Community Feedback Needed: Biggest AI issues

Does the AI have a way to check the defense of other cities? I got away with the silliest game today, destroying suicidal army after army as they attacked my well defended capital. My other two cities were defended by one warrior each and I would have been powerless to intervene had just one army of fawns and hunters wandered south a bit and taken them out. Right now, it looks like the AI will attack whatever's closest, regardless of it's chance of success. Well...it did get a single fawn deep inside my lines that had me worried for a while, but it seemed to just be out chasing workers. The AI does seem rather good on that front.

Just my thoughts after today's gamage.
 
Heyhey!

Patch e is looking good for the ai. keep it up!

what i want to discus is this: the ai sucks at roleplaying religion! Ihve been snooping around the xmls for things to do about it, mostly because i wanted my own games to have a more "good vs evil" flavor. Things I found and things i tried:

Random spreads are a real pain. Early religions get a huge headstart and certain leaders dont have enough weight against religions randomly spreading to major cities. Example: In my last game, Elohim converted to AV because it randomly spread to thier second largest city. Allthough elohim do have weight against av, its not enough to make them stay good in this case. Another good example is Kuriotates, they dont have a weight against anything and will convert eventhough the religion is actually only spread to a measly pop 1 border city. These are just examples, evil civs get the same. ROK will convert some evil leader to neutral in almost every game.

So, what I would do is set spreadrates for early religions to 0, i would give them 3 free deciples instead of 1 to compensate.

The later religions would then be tied to open border agreements, only randomly spreading between civs if there are open borders with the founding civ. In general the ai should be more careful with who it has open borders with. Some of weights should also be changed. (sunworshipping vampires anyone?)

Edit: Oh, totally offtopic and in relation to the Calabim and empyrean. Unless those vampires dont have a problem with sunlight i would say that some negative events could be put in for Calabim cities with the empyrean religion. Would be kewl!
 
In the mid game the AI never has any money on hand, which someone already pointed out could be a reason that adepts never get updated. After the AI is taught to hang back a little and defend itself (which sould also hopefully cut back on its empire upkeep costs and boost its tech production), it really needs to know how to build up an economy, or perhaps just how to focus certain cities to create gold producing cities, or tech producing cities. I mean, if the AI has a Holy City with a shrine, it should understand to get as many money enhancing buildings and wonders as possible in that city to create an economic powerhouse. Also, besides Khazad, AI's should understand the value of having some money in the bank.

In terms of war fighting, I think if the AI was more reticent to use its prodigious Privateers to blockade ports, and used more units to pillage and plunder during wars, it would not only get some more cash, but make the player's life more harder.
 
- It seems AI is still not moving its workers out of danger, if the enemy unit can move more than one tile due to mobility or dwarven/elven promotion

- Khazad AI has a surprisingly low priority on building mines considering that their world spell and the gathering of earth mana both are in need of as much mines as possible.
I see them rather go for cottage/windmill spam, which isn't too bad either, because of course they need as much money as they can get, but imho it's too much.
 
I don't know if anyone's mentioned this but I can do a lot of damage to the AI with hidden nationality animal units I capture. They seem to have only warriors and, just lately, archers. So the problems might be a combination of multiple things 1) not higher tier units; 2) not stack attacking the animals which keep waging guerilla warfare.

The way to code-solve 2) IMO would be to tell the AI to get a stack of units and attack any hidden nationality units in their territory as a priority.
 
I just wanted to mention that the AI has a bad habit of converting to the first religion that spreads to thier lands. Last night I had almost unintentionally gotten a religious victory (I really wasn't aiming for it) and everybody had converted to RoK. A little bit later though, the Balseraphs founded AV and a couple turns later converted to it.
 
I think that new Flavors need to be added to techs (units, etc), one for each religion. The hardcoding to go for religions should be removed, and leaders should be weighted towards or against researching a religion as much as towards adopting it.

A new way of weighing them towards adopting religions may be in order too. One that make more of a difference when only one religion is present.

Would changing
Code: 
<Define>
        <DefineName>RELIGION_ADOPTION_CHANCE</DefineName>
        <iDefineIntVal>20</iDefineIntVal>
    </Define>
help? Also, the leader's weights themselves need to be increased.
 
Some more things I've noticed (using Chipotle to observe the AI):

1. If the AI is pursuing a religion tech and you beat them to founding it, they abandon their research. Founding a religion pretty much only allows you access to the shrine, the AI should put more weight on researching it's preferred religions even if they've already been founded.

2. The AI doesn't build buildings in general. I saw 2 or 3 Kuriotate cities (not settlements) that had no buildings at all and only spammed units even though they were on an isolated island and had no use for the military at the time. The AI is pitiful at developing infrastructure and even when it successfully wages a war is trashes it's economy in the process.
 
where do I find this chipotle thing? sometimes I would like to be able to look at the AI cities and whatnot.

I'll try looking around in the download database.

Edit: nm, should look first before asking such an obvious question :P

Although, I'm not really sure how I should put it into the game or how to use it while playing a game. I don't really want to use the AI autoplay, but the debug part sounds useful.

