Mowque
Hypermodernist
still waiting for this and Rhye's to join together. should be awesome.
Better AI Latest Version
- Thread starter Iustus
- Start date
Spocko
Warlord
I've been more eager to download updates to Better AI than I have been to anticipate new "official" patches or XP's. Hope you guys keep up the good work on this!
JimMac99
Warlord
Taking a break guys?
My guess is that Firaxis has got to them, lets see...they have agreed that their next version is to be included in the next expansion, which they are currently testing, and have signed a NDA preventing them from posting on the forum...possible?
Wodan
Deity
Not a bad theory. Both have logged on in the past 24 hours. Blake hasn't posted on any forum since the 28th, and Iustus since the 22nd.
OTOH, maybe they're both simply taking a break. If they post something, they'll get bombarded.
It's reasonable however for them to at least log on to see if someone has found something actively broken (as compared to simply b!tching, like that Wodan guy about city placement as he is wont to do).
Wodan
OTOH, maybe they're both simply taking a break. If they post something, they'll get bombarded.
It's reasonable however for them to at least log on to see if someone has found something actively broken (as compared to simply b!tching, like that Wodan guy about city placement as he is wont to do).
Wodan
Uncle_Joe
Prince
- Joined
- Sep 9, 2005
- Messages
- 491
Possible, I suppose, but I wouldnt think any NDA would preclude them from informing people that they were going to cease further work on the mod (which I would imagine that they would do).
I think the current build is quite stable and pretty decent. It still has some problems IMO, but nothing catastrophic. So, if this is the last build for a while, at least its in pretty good shape.
I think the current build is quite stable and pretty decent. It still has some problems IMO, but nothing catastrophic. So, if this is the last build for a while, at least its in pretty good shape.
Quagga
Former Dictator
I heard that they've been swept up in American Idol fever.
mjs0
The 4th X
I don't play often enough to help much with testing, but I have not played a game without BetterAI in many months. I must admit I am getting some withdrawals from the lack of updates, we were spoilt for a while there!
The activity (or lack of it) on SourceForge is also interesting...
99 checkins of code between Jan5 and Feb12 (the last version), just 7 checkins since then and none since Feb20.
The activity (or lack of it) on SourceForge is also interesting...
99 checkins of code between Jan5 and Feb12 (the last version), just 7 checkins since then and none since Feb20.
jkp1187
Unindicted Co-Conspirator
Agreed. Still, if they ARE working on the inside now, I hope they give a shout-out to their peeps on this forum whenever Beta testing is needed!
Iustus
King
Hi folks,
Some RL things have consumed my time of late. I am looking into the lingering OOS error, but it is not as simple as just changing that 6 back to a 5.
I apologise for the lack of updates.
-Iustus
Some RL things have consumed my time of late. I am looking into the lingering OOS error, but it is not as simple as just changing that 6 back to a 5.
I apologise for the lack of updates.
-Iustus
Wodan
Deity
Ha! See there? They weren't abducted by aliens after all. There goes that theory.
Wodan
ps why is there no alien smiley?!?
Wodan
ps why is there no alien smiley?!?
JimMac99
Warlord
Hey! Good to see you back. 
(Though I do hope you guys get to beta the next expansion and it contains a version of Better AI)
(Though I do hope you guys get to beta the next expansion and it contains a version of Better AI)
Spocko
Warlord
Excellent! Welcome back!
Spocko
Spocko
I'm curious what the changes were in the handicaps for the better AI mod. I installed the latest better ai mod plus the handicap changes and started a game as the Incas. Prince/continents/standard/tropical/marathon. From what I'm seeing so far, the AI does build a bigger military than it used to. I built a reasonable defensive force and it was enough that the AI never declared war on me.
One thing I noticed is that the AI doesn't seem to defend against the early rush very well. I started right next to the Vikings and I was surrounded by jungle so his capital looked like a juicy target. I built a few quencha and sent them over to find that he was only defending his city with a single warrior. I lost 1 quencha and took his city. I didn't notice the thread on "aggressive AI" before I started my game so maybe this was because I'm playing on the default "wuss" setting.
Out of curiousity, I reloaded and only built 1 warrior per city. Ragnar quickly decided I looked like a juicy target and attacked me.
Another thing I've noticed is that the AI seems to be very much slower at research and wonderbuilding than it used to be. I conquered 1 city, founded 4 more, built about 10 workers, and built a couple of axemen per city and still had time to build ALL of the early wonders in my capital city. I assumed that I wouldn't be able to get the CS slingshot so I didn't try for it, but it took long enough for me to build the oracle that I definitely could have gotten it.
