leaders).

Of course i have only tried one game at monarch and am now usually playing prince so my experience may probably be different. Even at higher difficulty levels though i would expect more builder like civs to tech even faster than the warmongers and do quite well against them if declared on.

The higher the difficulty you play the bigger the difference between AI militaries gets, at Immortal its quite common to see Shaka, Napoleon or some other nutter take large amounts of land and vassals through war. This very often leads to 2 major threats, the huge, tech strong psycho and the the culturewhoring of his vassals (Gandhi and Mansa are seriously annoying for this!).

When it comes to stronger AIs a few things seem to help a lot;

• Creative - This offsets the terrible AI city placement and border popping suckiness.
• Imperialistic - As they have big bonuses to maintenance on high levels this does wonders there.
• High unit building probability - Stack of Axes wonder anyone?
• Willingness to trade - Just look at the difference between Mansa and Tokugawa and you can easily see the difference. An AI that will trade anything with anyone will go far.

I remember that Themeinteam made a few runaway AIs, this old thread should have some ideas for making evil AIs.

 

[NihilZero]

I remember that Themeinteam made a few runaway AIs, this old thread should have some ideas for making evil AIs.

I was just going to reference that thread.

As TMIT's AIs demonstrate, the Civ 4 AIs are not designed to destroy you. They all have weaknesses. To make a super one you would have to combine all the strong AI qualities with none of the weaknesses. For example, Mansa usually leads in tech (if he survives) but is not very warlike and has a low unit buildprob. Imagine a Mansa that still techs like a madman but who builds units and declares war like Napoleon? That would be nasty, and it's no accident that there is no such AI in the game.

Apart from generally refusing to tech trade, some of the really stupid warmongers also shoot themselves in the foot with their excessively high attack courage which leads them to attack recklessly and waste their stacks in suicidal assaults, when if they were just a little more circumspect they could choose their targets a little more sensibly and probably win more wars.

 

[LateGameWarMong]

That thread is more what I was looking for Ghpstage, I was afraid your post would be not what I was looking for when I read about creative and imperialist traits.
I am not looking for AI friendly "bonuses", I am looking for better designed AI behavior.

As TMIT's AIs demonstrate, the Civ 4 AIs are not designed to destroy you. They all have weaknesses. To make a super one you would have to combine all the strong AI qualities with none of the weaknesses.

FWIW, I'm not looking for an AI that destroys me specifically, as I often WB us on seperate continents.
I'm looking for an AI that will destroy other AIs. I rarely see civs destroyed by other civs, at least on noble - I haven't moved beyond noble, as I just don't like the concept of just adding huge arbitrary bonuses to the AI to make it difficult.

I'd rather see a pseudo-"smarter" AI.
I'm thinking of upping the dogpile stat on many of the AIs, and including one "spoiler" AI to kick things off (as I don't think the AI is capable of factoring in potential [non vassal] ally strength when going to war).
I want some civs to end up like Poland ended up a few times- a few civs just gang up on other civs and completely obliterate them.
And of course, if I give one civ a bunch of UU, UB, and all the leader traits.... I expect it to dominate.

I'd like my continent games to end with me dominating my continent, and finding the other continent dominated by a single AI (I'm talking an AI that holds at least 50% of the landmass, and has vassalized the rest)...
And this enemy continent would be very keen on going to war.

First I tried Monty's AI- and monty did do fairly well with the advantages (and other civs are really weak if you take away the ai bonus vs barbs, I had to WB every capital to start on a hill with a river moat around it to keep most of their capitals from falling early on when I did this, meaning the surviving ones held out against the super-monty AI longer, and while monty did destroy a couple civs, the performance was underwhelming).

I think I remember reading about how suryvarman was a well balanced AI, and I tried combining Sury's AI behavior, with Monty's war propensities and such.... that AI performed very poorly, and despite the good start location, every leader trait, UU,UBs... Boudica seems to be the most powerful on the continent, and could easily stand up to this lame duck AI.

Looks like I am going to have to custom craft my AI - first things to do, increase the dogpile war propensity a lot, for multiple AIs.
Increase tech trade willingness/ its "tech whore-ness"
Make it love cottages and chopping...
Look into making it a REXer as well?
Since it gets ikhanda's, and later Rathaus (-95% maintenence!!!), and it should be militaristic and build ikhandas, its size (from REX, and conquest), should be managable, No?
Or would it be better to give it sacraficial altars (ikhanda+ court house is still pretty good, no?)


Since there is more than 1 UU or UB for many units, and I had to choose, I am looking into making a second civ, that will REX and techwhore, but go for cultural/diplomatic victories - but still be able to fight off the warmongers, what would be a good starting AI template for that?

