Help improve the AI

[alexman]

If you have any saves that show the AI doing something stupid, please post them here. This includes silly unit movement during the AI turn as well as bad suggestions of what tile improvements or units/projects/specialists to build. Maybe together we can make a decent AI before the game is done next year!

Thanks in advance!
Alex Mantzaris
Mohawk Games

 

[Elhoim]

In general it has been pretty good, didn't notice anything outright bad with it

 

[Stringer1313]

Yeah the silence on this thread is shocking since usually the AI threads are millions of posts long! So I think that's a good sign. I too have found the AI just fine in. The AI suggestions help me make decisions when I don't feel like thinking too hard about one thing especially at the end of the game. I mean, if i were to nitpick, I might say that the AI appears to suggest barracks and ranges a lot I think when it feels like you aren't generating enough shields. I don't remember if they ever suggest ampitheaters etc. esp when the colosseum can reduce unhappiness if your unhappiness is high. The AI also seems to like strongholds which I never build, but then again that's because I haven't appreciated what they do yet. But to be honest that is like me complaining that the AI cannot read my mind. Sometimes I want shields sometimes i don't and I cannot expect the AI to know my strategy.

If forced to nitpick, I think my only complaint about the AI is that so far at least, AI always accepts my truce offer even if they are clearly winning. I've done this in a game where AI had blitzed 5 units around my city and worn it down then i offered truce and AI accepted (and the text box that comes up makes it look like the AI is proposing it). Now, I haven't minded this b/c I think it helps compensate for the difficulty around blitzing but I know ya'll are working hard on balancing the blitzkrieg issue. Perhaps it's because the AI's personality makes them want to accept a truce but it doesn't seem like it's being influenced by anything like how much they like you, who started the war, who is winning, or their personal traits. (Maybe it is in fact based on such factors and I'm missing it. It would be cool flavor to modify the truce dialogue boxes to better reflect it.)

(I don't want to derail this thread but it would be great to have AI resolve a ton of their suggested improvements for me in the late game -- of course at the player's option -- because i get major decision fatigue towards the end esp when decisions are micro and not as consequential. There could even be an option to have a dialogue box pop up listing all the improvements/city production things the AI wants to do in each city on that turn, and you just click "accept all" or you pick out the ones where you want to make the decision. I know you're trying to limit popups but this one would be at the player's behest. I'm not necessarily suggesting an "auto governor" system like a bunch of space 4Xs.).

 

[dagriggstar]

In a few different games I have spotted AI clearing barb camps but not minding the spot with a military unit. Allowing me to get a unit onto the site to effectively take it from them. In my last game there was an empty city site AND an Assyrian settler nearby, the AI seemed to use the settler to scout the area, which allowed me time to get a unit onto the site and essentially take the city site from them.

 

[alexman]

Was it generic barbarian settlement, or a named tribe? And was the city site closer to you than to the AI? The AI currently is being generous at the beginning of the game, and does not settle generic barbarian city sites that are closer to other players. Is that a bad idea?

 

[Starwars]

That's a hard call to make I think since the AI is already more established to begin with. Maybe it's not big enough of a feature to warrant it but could it be like a toggle or something (like Raging Barbarians in Civ)? "Aggressive settling AI"

It'd be fun to play ultra competitive games but not sure it'd be a great idea for the game overall.

 

[Elhoim]

Was it generic barbarian settlement, or a named tribe? And was the city site closer to you than to the AI? The AI currently is being generous at the beginning of the game, and does not settle generic barbarian city sites that are closer to other players. Is that a bad idea?

TBH, I think the whole parking thing to block the barbarian from reapearing is a bad idea. Not bad, just joking, but I particularly don't like that a single unit prohibits the tribe reappearance or settling.

 

[tzu]

TBH, I think the whole parking thing to block the barbarian from reapearing is a bad idea.

Well, if you (carelessly) beat down a barbarian camp next to zero with a single warrior (with a 2nd on the way) it can happen to you that an AI Civ intercepts, manages to make the final barbarian kill & occupy that settling location until they have moved their settler there and show you the long nose by founding their city ... what you could have avoided by playing diligently, wait for the 2nd warrior & secure the location for yourself ...

I'm uncertain, perhaps a unit should only be able to block the own & adjacent tiles ... so settling on farther tiles in the same area could be possible?

 

[Stringer1313]

Well, if you (carelessly) beat down a barbarian camp next to zero with a single warrior (with a 2nd on the way) it can happen to you that an AI Civ intercepts, manages to make the final barbarian kill & occupy that settling location until they have moved their settler there and show you the long nose by founding their city ... what you could have avoided by playing diligently, wait for the 2nd warrior & secure the location for yourself ...

I'm uncertain, perhaps a unit should only be able to block the own & adjacent tiles ... so settling on farther tiles in the same area could be possible?

Yeah I think the issue is less with the AI and more with the mechanic of racing to fill empty city sites with military units to block other settlers. It just feels like a cheesy mechanic. At the same time, I have learned to have settlers accompany armies and settle immediately when the barbarian is defeated. I guess that's the point?

 

[tzu]

For me it doesn't feel like a cheesy mechanic if a military unit, which is able to tear down a settlement and extinguish its population, can inhibit a population to found such a settlement. At least on the tile the military unit occupies itself; probably also adjacent tiles. In question are the tiles farther away ...
Nonetheless "settlers accompanying armies" sounds good.

