[MOD] More Naval AI

[Valkrionn]

AFAIK Tholal has not imported the "TrueModular" setup used in FF, RifE, and MoM, so it would be more limited than you are used to (IE, you cannot list simply the changed values, so different modmods can conflict).

Of course, I may have misinterpreted your post and you're just asking for permission.

 

[Tholal]

Hi Tholal. Is it possible to build a modular modmodmod based on your modmod?

If you're wanting to make a mod that uses my code as a base, then yes. If you're looking to make a small add-on for my mod, that is possible, but as Valk said, it won't be truly modular like Rife and WM.

Making my mod modular is something that I've considered doing, but unless it's a super easy project, it will remain sitting on the backburner for a while.

 

[esvath]

AFAIK Tholal has not imported the "TrueModular" setup used in FF, RifE, and MoM, so it would be more limited than you are used to (IE, you cannot list simply the changed values, so different modmods can conflict).

Of course, I may have misinterpreted your post and you're just asking for permission.

Nope, you got my point alright. I'm asking whether Tholal has make this a truly modular modmod.

If you're wanting to make a mod that uses my code as a base, then yes. If you're looking to make a small add-on for my mod, that is possible, but as Valk said, it won't be truly modular like Rife and WM.

Making my mod modular is something that I've considered doing, but unless it's a super easy project, it will remain sitting on the backburner for a while.

Well, I am hoping that you will change this as truly modular modmod. I hope that is not too much work for you. Keep the good work, man!

 

[xalien]

Now I've played 2 games with 1.61 - with 1st I went really far and got to a late game era and second much shorter, mainly to check whether what I saw in a 1st game fas just some random fluke - looks like it wasn't.
AI are nuts about wars, they'll assemble their stacks, send them on the other side of a huge map and then just raze everything. AC goes skyhigh, 4 horsemen start their rampage while everyone still defends with warriors and archers. AI civs often fail to expand, so they start dropping like flies pretty early. It was my 2nd game ever where I've reached the Wrath event and for the first time I've hit AC100. If I wouldn't had sent Brigit to hunt down the horsemen they would've wiped out all non-barbarian factions.

Anyone else noticed anything similar with 1.61 version?

 

[BvBPL]

Re: xalien's crazy war stories w/ 1.61:
I have noticed the AI seems more likely to go to war, but I haven’t seen it go raze crazy and crank the AC. Then again, the base AI doesn’t seem to like razing in general, so I guess having the AI raze cities is something of an improvement because it shows that the AI is exploring alternative strategies.

 

[xalien]

Razing goes on when they invade civs very far away, neighbors get captured. While it makes perfect sense to raze a city on the other side of the map where it would become a maintenance nightmare, one can't help but question why such invasions happen at all.

 

[clearbeard]

Razing goes on when they invade civs very far away, neighbors get captured. While it makes perfect sense to raze a city on the other side of the map where it would become a maintenance nightmare, one can't help but question why such invasions happen at all.

What's the point of war with someone on the other side of the map, if you're not going to invade? FFH is full of all sorts of juicy ideologies that spark wars beyond "you have land that I want," which is about the only casus belli in vanilla civ. Don't know how possible it would be to include the AC in the calculation the AI uses to go to war in the first place. That sounds like the logical fix to me though: get the AI to understand the consequences of its actions, vis a vis the AC.

That said, I've never had a FFH game, with this mod or otherwise, where the AC went crazy unless I was doing it. Haven't played the more recent couple of versions though; sounds like it's worth a look see.

 

[Tholal]

Can't say that I've seen this situation in particular. The AI doesn't really understand about the AC counter, so it is relatively easy for it to get out of control.

What usually happens is either someone founds Ashen Veil and really pushes it out to everyone around, and/or someone builds Prophecy of Ragnarok and pumps out tons of units (Clan of Embers can really send the AC up this way).

Was there anything unusual about your map or game setup?

 

[Tasunke]

I rather like the AI's razing tendency. Or rather, the fact that they will either capture or raze depending on certain circumstances.

Really makes the AI a bit more vicious and a worthy opponent ... instead of a acting as a tame kitten.

 

[xalien]

Was there anything unusual about your map or game setup?

