[MOD] More Naval AI

[Tholal]

warrior spam - 1 possible cause identified:

AI sends 3 warriors as an escort with any settler - and those warriors seem to stay in that newly build city, never to be touched

That's certainly possible. At the moment, the AI for city defenders consists of little more than casting spells and staying in the city. So if they ended up in a town with no upgrade buildings, they would remain in their original form. Next update will include more AI for city defenders, so hopefully we'll see an improvement on this issue.

I wonder, if it really builds those warriors, or somehow gets them (or some of them) for free?

The AI doesn't get any free units besides the ones they start the game with. They just get reduced maintenance costs and reduced upgrade costs .

I would like to see the Mercurians more inclined to declare war on the Infernals when they enter a game.

Not sure how to do that without hardcoding it in, though I suppose that's something to consider. Should the Mercurians and Infernals always be at war?

I can't install the patch. Damn stupid installers, it would be so much easier if it was a simple zip file.

I've attached a zip file of the 1.61 Assets directory for you (it still needs to be copied over a FFH2 installation, but now you can put it in whatever directory you want to).

 

[A Moon]

Not sure how to do that without hardcoding it in, though I suppose that's something to consider. Should the Mercurians and Infernals always be at war?

I think if they convert away from the Ashen Veil, Basium considers them redeemed enough to merit a pass for the time being.

 

[Valkrionn]

I don't think so; A demon is a demon, and Basium has spent a loooong time crusading against demons.

 

[A Moon]

I don't think so; A demon is a demon, and Basium has spent a loooong time crusading against demons.

Just my personal explanation for him not Declaring on non-AV Infernals.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Basium's warscript is based only on state religion, so in the game non-AV Infernals should be relatively safe. In the lore Basium shouldn't care what religion demons or those who deal with demons profess to follow.


In my modmod I got rid of his hardcoded warscript, and instead made it so that every unit with the Demon or Unholy Taint promotion (which Ritualists have) causes -1 diplomatic relations with Basium.

(Edit: I just realized that this might only work for unit that start with the promotion in their xml defines. I should probably test to make sure that units who have demon due to a default trigger the same effect.)

 

[Tholal]

non-AV Infernals.

Actually that's not even possible. The Infernal get Ashen Veil automatically in all of their cities and they have a -100 weight for all the other religions.

 

[A Moon]

Watch this space.

 

[Tholal]

"Actually", it's only The Order that Infernals can't adopt. Everything else is fair game.

Oh, OK. I was thinking about the AI, not the actual game mechanics. A -100 weight zeroes out the religion value so the AI will never be interested in adopting that religion. But I guess a human player could switch, which should indeed allow them to be peaceful with Basium.


And in regards to Broken Hawk's suggestion, MagisterCultuum reminded me that there already is a warscript in place that causes the Mercurians to plan wars with any and all Ashen Veil civs. Perhaps in that game they didn't have direct contact with each other?

 

[A Moon]

Oh, OK. I was thinking about the AI, not the actual game mechanics. A -100 weight zeroes out the religion value so the AI will never be interested in adopting that religion. But I guess a human player could switch, which should indeed allow them to be peaceful with Basium.

No, I was wrong. They can only follow AV. I think they might be able to go No Religion as well though.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

A -100 weighting prevents even human players from ever adopting that religion. A weighting of -99 should have the same effect on the AI but not hinder a human.

The weightings don't directly influence the AI's influence in adopting a religion, they modify how present in your empire the religion is considered to be. A -100 weighting means that as far as the game is concerned, you don't have the religion present anywhere.


Some complications were introduced in BtS (or was it a patch thereof?) which changed things so that the AI players consider the religions present in all cities their team owns rather than those they themselves own.

 

[HoratiusFlaccus]

First of all, awesome improvements to the base mod and many thanks.

I've actually had a game where the AI made a curious double attack on me. It attacked one of my border cities and at the same time used boats to unload some troops next to my only coastal city that was slightly to the left of the other city that I've just mentioned.
I thought it curious because this was just in the early to middle game and the ships had to take a while to get there. The unloaded troops included a hero (Barnaxus) that was seen on the field before.

First time I've seen the AI using boats to attack using the longer route.

This was the only time I've seen such a sneak attack but it's encouraging.

Anyway, I felt that I also should report an annoying bug.

In my last game, I killed some ships that were blocking my trade routes but the trade block continued for several turns anyway. No other ships in sight and I even made peace with the civilization that was causing it initially. There's no change. The ghost trade block is affecting several cities.

I'll attach a save file in the case you want to see it.

Thanks for the work in your mod again.

 

[Aline]

Think that blockade bug is old.

 

[HoratiusFlaccus]

It's possible, I don't know. What causes it?

 

[Tholal]

It's possible, I don't know. What causes it?

Unfortunately, it doesn't happen all the time and I've been unable to replicate it manually. Do you happen to have a save from right before you destroyed the blockading ship? If so, I might be able to trace the code and see what's happening.

 

[HoratiusFlaccus]

This quick save is the best that I can provide.

Declare war on Kandros and buy some ships.
Don't do anything for 2 turns and the trade block will happen. Get rid of the ships inside your cultural borders and you'll see that the trade block will persist anyway (it did every time I replayed it).

 

[Tholal]

This quick save is the best that I can provide

That worked. Turns out that Hidden Nationality ships weren't updating their blockades when they declared their nationality, leaving pockets of blockaded territory. This was affecting pretty much every civ in the game! Fix will be included with the next update. Thanks!

 

[HoratiusFlaccus]

That worked. Turns out that Hidden Nationality ships weren't updating their blockades when they declared their nationality, leaving pockets of blockaded territory. This was affecting pretty much every civ in the game! Fix will be included with the next update. Thanks!

No, thank you.

 

[BvBPL]

I’m playing my first game w/ your mod and I enjoy it a lot. It is nice to see the AI use paramanders, stygian guards, and lunatics; I don’t recall seeing as many before your mod.

I’m presently using Erebus Continent script and it drew this long landmass w/ many peninsulas, isthmuses, and bays. Because it most of the action takes place on one landmass we’re seeing little navy action, but there is some. I did notice that some AIs have colonized the few outlying islands around the continent. Nice to see that!

I am, however, running into the phantom blockade error where blockades stick around after the ship has moved on. I saw this once before in the History of the Three Kingdoms mod.

I’m also unsure if the AI understands how to effectively use hidden nationality unit though. Nearly all of the privateers I saw had declared, as had all hill giants (lots of captured hill giants in this game for some reason). I don’t really think of this as much of an issue as I have a hard time imagining any AI using hidden nationality effectively in any case.

 

[Tholal]

Nearly all of the privateers I saw had declared, as had all hill giants (lots of captured hill giants in this game for some reason).

AI Privateers will keep their HN status with the next release (and they are more than happy to harass their neighbors with them). I found a bug the other day that was causing them to declare their nationality (which in turn was leading to the permanent blockade issue). For the moment, land units will still declare after capture.

 

[esvath]

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

Thanks!