I'm thinking for the Rexer/Warmonger/Military domination civ+ AI, totem poles for exp points (though archery units are mostly defensive), whereas the peaceful civ gets the stele (+25% culture).
Maybe give the war monger the sacraficial altar (for whipping out troops), and the peaceful one the rathaus?
War monger: Skirmisher (+ totem pole= a good pre bronze working attack unit?)
Peace monger: bowman (the +50% vs melee makes it a better city defender, lower base strength = poor city attacker?)
etc

Also, I'm considering making buildings pay off faster, how do I get the AI to build them more?
(For example, a forge gives +1 hammer, in addition to its old bonus,
aquaducts: +1 food [barrays get+2], harbor +1 food, grocer, +1 food, factory+2 hammers, industrial park, 2).
And just incase constant war will make unhappy citizens, the war monger AI gets a custom UB jail: -70% war unhappiness)

 

[ManiaMuse]

That thread is more what I was looking for Ghpstage, I was afraid your post would be not what I was looking for when I read about creative and imperialist traits.
I am not looking for AI friendly "bonuses", I am looking for better designed AI behavior.



FWIW, I'm not looking for an AI that destroys me specifically, as I often WB us on seperate continents.
I'm looking for an AI that will destroy other AIs. I rarely see civs destroyed by other civs, at least on noble - I haven't moved beyond noble, as I just don't like the concept of just adding huge arbitrary bonuses to the AI to make it difficult.

I think this is your problem really - at noble, even Shaka isn't going to go on a continent conquering spree.

This is because:

1) The AI isn't particularly smart at waging war (doesn't build enough siege/has way too many defenders in backline cities/doesn't promote units well/moves stacks into vulnerable positions/is generally ineffective at warring etc)

2) The defender generally has the advantage in AI vs AI fights since the AI loves to stack cities full of longbows or whatever and spams walls and castles. When the attacking AI doesn't bring enough siege, and insists on bombarding down the defences to 0% even if they have just 1 catapult in their stack, this means that the attacking AI is easy pickings for counterattacks and takes forever to capture cities.

3) At higher difficulties the AI has more production bonuses. This means the difference in terms of military numbers between high and low unitprob AIs is more pronounced. This gives a warmongering AI more of a chance to go on a conquering spree since they will generally build more siege and build bigger stacks.

Also note that start locations play a big part as well. An AI which has poor land/is boxed in is always going to do worse than one which has loads of good land. Early border contact also increases the likelihood of early war between AIs as well which tends to spiral into further wars at higher difficulties.

I would personally try moving up a difficulty level or two. Even though you say you don't want to give the AI bonuses, you might find it is more challenging and enjoyable at higher difficulties. And the AI tends to war more anyway because it is easier for it to pass the power checks before it can plan a war.

Other things to try, maybe add an extra AI or two to the default for the map size. Closer borders = more AI conflict. Or try with aggressive AI.

 

[s.bernbaum]

As have others, I would suggest starting with Shaka for your purposes. In a recent game playing on Noble, large, and fractal (so there were multiple large land masses), by the end of the game (I was pursuing and achieved a space race victory) Shaka had destroyed all but two of the other AIs and was gearing up to take out one of them. This included invading two other land masses and taking them over completely.

 

[Nikolai Dneppen]

As mentioned, the difficulty level will effect the AI's ability to warmonger, making Shaka probably the best at it Monarch+. For Prince-, in my experience Catherine is always the greatest threat because she can massively expand like hell. And iirc, unlike Joao she'll declare war on anybody; not just people she hates.

Not too sure about the peacemonger super-AI...not my playstyle

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Sadly, Catherine turns up too infrequently because she is a 1/3 choice from Peter (whipping boy) and Stalin (crazy warmongering idiot).

 

[Ataxerxes]

I don't know about Catherine. She rexes well and is certainly treacherous enough for the job, but she has a fairly low UnitProb so unless she grabs a huge amount of land she's unlikely to have a big enough army to rampage. Shaka always has enough military fo his purposes.

I've never seen her get close to domination. I have seen Shaka do it on Noble. Her wars seem to be more designed to be a nuisance than an actual threat.

 

[raxid]

So, while not entirely on subject (maybe not at all actually) the AIs that perform best when no humans are present are actually IMP AIs (on high difficulties!). I have indeed tested this. This is slightly counter intuitive as IMP isn't considered a top trait in the hands of a human.

Since you said traits were discounted in this case, in AI vs AI fights I believe Shaka would be best (again high difficulties).

 

[LateGameWarMong]

well, with shaka, tweaking some tech trade numbers, and other Ai dogpile war willingness, I was able to get the super- shaka to vassalize or capitulate his entire continent.

