Community Feedback Needed: Biggest AI issues

[Pyr0mancer]

The money shown in the F4 screen means the money that leader is willing to give away in trade deals, not their full treasury. The Khazad are willing to give away zero percent of their money reserves.

But they still seem to spend all their money anyway. I've never seen an AI dwarven vault at anything more than low (with Shadows).

 

[uberfish]

Doviello have been completely destroying other AIs since last patch at immortal/deity (especially ones that warrior rushed. Civs like Grigori/Ljosalfar should really stop doing this.) It's actually getting a bit silly now, as the high level game is devolving into a rush fest involving boring low level units.

I would suggest the following changes

- reduce early game aggression factor for "peaceful" civs only
- remove mining from AI free tech lists on high difficulties, to slow down the axe rush
- move archery down to the same tech level as hunting to increase the chance of good defenders being produced by the AI, and thus make it more difficult to rush. Increase the cost of bowyers and stirrups to compensate.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

It's a delicate balance though, because the Doviello, even more so than the Clan of Embers, needs to gain an initial advantage to set itself up for the rest of the game, and that tends to mean destorying AI's that are next to it. Heck, Barbartos the Lich can sometimes destroy a civ. I don't see why the human is allowed to rush a civ and the AI is not.

Even thematically, the peaceful civs would not declare war, but I am pretty sure they will build a lot of warriors to protect themselves too. Actually, another benefit to this is that isolated civs don't have to build that many warriors, and can use the money to catch up in tech until optics.

 

[Xuenay]

I don't see a problem with the Doviello destroying early neighbors, either. It's far more interesting to see the AI's actually doing something than it is to have them all occupy basically the same situations for the whole game.

 

[Ksi]

Really? I had one game so far that the Doveillo dominated but more than half of my deity games the hippus conquer massive portions of the map. The bad part is they seem to over extend themselves. Is there any sugestions on teaching the ai how to properly manage an economy?

edit: Deity, aggressive ai, 20 players, large, pangea, raging, barb world, living world

I find the ai is decent at combat now (however using more siege and spells for attack would be great)
But the biggest issue seems to be economy without a doubt.

 

[Xuenay]

It'd be real neat if the AI could be taught to take advantage of other civilizations that've overextended themselves, creating a cycle where the Doviello and Hippus reign in the early game, after which the surviving back-loaded civilizations gradually build up, attack and prosper due to their superior economy...

 

[Pyr0mancer]

I just got Adventurer-rushed for the first time, on Monarch. Wow, that sucked. I had some 5-6 warriors fortified in my hilltop capital, and Carrow the Hunted just blew straight through them without taking more than a few scratches.

Anyways... I don't recall if this has been mentioned, but the Kuriotates AI REALLY needs to be taught how to spread its cities properly, as well as when not to promote a settlement. Single settlement with all of its BFC open? Promote. Settlement where not even its REGULAR cross is workable due to being in between two cities? Don't promote.

 

[uberfish]

It's a delicate balance though, because the Doviello, even more so than the Clan of Embers, needs to gain an initial advantage to set itself up for the rest of the game, and that tends to mean destorying AI's that are next to it. Heck, Barbartos the Lich can sometimes destroy a civ. I don't see why the human is allowed to rush a civ and the AI is not.

Actually I would like the AI to stand up better against rushes in general. Both from humans, and from other AIs.

 

[Graymalkin]

This has probably been said before but I just saw decius (evil Bannor) throw 7 or 8 scouts at my two bronze upgraded warriors that were fortified in a city. He used scouts even though he could have built his own bronze warriors for the same price.

 

[Bezhukov]

Is there any sugestions on teaching the ai how to properly manage an economy?

All AI should be forced to run City States until they show that they've learned to better manage their economies.

 

[Mukuu]

Anyone else think that the AI's value religion founding techs to much? It seems silly to be able to trade techs that are worthless to the AI, especially late game, for military techs... or to be able to trade them to the Infernals. Just opinion I guess. =]

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Yeah, something needs to be done about religious techs. The AI needs to have a high value on acquiring the tech for its favorite religion and for the religion it currently has adopted (so it can spread it to its other cities and to rivals), but non consider other religion founding techs (especially those whose religions are already founded) to be valuable. Also, the AI's value for its current religion's tech should be reduced significantly once it has the tech, so that it will be more likely to share the tech and spread its religion to its rivals.

 

[snarko]

A couple problems from my current game:
Being at war with the Sidar they kept sending a lone horseman to attack one of my cities. A lone horseman doesn't stand a snowball chance in hell against a fortified stoneskin ogre with combat 4 and formation inside a city. Sure, his unit withdrew most of the time, but I just killed it when it was my turn to move.


The AI voted yes for liberty. A majority of those who voted were at war. Of those who weren't at war they have since gone to war. I haven't been in the councils much so I don't know if they never got the chance or something, but with every single one in the council being at war they should revote and cancel liberty asap.

 

[Dier]

I agree with the posters that mention worker inaction as a huge handicap for the AIs. Forest locations cripple them enormously. Perhaps it would be better if forests with roads or rivers yielded one commerce, so the tech rate isn't stuck at the palace rate. I have no idea what the repercussions would be though... Could be they'd keep forest around forever then.

 

[Pyr0mancer]

I agree with the posters that mention worker inaction as a huge handicap for the AIs. Forest locations cripple them enormously. Perhaps it would be better if forests with roads or rivers yielded one commerce, so the tech rate isn't stuck at the palace rate. I have no idea what the repercussions would be though... Could be they'd keep forest around forever then.

Repercussions: Elves. It would give the two elven civs such a massive economic boost that no other civ could ever hope to compete. I mean, Ancient Forest Towns already produce a food surplus, production, and a pile of commerce. We REALLY don't need to add to that.

 

[Dier]

Well, the elves could be excluded from the bonus, as they don't really need it to begin with. Another idea is to have a special worker unit at the start that can (slowly) chop forests, or indeed move back the worker techs as mentioned by others.

Edited: Or all workers could chop forests from the start in (say) 10 turns, and with bronze working they can do it in 3 turns.

Edited some more: Heh, that could be done with all worker actions. I like it...

 

[Frogmanx82]

I'd like to see forts get out of the city resource cross altogether. Forts are much more useful on the perimeter anyway. A rule like no fort built 2 hexes from a city would suffice.

 

[Milosrdenstvi]

or 3 for kurio

 

[DuckAndCower]

I'd like to see forts get out of the city resource cross altogether. Forts are much more useful on the perimeter anyway. A rule like no fort built 2 hexes from a city would suffice.

I'd like to add my support for this. I really can't see why the AI (players' auto-workers included) love ruining workable tiles by providing a place for attackers to take cover.

As far as AI problems go, the biggest I can see is that the AI doesn't seem to value heroes and high-level units very much. Instead of weakening a target with a low-level unit, they'll always attack with their strongest unit first, even if it has a relatively low chance to succeed. Even if it does win, they don't seem to be able to understand how to protect their injured high-value units correctly, allowing for an easy counter-attack.

I think the problem is that the AI will often go all out with its attack. It seems to need to learn some patience when attacking.

The 'Chirp need to learn how to level Barnaxus without getting him killed all the time. I often see "Barnaxus has been killed" very early in the game, and I'm not sure the AI knows how to rebuild him. Even if he is rebuilt, though, he loses his combat promotion. An important part of playing the 'Chirp is to get Barnaxus to Combat 5 quickly, but without letting him die.

 

[uberfish]

I think the forest start problem can be fixed just by enabling chopping from turn 1 (just don't give any hammers until BW is researched)