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Better BAT AI

B

buck beach

Prince
Joined
Dec 2, 2001
Messages
511
Location
Upland, California
Sure it's not a revelation that this mod suffers from a too many goodies syndrome where the AI doesn't have a clue how to use all that is available. Having said that I have regressed back to the updated BTS and added the Better BAT AI mod. Wow the AI seems to be remarkably improved.

Sure I miss a ton of the ROM and AND improvements and additions :cry:, BUT, it now once again feels like a game as opposed to a sandbox.

Buck
 
What do you miss exactly from the AI ? Better AI is included in AND and the AI is set to use all the features included.
If it's not, then it's a bug.
 
dbkblk said:
What do you miss exactly from the AI ? Better AI is included in AND and the AI is set to use all the features included.
If it's not, then it's a bug.
Click to expand...

Lot's of new stuff has been added without proper AI code and the game balance has been changed around without adjusting the AI.

It's even much worse in C2C:(
 
Ok. It would be nice to try to make an exhaustive list from your feedback so we can try to improve the situation.
 
Well, i understand what buck beach says, since i have long ago the feeling that the AI is not challenging enough. Im not exactly sure how would i explain it, but its rare to be afraid by a neighbour AI even if they are stronger than you... definitively they are not treacherous enough!
What do you all thought about that?

EDIT: Yes, its a good idea to make that list, since this also makes part of that last balance stage.
 
alberts2 said:
Lot's of new stuff has been added without proper AI code and the game balance has been changed around without adjusting the AI.

It's even much worse in C2C:(
Click to expand...

Yes. yes, and yes!! C2C had some great ideas and solved the memory bug so as to have bigger civilizations; however, gave us a poke of some very silly buildings and units (IMHO). In AND2 same syndrome with buildings and units just named differently.

I won't even go into the Great Wonder additions (eg Blarney Castle).

Someone staying up late at night just to think of stuff to throw at the mod to make it more complex and AI complicated without any regard as to content.

I mentioned this once to an important member of the team that the mod has gone way out of control and the genie is out of the bottle as far as correcting.

Buck

Edited to reiterate that both C2C and ROM/AND/AND2 have some very cool concepts and ideas
 
And they stupidly readily make peace with you.

I'm playing with Ruthless AI, not aggressive, but the 'next' one up only.

I'm a war with numerous AI's, they bride each other into war with me, about 8-10 (Gigantic map).

Any way Caesar, attacks a border city, with only 1 spear defence, I stupidly keep forgetting to reinforce it.

I see his stack attacking, one that could take on my usual defences. I then make peace with a 3rd AI, Who has no hope of garrisoning the city with in 20 turns, they accept the threatened city as a peace offering, as they aren't at war with Caesar, city saved. Barbs then take the city and I take it back.

2nd time, same city, same woeful defence, never learn, Caesar attacks again, I can't defend, I give the city for peace. I wait till peace treaty is over, attack Caesar, take out about 5 cities and reclaim this contested city once more.

The AI is too willing to accept a token offering, when it should refuse, as I can take what it want's.

Some assessment of situation, it would have had 100% success in taking the city.
 
I'm not so skilled but i'll try to look at AI once i've finished language support. Keep listing problematics.
I also think somewhat the AI isn't enough mighty on the military side.
 
Not sure if it the AI is per se better in Better BAT AI vs RAND, but I will contest that the way in which RAND is structured, human players can play the system more to get a strategic lead on the AI.

I do agree that Better BAT AI is harder than RAND at the same difficult setting, but then again I haven't played RAND where the difficulty scales to how well your doing.
 
dbkblk said:
Ok. It would be nice to try to make an exhaustive list from your feedback so we can try to improve the situation.
Click to expand...

Well, there's already a lot of "Things the AI is poor at" posts floating around in just the last week alone :lol:

A few quickies off the top of my head though...

*Great Commanders. Just enabling it reduces the game three whole difficulty levels, and USING it reduces it even further. The AI has zero clue how to use these, and a player with a fully promoted one - even with stack limits - is almost untouchable.

