Observations from new AI stats

Koshling · Sep 22, 2012

Not sure how many of you have looked at the AI stats being generated in the BBAI logs recently in your games, but I'm starting to see interesting patterns from mine, that definitely suggest areas where time should be invested to improve the AI.

I'd really like to encourage people (especially regular players of the SVN, and modders) to examine these dumps from time to time and see if anything unusual jumps out. This thread is for such reports (and discussions)

Koshling · Sep 22, 2012

So, I'll kick off.

My current SVN game is in early classical. I dominate my continent, but another AI is also entrenched there, and right now I don't quite have the force to remove it. However, the AI stats show other civs, who I have not yet met, WAY ahead of me (twice my city count, twice my research rate, ...), which obviously is a good thing from an AI-is-working-ok so far perspective!

However, the stats for the larger AIs seem to contain the seeds of their own destruction, and I predict they will implode sometime in about the next era. The reason is REV instability caused indirectly by crime. The AI is building all the anti-crime buildings and basically managing it fairly well, but as it grows it runs out of ways it knows how to use to manage crime, and crime eventually goes rampant once city sizes get into the 20s and 30s. The crime buildings this generates (once the crime level gets past about 250 or so) then produce instability the AI cannot cope with, and implosion results.

There are several tweaks that need to be made to the AI, but the BIG one (which I think will prevent the implosions, or at least delay them considerably) is that currently the AI knows pretty well how to manage crime using anti-crime buildings, but it has a very weak grasp on how to manage it using anti-crime units.

Since anti-crime from buildings caps at fairly low levels (there just aren't that many buildings you can build to fight crime), fighting it with units is the only way that actually scales to larger sized cities. As a result, not having a good grasp on how to do this, means the AI fails to control crime as its cities get larger.

Hence a new work item, which I will treat as fairly urgent (before V27) - improve unit-based AI crime management. That includes:

More forcefully keeping anti-crime units in cities (it does know to do this, but only enforces it weakly currently)
Actively building units to fight crime (right now it just knows to build good defenders, and part of the 'goodness' calculation for the defender AI includes property assessment, so crime fighting). However, it doesn't understand the direct link between crime levels and the need to build anti-crime units explicitly (so if it thinks a city is adequately defended it won't build more defenders, so it won't get more crime fighters indirectly that way)
Allowing more criteria to be exposed to the unit contracting system, so that crime fighters can be explicitly requested

LumenAngel · Sep 22, 2012

In my game, even if (at least) 2 civ are better than me in research, i m still able to have ALL religions (except druidic tradition).
Look like in classical era, AI under-estimate tech like reincarnation, karma and already-built religion tech (but prereq for others undiscovered-religion tech).

And same points about crime. AI build even less guard and town watch than in the v25

T C · Sep 22, 2012

I would love to contribute some logs from my games (I haven't played v26 at all, but I should have some more time this week), but I can't seem to turn them on. I put them on in BUG menu (with level 3) but they never appear in my logs folder.

Is there an idiots guide to logging somewhere here?

ls612 · Sep 22, 2012

T C said:
I would love to contribute some logs from my games (I haven't played v26 at all, but I should have some more time this week), but I can't seem to turn them on. I put them on in BUG menu (with level 3) but they never appear in my logs folder.

Is there an idiots guide to logging somewhere here?

In the FAQs thread it says how to do it.

JosEPh_II · Sep 22, 2012

LumenAngel said:
In my game, even if (at least) 2 civ are better than me in research, i m still able to have ALL religions (except druidic tradition).
Look like in classical era, AI under-estimate tech like reincarnation, karma and already-built religion tech (but prereq for others undiscovered-religion tech).

And same points about crime. AI build even less guard and town watch than in the v25

If you are using a recent SVN update this should not be the case. I supplied koshling with some BBAI logs and he found that the AI was undervaluing the religion techs and made correction to it. My current game with those correction I have only founded 2 while some of the AI have founded up to 5. I too used to be able to found them all. That's why I complained about it.

