Give me your best AI quirks, oddities and 'unique' decisions!

[Stalker0]

I've seen this a lot lately, certain luxuries just seem really valuable to the ai.

In one game they would do almost anything to get my citrus resource.

In another the ai would not give me his extra cotton even if I offered big incentives.

 

[Gazebo]

I've seen this a lot lately, certain luxuries just seem really valuable to the ai.

In one game they would do almost anything to get my citrus resource.

In another the ai would not give me his extra cotton even if I offered big incentives.

That's usually because the AI has less happiness than you do and thus needs it more.

Regarding the 20gpt for a luxury, I bet it gave William a WLTKD. I added a value bonus to that for the AI.
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[Funak]

That's usually because the AI has less happiness than you do and thus needs it more.

Regarding the 20gpt for a luxury, I bet it gave William a WLTKD. I added a value bonus to that for the AI.
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Cool. If we add the CEP UA for him then that deal would probably make him money anyways, so I don't see why it wouldn't be there.

 

[Deluxe]

I went at war vs an AI (Gustavus) in deity, and sadly he did not behave better than before.



His army was way bigger at the beginning of the war (when taking this picture, half a dozen swordmen were already dead), and I did not have enough troops to stop him, but he did not attack my bowmen nor my city during the first 15 turns of the war (in the end, his 4 bowmen started firing on mine). He had so many swordmen that he could have just charged and killed all my bowmen in 2 turns, but instead they were walking and walking in front of my city, without trying anything.
Same thing with his bowmen ; because of the woods they could not fire on the city, and I think that this was the main problem : he was trying to put both his swordmen and bowmen in position.

Well, it seems that the AI is still not able to correctly attack an defended city. If there is 2/3 bowmen next to the city, it will never try to sacrifice some troops to kill them, but instead will run in circle in front of my bowmen, until there is nothing left standing ...

 

[Gazebo]

Curious. Do you have any other mods enabled I should know about? Sounds like a positioning issue, yeah. As I've said, the tactical AI is tough to work with because of its variability. One small change has a knock-on effect elsewhere, etc. If this is a repeated problem, I'll do some more investigating. Sometimes the AI just...goofs.
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[Deluxe]

Nope, no other mod except RED modpack, but it's graphical only.

I have Civ IV diplomacy, CSD and Smart AI enabled.

It seems to me that the AI always want to completely circle a city before starting to attack it. And in the meantime, it does not manage to kill the surrounding units, because it tries to circle. And this behaviour loops.

When they get artillery it tends to do this less : in deity there are so many units that sometimes artillery units can't move, and thus attack and kill my units.

I'll have to test more, but I've seen the AI attacking correctly only once, with a numerical advantage so big that it does not really count. Even in this case, my units survived way longer than they sould have.

Edit : Besides that, I find the AI more aggressive on the field, and in deity warmonging is harder than it was. A bad move from my side and I lose my army.

Edit : Another game, same scenario. I had only 1 archer in my capital city when the war started, and the AI units never touched the city.

 

[Ralgar]

The AI only attacks cities in a turn if they can knock down 25% of its hit points, so they can be conquered in 4 turns max. (Defined in CvTacticalAI.cpp the function "PlotDamageCityMoves()")

If that is not possible, the AI will try to reposition their units.

 

[Deluxe]

Ok, that explains a lot.

I guess the AI should first try to clean the units outside of the city.

 

[Deluxe]

It's not really a stupid move from the AI, but more a really frustrating one for the player :

it happens really often that the world in my games is divided between 2 ideologies, with approximately the same score for each "side". The thing is, it's pretty common that one civ flipps, creating a cascade of ideological changes.
Until then, no big deal. I think that the malus linked to ideology are too strong, and that the AI are a bit too sensitive to this, but this is a probem for later.

No, the big problem here is that everytime this happen, my biggest ally (usually the 2nd civ in term of power) ends up changing his ideology, and in 1 turn I go from "best friend" to "worst ennemy I want to kill you and eat your eyes with pepper sauce".

That's not a big deal, but the AI randomness about ideologies (and in general) and this absence of any warnings are really pissing me off sometimes.

 

[Funak]

It's not really a stupid move from the AI, but more a really frustrating one for the player :

it happens really often that the world in my games is divided between 2 ideologies, with approximately the same score for each "side". The thing is, it's pretty common that one civ flipps, creating a cascade of ideological changes.
Until then, no big deal. I think that the malus linked to ideology are too strong, and that the AI are a bit too sensitive to this, but this is a probem for later.

No, the big problem here is that everytime this happen, my biggest ally (usually the 2nd civ in term of power) ends up changing his ideology, and in 1 turn I go from "best friend" to "worst ennemy I want to kill you and eat your eyes with pepper sauce".