Another source of amusement is that the vikings founded the first religion before I conquered them and the AIs on other continents have founded all the rest so far so both of my remaining neighbors (Ragnar and Kublai Khan) love me because I own the sole religion on my continent.
I'll have to try Monarch with Aggressive AI and see how it goes. I have "builder" tendencies and Monarch used to be a problem for me using a builder strategy.
Oh, and I LOVE the new governor. He whips my granaries for me without me having to think about it! My main complaint is that he focuses too much on food when I'm at my happyness cap. Food should have a weighting of zero vs hammers and commerce when you're at the cap. What criteria does the governor use for whipping? He whips some buildings before I would have and others that I normally do whip, he doesn't...
One thing I noticed is that the AI doesn't seem to defend against the early rush very well. I started right next to the Vikings and I was surrounded by jungle so his capital looked like a juicy target. I built a few quencha and sent them over to find that he was only defending his city with a single warrior. I lost 1 quencha and took his city. I didn't notice the thread on "aggressive AI" before I started my game so maybe this was because I'm playing on the default "wuss" setting.
Out of curiousity, I reloaded and only built 1 warrior per city. Ragnar quickly decided I looked like a juicy target and attacked me.
Another thing I've noticed is that the AI seems to be very much slower at research and wonderbuilding than it used to be. I conquered 1 city, founded 4 more, built about 10 workers, and built a couple of axemen per city and still had time to build ALL of the early wonders in my capital city. I assumed that I wouldn't be able to get the CS slingshot so I didn't try for it, but it took long enough for me to build the oracle that I definitely could have gotten it.
Another source of amusement is that the vikings founded the first religion before I conquered them and the AIs on other continents have founded all the rest so far so both of my remaining neighbors (Ragnar and Kublai Khan) love me because I own the sole religion on my continent.
I'll have to try Monarch with Aggressive AI and see how it goes. I have "builder" tendencies and Monarch used to be a problem for me using a builder strategy.
Oh, and I LOVE the new governor. He whips my granaries for me without me having to think about it! My main complaint is that he focuses too much on food when I'm at my happyness cap. Food should have a weighting of zero vs hammers and commerce when you're at the cap. What criteria does the governor use for whipping? He whips some buildings before I would have and others that I normally do whip, he doesn't...
Greetings.
I appreciate your work on this mod. Warlords 2.08 I understand owes some credit to this? The computer's economy is managed as well as many expert players, but the field tactics are still not hard to beat, especially with catapults.
I would like to ask what approach you use in your algorithms for a Better AI. Do you set certain 'endpoints' that pre-define the computers success and iterate all the possible permutations until your 'endpoints' are maximized each turn? Or do you simply create a set of priorities for each unit and city and civic and then modify those priorities?
I remember when the chessmaster series first started back in the late 80's. I met someone while working who would set his computer to take it's turn each morning, and the computer would take up to 24 hours to calculate it's best option on the highest levels, then he would come back and take his turn the next morning. I also remember a hand-held chess computer a roommate of mine had that had 64 levels. I once beat it on its highest level, even though it was capable of thinking more turns ahead than I was... I beat it by controlling the middle of the chessboard and pursuing general strategies. Took me 4 hours, but was the crowning ahievement of my strategy gaming...
I don't know exactly how it's done, but I think if a focus was added on taking advantage of the modern desktop's massive computing power, great advances could be made. I think setting endpoints for the computer, like maximizine score, with sub-endpoints added for minimizing opponents economies, etc, might be a wide-open field. The computer could actually be given time to iterate all possible moves, buildings, civics, etc, for several turns in advance, and then choose teh path that heads them best towards their goal. I think battlefield strategies could be broken down like a chessboard and processed much like chessmaster does, despite the added layers of complexity. I think some human players would be willing to give the computer extra time.
I would like to see this Better AI mod take on a broader and more ambitious scope, with specific goals and timelines. Here is my challenge:
-------------------
I am a 2nd year medicine resident, so I can only get the ball rolling, but I have a background in Biophysics and am interested in helping with the theory of the AI when I have time. I think there are a lot of great players who could be recruited to help.
In addition, if the AI Leader's interaction and dialogue were souped up with some more character depending on various situations, (even bringing back the advisors from civ II???) This would make for a mod that could serve better than an expansion, and would put CIV IV on the map permanently as a necessary tablepiece for any computer game collection, much as the chessmaster series.
I would recommend re-naming this mod 'Civmaster Challenge'
I hope people will volunteer to take on roles as engineer, programmer, first mate, etc etc for this proposal...