The only unusual thing was was tectonics map which I haven't used in a while, game rules were the same as always. AV was founded but never spread, PoR was built by one of the main warmongering civs and did contributed to AC a lot (although they attacked me and I killed a lot of marked units).

What's the point of war with someone on the other side of the map, if you're not going to invade?

I rather like the AI's razing tendency. Or rather, the fact that they will either capture or raze depending on certain circumstances.

Really makes the AI a bit more vicious and a worthy opponent ... instead of a acting as a tame kitten.

My point was that with such behaviour the game is pretty much gone, you just wait it out and AI's will wipe each other out in no time.

 

[Tasunke]

at least will survive ... and it will be a stronger AI for it. (harder to kill, likely)

It makes the AI somewhat interesting, imho

 

[Tholal]

I'll have a lot of changes to the unit AI with the next release that should help with how and where they wage their wars.

I'm also going to make Tolerant civs less likely to raze. I'll probably hold off on any further changes to the raze code at the moment, though it does make sense to have most civs avoid razing when the AC is high.

 

[Horatius]

Personally, I didn't see any particular razing tendency in the latest patch.
I think that it's a mistake to even make tolerant civilizations less likely to raze.
They all should raze more.

The AI conquers and keeps lousy cities too much.

As an example from my last game, the Hippus decided to raze a barbarian city north of my border (the only city to be razed in that game). That city (with six population) had four tiles of tundra but it still would have been a balanced city.
Quickly afterwards, the Hippus actually proceeded to conquer and keep a barbarian city that was slightly above the last one that I mentioned. 70% of the tiles were ice but it was still kept. Why? I can only assume that it was because it had access to a corn and so the Hippus finally got an extra corn for trade even though most tiles were unusable (unfortunately for them they couldn't use it for trade, since I was the one providing corn to everybody that didn't have it).

Also from my last game: Auric conquered and kept a Hippus city that was the lousiest thing ever. Because that city was suffering from huge cultural pressure from everything except Auric's culture it could only work an extra tile. Because it was surrounded by enemies and ready to revolt it also had a huge stack defending it - a waste (which was fine by me since I was able to backstab him more easily).

If x tiles are of this particular low quality, if it's too far away from your cluster of cities and you can't keep conquering, if it's suffering too much cultural pressure from other civilizations: it should be razed automatically (unless it has a decent wonder or a very important resource).

I don't even see big razing from Infernals.
I only see big enough razing from demon spawning - which was probably what happened in xalien's game.

Also, with my experience, I also don't understand the previous complaint about the warrior spamming.
In my immortal games with the latest patches, only the most weak civilizations get stuck with warriors. Everybody else upgrades most warriors and scouts - and quickly those T2 units come hungry to bang and trash my few cities.
I should say, though, that sometimes the civilization that is ahead on tech early on keeps warriors for too long which typically makes them my earliest target - that usually seems related to tech and wonder whoring or disciple spamming.

A more important thing to consider is the fact that the AI builds useless boats and gets astronomy on a lakes map.
I'm sure that you are aware of this issue.

The AI still doesn't do a good active defense and in doubt will prefer to stay inside cities (even though my hero, injured and alone, just volunteered himself three or two tiles away from an enemy city).

One can certainly see the improvements though.

I should say that I've never really cared for the Ilians' AI before the latest patches. But now, every time that they are on my games, they seem to put themselves ahead very early on. Maybe it's just coincidence but...
Anyway, there was this game on standard speed where Auric, by turn 230, was way ahead in every department. Lots of cities, already a second palace, many units trashing two other civilizations, four wonders built. What was the fourth wonder? The lyre.
He's playing a huge fat-behind war but decided to tech drama and built the lyre - I find it funny that the AI could have been considering a culture victory with Auric. Why in the world would the Ilians build the lyre? I guess that they could do whatever they wanted in that game.
I never had a chance. Complete ice domination.

Still, although Auric does seem to do well early on in my latest games, he typically becomes much less of a threat the longer the game goes on. That is because he continues to attack with hordes of javelin throwers and tends to tech everything except the melee line. Where are those champions and Wilbowman?

