[MOD] More Naval AI

[ChrisAdams3997]

I garantee that happened. Maybe it was different groups on same tile? They arrived in different groups. I wish I had saved but was really suprised. Maybe a fluke influenced by my 24 units as well (early diety war with the hippus...)

It'd crossed my mind as well they might have been separate groups, but it's still an odd coincidence based on how the code is set up for that many large groups to happen to converge on one spot. That's why a save game would have been really useful to take a closer look, but I think the changes I've made this evening will really back the barbs off in the early game. I just need to check I didn't go too far, so I'm hoping to have time to do some testing tomorrow afternoon.

Btw, is the production in barb cities augmented as well, or am I seeing things (a possibility...).?

I haven't a clue, but I can look into it.

 

[Aline]

Capital as holy city?
Bug or feature?

 

[Horatius]

Forget about the barbarian production issues that I brought up, sorry about that.
The difference is that the produced warrior is coming out from the city immediately whereas before they tended to wait for more units before coming out with groups of 2, 3 or 4. From that, my mistaken impression.
It's kind of interesting that the barbarians tend to group themselves on the field but not on cities waiting a bit - and I guess that is exactly one of the reasons why we are meeting more barbarian attacking groups at a faster rate.

I just played another test game with the latest patch. I was more aggressive with fog busting and didn't see barbarian groups of more than four units. AI civs were incredibly aggressive once again right from the beginning while even having the same religion.
There was some razing until turn 228 or something (7 cities razed by the AI) - that was done mainly by the Bannor, but Cardith was relatively far away from them so I kind of approved of the razing, I guess...
A balanced enough game where I won a religious victory with the Malakim before summoning Basium for fun.

- There was a bug, though (I think that this was reported before already, I don't know).
Apparently Ethne was defeated by the Clan but her "ghost" was still in the game. I had declared on her to satisfy the clan and failed to notice that she actually had no cities. Below is a save state of the turn when I noticed that she was not in the game although I could still talk to her.

 

[Fafnir13]

View attachment 299766

Capital as holy city?
Bug or feature?

Feature. Capitals only have reduced chance, not blocked. This isn't a change made by the mod.

 

[Aline]

Hmkay, never seen that happen before.

 

[Fafnir13]

Does the mod adjust AI city spamming much? Sometimes, it seems like a comp is doing it less. Then I start up another game and it is just insane. Maybe some civs are just weighted for it.
In any case, I hate it. I've always hated it. I know it's crummy economics and I know the cities they're placing are junk. I burn most cities I capture for that reason.
I wish the comp would spend more time just building up their little empire and maybe prepping for a war or two. No need to completely fill the map, cutting off any possibility of peaceful expansion for a semi nearby player.
Some of it just boils down to spawning locations and map specifics, I know. But can we can we put a little of a damper on it? At least wait until the last city they founded has grown beyond a 1 pop with no culture or something.

 

[Fafnir13]

Sorry for double post. Couldn't figure out a way to make an attachment with an edit. There's a stack of two lizardmen heading in. Had a stack of two not long ago as well. The spawning lizard seems to be grabbing his lair-guarding buddy and taking him along on the attack. This game has taken a few save/loads just to get this far.
Playing with the beta patch for 1.8, as uploaded a few pages back.

 

[ChrisAdams3997]

I've already made some changes for the next version that'll prevent what you describe Fafnir. The original FfH code that caused barbs to keep a defender on lairs was some somewhat flimsy python code that didn't play well with how grouping code typically works in the DLL, but it'll be fixed for the next version.

There's also not code in the current 1.8 beta specific to lizardmen grouping in the early game, but there will be for the next.

 

[Horatius]

I forgot to say that in the save state that I posted above there is also the issue that my units are not able to pick up the Orthus' axe to the right of my capital.

I wish the comp would spend more time just building up their little empire and maybe prepping for a war or two.

That's what I'm seeing more and more...
I guess that it depends on the map as well, if people are close to each other or not ?

Expansive leaders do build a lot of cities. Cardith builds too many useless settlements for sure.

 

[Tholal]

I forgot to say that in the save state that I posted above there is also the issue that my units are not able to pick up the Orthus' axe to the right of my capital.

The Axe belongs to your teammate.

Cardith builds too many useless settlements for sure.

Agreed. The AI isn't too clear on how Settlements work.

 

[Broken Hawk]

patch 1.7. I received 2 Great Engineers rather than 1 upon researching Machinery. See attachment and hit enter. I reported this before but didn't have a save.

 

[Tholal]

patch 1.7. I received 2 Great Engineers rather than 1 upon researching Machinery. See attachment and hit enter. I reported this before but didn't have a save.

You had a Great Person born in Golden Leane the same turn you finished researching Machinery.

 

[Broken Hawk]

You had a Great Person born in Golden Leane the same turn you finished researching Machinery.

Last time you asked for a save. Just a coincidence I guess. Thanks.

 

[Tholal]

Last time you asked for a save. Just a coincidence I guess. Thanks.

Yeah. Kind of funny that it happened to you twice. I guess you really like making Great Engineers?

 

[Broken Hawk]

yeah. Kind of funny that it happened to you twice. I guess you really like making great engineers?

 

[Horatius]

Cassiel gets owned by barb lair spawns on diety. This tells a lot.

Also you can see that units that are wired for attack, etc and not defense do not necessarily go inside the city to defend it even if it is the best move. This is why I was saying before that the AI is now worse at defending.

Hit Ctr-Z and press some turns to see what happens.

 

[Tholal]

OK. Here's a installer for 1.8 beta2 (not compatible with previous saves). This includes a 2nd round of changes to Barbarian AI from ChrisAdams3997. They should group up less often and also be more aggressive.

Other changes include the following.

• AI will be a little less aggressive about lair exploration
• Tweaks to how the AI chooses groups
• Tweaks to AI civic values
• Tweaks to AI promotion choices
• Tweaks to AI tech choices
• AI will sometimes use Priests to found Temples
• Conquest groups should guard cities a little more often
• AI will be less interested in buildings that grant access to units when the game option NO_BUILDING_PREREQS is selected
• AI will value techs that give them access to their World Spells
• Bug fix - automated units for human players should no longer try to explore Lairs
• Bug fix for ghost players sometimes remaining in the game
• Bug fix / gameplay change - Life mana is now associated with Alteration rather than Divination

 

[Fafnir13]

Just out of random curiosity, does the AI know when "No World Spells" is enabled?

Also: Loller Elves just died on turn 3. A new Record (for me)!

 

[Broken Hawk]

Thanks again. Just in time for the Labor Day weekend.

 

[Tholal]

Just out of random curiosity, does the AI know when "No World Spells" is enabled?

It knows it cant cast them. The only other place I know offhand where that knowledge would be needed by the AI is in the code I added with this latest revision, so I do need to put a check in there. Thanks for the tip!

Also: Loller Elves just died on turn 3. A new Record (for me)!

You happen to still have the turn 0 save that I can look at?

Thanks again. Just in time for the Labor Day weekend.

Excellent! I hope you enjoy it!