Brainstorming: Weaknesses of the AI
- Thread starter Chalid
- Start date
Here's something that probably qualifies...
I'm playing the Hippus right now, and am at war with the Infernals.
For whatever odd reason, I keep seeing Imp rushes... Hyborem is mass producing the Imps, giving them combat promotions, and sending them into battle. There will be a few Infernal Spearmen and Prophets hanging around, and (more recently) the occaisional Hellhound, but the bulk of his offensive forces are Imps. Hyborem seems to be completely avoiding giving any sort of magic to his Imps whatsoever.
I'm playing the Hippus right now, and am at war with the Infernals.
For whatever odd reason, I keep seeing Imp rushes... Hyborem is mass producing the Imps, giving them combat promotions, and sending them into battle. There will be a few Infernal Spearmen and Prophets hanging around, and (more recently) the occaisional Hellhound, but the bulk of his offensive forces are Imps. Hyborem seems to be completely avoiding giving any sort of magic to his Imps whatsoever.
Chandrasekhar
Determined
I've noticed that the AI when playing Malakim takes into account the movement bonus of deserts, but not the defensive bonus they get. So they'll pass through one, but try not to end their turn in one. It's a minor point, but it's related to that topic.
Chandrasekhar
Determined
I have noticed the issue with the imps as well. It seems like as often as not the AI's adepts only have the magic promotions that they started with because they have multiple mana of one type.
Quetz
The Tallest Lilliputian
Just wanted to point this out (dunno if its been mentioned, probably but no time to read whole thread, heh)
Earlier, i was playing a game as the Amurites, of course. My closest competitor, that ingrate from Bannor, up and decided to declare war on me... despite the fact that I had let him shield my peninsula from barbarians and angry Infernals the whole game (not to mention the huge list of green modifiers I had double-dealed to get!) But anyways, he was actually summoning units to attack me with, which was cool. What wasn't so cool was that he was summoning them all the way back in his territory, then sending them my way. Of course, they never quite made it far enough to actually attack...
Is there any way to constrain/compel the AI to use those spells ONLY when they are close to one of your cities/stacks?
Earlier, i was playing a game as the Amurites, of course. My closest competitor, that ingrate from Bannor, up and decided to declare war on me... despite the fact that I had let him shield my peninsula from barbarians and angry Infernals the whole game (not to mention the huge list of green modifiers I had double-dealed to get!) But anyways, he was actually summoning units to attack me with, which was cool. What wasn't so cool was that he was summoning them all the way back in his territory, then sending them my way. Of course, they never quite made it far enough to actually attack...
Is there any way to constrain/compel the AI to use those spells ONLY when they are close to one of your cities/stacks?
Quetz
The Tallest Lilliputian
Ok, I dont have any hard details here. I'm just posting this because I think it might possibly, maybe, help with making the AI semi competent (without the cheats it gets on Diety 
)
So I was playing a game earlier on Monarch to try out the Cabalim. I got so far ahead of the AI's that I felt bad, and decided to cheat and rush their build orders for a turn or two to help them out a bit, in the hopes they would catch up to me somewhat (I had like 7 cities, some AIs still only had one.) This was on the Faerun map, DLable somewhere on this site. (incidentally that map is awful, I had to edit it quite a bit in WorldBuilder to make it even possible for some AI civs to survive at all.. Elves in a huge swath of jungle, etc etc)
Anyways, as I went around the world instabuilding for the AI's, I noticed that their choices of building were pretty strange. I ended up doing this for at least 40 turns or so, just to see what they would produce.
Here are some of the stranger things that came up.
- Bannor insisted on buildng a Hunting Lodge in every new city, right after the first warrior. The problem? 80+ turns to finish it. Then a Hunter to defend each city, for 50+ turns, then they wanted an herbalist for another 80, the next time I came by after that. The herbalists were all in cities that were quite healthy. The Bannor capital was exuding sickness, but they would not build one there, for some reason, until right before I quit goofing around.
- Once Sheiam got the tech for Gambling Houses, they had to have one in every city, no matter how small. One that I saw was due to finish in only 189 turns or so.
-The Infernals also insisted on building Herbalists in every city, for 80+ turns in the colonies that I helped them start. Now, none of these cities had any unhealthiness issues at all, being from 8 health > 2 sickness in one city to 12health > 2 sickness in another. This was the case with almost all civs, actually, to save myself some typing. Why do they love herbalists so much??
