Improved AI?

[bennos76]

About the barbs:

When I was looking who had marble (cause I didn't), I saw something interesting:

How is THAT possible??

Lol. Bombay, dual holy city of the Judaio-Hindu Barbarian Empire!

Asoka must have founded the religions there, but lost the city to the Barbarians at some stage. In any event, I'd be sending a few troops down there before Asoka claims it back!

 

[El Koeno]

Lol. Bombay, dual holy city of the Judaio-Hindu Barbarian Empire!

Asoka must have founded the religions there, but lost the city to the Barbarians at some stage. In any event, I'd be sending a few troops down there before Asoka claims it back!

It's quite far away though... I wonder if it would be smart to capture that city.

 

[The Great Apple]

If not, it wouldn't be a bad idea to raze it - if you can't get the shrine income why let anybody else?

 

[El Koeno]

If not, it wouldn't be a bad idea to raze it - if you can't get the shrine income why let anybody else?

Hmmm. Wouldn't have thought of that. Sounds like a good idea.

 

[Eshnunna]

I confirm that the AI must have been tweaked seriously, war being much more entertaining now.

My last game (on monarch) was a breathtaking space race game where I was sandwitched between Kubilai Khan (who'd vassalized Monty and Georges Washington), and Alex (who stayed in a threesome war including my buddy Sal and his worse ennemy Pete for half a milennium).

They kept declaring war over and over, bringing big stacks, launching combined arrms naval assaults towards my core or less protected cities.

Really funny. Good programming job Firaxis!

 

[weasel77066]

Ive only played two games, on my third. Ive noticed a (seemingly) increased ai especially regarding combat. Im still watching the ai as to the vassal states. Something seems funny about it, but cant really finger it. Its probably just different to me, but it seems "robotic" when civs are vassaling out to each other. Combat seems really improved, The bots have some kind of strategy now, rather than just attacking whatever.
After seeing Bombay in the pic below I wonder... I laughed my head off when I seen it.Itll really be funny if it ends up on the Top 5 Cities list.

 

[Enkidu_Warrior]

After playing quite a few more games, I have to say it's great to see the AI using better tactics and being even more opportunistic in terms of taking care of advantages. And for that, I'm thankful to the developers.

Now, what I'd like to see is the AI get more strategic.

For example, in my current game, I'm Rome, sandwiched between four civs. Brennus has been ahead of me in power ranking for the whole game, but he's first and I'm second, and not a big gap. Suddenly, Brennus declares war and marches his (gasp) 4 units into my territory. And for the duration of the war, he sends groups of anywhere from 2 to 4 units to harass my territory.

It would have been nice if Brennus, having seen he was ahead of me in power, started a military buildup - afterall, that's what us humans do when we prepare to take someone out, get a stack of units together. Then, once he had his invasion force, came after me. (even better, he should have gone after Ragnar, whose territory was nice and who was slightly weaker than me, or Tokugawa, who was much weaker than both of us and whose UU hadn't yet appeared.)

I think a manifestation of strategy could be done for each of the victory conditions, simply by prioritising city builds differently, changing worker priorities, and tweaking the leader's approach to diplomacy along the way.

Then, these conditions could be triggered by in game events:

- If an AI is out ahead in power to one or more neighbors with a shared border, and is in the age of their UU, the offensive war build-up should be triggered.

- If an AI has lots of health and happiness resources within their borders, and three cities with solid food supplies, the cultural build-up should be triggered, including "good-guy" diplomacy.

- If an AI founds one or more early religions, and has one or more high-production cities (to spam missionaries early and wonders late), the diplomatic-goal should be triggered.

The one-size-fits-all AI, whose degree of variation by the leaders is more a function of how surly they are and how much they'll trade, should be superceded by flexible AIs who take the circumstances created by their territory, build-up priorities, and diplomatic outcomes, to engage in focussed attempts to win - not just avoid losing.

 

[parachute4u]

It's quite far away though... I wonder if it would be smart to capture that city.

Unfortunately I didn't have the time/cities/resources to build galleons/city-attackers at that time. My northern cities had to build culture to pressure the chinese while my south cities had to build research/+science-buildings in order to win the space race. After I knew I would win the game, I built one transport and took the city with 1 cannon and 3 infantry. The city had 3 rifles inside if I recall right.

After taking it, I gifted it back to Asoka, cause I felt sorry for the poor guy

The game ended with me winning by space race. Surprisingly I did not get involved in any war at all.

 

[onedreamer]

AI is waiting for the right time to declare wars. It happened to me, that some furious/annoyed guy declared on me, right after I moved my stongest troops into enemy territory to win another war I was involved in at that time.

This happens in Vanilla all the same...

I hardly built any naval power with Vanilla Civ, never needed it - I have to now, or my improved sea resources are toast about two turns in to any war with another Civ!

I don't know how you could defend sea resources in vanilla without a navy, since what you described about Warlords (pillaged within a coupla turns if not defended) happens regularly in Vanilla.

 

[The Navy Seal]

Buffbot I think it's a great improvment on the barbarians it seems like playing a multiplayer. As for the XPs Zebra has a MOD allowing 20 XPs. Zebra 9's Additions

parachute4u I would have kept the city, not a bad build area.

 

[romelus]

it's a mixed bag. with every war it seems that the AI must try a sneak sea attack, even if it means taking defenders away from a border city. the AI also builds and uses nukes now, but i saw monty use a nuke on a barbarian city while in the middle of nuking me. and if an AI is not at war with anyone, he'll send nuke after nuke into barbarian cities...