If you can and it's possible, if you find it easy and have the time, I would recommend some tweaking to the Ilians' AI.
Lower the priority of the bone palace and increase the priority of the priests (he seems to go for that bone palace first so many times).
Increase the priority of the melee line.
Lower the priority of javelin throwers as city attackers.

I'm also interested in others opinions about the Ilians.

Finally, is there any particularly good way to watch the AI doing their thing themselves without playing the game yourself while using your mod? I'm curious about this.

Thanks a lot.

 

[Tholal]

Thanks for the feedback! Always good to hear some specific details about what is working and what isn't.

Finally, is there any particularly good way to watch the AI doing their thing themselves without playing the game yourself while using your mod? I'm curious about this.

Press SHIFT~ (upper left corner on most american keyboards) to bring up the command window. Type CyGame().setAIAutoPlay(xx) where xx is the number of turns you want the game to play by itself. Hit CL-Z to see the whole map. Oh, and you have to have debug mode turned on in the .ini file.

 

[BvBPL]

Thanks to your mod, I’m able to play FFH2 on a low cohesion Erebus Contienents map. AI Lanun is finally in its element, and it is powerhouse. Lots of fun!

A few questions and comments from my current game (Svart, Large Map, Prince Difficulty, low cohesion map).

Phantom blockade issue: Is there any way to remove these phantom blockades in worldbuilder?

+2 for War Spoiling Our Relations: I have a +2 (positive) modifier w/ the Mercurians for “this war spoils our relations,” which is a little odd. This doesn’t have any real effect on the game because they totally hate me for other reasons, as does their ally Lanun.

Overseas invasions: I am seeing overseas invasions, but they are few and far between. In addition, those invasion forces that do land are not generally sufficient. For example, I recently caught sight of a Lanun Queen of the Line crossing a channel separating their main island from one I just captured. I didn’t have any ships present, so I had my mage cast maelstrom and rust hoping the damage and debuff would cause them to turn around. It didn’t, and the next turn the Lanun poured their invasion force on my shores, which consisted of a war turtle, a few champions, and some miscellany. I am at the office and I do not have the game in front of me, but my recollection is that the invading force was around eight units, which is less than the total capacity of the a QotL, would have likely been insufficient to retake the recently captured cities even w/o maelstroms and rust (although defense would have been very painful for me), and it the invasion force was not at all reflective of total military power of the Lanun. Then there’s Basium who I’ve never seen field a transport despite the massive number of angels he has, and the Sidar who seem to have landed an invasion force on a hostile island consisting of, one shade (although I guess it is possible that unit may have been the last one surviving and they may have just waned it).

Colonial Upkeep: The AI is making overseas cities, but it isn’t doing much with them. I’ve frequently attacked overseas cities and found them filled with warriors or other low-end units. One city has something like 10 warriors and their national hero while the civ’s mainland was running around w/ tier four units.

Lanun UUs: I doubt the AI knows how to use boarding parties and war tortoises effectively at sea. Not really a big deal since I’m sure programming the AI for one or two units must be a pain.

Very, very fun mod.

 

[Tholal]

Phantom blockade issue: Is there any way to remove these phantom blockades in worldbuilder?

Not that I know of. I am working on the next release. I might consider releasing a beta version if folks are interested in it.

+2 for War Spoiling Our Relations: I have a +2 (positive) modifier w/ the Mercurians for “this war spoils our relations,” which is a little odd. This doesn’t have any real effect on the game because they totally hate me for other reasons, as does their ally Lanun.

Strange. I hadn't noticed that one before. I'll keep an eye out for it.


Thanks for all the other feedback and glad to hear that you're enjoying playing my mod!

 

[Broken Hawk]

Speaking of the ErebusContienents map...is there a setting or settings that spread the civs out across the map. No matter what I do, they are always bunched closely together.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I suggest you search in the file with a text editor... if you search for LARGE for example, you should quickly find the section that sets minimum tile distance between starting spots for each gamesize.

I recommend setting those to 150% the normal number. so for example 8,7,6 would become 12,11,10 and so on. take a look at the file and you'll see what I mean

 

[Broken Hawk]

Thanks!!!

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

you're very welcome. let us know if it works well