That's not a big deal, but the AI randomness about ideologies (and in general) and this absence of any warnings are really pissing me off sometimes.

The main problem is that you just don't have any happiness to spare on ideology pressure (same goes for the AI) so as soon as they get their first penalty they start falling over like a cardhouse. And losing cities doesn't really help them either so they usually just keep falling.

 

[Deluxe]

The main problem is that you just don't have any happiness to spare on ideology pressure (same goes for the AI) so as soon as they get their first penalty they start falling over like a cardhouse. And losing cities doesn't really help them either so they usually just keep falling.

Yep. I think the whole ideology system is flawed, and that the unhappiness malus is way too high. We could imagine other way to impact the game (trade routes to other ideology getting a malus, etc).

Frankly, except in some rare cases where 2 big sides went at war, I usually end up with a mono ideological world, which is a bit sad and not fun at all, imo.

Edit : Well, let's not start this discussion here ! Just to say that the AI is impacted by this, and that -maybe- the player should be alerted in those cases, and the diplomatic malus post-poned. It's infuriating to be unable to do anything in those situations, except loading a save

 

[Funak]

Yep. I think the whole ideology system is flawed, and that the unhappiness malus is way too high. We could imagine other way to impact the game (trade routes to other ideology getting a malus, etc).

It's actually the current unhappiness system scaling out of control in lategame.

 

[Deluxe]

It's actually the current unhappiness system scaling out of control in lategame.

Well, I do remember some similar scenarios with "vanilla" Civ. Malus could sometimes be really, really huge, and the AI are not even trying the fight the tide.

 

[ilteroi]

It seems to me that the AI always want to completely circle a city before starting to attack it. And in the meantime, it does not manage to kill the surrounding units, because it tries to circle. And this behaviour loops.

I can definitely confirm this. I just saw Japan trying to attack a city state with 3 catapults and 3 pikes. So far so good. The army closes in on the the city, pike takes ranged damage, army pulls back a little. Repeat. The catapults never attack. The city state does not have a single unit in the field. There is something very broken here (with SmartAI btw)

Also, AI shouldn't waste time taking out non-ranged ships when attacking a city

 

[darko82]

I can definitely confirm this. I just saw Japan trying to attack a city state with 3 catapults and 3 pikes. So far so good. The army closes in on the the city, pike takes ranged damage, army pulls back a little. Repeat. The catapults never attack. The city state does not have a single unit in the field. There is something very broken here (with SmartAI btw)

Also, AI shouldn't waste time taking out non-ranged ships when attacking a city

Is it possible to fix it at all, I wonder? Or it's simply beyond anyone's capibilities because it's so hard to fix it?

 

[Deluxe]

Is it possible to fix it at all, I wonder? Or it's simply beyond anyone's capibilities because it's so hard to fix it?

The AI code is definitely really, really hard to understand from an external pov. I tried to take a look at it, but it would require hours of analysis + a lot of playtesting to get anything better. I truly respect the few who tried for us.

However, there is room for improvement and it CAN be done, just need to find someone motivated enought to go for it...

 

[bane_]

So, I'm using AI - Smart Mod and making A LOT of autoplay sessions lately and realized that the AI rarely uses Great Generals (at least at the earlier stages of the game). More often than not, I see them waging war and a Great General waiting the 'good news' stationed in a city.

I play test mostly up until the Renaissance, so I don't know if it has something to do with Era (which seems wrong too, if it does), but even Mongolia is leaving Great Generals behind!

(Pangea, Standard, Deity, Domination-only)


Also, as a probably-related note, sometimes my Civ with very high Faith flavor leaves 1-2 Prophets at home doing nothing, even though there are still Religions to be founded. I realized that this was somewhat common. Maybe there is a connection between these two oddities?

EDIT:
Oh, I almost forgot...

Spoiler :

WHY THE HELL IS ATTILA GOING FOR PIETY?!

 

[Krajzen]

This one with Attila cracked me

 

[Gazebo]

So, I'm using AI - Smart Mod and making A LOT of autoplay sessions lately and realized that the AI rarely uses Great Generals (at least at the earlier stages of the game). More often than not, I see them waging war and a Great General waiting the 'good news' stationed in a city.

I play test mostly up until the Renaissance, so I don't know if it has something to do with Era (which seems wrong too, if it does), but even Mongolia is leaving Great Generals behind!

(Pangea, Standard, Deity, Domination-only)


Also, as a probably-related note, sometimes my Civ with very high Faith flavor leaves 1-2 Prophets at home doing nothing, even though there are still Religions to be founded. I realized that this was somewhat common. Maybe there is a connection between these two oddities?

If you have logs turned on, and you look at the homelandAI log, you'll see what the AI is doing with its great people. If it is throwing errors or odd decisions, that may explain why you are seeing these behaviors.
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