Well. You get the idea. It seems that despite the loadscreen tip that says "make sure you need every building you create," the AI quite often chooses buildings that it has no need for whatsever, and would take a very long time to finish to boot. I dont know if there is any way to make it only pick buildings/units will be done in a reasonable amount of time, but I thought I would post that there could be an issue with it, nonetheless. It could well have just been the map I was playing on, which was awful, as I said - I literally had the only good spot. Which is why I'm gonna do another run through just to see if I can get something more substantive to post
) So I was playing a game earlier on Monarch to try out the Cabalim. I got so far ahead of the AI's that I felt bad, and decided to cheat and rush their build orders for a turn or two to help them out a bit, in the hopes they would catch up to me somewhat (I had like 7 cities, some AIs still only had one.) This was on the Faerun map, DLable somewhere on this site. (incidentally that map is awful, I had to edit it quite a bit in WorldBuilder to make it even possible for some AI civs to survive at all.. Elves in a huge swath of jungle, etc etc)
Anyways, as I went around the world instabuilding for the AI's, I noticed that their choices of building were pretty strange. I ended up doing this for at least 40 turns or so, just to see what they would produce.
Here are some of the stranger things that came up.
- Bannor insisted on buildng a Hunting Lodge in every new city, right after the first warrior. The problem? 80+ turns to finish it. Then a Hunter to defend each city, for 50+ turns, then they wanted an herbalist for another 80, the next time I came by after that. The herbalists were all in cities that were quite healthy. The Bannor capital was exuding sickness, but they would not build one there, for some reason, until right before I quit goofing around.
- Once Sheiam got the tech for Gambling Houses, they had to have one in every city, no matter how small. One that I saw was due to finish in only 189 turns or so.
-The Infernals also insisted on building Herbalists in every city, for 80+ turns in the colonies that I helped them start. Now, none of these cities had any unhealthiness issues at all, being from 8 health > 2 sickness in one city to 12health > 2 sickness in another. This was the case with almost all civs, actually, to save myself some typing. Why do they love herbalists so much??
Well. You get the idea. It seems that despite the loadscreen tip that says "make sure you need every building you create," the AI quite often chooses buildings that it has no need for whatsever, and would take a very long time to finish to boot. I dont know if there is any way to make it only pick buildings/units will be done in a reasonable amount of time, but I thought I would post that there could be an issue with it, nonetheless. It could well have just been the map I was playing on, which was awful, as I said - I literally had the only good spot. Which is why I'm gonna do another run through just to see if I can get something more substantive to post
The Great Apple
Big Cheese
Frozen-Vomit
Prince
The Great Apple said:
You should really jump around in front of kael with this - waving it before his face
Would be great if this is fixed for ffh.
QES
Court Jester
Agreed. There should be some sort of fireworks display pointing to that, and hopefully a potential fix.
-Qes
-Qes
Maniac
Apolyton Sage
Re the AI picking combat instead of mana promotions for their magic users:
How about each magic promotion giving a combat bonus? Then they'll probably appear more juicy to the AI. Base strength of all magic users should probably be reduced then to compensate.
How about each magic promotion giving a combat bonus? Then they'll probably appear more juicy to the AI. Base strength of all magic users should probably be reduced then to compensate.
That sounds cool... I tend to agree.
They should be minor, potpourri-type bonuses... that may come into use in unusual situations.
For example...
Chaos could give +20% City Attack per level, perhaps increased for Chaos 3.
Death could give +20% attack vs Undead per level, perhaps increased for Death 3.
Dimensional could give a fairly substantial withdrawal chance... say 30% (per level?).
Earth could give +20% Hills Defense per level, and eventually ignore Hills movement cost.
Entropy could give +20% attack vs Demons per level, perhaps increased for Entropy 3.
Fire could give +20% Desert Defense per level, and eventually ignore Desert movement cost.
Law could give +20% City Defense per level, perhaps increased for Law 3.
Life could give a low-level Medic effect... say, 5% per level, and eventually grant adjacent-tile medic.
Nature could give +20% Forest/Jungle Defense per level, and eventually ignore Forest/Jungle movement cost.
Spirit could give +20% vs Disciple units per level, perhaps increased for Spirit 3.
Water could give +20% defense on seas and rivers, and eventually grant Amphibious.
They should be minor, potpourri-type bonuses... that may come into use in unusual situations.
For example...
Chaos could give +20% City Attack per level, perhaps increased for Chaos 3.
Death could give +20% attack vs Undead per level, perhaps increased for Death 3.
Dimensional could give a fairly substantial withdrawal chance... say 30% (per level?).
Earth could give +20% Hills Defense per level, and eventually ignore Hills movement cost.
Entropy could give +20% attack vs Demons per level, perhaps increased for Entropy 3.
Fire could give +20% Desert Defense per level, and eventually ignore Desert movement cost.