 

[The Navy Seal]

romelus Guess he doesn't like barbarians or the earth.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, to be fair, although the AI OCCASIONALLY would use navies to attack my coastal cities, it didn't happen with NEARLY as much frequency as it does in Warlords-which is good. The only thing ticking me off now is that there is almost no way to win an offensive battle between two triremes. Even when you do its mere luck. I wish they would make naval battles as Strategic as land warfare (i.e. lots of promotions!!)

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[The Navy Seal]

Aussie_Lurker Get this the other day my tririeme beat another with a 32.7% I got to upgrades!!!

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

This happens in Vanilla all the same...



I don't know how you could defend sea resources in vanilla without a navy, since what you described about Warlords (pillaged within a coupla turns if not defended) happens regularly in Vanilla.

I don't know man, I think it's pretty obvious when playing Warlords that the AI is both better at war, and much more likely to declare it. While war was a normal occurance in vanilla, in Warlords, the AI seems to enjoy declaring war! I've had pleased civs declare on me and bring in a war ally. That never really happened in my vanilla.

 

[bennos76]

Yep, I agree. Warlords has forced me to quit a few bad habits, mostly just little things that you would assume the AI wouldn't be clever enough to do. But it does definately seem ot be better at large scale wars. In my vanilla civ games the AI always use to seem to shy away from navy. I usually didn't find it very difficult to rule the seas. Now, it's a challenge to keep the coast guard in good shape. And the enemy navy is 'organised', i.e. they arrive in formation with stacks full of complimentary units. Maybe this happened in Vanilla but I don't recall seeing much of it, whereas it's the norm now.

I've found I generally need to keep my level of military preparedeness a couple of notches higher on Warlords, and avoid making silly mistakes.

 

[The Navy Seal]

The Ai is definatly more aggressive they go for domination almost every time.

 

[WuphonsReach]

I agree that the AI seems more advanced and active in Warlords. Been playing all day on a Huge, Fractal (Warlord) map with 11 other AIs. The AI is definitely not turtling their stacks in the cities while you pillage.

Unlike my last game, I'm being very careful not to leave my home turf undefended while I go to war elsewhere. If you're not top dog (or at least a dog with big teeth) there a big risk of a dog pile on top of you.

I've seen the AIs dogpile on another AI. First one declares war, then suddenly you'll see 3 other civs jump in on the action. If it's an enemy of yours, you'd best send a stack in to get a piece of that civ before its gone. Needless to say, I'm doing a lot of diplomacy and religion spreading in the early game to get as many brothers and sisters of the faith as possible.

The craziest action was when the whole world went nutz in the mid-1800s. All 11 AI civs were still in place with lots of defensive pacts and a pair of vassal lines. All of a sudden everyone pretty much up'd and declared war on everyone else. That lasted for about 50-100 turns and resulted in a lot of razed cities across the world. Bismark never recovered from Hannibal's SOD that was razing city after city.

Ghandi doesn't even own a city (I play with the "complete kill" setting) after I took all of his locations. So he's a vassal state of mine with a single submarine to his name. (Trapped in a sea that I haven't gained access to yet, Stalin won't give me open borders to transit the strait.)

 

[The Navy Seal]

Get this, last week when I was playing all of a sudden, like 7 great gens were born in one turn, then the numbers slowly decreaced I guess the Ai ran out of land to settle.

 

[cabert]

Obviously some tweaks have been done, and as bennos76 said, I had to quit some bad habits in warlords.

An example:
In vanilla, i always (i mean on every occasion = even if it's on another continent) went worker stealing, when i didn't mind the AIs relation modifiers too much.

Here i did start a new monarch game, with Hannibal (so it's warlords).
I tried a different start (wheel and pottery first, while building a worker), then AH ...
All was going quite well (though a bit slow for settling a third city, so i had to take a risk: settling on roman cultural border, and engineer rushing a wonder (parthenon) in the new city.

The only move i did was trying to steal a worker from gengis kahn on the far side of the map.
I thought "they say worker stealing doesn't work well on warlords, so let's try a safe move, he's so far away without common borders + has to go through indian or roman land to get to me, he'll never come".

Indeed it doesn't work well, my warrior died to an archer, i didn't kill the worker, so gengis had it back. That was pretty obvious, but i wanted to test it = total waste of a faraway warrior, but who cares? His time was over anyway.

He didn't come for a long time and didn't want to make peace for free, so I let him fumble.
Then he landed a keshik through Indian territory!
Seeing it coming, I had a spear in my parthenon city and I killed the first keshik before he could pillage anything.
HAHa, what an attack, was my thought.
After that, he knew where i was and sent waves after waves.
After a while I checked. India had closed borders with GK!
He declared war on India, while already at war with me? but he came for me anyway! Maybe India dogpiled on him? I don't know.
And finally he did get this city. I took it back once. But in the end he overwhelmed me : i had only 3 cities, with low production and this border city was away from the other 2 = harder to defend.
I quit this game. That's my first loss on monarch for a lonnnng time.

So indeed, there is some AI improvement. They target a city better (= not changing too soon, when it's still possible to get it), IMHO.
+ they do multiple stacks, try to find the weak spot,...

I reloaded the 4000BC save and tried it again, without the move. Genghis Khan dogpiled on India after I attacked and captured the christian holy city (with shrine, please ). A 20/30 turns later, i had captured 2 more cities, and Gandhi surrendered to... Genghis .

Obviously, the AI still don't manage city taking too well, but the capitulation system makes it a not so big deal = they send big threatening stacks, and the other AI surrenders.