Fighter Production

[techumseh]

As the Canadian winter closes in, I'm hunkering down with my computer and digging out some old games. One is an old ToT mod I made years ago, which I called TechMod. It has 3 different styles of units: British, German and Russian, depending on which civ you choose. There are 3 types of aircraft technologies: biplane, monoplane and jet. Something I've noticed is that the AI civs do not build fighters. After experimenting with vanilla ToT, I found that the same applies. Is this also the experience of others? I remember this was not the case with earlier versions of Civ2.

Also to the Lua wizards: would it be possible to change the build orders for some AI-controlled cities with Lua? Thanks.

 

[Dadais]

2 ways to trick AI with lua :
First, force building choice in cities according to "circonstances".
Second, have a proxy unit* build option for AI only, which once produced is replaced by said fighter. *One kind the AI uses yet is somehow wasted, why is the Marine-kind in my mind ?

 

[JPetroski]

Also to the Lua wizards: would it be possible to change the build orders for some AI-controlled cities with Lua? Thanks.

Yes, you can have certain cities produce certain things and you can change that as needed. You could also do it with a rationale that might make sense. So for example, maybe you want them to build fighters if the other civ has built bombers. You could count the bombers Civ B has, then compare that against the number of fighters Civ A has, and use that as the logic for switching production over.

Same thing could apply to a naval arms race. If one civ gets too many battle ships you can have another try and match them.

Lots of cool stuff you can do. Probably the simpler you keep the logic the better though.

 

[techumseh]

Thanks. I've been working with my mod (TechMod) quite a bit lately, and looking at how the AI performs in the later game, particularly what it choses to build. The results are very unsatisfactory IMO. Once most of the modern units are buildable, defeating a powerful AI civ is very easy. It doesn't build fighters, leaving AI civs completely vulnerable to human airpower. It also builds masses of cruise missiles, regardless of the presence of enemy battleships or carriers, which are the only unit types they attack. And even though an AI civ might be under massive attack, it proceeds to build airports and offshore platforms as soon as it gets the technologies needed, rather than combat units. All of this also applies to vanilla ToT.

I got this response on the general discussion forum: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/fighter-production.700853/ , which was very interesting. I'm wondering if you or Prof Garfield or Knighttime (or anyone) could replicate it for Test of Time. What would be ideal IMO, would be a Lua module that gives the player some degree of control over the production menus in scenarios or the regular game.

 

[St. Leo]

And even though an AI civ might be under massive attack, it proceeds to build airports and offshore platforms as soon as it gets the technologies needed, rather than combat units.

I've also noticed a high priority on building airports, sam batteries, sdi defences, coastal fortresses, port facilities, and city walls with the auto-build governor. My current attempt to solve that in my personal mod is to split those buildings off into stub technologies with a low AI priority.

 

[techumseh]

Good idea - thanks. Ultimately, it would be ideal to have some sort of Lua interface that allows the player to program the build menu for her/himself.