Now if you are using vanilla v26 with the patch then Yes you can found them all.

JosEPh

Koshling · Sep 22, 2012

T C said:
I would love to contribute some logs from my games (I haven't played v26 at all, but I should have some more time this week), but I can't seem to turn them on. I put them on in BUG menu (with level 3) but they never appear in my logs folder.

Is there an idiots guide to logging somewhere here?

What ls612 says above is the right place to look - sounds like you dont have logging enabled in you INI file. The AI stats dumps are not in V26 anyway though (recent SVN addition)

ls612 · Sep 22, 2012

Koshling said:
<snip>

[*]More forcefully keeping anti-crime units in cities (it does know to do this, but only enforces it weakly currently)

Actively building units to fight crime (right now it just knows to build good defenders, and part of the 'goodness' calculation for the defender AI includes property assessment, so crime fighting). However, it doesn't understand the direct link between crime levels and the need to build anti-crime units explicitly (so if it thinks a city is adequately defended it won't build more defenders, so it won't get more crime fighters indirectly that way)

Allowing more criteria to be exposed to the unit contracting system, so that crime fighters can be explicitly requested

I could try my hand at the bolded one.

Koshling · Sep 22, 2012

ls612 said:
I could try my hand at the bolded one.

..er...none are bolded!

ls612 · Sep 22, 2012

Koshling said:
..er...none are bolded!

They are for me. :confused:

I meant the first one. The one about tying anti-Crime units more forcefully to cities. The only issue is that I can't find a way for the CvUnitAI class to access property data. :crazyeye:

Koshling · Sep 22, 2012

ls612 said:
They are for me. I meant the first one. The one about tying anti-Crime units more forcefully to cities. The only issue is that I can't find a way for the CvUnitAI class to access property data.

getGameObject() (etc.)

Thunderbrd · Sep 22, 2012

I believe about a month ago I suggested adding a new unit AI for crime fighters. It sounds like the heart of what I had suggested (the ai taking note of how much crime it was generating and ordering new crimefighters rather than simply 'fighters' to address out of control crime as needed) is now being considered fully. That said, I'm curious what the strategy is that you'll be employing to do this code-wise? I may not completely understand the answer but it could be interesting to try since I'm still trying to wrap my head around the ai unit order and command sections.

Koshling · Sep 22, 2012

Thunderbrd said:
I believe about a month ago I suggested adding a new unit AI for crime fighters. It sounds like the heart of what I had suggested (the ai taking note of how much crime it was generating and ordering new crimefighters rather than simply 'fighters' to address out of control crime as needed) is now being considered fully. That said, I'm curious what the strategy is that you'll be employing to do this code-wise? I may not completely understand the answer but it could be interesting to try since I'm still trying to wrap my head around the ai unit order and command sections.

The AI unit odrering mechanism has been extensivel changed to use a brokered contracts scheme now, so cities never build units directly - they place orders for them which are then placed with the most appropriate cities. Currently the criteria you can ask for when placing a contract only encompass canAttack/canDefend/canDoWorkerStuff, total strength required, and AI type - I need to generalize that parameterisation somwhat.

Thunderbrd · Sep 22, 2012

Ok. I'm just thinking that Town Watch style units would be poor choices for defense purposes (though nice to have around for defense given their appropriate volumes and not terrible combat stats) but exceedingly good options for anti-crime efforts. And having another unit AI defining them could help us to guide them to make sure that the anti-crime promotions are considered of the utmost importance without peer.

ls612 · Sep 22, 2012

Koshling said:
getGameObject() (etc.)

I think that's only for CvPlayerAI. It doesn't seem to be declared for CvUnitAI.

Koshling · Sep 22, 2012

ls612 said:
I think that's only for CvPlayerAI. It doesn't seem to be declared for CvUnitAI.