Bigben34
I appreciate your work on this mod. Warlords 2.08 I understand owes some credit to this? The computer's economy is managed as well as many expert players, but the field tactics are still not hard to beat, especially with catapults.
I would like to ask what approach you use in your algorithms for a Better AI. Do you set certain 'endpoints' that pre-define the computers success and iterate all the possible permutations until your 'endpoints' are maximized each turn? Or do you simply create a set of priorities for each unit and city and civic and then modify those priorities?
I remember when the chessmaster series first started back in the late 80's. I met someone while working who would set his computer to take it's turn each morning, and the computer would take up to 24 hours to calculate it's best option on the highest levels, then he would come back and take his turn the next morning. I also remember a hand-held chess computer a roommate of mine had that had 64 levels. I once beat it on its highest level, even though it was capable of thinking more turns ahead than I was... I beat it by controlling the middle of the chessboard and pursuing general strategies. Took me 4 hours, but was the crowning ahievement of my strategy gaming...
I don't know exactly how it's done, but I think if a focus was added on taking advantage of the modern desktop's massive computing power, great advances could be made. I think setting endpoints for the computer, like maximizine score, with sub-endpoints added for minimizing opponents economies, etc, might be a wide-open field. The computer could actually be given time to iterate all possible moves, buildings, civics, etc, for several turns in advance, and then choose teh path that heads them best towards their goal. I think battlefield strategies could be broken down like a chessboard and processed much like chessmaster does, despite the added layers of complexity. I think some human players would be willing to give the computer extra time.
I would like to see this Better AI mod take on a broader and more ambitious scope, with specific goals and timelines. Here is my challenge:
-------------------
Spoiler :
I am a 2nd year medicine resident, so I can only get the ball rolling, but I have a background in Biophysics and am interested in helping with the theory of the AI when I have time. I think there are a lot of great players who could be recruited to help.
In addition, if the AI Leader's interaction and dialogue were souped up with some more character depending on various situations, (even bringing back the advisors from civ II???) This would make for a mod that could serve better than an expansion, and would put CIV IV on the map permanently as a necessary tablepiece for any computer game collection, much as the chessmaster series.
I would recommend re-naming this mod 'Civmaster Challenge'
I hope people will volunteer to take on roles as engineer, programmer, first mate, etc etc for this proposal...
Bigben34
The branching factors and unknown information in civilization are far larger than chess. They are possibly far larger than go.
With 50 units, each can move in one of 8 different directions, or do 2 or so actions not-moving. That is on the order of 10^50 possible "next moves".
If you order the movement of the units canonically (which removes some useful strategic options), every turn the first unit movement of units still generates a branching factor of 500: still far larger than chess. (and most units can move more than 1 unit of distance)
So the game has to have lots of heuristics to decide what kinds of moves one should do.
And one can often not determine what the results of a set of actions are: you don't know where the enemy troops are, if the enemy will produce more units, or how the enemy will react to your movements.
Hence heuristic strategies. The AI makes a plan based off of heuristic rules and develops it based off heuristic rules.
To test these rules, you put them up against human and AI players, and see how the AI performs. Does the AI act like you want a nation to act? Is it an effective challenge?
With 50 units, each can move in one of 8 different directions, or do 2 or so actions not-moving. That is on the order of 10^50 possible "next moves".
If you order the movement of the units canonically (which removes some useful strategic options), every turn the first unit movement of units still generates a branching factor of 500: still far larger than chess. (and most units can move more than 1 unit of distance)
So the game has to have lots of heuristics to decide what kinds of moves one should do.
And one can often not determine what the results of a set of actions are: you don't know where the enemy troops are, if the enemy will produce more units, or how the enemy will react to your movements.
Hence heuristic strategies. The AI makes a plan based off of heuristic rules and develops it based off heuristic rules.
To test these rules, you put them up against human and AI players, and see how the AI performs. Does the AI act like you want a nation to act? Is it an effective challenge?
I tried a new game with Aggressive AI checked and it's quite possible to still play as a builder without building a massive "defense" force. I'm playing Churchill/Monarch/aggressive AI/raging barbs/standard/continents/tropical. I started off on a continent with just 1 other AI. I figured I might be screwed since it was the romans so I beelined for iron working and grabbed all of the iron I could find. Sure enough, when I got to Alphabet, the romans started trying to trade stuff to me for iron... Muhaha, no Praetorians for JOO!!
