Hello, I'm not sure if this is the right thread for this but.. I'm playing on deity, and in many games the AI seems to be very weak in the prehistoric era. Attached is a save of my latest game, around turn 80. This is with the latest SVN. Notice that my research rate is 2-3 times MORE than the AI's. They're also not building many units and also many of them are just hanging around inside their borders doing nothing, like the german tracker that is in the save. I feel that the deity difficulty in general is not enough of a challenge, this would be a good place to improve it for sure.
I took a look at this, and it isn't really an AI problem (well in a sense it is, but it's not the main issue). I've copied the AI stats from the AI log for the turn you posted below for information (anyone can see this info BTW if they turn AI logging on - it's produced for every AI player every turn). The critical point is that Germany is at 100% gold (0% research) with maintenance costs of 14/turn and income of 9/turn, so it's basically in an unsustainable maintenance hole, that realistically it's only going to get out of by either disbanding a city or building all possible gold buildings.
The minor AI flaw (minor because it won't normally get itself INTO this situation, which is purely an artifact of getting the 'bonus' (haha) of 2 cities at the start on deity) is that it prioritizes the building of at least one hunter higher than it does emergency gold producing buildings. The result is it keeps building a hunter (the one you saw) and having it forcibly disbanded before it can do anything with it (the hunter you thought was not moving was actually a hunter being disbanded and rapidly replaced by another one again and again!).
One fix would be to remove the 'bonus' city the AI gets on deity, because the game is just not set up to enable you to support 2 right out of the gate due to 0 gold reserves and maintenance. Alternatively (maybe better in order to keep deity as challenging as possible??) we could make the AI have 0 city maintenance costs below THREE cities instead of below TWO as now (so the extra city didn't have any maintenance impact until it gets to build a third)
I like the second solution best, because it preserves the 2-city for AI bonus on deity, which (once maintenance is removed for it) really ought to make things a lot more challenging.
I don't plan to change build priorities urgently to allow gold production to float up higher in the order, but at some point I should probably do that too.
Opinions?
Here's the AI stats log for Germany:
Code:
[113929.836] German Empire stats for turn 77:
[113929.836] Gold rate: 100
[113929.836] Science rate: 0
[113929.836] Culture rate: 0
[113929.836] Espionage rate: 0
[113929.836] Treasury: 0
[113929.836] Total gold income from self: 9
[113929.836] Total gold income from trade agreements: 0
[113929.836] Unit cost (pre inflation): 0
[113929.836] Unit supply cost (pre inflation): 0
[113929.836] Maintenance cost (pre inflation): 14
[113929.836] Civic upkeep cost (pre inflation): 0
[113929.836] Corporate income (pre inflation): 0
[113929.836] Inflation effect: 0
[113929.836] Total science output: 15
[113929.836] Total espionage output: 2
[113929.836] Total cultural output: 40
[113929.836] Total population: 7
[113929.836] Total food output: 40
[113929.836] Total production output: 20
[113929.836] Num cities: 2
[113929.836] National rev index: 8
[113929.883] Number of animals subdued: 3
[113929.945] Civic switches: 2
[113929.945] Total num civics switched: 4
[113929.945] Total turns in anarchy: 0 (0%)
[113929.945] Current civics:
[113929.945] Government: Anarchism
[113929.945] RULE: Obedience
[113929.945] POWER: Strongman
[113929.945] SOCIETY: Primitive
[113929.945] Economy: Communalism
[113929.945] MILITARY: Banditry
[113929.945] Religion: Folklore
[113929.945] WELFARE: Survival
[113929.945] Garbage: Garbage Anywhere
[113929.945] Immigration: No Borders
[113929.945] Education: Oral Tradition
[113929.945] Language: Native Language
[113929.945] Agriculture: No Agriculture
[113929.945] Currency: No Currency
[113929.945] Civic switch history:
[113929.945] Turn 1:
[113929.945] Militia -> Banditry (no anarchy switch)
[113929.945] No Language -> Native Language (no anarchy switch)
[113929.945] Turn 47:
[113929.945] Irreligion -> Folklore (no anarchy switch)
[113929.945] Ignorance -> Oral Tradition (no anarchy switch)
[113929.945] City Berlin:
[113929.945] Population: 5
[113929.945] Production: 13
[113929.945] Food surplus: 10
[113929.945] Local rev index: -1
[113929.945] Maintenance: 4
[113929.945] Income: 6
[113929.945] Science: 7
[113929.945] Espionage: 3
[113929.945] Culture: 21
[113929.945] Net happyness: 4
[113929.945] Net health: 5
[113929.945] Food trade yield: 0
[113929.945] Production trade yield: 0
[113929.961] Commerce trade yield: 0
[113929.961] Property values:
[113929.961] Crime Rate: -57
[113929.961] Water Pollution Rate: 10
[113929.961] Disease Rate: 37
[113929.961] Air Pollution Rate: -330
[113929.961] Flammability: 20
[113929.961] City Hamburg:
[113929.961] Population: 2
[113929.961] Production: 7
[113929.961] Food surplus: 9
[113929.961] Local rev index: -1
[113929.961] Maintenance: 12
[113929.961] Income: 3
[113929.961] Science: 4
[113929.961] Espionage: -1
[113929.961] Culture: 18
[113929.961] Net happyness: 4
[113929.961] Net health: 1
[113929.961] Food trade yield: 0
[113929.961] Production trade yield: 0
[113929.961] Commerce trade yield: 0
[113929.961] Property values:
[113929.961] Crime Rate: 72
[113929.961] Water Pollution Rate: -162
[113929.961] Air Pollution Rate: -249
[113929.961] Disease Rate: 19
[113929.961] Flammability: 20
[113929.961] Units:
[113929.961] Stone Thrower (UNITAI_CITY_DEFENSE): 1
[113929.961] Tribal Guardian (UNITAI_CITY_DEFENSE): 1
[113929.961] Buildings constructed by units:
[113929.961] Myth of the Bear: 1
[113929.961] Master Hunter: 1
[113929.961] Myth of the Wolf: 1
Edit - decided to tweak the maintenance costs so that the second city is much less expensive for AI players (has no effect once they get to a third city and beyond, so once out of prehistory it won't change anything). This should have the effect of making deity games a lot more challenging early on. This is included in SVN rev 4694 - for existing games a modifier recalc is needed for it to take immediate effect (else it will take effect progressively as the code needs to recalculate maintenance due to changes such as new buildings and so forth)