Law could give +20% City Defense per level, perhaps increased for Law 3.
Life could give a low-level Medic effect... say, 5% per level, and eventually grant adjacent-tile medic.
Nature could give +20% Forest/Jungle Defense per level, and eventually ignore Forest/Jungle movement cost.
Spirit could give +20% vs Disciple units per level, perhaps increased for Spirit 3.
Water could give +20% defense on seas and rivers, and eventually grant Amphibious.
The Great Apple
Big Cheese
It wouldn't be too hard to change the offending lines of code to work out the odds more accurately.xumio said:
Kael
Deity
The Great Apple said:
Im sure it does. Awesome work TGA! Im adding it into FfH right now and I'll do some playtesting on it.
Kael
Deity
The Great Apple said:
Yeah, fortunatly the Warlords function doesn't use any calls that don't exist in vanilla Civ so it can be dropped in without changes. Testing is looking promossing too, with the AI more likely to attack with good odds and less likely to attack with bad ones.
I will be interested to see what the feedback is on it after 0.16 releases (no ETA).
Quetz
The Tallest Lilliputian
you mean I wont be able to sneak my semi-xp'd warriors past Hill Giants anymore? 
Hypnotoad
Prince
Some strange things in my game as the Khazad on Immortal (Arturus leader). Tessa is right next to me. I thought: cool, she's a defensive type, I can build while she does and hopefully have open borders for trade. But our incompatible religions (Runes and Fellowship) gave her a -6 modifier to relations and so she's been attacking me pretty much the whole game.
First some flavor issues:
So I think it would make sense for the neutral religions to not provoke so much hostility. Similarly, I think the builder civs should not be so provoked into fighting. Especially the Elves, who aren't good at taking territory.
On the fighting issue, I'm not sure that the AI realizes it doesn't have seige engines. I have killed a lot of elves. I mean, at least 20 for each of mine that have died. Tessa just sends in dozen after dozen of units, which die at my walls, giving my units more experience... Also, she did build the Pact of Nilhorn, which is the loophole that gives bombarding to the elves early on. But she never brought them in to bombard my cities.
Tessa also sends in about 8 units every couple of turns (against my 4 in the city), when if she had waited 10 turns she clearly could have beaten me (in fact, I thought I was done for, with a bad start, but have survived the waves of attacks).
She built Gilden fairly late. Bambor already was over 100 experience. Then she brought him right up to battle line undefended. Bambor killed him at a 100% chance (he also has Orthus' Axe). She should have gone for her hero sooner and then had him hang back for a while to gain some basic XP. I can see that it would be hard for the AI to understand hero's potential, but given how great it is...
I will say that the elves are really good at spreading their religion. Almost too good: Fellowship has dominated in all the games I've played. But maybe that's just luck of the draw. Anyway, good for the elves -- try to get the AI to do the same with the other religions.
First some flavor issues:
So I think it would make sense for the neutral religions to not provoke so much hostility. Similarly, I think the builder civs should not be so provoked into fighting. Especially the Elves, who aren't good at taking territory.
On the fighting issue, I'm not sure that the AI realizes it doesn't have seige engines. I have killed a lot of elves. I mean, at least 20 for each of mine that have died. Tessa just sends in dozen after dozen of units, which die at my walls, giving my units more experience... Also, she did build the Pact of Nilhorn, which is the loophole that gives bombarding to the elves early on. But she never brought them in to bombard my cities.
Tessa also sends in about 8 units every couple of turns (against my 4 in the city), when if she had waited 10 turns she clearly could have beaten me (in fact, I thought I was done for, with a bad start, but have survived the waves of attacks).
She built Gilden fairly late. Bambor already was over 100 experience. Then she brought him right up to battle line undefended. Bambor killed him at a 100% chance (he also has Orthus' Axe). She should have gone for her hero sooner and then had him hang back for a while to gain some basic XP. I can see that it would be hard for the AI to understand hero's potential, but given how great it is...
I will say that the elves are really good at spreading their religion. Almost too good: Fellowship has dominated in all the games I've played. But maybe that's just luck of the draw. Anyway, good for the elves -- try to get the AI to do the same with the other religions.
Chandrasekhar
Determined
Hypnotoad said:
I've noticed this as well. The elves' high hammer output means that their power graph always has a very high value, which makes them think they can take out anyone they want to. I'd suggest making their leaders much less warlike to compensate.
Chandrasekhar said:
In 0.16 the Odds Calculator for the AI will be more correct though, so they wont throw their units away to losing odds that often. Still I agree about the above. Amelanchier should be pretty aggressive IF he is attacked though. (Since he is a Defensive Raider)