Edit: I tried doing the debug mode mentioned here http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9562 , but the chipotle thing keeps saying that CyGame has no attribute like that.
 
Check that debug (cheat) mode is enabled by pressing ctrl-z which should reveal the whole map. To do this you need to go to the menu then to game details and click the turn debug mode on. Press ctrl-z again to return the map to normal (unrevealed) afterwards if you like.
 
Sarisin: you build *that* wonder? Amazing. I've never even came close.

If anyone did any coding, most of the advice here are too difficult to do with a rigid coding system. The typical Civ4 PC does not have the processing power for the kind of network logic required for adaptation. The best we could do is give a general script to each civ.

I have one: make them build one unit-enabling building (label the buildings as such) as soon as the tech is researched and a city with enough production to build it in X number of turns (X hardcoded for each building) is idle. If no city meets that condition, then build it in the most productive city as soon it becomes idle. Do not build more than one unit-enabling building in one city, unless all cities with enough production to build said building in X number of turns. In that case, build the building in a city that already has a unit-enabling city, but similar in nature. For the last case, for example, cavalry and infantry would be "similar", while cavalry and siege would not.

I believe we can see balanced armies beyond T2 with this rule.
 
Try giving civs a "preferred religion" like in the Total Realism mod (where Arabians will convert to Islam, Indians to Hinduism, Persians to Zorastrianism etc).
That is, Civ X will ALWAYS convert to Religion Y if they get even a single city with that religion.

Appropriate preferences would probably be:
AV: Sheaim
Order: Bannor
Empyrean: Malakim
FOL: Ljiolsofar
Runes: Any dwarf
OO: Lanun, I guess? Or Balseraphs?
Esus: None, really. Or dark elves, I guess.

Possibly do it by leader (Hannah seems more likely to be OO than Falamar).
 
". Right now, it looks like the AI will attack whatever's closest, regardless of it's chance of success. "

This is definetly not true, in my last game the Dondevillo hero+5 beasman attacked me and they gone past my 2 cities (with 3-3 warrior defender) to my lightly defended (1 scout) capital.

furtunately i was able to outmanuver him being a ljiolsofar in my forest (warriors walking 2 step in the early game is a bit powerful btw) and 7 defender was just enough

i was expected that maybe i can play him and leve the 2 city with all warriors (trying to lure hikm to the "empty" small cities, but he gone straight to my capital and attacked my 6 warrior+1 scout with hero+4 beastman even my other 2 city was totally undefended. (it was not a bad choice btw - if he would tried to capture again one of my empties i would be there sooner again and he would only waste time)
 
Bad Player said:
Check that debug (cheat) mode is enabled by pressing ctrl-z which should reveal the whole map. To do this you need to go to the menu then to game details and click the turn debug mode on. Press ctrl-z again to return the map to normal (unrevealed) afterwards if you like.
Click to expand...

oh I see, thanks.
 
The AI should have a lower weight towards building the pact with the nilhorn. I saw Cassiel building it without having a second city, really slowing him down. It was Creation and he had a valley of his own though.
 
AI needs to be more realistic in its early game peace treaty acceptance - when it's lost units at 5:1 ratio and failed to capture any cities it should not still be trying to demand a city for peace, in fact it should realise the war is not in its own best interests and offer a ceasefire. I believe this problem is caused by the early game AI power rating being artificially inflated thanks to its starting bonuses.

AI should not be declaring war on player for failing to adopt its favourite civic... of pacifism.
 
Ahriman said:
Try giving civs a "preferred religion" like in the Total Realism mod (where Arabians will convert to Islam, Indians to Hinduism, Persians to Zorastrianism etc).
That is, Civ X will ALWAYS convert to Religion Y if they get even a single city with that religion.

Appropriate preferences would probably be:
AV: Sheaim
Order: Bannor
Empyrean: Malakim
FOL: Ljiolsofar
Runes: Any dwarf
OO: Lanun, I guess? Or Balseraphs?
Esus: None, really. Or dark elves, I guess.

Possibly do it by leader (Hannah seems more likely to be OO than Falamar).
Click to expand...

Allready in the game! Have a look at my post at the top of this page. The weights are allready in the game, but the leaders have them set too low or lack them alltogether. Imo the totally random spread of religions is more of a problem though.

Anyway, you can change them yourself in the civ4leaderheadinfo.xml file.
 
I realise that there are adoption "weights", but I was suggesting a more absolute implementation, as in the Total Realism mod. The weights aren't really low enough to stop AIs adopting inappropriate religions, or high enough to make them automatically adopt a suitable religion.
This is even more of a big deal when religions change alignments and everyone tends to adopt a widely spread religion (eg everyone converts to Runes early, and so there are no Evil civs left).

You might also want to consider some kind of penalties for multiple religions. It feels much more roleplayingish for a civ to have only a single religion, and for there to be big problems (like a happiness penalty) for having multiple religions in the same city.
 
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