Has AI gotten any better?

[Aristos]

MAX_CITY_HIT_POINTS from 25 to 50 to preserve the ratio (Important).

And no, I did not know Thal did the change before. Did he also increase the tiles-between-cities value to 4 or more? Maybe he should...

 

[Aristos]

As far as CS, what I did was space them out at medium level which is 7 tiles and instead of 28, I run 14 of them. On a Giant map its been working out so far. However, on a normal game map I see your point, 4 tile spacing would be about the max.

Anyway, the game has been fun. As China I have tons of room to expand. The only thing that worries me is the total unaggressiveness of major civ AIs. Hopefully that changes as the game progresses. If they let me get too strong, they are done for. I may have to move up to Immoratal level next game. Other than that its been a blast. So far I am only in the Medieval Era so there is plenty of time for the game to develop. If it gets interesting in the military scheme of things later on, I'll add some screen shots.

I have seen the opposite. Total aggresiveness from the start, but that may be because I did start the game without CS and disabling Diplo Vic on purpose... but they fought me like crazy for the territory, war after war... that was with 4 inter city, I wonder what will happen with a value of 5... lots of maneuvers too. Still not completely convinced, though..

The inconsistency with the AI mood may be due to WWGD component of VEM, I confess I used it only to get the updated HandicapInfos.xml file as I utterly dispise what they have done with the happiness bonuses for the AI... if I could find a way to only use that file without the whole WWGD, I would...

 

[nokmirt]

I have seen the opposite. Total aggresiveness from the start, but that may be because I did start the game without CS and disabling Diplo Vic on purpose... but they fought me like crazy for the territory, war after war... that was with 4 inter city, I wonder what will happen with a value of 5... lots of maneuvers too. Still not completely convinced, though..

The inconsistency with the AI mood may be due to WWGD component of VEM, I confess I used it only to get the updated HandicapInfos.xml file as I utterly dispise what they have done with the happiness bonuses for the AI... if I could find a way to only use that file without the whole WWGD, I would...

I am in a war now, but they declared on me and took a city, which I took back a few turns later. Korea declared war, I told them not to build cities near me and he refused, so I denounced him. He denounced me back and declared war a turn after that. The Korean peninsula is tight, so its been a tough fight. I really wasn't prepared for war, been too busy expanding and fighting barbs. I had to adjust my military fast and I will have Cho Ko nus soon and should be able to take Seoul. The Japanese are getting more aggravating as well. The game has been a lot of fun and war is tougher, units take a beating thats for sure.

 

[Aristos]

I am in a war now, but they declared on me and took a city, which I took back a few turns later. Korea declared war, I told them not to build cities near me and he refused, so I denounced him. He denounced me back and declared war a turn after that. The Korean peninsula is tight, so its been a tough fight. I really wasn't prepared for war, been too busy expanding and fighting barbs. I had to adjust my military fast and I will have Cho Ko nus soon and should be able to take Seoul. The Japanese are getting more aggravating as well. The game has been a lot of fun and war is tougher, units take a beating thats for sure.

You mentioned 7 tiles before... are you using a value of 7 for your inter-cities variable?

If yes, that seems too much. Remember that cities only use up to the third ring of hexs, so the max intercities should be 6, and even then, if you use 6 as a value, that leaves a nice hole in the middle of the triangle of cities that is basically useless tiles.

 

[nokmirt]

You mentioned 7 tiles before... are you using a value of 7 for your inter-cities variable?

If yes, that seems too much. Remember that cities only use up to the third ring of hexs, so the max intercities should be 6, and even then, if you use 6 as a value, that leaves a nice hole in the middle of the triangle of cities that is basically useless tiles.

No just space between City States. On the YAHEM mod 7 tiles is medium distance. I wanted to spread them out and limit them. So far I have only Hanoi and Kuala Lumpur nearby and thats plenty. 4 tiles for city spacing seems ok for now. Although some of mine are spaced 5 or 6 apart, to get closer to available resources. I'm in Asia so there is tons of land. In cramped Europe 3-4 tiles would be about right for spacing, you have to be able to use less land to try to produce more.

Yes, and about the 6 tile spacing you are right it takes a long time to build up the pop to use the best tiles, many are not feasible for use. But it does open up room for AI and human armies to maneuver better.

 

[glider1]

I personally am attracted to Aristos idea of greater spacing between cities. The advantages are that you can play on a bigger map with no more cities than standard, and the city states can still fit in. You could think of each city not as a city, but as an entire region. I do kinda see the idea that there is more room for the AI units to position, which has the benefit of causing less issues of obstruction with the strict 1UPT implementation. It also may put the AI's under less ranged bombardment fire by humans and make ranged bombardment more difficult for humans. The double hit that AI's experience from city bombardment as well as garrison bombardment, that can be issued out by multiple cities along the path, might be less of an issue with wider city spacing.

The problem is that the AI needs to find optimal locations for it's cities. If it cannot build cities closer than say 5 tiles, they might locate cities in poor locations, relative to the human that can find ways to compromise. It will be interesting to hear your thoughts. Other issues are that settlers and workers have to travel further, which can put them at the mercy of barbarians especially in the VEM mod.

Sorry for not linking to the amazing VEM mod by Thalassicus:
http://civmodding.wordpress.com/

If you download that mod either from within the game or not, you can see some of the basic changes that Thal has done by examining files such as:
/VEM - Vanilla Enhanced Mod/Armies/VEA-General.xml

However please note: do not to take Thal's changes in isolation. His mod is very integrated and everything is balanced against everything else. Looking at only one variable does not give you this picture

Cheers

 

[aziantuntija]

Yes sure, go into C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization v\assets\Gameplay\XML\GlobalDefines.xml

Open the xml document in notepad. Find MAX_HIT_POINTS and change the value from 10 to 20. Do the same with MAX_CITY_HIT_POINTS and change the value from 20 to 50. Try the game and let us know what you think.

Thanks nokmirt .

But unfortunately my current enthusiasm for civ has allready run its course (and also I have been quite a busy lately). But do not worry because it will be back in couple of months . I did a quick test though and it seems like a very good help for the bad AI.

Sorry for not linking to the amazing VEM mod by Thalassicus:
http://civmodding.wordpress.com/

If you download that mod either from within the game or not, you can see some of the basic changes that Thal has done by examining files such as:
/VEM - Vanilla Enhanced Mod/Armies/VEA-General.xml

However please note: do not to take Thal's changes in isolation. His mod is very integrated and everything is balanced against everything else. Looking at only one variable does not give you this picture

Cheers

Thanks for the link glider1, I will bookmark it and most likely try it out once I start playing civ again .