[MOD] More Naval AI

[Aline]

About that Ais religion choices, i have noticed, that the Sheaim will almost allways gor FoL, in fact i have seen only one game where they did not go FoL, also the Lansos like to go AV, not allways but way to often, both civ-religion choices are terrible, and both civs, especaly the Sheaim are total pushovers in any game.

 

[Broken Hawk]

In my games the Sheaim are most likely to go AV and the Ljosalfar to go FoL. That is how they are set up in my current game in fact. Interesting differences in experiences. I don't get to play a lot though.

 

[Tholal]

About that Ais religion choices, i have noticed, that the Sheaim will almost allways gor FoL, in fact i have seen only one game where they did not go FoL, also the Lansos like to go AV, not allways but way to often, both civ-religion choices are terrible, and both civs, especaly the Sheaim are total pushovers in any game.

The Sheaim tend to go for FoL or OO as a first religion since it won't change their alignment.

Buried somewhere in this thread I had previously mentioned that the AIweights in Leaderheadinfos.xml probably could use some tweaking, but I don't know enough lore to feel qualified to make appropriate adjustments.

If you do feel that there is a problem with AI religion choice, it will need to be leader-specific (different leaders in the same civs have different AIweghts for the various religions) and show a discernible and repeatable trend towards the wrong religions over several games. Then I can see about giving minor tweaks to a couple of values for that leader.

Thanks for the report. I do agree that the Sheaim AI seems to struggle more often than not. I'll see if I can't figure out what's going awry.



In other news, I'm hoping to have version 1.7 out this week. It's main focus will be Unit AI.

 

[xalien]

I've noticed Sheaim love for FoL as well. In several games they were the ones to found it. OO is also quite popular with them, but it would be nice to see them value AV a bit more.

 

[Aline]

Well i dare say that all Sheaim leaders should have a huge bonus towards AV, in fact they shouldent go for anything else unless forced to do so, it is simply the best religion for them, both lore and gameplay wise.
Also all Lanos leaders should never go AV unless forced to, if Hell spreads in their lands they loose their entire ecconomy.

 

[Broken Hawk]

One thing I've noticed about the Sheaim is that once they build Planar Gates, all I see is Tar Demons and Mobius Witches. Easily dispatched. Manticores anyone?

 

[Horatius]

In my last diety game, the sheaim actually switched to Fellowship of the leaves in the middle game.
After somehow surviving the early pyre zombies they gave me a breather and I managed to get to sorcery and mages with destroy the undead.
So off I went confident that I would take them out of the game. But as soon as I catch a glimpse of their cities I see dozens of disciples of leaves and hardly any pyre zombies. As you can guess, in the very next turn a massive upgrade action happened - and I was not happy.

I look forward for the next unit AI improvements.
Cheers

 

[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.

I've continued onto my 2nd game, results are as follows: out of 14 starting civs only 6 remain (2 of them were gone before I even made contact), mainly thanks to Dovielo and Clan. AC got "only" to 60, probably because there were quite a few significant drops otherwise it would've been closer to 80-90.

Basically, Clan and Dovielo were doing the same routine - establish a base empire, then crank out tons of troops and then go on eliminating civs on one-by-one basis. Game balance between economic and warmongering aspects is heavily shifted towards the latter, peaceful victory types are pretty much unrealistic for AI - if they're not warmongers they're goners. Tech progress is virtually non-existent, I get like 250 beakers/turn in a middle game (smelting, taxation, sorcery tech level) and I'm way ahead.

Maybe it would be different on a map with more continents, tectonics map with 30% water make a single landmass so everyone can be reached by land.

I've attached a savegame for anyone interested to see how the world looks like now.

 

[Tholal]

Version 1.7 released (incompatible with previous saves) - DOWNLOAD LINK

Changes with this update:

