One AI problem has bigger gimping effect than any other

[Pazyryk]

We all have a long list of things that the AI does poorly (or not at all, like naval functions or magic). But I'm quite convinced that one problem gimps them more than anything else. I usually play Immortal difficulty (sometimes higher) and it is quite frequent that I'm trading Agriculture to AI at turn 150 or beyond. When I look at that civ, I'll find 3 or 4 wheat, corn or rice bonuses around their capital. Same for hunting and fishing. It's quite simple: pick agriculture (usually), or hunting or fishing as first tech. I can think of no situation (except playing Scion) where one of these should not be the first tech. Second tech should almost always be another food tech or calendar. Again, once you have ag, if you have 3 cows nearby, go for animal husbandry. If you have 4 bananas, go for calendar. And so on. These first couple food techs should trump all other military or religious considerations. Once the AI gets past this hurdle, it can roll along pretty well (with all it's enormous production bonuses for difficulty setting). But if it delays these to turn 50 or 100 or 150, as it does, then no amount of production bonus can make up for this lost time.

I have no experience coding AI, but I know from python coding that it would be straightforward (I won't say trivial... it's too easy to call someone else's effort trivial) to tally up bonuses around the capital. If more AI was exposed to python, I'd probably have this fixed in a jiffy. Can't we just force these first few techs based on bonuses around AI cities? And get them actually in the game at turn 20 instead of 150?

I think this problem is still in base FFH. When I last played vanilla civ4 BtS (more than a year ago), Immortal was much more of a challenge and I don't remember seeing this particular problem.

I really don't want this thread to turn into a long list if AI deficiencies. There are many and some will be very hard to solve. I'm curious to know whether others agree (or disagree) that this one nonsensical behavior just kills the AI (more than any other) as a challenging opponent. And how do we fix it?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

it seems to me this is caused by those evil, evil beelines. which need to get ridden of in order for the AI to act smart instead of like a spoiled child that sees its favourite toy on a shelf too high to reach and passes all its childhood sitting there looking at it. nice description

 

[Valkrionn]

Actually, pretty much every AI mod includes a function that checks surrounding territory for resources, and then grabs the proper economy tech to work it. Not hard to do.

 

[Opera]

I already did something like that for LENA You might want to check CvGameUtils.py in it

 

[Pazyryk]

@ Gekko, AI needs to potty train before it tries to be a fighter pilot...

@ Valkrionn, then why am I seeing what I describe? I'm absolutely certain I'm seeing AI with wheat without agriculture, fish without fishing, deer without hunting, etc., out past turn 150 or even 200 or 300. Maybe the code is in place but something else is overriding it (tech bee-lining I guess). if it is a weighting system, then using visible land bonuses should be weighted much more highly than anything else (or everything else combined). Again, putting these off till after archery, bronze, or whatever is a sure game loser. I think what happens is that the AI doesn't go for these first, then by turn 100 or so it has grown to big and can't advance because it has no farms, plantations or cottages to support the larger empire.

 

[Pazyryk]

@ Opera, I saw that in the LENA thread. Any chance you can get Ahwaric to drop that into base Orbis?

 

[Opera]

@Pazyryk@Valkrionn: Valkrionn just said that the AI mods out there all take care of this dumb behavior, not that this behavior doesn't exist It's caused by the beelines and by the "favorite techs" tags.

@PazyrykAgain: I think Ahwaric is willing to do it but that he may not remember to do so

 

[Valkrionn]

What Opera said. There are several mods that do this... Wild Mana, both FfH AI mods, LENA, Improved FFPlus AI (Yes, a modmodmodmod... They DO exist. ).

Ahwaric just needs to merge the files from one or more into Orbis.