*Coastal Bombardment. You can do it, the AI can't.

*Suicidally trying to attack wandering stacks with a single siege unit. Sometimes the AI get in "Catapult Fights" and have two siege units try and kill each other for turns on end with no resolution.
 
Besides the AI, maybe the real problem lives where the highest difficulty levels are not enough challenging for the humans so we can keep up with the AI! While playing at "Deity", i don't feel like I play like a god. Things are easy once the monarchy is here.
 
dbkblk said:
Besides the AI, maybe the real problem lives where the highest difficulty levels are not enough challenging for the humans so we can keep up with the AI! While playing at "Deity", i don't feel like I play like a god. Things are easy once the monarchy is here.
Click to expand...

I always figured the difficulty names were referring to the AIs :)

Even though they're as dim witted on Deity as they are on Warlord :lol:
 
No, in fact in base game, the difficulty refers to the handicap set to the human player. The AI always have the same handicap as Monarc. In AND, AI handicap vary based on the current player level. Flexible difficulty introduce different difficulty levels, for each players/AI, so your handicap is based on a formula more or less based on the score.

The right approach might be to:
- Increase severely the difficulty difference on each difficulty stage
- May the AI more aggressive in Ruthless
- Maybe decrease a bit the research on AI (which is always ahead of me) and increase the military size. I don't know about that.
 
dbkblk said:
No, in fact in base game, the difficulty refers to the handicap set to the human player. The AI always have the same handicap as Monarc.
Click to expand...

That's not what I was talking about at all :confused:


You said "When I'm playing on Deity I don't feel like a god"
I said that the difficulty levels - the names themselves - referred to the AI. The AI were settlers, warlords, deities - not the player.

I wasn't referring to the difficulty or the handicaps themselves at all :confused:
 
dbkblk said:
The right approach might be to:
- Increase severely the difficulty difference on each difficulty stage
- May the AI more aggressive in Ruthless
- Maybe decrease a bit the research on AI (which is always ahead of me) and increase the military size. I don't know about that.
Click to expand...

As for this, I don't see how further adding to artificial handicaps would make up for the AI's stupidity in AND.
If they could research more efficiently, you wouldn't NEED to cripple the player behind the scenes just to make up for their shortcomings.

I don't ever play with Ruthless on, so that change would be wasted on people like me personally.
 
Ow ok. I misunderstood, sorry. As for the AI, the discussion is on. If there isn't easy approach, we must try to list some cases and gather savegames where the AI is acting strangely.

For example, for which mecanisms do you think the AI is acting stupid ?
 
dbkblk said:
Ow ok. I misunderstood, sorry. As for the AI, the discussion is on. If there isn't easy approach, we must try to list some cases and gather savegames where the AI is acting strangely.

For example, for which mecanisms do you think the AI is acting stupid ?
Click to expand...

Well, we've been listing areas where the AI is acting in a subpar way for the past 400+ revisions, so a quick glance through the forums should bring up a good plenty of material to work with :p

The 'General Discussion' thread had some, sometimes individual threads are posted, but honestly one big one is Great Commanders, Treasures, and Missionaries.

The AI wastes money by having DOZENS or more Missionaries huddled up in their cities, since they have GPT costs on them and the National Limit has been lifted.
Great Commanders the AI ALWAYS turns their generals into (Personally, I've yet to see an exception) and then just park them there and let them rot until the end of time. Other times they actually use them as scouts or just shuffle them around their territory. Waste of time, and it makes the game so much easier when you realize they're not settling them anymore AND don't know how to use them properly. As such, I never use this option.

Also, they seem to love attaching great generals to battering rams and similar for some reason.
 
While there are a lot of posts floating around discussing areas and circumstances where the AI is behaving poorly, I do agree that a single list gathering them all into once place would be beneficial.
 
The AI does know how to use caravans, it just never knows when to build them. If you gift them in the worldbuilder, they get used fine.

Airlifting...not sure but I do think the AI uses this. I just rarely play late-game.
 
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