Do the other civs get quests (and by extension their benefits)?

[nick-brown]

Apologies if there's already a thread going on this, I couldn't find it.

So to give an example of the question, does the AI, when they build their first ultrasonic fence, get asked whether they want to reverse the polarity and make their trade units immune to aliens?

Beyond hacking the code, I'm stumped as to a scientific means of measuring this.

Ta

N

ps, whilst we're on the subject of AI trade, anyone know a definitive way to stop the AI trading with you - I thought declaring war on them would do the job but it appears not?

 

[Bezurn]

I believe so. I also think they get other quests that would give them affinity points for completing them. I'm not sure how good it is at completing them. It wouldn't make sense for the human to be able to get 3-4 tech free affinity points as the AI would have to research a lot more leaf techs in order to get the units upgraded to the final level. I don't think the game cheats and gives them freebie affinity levels at certain points. Of course this is all my opinion and has no basis in fact.

 

[Ryoga]

I believe so. I also think they get other quests that would give them affinity points for completing them. I'm not sure how good it is at completing them. It wouldn't make sense for the human to be able to get 3-4 tech free affinity points as the AI would have to research a lot more leaf techs in order to get the units upgraded to the final level. I don't think the game cheats and gives them freebie affinity levels at certain points. Of course this is all my opinion and has no basis in fact.

Nope, if you look at the XML in the CivBEQuests.xml all the affinity quests are marked as "IgnoredByAI" and I know for a fact that the lua code specifically checks that and prevents the quests from being assigned to AI.
There is however an error in the check system and three affinity quests (only those three) are selected anyway, but it is clearly a bug and I doubt the AI can even complete them.

All the rest are assigned normally. I'm not entirely sure how the building quest choices are handled, but the code specifies "flavors" for each choice, and flavors only matter for AI, so there is most certainly a system of selection based on that.

It is unclear to me how the lack of Affinity quest reward for AI is compensated.

 

[GeoModder]

It is unclear to me how the lack of Affinity quest reward for AI is compensated.

If what you discovered holds true, I'd say the starting benefits of the AI colonies are not enough to compensate for all those little benefits human players can stack.
Even so, is it possible the AI colonies automatically get a building benefit assigned once they complete one? They're not given a choice, but get one automatically from a 'hard list' or something?

 

[nick-brown]

I agree Geomodder - I can't see how they can possibly compensate - the trade unit immunity is a case in point but even more obvious is the Autoplant +50% trade routes - if this was the case, there's Hutama's advantage gone immediately.

Ryoga - could you explain what you mean by "flavours" please?

 

[traius]

I agree Geomodder - I can't see how they can possibly compensate - the trade unit immunity is a case in point but even more obvious is the Autoplant +50% trade routes - if this was the case, there's Hutama's advantage gone immediately.

Ryoga - could you explain what you mean by "flavours" please?

I can't explicitly say with certainty, but in all previous Civ games flavour just throws a bias on certain RNG rolls for "decisions"

 

[metagross]

I'm not sure which quests are bugged but currently AI definitely receives quest. You just have to keep an eye on the map around T8-12 and you will either a few Stations popping up next to AI's Capitals (Send a TR quest) or a Crashed Satellite appearing out of nowhere.

 

[Roxlimn]

The AI doesn't always get the Trade Vessel immunity. I've observed a fair number of AI trade vessels getting munched by aliens. I imagine it's pretty painful over the course of the game.

 

[Waywocket]

The AI doesn't always get the Trade Vessel immunity

How do you get that? I know there's a trade convoy immunity, but it doesn't seem to affect vessels. Is this a separate thing?

 

[weregamer]

How do you get that? I know there's a trade convoy immunity, but it doesn't seem to affect vessels. Is this a separate thing?

It most certainly affects trade vessels too. Once you have it, seaborne routes are as immune as land ones. In many hours of play, I've lost sea routes to aliens nearly 100% of the time on their first run if I don't have the immunity, and definitely 0% of the time once I do.

 

[Waywocket]

Hmm, I guess I must have had them pillaged by AIs and not read the notification properly .

 

[omniclast]

Ryoga - could you explain what you mean by "flavours" please?

The AI evaluates decisions based on variables called flavors that weight buildings, techs, virtues etc in categories like FLAVOR_CULTURE and FLAVOR_ENERGY. AIs pursue different flavors at different points in their Grand Strategy and lean towards some flavours based on their personality biases. Each building quest option has a flavor to help them assess which better fits with their strategy.

However unlike other game elements that have flavors, building quests have no weighting, so the AI can't tell how much better +1 trade route is from +2 flat energy - it can just tell one is for trade and the other is for energy, and assumes they are equally valuable. I'm guessing the devs thought they wouldn't need to add flavor weights because the quest options would be balanced, but of course we all know they're not. This leads to the AI making choices that are obviously quite poor from a human's perspective.

The affinity quests are handled by a different system, which is mostly ignored by the AI. However there is also a variable for these quest decisions to have flavors, so it's possible they were originally intended to be used by the AI, but the devs scrapped it because they didn't have time to code the AI to handle complicated s*** (like finishing an excavation /s)

 

[Ryoga]

I'm not sure which quests are bugged but currently AI definitely receives quest. You just have to keep an eye on the map around T8-12 and you will either a few Stations popping up next to AI's Capitals (Send a TR quest) or a Crashed Satellite appearing out of nowhere.

And the reason you see that happening so often is because that's what 2 of the 3 quests that aren't correctly ignored do. While you can get one among 6 possible quests in the beginning, the AI can only get those 3.

But trust me, that isn't supposed to happen, it is unmistakably a bug.

 

[nick-brown]

The AI evaluates decisions based on variables called flavors that weight buildings, techs, virtues etc in categories like FLAVOR_CULTURE and FLAVOR_ENERGY. AIs pursue different flavors at different points in their Grand Strategy and lean towards some flavours based on their personality biases. Each building quest option has a flavor to help them assess which better fits with their strategy.

However unlike other game elements that have flavors, building quests have no weighting, so the AI can't tell how much better +1 trade route is from +2 flat energy - it can just tell one is for trade and the other is for energy, and assumes they are equally valuable. I'm guessing the devs thought they wouldn't need to add flavor weights because the quest options would be balanced, but of course we all know they're not. This leads to the AI making choices that are obviously quite poor from a human's perspective.

The affinity quests are handled by a different system, which is mostly ignored by the AI. However there is also a variable for these quest decisions to have flavors, so it's possible they were originally intended to be used by the AI, but the devs scrapped it because they didn't have time to code the AI to handle complicated s*** (like finishing an excavation /s)

Many thanks omniclast