You are right, that has more to do with mechanic design than AI implementation. But it shows from where we are coming: if the AIplayers handle a situation well, I'm hesitant to want change the maybe less than perfect mechanic

 

[Stringer1313]

TBH, I think the whole parking thing to block the barbarian from reapearing is a bad idea. Not bad, just joking, but I particularly don't like that a single unit prohibits the tribe reappearance or settling.

Wait are you sure this is the case? I did the exact same thing, parking a military unit on a defeated barb camp but b/c my settler took way too long, eventually the barbarian camp respawned and pushed my units away.

 

[Sephi]

In the attached savefile in the east of my empire a settler from egypt gets wrecked by barbarians. It's on the highest difficulty level so I would expect the AI to have some military to protect him.

 

[Sephi]

Here the persian attack me with a warrior at turn 72 on highest difficulty (northeast of my empire). They should better upgrade him first before they send him to die. It was the only warrior they send towards me, maybe some starting unit they forgot to upgrade?

 

[Sephi]

in the same game ten turn earlier I conquered the persian capital and saw that next to it there were still unexplored ruins (southeast of my empire). Is that a feature or should the AI explore these ruins?

 

[Sephi]

In this game there are two persian units in the northeast of my empire. The AI used them before to kill barbarians but it seems they don't use them yet in the war against egypt. Later in the game persia got destroyed by egypt.

 

[Sephi]

If you have any saves that show the AI doing something stupid, please post them here. This includes silly unit movement during the AI turn as well as bad suggestions of what tile improvements or units/projects/specialists to build. Maybe together we can make a decent AI before the game is done next year!

Thanks in advance!
Alex Mantzaris
Mohawk Games

Hi Alex,

thanks for all the hard work you put into the game. In general the AI is doing a good job. I posted a couple savegames, hope it helps to further improve it.

 

[dagriggstar]

Was it generic barbarian settlement, or a named tribe? And was the city site closer to you than to the AI? The AI currently is being generous at the beginning of the game, and does not settle generic barbarian city sites that are closer to other players. Is that a bad idea?

Generic barbarian settlements.

I play with weird settings - 6 opponents, small map size, fledgling AI start (the one where they only have one city), max barbs (always 5 tribes), either the hardest or second hardest difficulty. To describe that specific instance
1) barbarian camp one city site away from my capital, Assyria's capital and Rome's capital (this was a much more cramped map than usual)
2) One of the AI's cleared the camp, although I am not sure who
3) I actually found the site relatively late (since I had scouted and settled in other directions), at least turn 30. I saw the Assyrian settler one years worth of orders away, I had no military unit within that range nearby so in my head conceded the settle to them.
4) Their settler moves around the edges of the settlement but not onto it
5) I march a military unit over to occupy the site after 3 years of Assyria not doing anything.

In other instances, I have noticed AI clearing camps but not parking units on those camps. Just like generally speaking. The above was the most unusual behaviour I'd seen. Based on your description was probably a result of the game settings I play on......

 

[Stringer1313]

Generic barbarian settlements.

I play with weird settings - 6 opponents, small map size, fledgling AI start (the one where they only have one city), max barbs (always 5 tribes), either the hardest or second hardest difficulty. To describe that specific instance
1) barbarian camp one city site away from my capital, Assyria's capital and Rome's capital (this was a much more cramped map than usual)
2) One of the AI's cleared the camp, although I am not sure who
3) I actually found the site relatively late (since I had scouted and settled in other directions), at least turn 30. I saw the Assyrian settler one years worth of orders away, I had no military unit within that range nearby so in my head conceded the settle to them.
4) Their settler moves around the edges of the settlement but not onto it
5) I march a military unit over to occupy the site after 3 years of Assyria not doing anything.

In other instances, I have noticed AI clearing camps but not parking units on those camps. Just like generally speaking. The above was the most unusual behaviour I'd seen. Based on your description was probably a result of the game settings I play on......

I think someone from old world said that they purposefully coded it so that AI doesn't aggressively settle former barb camps in the beginning of the game, since they have a head start and they don't want to discourage the player. Maybe that should be adjusted depending on how developed the AI is at the beginning. To make this make a bit more sense from a role playing perspective maybe they should include event decisions related to the day in which the AI starts settling places so you know when that starts to happen and it makes sense to the story.

 

[Abegweit]

The AI in this game is simply incapable of waging war. This has to be fixed if you want to create a serious game. I have many complaints about this but let me simply point out two things which happen over and over again.

Scenario: I have a city six or seven tiles away from the AI and we are at war.

Case 1) I advance a scout unit two tiles towards the enemy in order to evaluate its strength. The AI will ALWAYS send one (or occasionally two) units to damage my scout. My response: the scout retreats and I murder the invaders. If there are two units and I do not have enough strength to kill them both, the second unit will hang around for another turn to be executed.

Case 2) After the above murder, I move in on the enemy city. I have maybe four attackers. I kill one unit and seriously damage another. Somehow the AI never manages to kill any of my attackers (although it often comes close). Even worse the damaged unit does not retreat to safety. Instead it stands its ground (or maybe moves a tile or two back where it is exposed to a secondary attack).

I am used to winning wars without ever losing a unit. It feels like Civ 5.

 

[Stringer1313]

That's weird, I have had the opposite experience (or maybe i'm not that good). I never have had an easy time taking over cities (well, excluding the snowball effect after I've finally taken 1-2 cities). Also I haven't tried that scout trick...