Enhanced AI suggestions for BTS

[Quagga]

There's been a lapse in discussion in this forum about Better AI, partly because we were waiting for a 1.0 release, then because the Better AI Team disappeared. We could speculate about why that happened, but I don't think it's necessary.

The point is that Enhanced AI is part of Beyond the Sword. Who better to suggest what should be part of the Enhanced AI than the people who have been using Better AI and have interest in this topic?

Therefore, I'm starting this thread so that we can resume our discussions, but with an eye toward the forthcoming expansion, rather than the Better AI mod. I'm sure the right people will find the thread.

Some things to note: Enanced AI probably does not need to preserve save game compatibility. Similarly, some of other restrictions Blake used to scope Better AI may not apply to BTS's Enhanced AI.

I'll start: Worker automation: I sure would like to see workers concentrate on building railroads on mines and the other improvements that get a hammer benefit. I can use manually-operated workers to create cross-country highways, so that doesn't matter to me. What I hate seeing is workers railroading towns, farms and windmills when there are mines and lumbermills without railroads. I'm forced to operate them all manually just to avoid this silliness. I'm sure the AI suffers too from this.

 

[Yakk]

Worker: build Commerce, Food and Hammer options. A Hammer Route worker would prefer to build railroads on production-improving tiles, and only once every hammer railroad was built it would do other locations.

Workers should generally bias towards building roads on squares that boost production, even without that setting...

The worker should prefer to improve tiles that the city it is helping would use, ideally immediately, or if the growing city grows. So improving the hammers of a city with emp food/commerce is pretty pointless.

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With the new spies, we have a chance for the AI to gain some real intelligence about enemy empires. This gives a chance for the AI to try out "complex" attack plans, like "bypass border city with stack-of-doom, cut transportation network to prevent easy reinforcement of defenders, then attack lightly defended inner city".

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Better response of the AI to barbarians. Barbarian AI/Animal AI is simple, and the AI should know this. Barbarians are both a danger that can be surpressed (fog-busting, setting honeypot units along Barbarian approach paths) and an oppertunity to be exploited (terran maps when you colonize the new world, expanding by killing barbarian cities, XPing up units by attacking or getting attacked by barbarians, funding your commerce by taking and burning barbarian cities).

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More intelligent inter-empire war cooperation. "Why don't you attack X" should be something the AI should request other AIs (and players) to do.

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Diplomatic warfare. The planned formation of power-blocks, beyond the accidents of religion. Taking down strong empires that threaten your victory plans. Declairing war or trade embargo as a block.

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Understanding the value of gifted units. Using it for proxy-wars.

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Intentionally building up cash stockpiles to buy techs from other empires.

 

[Tyrole]

I would like the new AI to have properties similar to the settings implemented with the better ai Handicap fix. My greatest (and only serious) complaint in the Civilization series has been that when you increase or decrease difficulty levels, the AI doesn't scale with you. The game merely cheats for one side or the other. And only so much fun can be had when someone is cheating.

I would like to see handicap removal as at least an option with the new expansion. The AI, of course, would have to scale due to the changes.

I believe this change would be invaluable, and I wish luck to and thank all the planners and programmers working on this new project.

 

[Ishon]

I'm repeating myself, but: forts.

1) When to build them;
2) How to deal with them.

 

[Newcomer24]

I'm repeating myself, but: forts.

1) When to build them;
2) How to deal with them.

Forts are completely useless... apart from some very very very... very.. very.. rare circumstances. The AI should not bother with them.

 

[Yakk]

Barbarian AI:

You can currently make the BetterAI barbarians stop advancing on you by simply creating a wall of units. Their pathing algorithm says "can I reach that city?" "no, I can't", and it proceeds to wander randomly.

If it happens to wander near the wall of units, it might attack one: so long as the wall is on defendable terrain and/or with strong enough units, this isn't a problem.

 

[Ishon]

Forts are not useless since Warlords was released. And they should be boosted even more in the BtS expansion so that there's no doubt about their usefulness.

 

[darko82]

I would like the AI not to gather all the units in one huge pile ! It would be better if it actually spread the units into several smaller piles. Otherwise, it is relatively easy to destroy all of its army with cannons etc. without much loss. The AI is defenseless after such loss ( few units often old-fashioned is left in the cities ).

I would like to ask a programmer to implement the possibility to set the soundtrack music for each civilization. For instance, if I choose to play Indian Empire, the music that I choose for that civ will be played. If I choose Russia, then I should have a Russian music in diffrent eras etc. A small thing, but is missing, to my mind ! In Civ 3, we actually had such possibility.