Actually I didn't go straight for Ironworking due to the raging barbs, I had to make a detour for archery. Churchill's archers are seriously badass... 10 xp gets me Drill IV. I sent my archers out to go sit on forested or jungled hills to cut down on the fog of war and it wasn't long before all of my archers were capped at 10xp. I found it easiest to just park enough archers around the perimeter of my borders to get rid of fog of war so by the time I had made about 15 archers, barb incursions were pretty rare. It's now around 1300AD and fog of war is gone on my continent, and the barbs along with it. The barbs never managed to kill any of my units or pillage any of my improvements. I did keep a lot of forest intact early on though for the combat bonus but I had to protect my cottages and pastures.
My continent had a fairly narrow spot in the middle so I sent a couple of settlers out to choke that off and then refused to agree to open borders so that let me fill in my half of the continent at my own speed whenever my economy caught up enough.
I'm nowhere near the lead in tech but I'm not horribly far behind and I'm ahead of the romans. Neither me nor Caesar got any of the early religions so we both spent a long time as Atheists. I eventually made it to Philosophy first and built a shrine which promptly spread the true faith throughout my continent. The romans love me now. Ocasionally he'll demand stuff and I always turn him down. He mostly refuses to trade any tech. He's refused all of my offers. He did trade me some fish for something but resources are the only thing he's really open to trading.
My military is still small enough that it costs nothing to support and consists of a mix of drill 4 archers and newly minted crossbowmen. I disbanded my warriors shortly after I got archery since Churhill gets such badass archers. Based on what I can see of Caesars cities from my religious spies, he has a mix of about 20 longbows, cats, and axemen in the 2 or 3 cities closest to mine and 1 longbow in all the rest. Seems we've both built up to the point where both of us could easily fend off an attack from the other guy but neither of us could launch a successful assault. All of my cities built castles since it seems the AI takes that into account when deciding how "strong" you are.
Is it the aggressive AI or the Monarch level that's making him refuse to trade tech with me? Our relations are at "Pleased" and have been since shortly after I discovered Philosophy. Seems like it would benefit both of us to trade since we're both behind the other AIs in tech.
Actually I didn't go straight for Ironworking due to the raging barbs, I had to make a detour for archery. Churchill's archers are seriously badass... 10 xp gets me Drill IV. I sent my archers out to go sit on forested or jungled hills to cut down on the fog of war and it wasn't long before all of my archers were capped at 10xp. I found it easiest to just park enough archers around the perimeter of my borders to get rid of fog of war so by the time I had made about 15 archers, barb incursions were pretty rare. It's now around 1300AD and fog of war is gone on my continent, and the barbs along with it. The barbs never managed to kill any of my units or pillage any of my improvements. I did keep a lot of forest intact early on though for the combat bonus but I had to protect my cottages and pastures.
My continent had a fairly narrow spot in the middle so I sent a couple of settlers out to choke that off and then refused to agree to open borders so that let me fill in my half of the continent at my own speed whenever my economy caught up enough.
I'm nowhere near the lead in tech but I'm not horribly far behind and I'm ahead of the romans. Neither me nor Caesar got any of the early religions so we both spent a long time as Atheists. I eventually made it to Philosophy first and built a shrine which promptly spread the true faith throughout my continent. The romans love me now. Ocasionally he'll demand stuff and I always turn him down. He mostly refuses to trade any tech. He's refused all of my offers. He did trade me some fish for something but resources are the only thing he's really open to trading.
My military is still small enough that it costs nothing to support and consists of a mix of drill 4 archers and newly minted crossbowmen. I disbanded my warriors shortly after I got archery since Churhill gets such badass archers. Based on what I can see of Caesars cities from my religious spies, he has a mix of about 20 longbows, cats, and axemen in the 2 or 3 cities closest to mine and 1 longbow in all the rest. Seems we've both built up to the point where both of us could easily fend off an attack from the other guy but neither of us could launch a successful assault. All of my cities built castles since it seems the AI takes that into account when deciding how "strong" you are.
Is it the aggressive AI or the Monarch level that's making him refuse to trade tech with me? Our relations are at "Pleased" and have been since shortly after I discovered Philosophy. Seems like it would benefit both of us to trade since we're both behind the other AIs in tech.
Wodan
Deity
You rufused open borders for a couple thousand years, and have refused many many trades, and you're surprised that he's refusing your trade offers? Geez, some people.
Try giving him some iron for free. You surely don't care by this point. In 30 turns or so you'll start getting some favorable trade dip bonuses. He'll agree to your "real" trade offers then.
Wodan
Try giving him some iron for free. You surely don't care by this point. In 30 turns or so you'll start getting some favorable trade dip bonuses. He'll agree to your "real" trade offers then.
Wodan