I started with 12 ai, continents setting (largest map size).
It unusually gave me 3 continents, 2 civs on mine (including me), 2 civs on a continent directly south of me, and the remaining 8 on shaka's continent (there were some sizable islands too, that had no one start on them.

Dissappointingly, only 1 civ was wiped out on the 8 civ continent, and it wasn't even by Shaka. However, Shaka did capitulate Mansu Musa, the Native Americans are a rump civ with only 5 closely packed civs on a peninsula.
Shaka is by far the largest, Zara is the only one rivalling him in size, (maybe 2/3 the territory), but is a willing vassal.
I didn't think I could get any foot hold on the continent without preparing a massive D-Day-esque invasion.
I established two ice/tundra cities on his continent (I own everything not on the large 8-civ [well now 7] continent), 1 fish resource each, and iron or silver - mainly they are to protect the forts that allow me passage through the ice (otherwise, i couldn't go around the continent to the south by sea).

Shaka soon DOW's me, and with every other civ vassaled.... my poor tundra cities with just 4 musketmen at one, and only 1 at the other and negligible culture bonus, it looks really bleak.

1 rather small stack reaches me, I take it out, 4 curriassers arrive to reenforce my city by transport.
Another stack arrivees at the tile right outside the city, I do some damage to it...
They take my culture bonus from 20 to 0 (they only had like 3 trebs, and I did flanking damage to the stack)
but I see 4 more stacks (1 of shakas, others from the other civs), with a lot of siege units, my transports with reenforcements are stil 3-4 turns out.....
Hopeless.... I see i've done enough damage to the initial attack stack, to get him to talk to me.... he wants the city- which will cut off my sea route to the south... I could abandon the city and fall back to the fort (at 1 population, it would be razed, and the culture wouldn't inactivate my fort-canal), and then possibly to the 2nd city (there was a small stack moving to it too, from Zara)....

Looks like I will be expelled from the continent....
(note I modded away colonial expenses- ie, back to warlords economics)
-I wonder what he will take in place of the city for peace...
Don't want to give away any techs... how about gold?
200 gold was all it took to buy peace
Multiple transports (indiamen) that were about 7 turns out arrive, I have a tech lead and my musketters get upgraded to riflemen, and I have Drill-Cannons for counter enemy stack work.... I've got a good 10+ riflemen in each city, 4 cavalry, and 4 cannons each now.

Ja, the AI ist sehr dumm.
The military buildup will continue, and the continent will be mine- so much for waiting for infantry, carriers, tanks and fighters for "D-Day"

The AI was really stupid.... sure I damaged his stack, but all but 1 of my defenders were in the red, from attacking his stack (thereby loosing the fortify bonus).
Next turn, he probably could have taken the city with no losses.

 

[Darf Spud]

I think my favourite leader in terms of AI is probably Gandhi. Never decalres war on me, and he's the only leader I go into a defensive pact with (cause he dosen't get invavded that often, and when he does it's usually by Monty).

The worst AI by a mile is Montezuma. One game I had tanks, artillery and planes and he only had axemen. I also controlled 1 and a half continents, and he had a few cities. You can guess what happened when he tried to invade me.

 

[xenex]

What difficulty are you playing at, because the higher you go the less wise it becomes to get really friendly with Gandhi since other AI's WILL attack him.

 

[sherbz]

Im surprised there are so many people who think shaka is a really good AI. In all of my games he has been mediocre at best. All of the war monger AI's are generally quite poor because the AI doesnt pursue the domination victory condition (which is their most likely win option). The only ones it does pursue (space and culture) leave war mongers ill disposed at pursuing because their tech and culture rate are so poor.

I think the best AI's are (in no particular order)

Justinian (Imperialistic means he can get big, also a zealot so he gets into wars and because of spamming missionaries he often corners the game diplomatically)
Mehmed (quite a high unit prob and gets into a few wars. Because he techs well he can be a threat. Also has good balance with his +2 health and +2 health\happiness from Hamm)
Willem (culture whore and tech whore. As a rule any creative AI is decent)
Huyana Capac (wonder and tech whore, can also go culture)
Zara Yacqob (another creative AI, ive never seen him do badly)
Jao (this guy can get huge)
Catherine (one of the best expanders in the game)
Gilgamesh (similar to zara)

I think the 2 traits the AI is best with are creative and imperialistic, especially on higher difficulties. Creative because it gives the AI more opportunity to block unfriendly civs and grab land, and imperialistic because AI bonuses allow it to out expand a human player. Ive seen Jao get 10 cities on immortal before hitting the AD's. Thats crazy!