FfH2 AI Issues Thread

[notque]

Here are some interesting things I've learned about the AI doing so much testing.

If the AI is at war, they tend to beeline Military Strategy. Several Leaders get stuck for turns not researching anything after they get it. I put in a brute force fix I don't like force anyone with Military Strategy to research Bowyers. It fixes the problem, but again, don't like it.

The AI will occasionally not pick a new tech for 1-5 turns. I don't know why, but by doing my complicated tech stuff, they don't have this problem.

The AI will get techs for things they don't have, but not going for a tech where it's a prereq. Just odd.

Some leaders at a certain point will research all the other religions even if they have a religion. Then, they cast Purge the Unfaithful for no benefit.

Scouts are built WAYYYYY too frequently, and I turned them off. Guess what? Civs live a ton longer now. They don't die immediately. It's awesome.

The AI loves to go bankrupt. I've fixed this by focusing on money techs.

There's probably more. I've learned and fixed a lot of weirdness this weekend.

 

[notque]

double post

 

[MasterofDisasta]

If the AI is at war, they tend to beeline Military Strategy. Several Leaders get stuck for turns not researching anything after they get it.

That's interesting to know because I remember thinking just the other day that it was pretty weird that all 12 civs in my game had military strategy eventhough some were lacking more basic techs. I had thought it was just a weird coincidence of tech brokering but it obviously is a bigger problem.

What is the real use of military strategy anways? If you don't get it first (no free commander) and aren't an organized leader (no command posts) what is the point of getting that tech anyways? Iirc the only other benefit is one promotion - I think blitz. I just trade for military strategy when I'm backfilling.

 

[notque]

I don't think the AI beelines it because of any benefit, I think they are set to beeline war techs if they are at war. And if they are still at war, they get screwed up on what to do next.

The biggest problem is less they beeline it, and more that they can get stuck not having anything to research after the fact. Either way, both issues I have fixed in my setup.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Scouts are built WAYYYYY too frequently, and I turned them off. Guess what? Civs live a ton longer now. They don't die immediately. It's awesome.

At least, remove the UNITAI_ATTACK and UNITAI_CITY_DEFENCE tags from them. The latter tag doesn't makes sense, the former makes sense only in case of the Svartalfar.

 

[notque]

I think removing the AI from building them entirely has worked wonders. They can still go up the recon line and build hunters, and since svartalfar beeline hunting anyway, it has little effect on them.

 

[Honor]

Any chance of this stuff being implemented in original FfH?

 

[CladInShadows]

Wow. Just when i thought i was finally on the way to winning on diety, I get completely destroyed by a naval invasion from Auric Ulvin. So much for the AI not being able to fight over the sea, he had boats bringing in reinforcements every second turn until I was simply overwhelmed.

 

[CladInShadows]

oh and also there's nothing wrong with the way the AI uses scouts. considering an obvious promotion choice early game is +40% vs. melee units, the scouts often end up with a better chance than warriors anyway. it's good that the AI tried to mix its armies up so that they can deal with different situations.

 

[mahazel]

oh and also there's nothing wrong with the way the AI uses scouts. considering an obvious promotion choice early game is +40% vs. melee units, the scouts often end up with a better chance than warriors anyway. it's good that the AI tried to mix its armies up so that they can deal with different situations.

Yes, but they are using scouts for defending cities, when warriors are much better for doing it. If they could first build defenders (3-4 per city in the beggining) and next scouts it should be ok.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Promotion vs. melee or not, scout's base strength is just too pathetic to be worthwhile as an attacking unit.

 

[notque]

There is a lot wrong with the way they use scouts. Run an AutoPlay game and watch them. They die because of too many scouts and not enough warriors.

 

[Jules.lt]

A scout has no reason to be other than exploring, if it doesn't get the +1 attack from I don't remember which trait. If the UNIT_AI_ATTACK and CITY_DEFENSE are removed from it as suggested, won't the AIs stop spamming them?

 

[notque]

Try it out and see. I'm not sure.

If the AI building no scouts is a problem, I'll let them build 1. If they own 1, they stop.

Does anyone really build that many scouts anyway? Anyone with a recon line rushes hunting...

 

[Imuratep]

If I play Svarts, yes, more than warriors, but with other civilizations almost never.
The AI really mustn't build scouts, it ruins their defense so often. Just give them 3 scouts from the start and then they should explore enough territory.

 

[notque]

So if you are Svarts, You can build as many as you want.
If the AI are Svarts, they rush Hunting, so they will be making Hunters anyway. So no scouts for them doesn't hurt them.

Or limit them to 1 scout, or whatever.

 

[Jules.lt]

Forbidding them from building scouts is too hard a fix. It might create problems in some situations (e.g. scenarios where they're expected to build them) or hurt AIs inspecific situations generated by the map settings (very few civs compared to the map size + no barbarians -> need scout to explore: they're as good as warriors against animals, faster and get better hut results)

Changing the UNIT_AI and dramatically lowering AI preference would be preferred, if it has any efficiency.

 

[notque]

I can see in specific situations how it may cause a problem. The AI continues to scout, they just do so with warriors.

Worse hut results. Slower. But they survive the scouting. Which gives them units with more experience they can use, and they don't keep building scouts that die.

Watching the AI Autoplay is really fascinating. They build a scout. It explores. It dies. Repeat over and over.

I've watched this kill several AI players before. They focus little on anything else with a priority to scout, and with how fast scouts die, they just keep churning away at it.

 

[PaulusIII]

I saw this in another thread and I thought I'd add it here, with some of my own screenshots as illustration:



This is just past 1/3 of the way through the game. At some point he conquered the Elohim, and now he has 10 cities. Although he has researched Horseback Riding it's not doing him much good. He hasn't researched Cartography, so he's stuck in a Despotism. Each of his cities is defended by a single warrior, and he has no other military units (although he does have quite a few idle workers). I strongly suspect he's at 0% science as a result of massive city support costs, and so getting Cartography would probably take him most of the rest of the game. He's got lots of farms, but because he hasn't researched Mysticism he has no way to make sages to help get to Cartography faster. He has essentially defeated himself.

The AI needs to understand that Despotism is fatal beyond three, or maybe four cities. Once it has that many cities it should either wait until another civic is available before continuing a conquest spree or else start torching cities instead of keeping them.

I've noticed this as well. In my case Tasunke has conquered two empires, but he lacked Cartography and as such crashed his economy. As soon as I got Trade I noticed what was going on with him.

 

[notque]

To help fix that issue, I have the AI research code of laws provided they have 5 or more cities.

Also, I have other money techs having higher priority. They won't beeline them, but they will consider them faster.

Now, I don't see economies crash as much. Still happens, and I will still need to do more to stop it.