• AI
  • AI - Major reworking of several unit AI functions and adjustments to how the AI assigns Groupflags to its units
    • AI should be more active about taking care of threats inside and near their borders
    • Assignment of Inquisitor and Feasting AIs are handled dynamically
    • Temporary Summons should be more aggressive
    • Units designed for attack are less likely to be assigned as defense units
    • AI should be better about defending important cities
    • Adjustments to SettleMove: AI given more leeway about where to place first city; AI should be better about not placing first cities right next to each other; AI will send its settlers back to safety if it thinks there is too much danger nearby
  • AI - Naval units with a full cargo hold won't try to cast Longshoreman
  • AI - Privateers and Pirates will no longer Declare Nationality
  • AI - AI will try and keep extra defenders in their Holy City when pursuing a Religious Victory
  • AI - AI more likely to cast area effect spells
  • AI - AI understands how Tsunami works
  • AI - Tolerant leaders less likely to raze
  • AI - Patrol groups are allowed to declare war
  • AI / flavor tweak - AI civs with just one level of the Altar will now consider switching to religions that make them evil
  • AI - Floating Eyes will now recon properly
  • AI - Donal Lugh will cast Recruit
  • AI - Tolerant civs encouraged to build the unique buildings for other civs in captured cities
  • AI - AI will dynamically determine how much defense each city needs
  • AI - AI will no longer build the Mercurian Gate in their Holy Cities
  • AI - AI workers will no longer replace developed Mana nodes
  • AI - minor reduction in the AI's interest in Theocracy
  • AI - AI will summon more often
  • AI - AI more likely to cast Gifts Of Nantosuelta
  • AI - Tweaks to code that finds starting spot for the Infernals
  • AI - Barbarian Allies wont try and target Barbarian Cities
  • AI - AI less likely to research a Religion that isn't their favorite
  • AI - AI more likely to target Altar cities when enemy is pursuing an Altar victory strategy
  • AI - AI will prefer to upgrade units with experience when upgrading to Tier 3 and 4 units
  • AI - AI will delete Stranded Conquest units if its in Financial Trouble (mainly affects Clan after they use their World Spell)
• BUG FIXES
  • Bug fix - HN ships that declare nationality will have their blockades cleared (no more phantom blockades)
  • Bug fix - Disrupt will no longer cause cities to have negative culture
  • Bug fix - fix for issue that would sometimes cause the isSummoner() function to incorrectly return as false
  • Bug fix - fixed a typo in the AddtoFleshGolem code
  • Bug fix / AI cheat fix - AI no longer allowed to target cities that they haven't yet revealed
  • Bug fix - fix for loop that could occur when a mixed stack led by a Water Walking unit would try and find a path to a water tile
  • Bug fix - fix for a potential endless loop where a unit would repeatedly rejoin another unit that was trying to heal
  • Bug fix - now Barbs really can't cast Resurrection (my previous fix for this issue wasnt working properly)
  • Bug fix - added missing text key for units that explode in combat
  • UI Bug Fix - city screen will now properly display the production bonus from Unhappy Production
  • UI Bug Fix - fix for a missing line break on the civ info pop-up that's shown when first starting a game
• GAMEPLAY TWEAKS
  • Naval - Privateers and Pirates Bombard rate reset to zero (gameplay tweak I made early on that I'm now removing)
  • UI - Infernals get their own color (black with a reddish tint) to differentiate them from the Barbarians
  • UI - Blockading ships will now be identified as such in their mouseover help
  • UI - Text messages for Golden Ages and Wonders being built are now colored
  • Flavor Tweak - Treants that expire will leave behind New Forests
• MISC
  • Code - setBlockading() is now exposed to Python
  • Code - added debug logging for spellcasting
  • Internal Assert fix - Immortal units that are killed in their capitol won't try to reset their XY position
  • Internal Assert fix - units that are immobilized due to casting at the beginning of their turn won't try to move
  • Code - python assignments of mage-type AI is now handled in onUnitCreated rather than onUnitBuilt (mainly affects Infernals upgrading Manes)
  • Code - added PyResult for Declare Nationality (to fix permanent blockade issue)
  • Code - added new AI Type - UNITAI_INQUISITOR
  • Code cleanup - removing old mage promotion code that is no longer being used
  • Code - enabled the onUnitLost python callback; adjusted the location of the callback in the kill() function in the SDK

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

congrats on the new release, looks really juicy

 

[Broken Hawk]

Great. Thanks for your hard work.

 

[Tasunke]

thanks for the new release

 

[mountain_man]

Thank you for the release Tholal, it looks great indeed, awesome mod which has really beefed up the AI

(although I will wait a bit before installing as it breaks saves....I am currently facing 2 permanent alliances of arthurus/mahala on klimorph and....os gabella/thessa on order, don t often see that one)

 

[Tholal]

(although I will wait a bit before installing as it breaks saves

Yeah. Sorry about that. It's never something I do on purpose, and I'm not even completely sure what caused save games to break. I think maybe it was the addition of a new AI type.

I am currently facing 2 permanent alliances of arthurus/mahala on klimorph and....os gabella/thessa on order, don t often see that one)

Sounds like an interesting game!

 

[Horatius]

Thanks a lot for your work. I can't wait to try it.

 

[Broken Hawk]

Thank you for the release Tholal, it looks great indeed, awesome mod which has really beefed up the AI

In the new release, the AI is even more challenging.

 

[Tholal]

Game balance between economic and warmongering aspects is heavily shifted towards the latter, peaceful victory types are pretty much unrealistic for AI - if they're not warmongers they're goners. Tech progress is virtually non-existent, I get like 250 beakers/turn in a middle game (smelting, taxation, sorcery tech level) and I'm way ahead.

So what I'm hearing is that the AI doesn't do well if it's not conquering its neighbors? Fair enough, though it's been my experience that achieving any sort of victory without major military engagements is pretty much impossible in Civ anyway. Is that incorrect? If so, I'd love to hear some specific strategies from anyone who regularly wins without tearing into their neighbors.

I did run across some code just before I released 1.7 that seems to be hindering the AI tech research a bit. I plan on looking into that for the next release.

 

[Valkrionn]

One thing that we're wanting to do with RifE to help AI teching (well, did want to, not sure if it'll work for our new design): Bring back Eras, by eliminating religious eras (BtS 3.19 exposed enough to the DLL that you can add sound tags to other things, so you can maintain the religious sound tracks; Already done in RifE).

Has a few fringe benefits as well... Easier to add leaders/religions, as there are no more religious eras to account for.

 

[UncleJJ]

I have been playing on FFH2 patch n until today finishing off old games. I heard about this mod / patch a week ago and decided to try it

Now I've upgraded to patch o and downloaded this patch version 1.7. What a difference it has made to basic FFH2 The AI is actually building ships and sailing them around something I have always missed in regular FFH2. The AI economy is much improved and now they actually trade techs with the human at reasonable rates, much more like BTS.

I'm playing an archipelago map with the Lanun on emperor level (I want to try out naval battles), so I expect a tech lead once the pirate ports start maturing. But so far (turn 199) the AI has grabbed all the early religions and I'm having to try hard to get any wonders. I did make a special effort to get the great lighthouse and so trade route income should be plentiful once that gets going.

Everything is going great so far and I just wanted to say thanks to Tholal for adding to this great game. The AI was always a weakness of FFH2 and it seems to be much better as far as I have played. So thanks again for all your hard work

 

[Tasunke]

hmm, could you perhaps still keep a link of 1.61 available on the first page?