It's declared on CvUnit which CvUnitAI inherits from

Koshling · Sep 25, 2012

Ok, now the trading posts and monarchy issue is sorted out the AIs did better for a while, but now the biggest is starting to implode:

Spoiler :

The things that stand out to me here (if anyone sees anything else please say) are:

Code:

[8809.470]     Gold rate: 80
[B][8809.470]     Science rate: 20[/B]
[8809.470]     Culture rate: 0
[8809.470]     Espionage rate: 0
[8809.470]     Treasury: 1300
[8809.470]     Total gold income from self: 860
[8809.470]     Total gold income from trade agreements: 0
[B][8809.470]     Unit cost (pre inflation): 528[/B]
[8809.470]     Unit supply cost (pre inflation): 1
[8809.470]     Maintenance cost (pre inflation): 169
[8809.470]     Civic upkeep cost (pre inflation): 189
[8809.470]     Corporate income (pre inflation): 0

and

Code:

[8809.470]     Current civics:
[8809.470]         Government: Monarchy
[8809.470]         POWER: Sovereignty
[8809.470]         SOCIETY: Caste
[8809.470]         Economy: Barter
[8809.470]         MILITARY: Mercenaries
[8809.470]         Religion: Divine Cult
[8809.470]         WELFARE: Charity
[8809.470]         Garbage: Garbage Anywhere
[8809.470]         Immigration: Closed Borders
[8809.470]         Education: Military Tradition
[8809.470]         Language: Interpreters
[B][8809.470]         Agriculture: No Agriculture[/B]
[8809.470]         Currency: Coinage
[B][8809.470]         Politics: Strongman[/B]

and

Code:

[8809.470]         City Monbetsu:
[8809.470]             Population: 14
[8809.470]             Production: 60
[8809.470]             Food surplus: 0
[8809.470]             Local rev index: 46
[8809.470]             Maintenance: 13
[8809.470]             Income: 100
[8809.470]             Science: 40
[8809.470]             Espionage: 2
[8809.470]             Culture: 66
[B][8809.470]             Net happyness: -9
[8809.470]             Net health: -12[/B]
[8809.470]             Property values:
[8809.470]                 Air Pollution Rate: -120
[I][8809.470]                 Crime Rate: 515[/I]
[8809.470]                 Water Pollution Rate: 78
[8809.470]                 Disease Rate: -51
[8809.470]                 Flammability: 90

and

Code:

[8809.470]         Ambusher: 66

I suspect there's a bit of over-expansion/over-militarization going on, and especially that ambushers are being built for inappropriate uses (I need to look into what AI types the AI is building ambushers for - I strongly suspect they are being used at home and generating a ton of crime as a result). The low-growth civics are probably an over reaction/mis-reaction to the rampant unhealthy (meaning it doesn't think it wants more growth).

bill2505 · Sep 25, 2012

what about adding a police specialist

Koshling · Sep 25, 2012

bill2505 said:
what about adding a police specialist

I think it's in-plan, but awaiting support for new specialist types.

I am intending to improve the AI's crime management with units anyway, which should help with the crime part (right now it really only has a good grasp on controlling it with buildings). Well...based on the above...that and not having it kill itself with its own crime units (the ambushers above)!

ls612 · Sep 25, 2012

Koshling said:
<snip>

I suspect there's a bit of over-expansion/over-militarization going on, and especially that ambushers are being built for inappropriate uses (I need to look into what AI types the AI is building ambushers for - I strongly suspect they are being used at home and generating a ton of crime as a result). The low-growth civics are probably an over reaction/mis-reaction to the rampant unhealthy (meaning it doesn't think it wants more growth).

That's what I was trying to get at regarding ambushers and attack stacks. The AI has been sending stacks with ten or so military units and 20 rogues (the upgrade from Ambushers) at my territory, which I'm destroying rather easily. And I've been complaining about over-militarization bugs in the AI since July, so they apparently aren't all fixed.

Observations from new AI stats

Vorlon

Vorlon

King

Prince

Deity

TBS WarLord

Vorlon

Deity

Vorlon

Deity

Vorlon

C2C War Dog

Vorlon

C2C War Dog

Deity

Vorlon

Vorlon

King

Vorlon

Deity

Similar threads