Post 0.41h AI feedback needed

People ought to also state the difficulty level they are playing at. I remember that the main reasons I played at lower difficulties in BtS was that at higher ones the AI maintained far more units than I could possibly build (since I also focused on buildings), and thus I had lots of demands and war declarations, then faced stacks of units far too large for me to handle.

Thanks Xienwolf, that would be very handy. It doesn't do much good to complain about AI perks when playing at prince level and above, thats kinda the point of those levels.

The AI's boosts haven't really been changed. Only that the AI plays smarter so those boosts make a much bigger difference. I want the AI as good as possible, and then curtail the AI bonuses, rather than giving large bonuses and having the AI play dumb.

And there really isn't much of a player ai. The Barb player, Sabathiel, Os-Gabella, etc all use the same AI code. There are some variables you can toggle and barb units do have have a more aggressive attack function. But 95% of the AI code is the same for all players.
 
The AI changes are not what I expected. For some reason, I have seen much less war, despite the AI building extra units, which is not what I want at all. The Clan, Doviello and Hippus rarely DoW, and on the rare occasions I do get a DoW I am only attacked 50% of the time. The AI is still really stupid about sacrifical units. I used Loki's puppet as bait, essentially imprisoning a Sheaim stack to two squares while I picked the zombies off with chariots, when they would have destroyed me if they attacked my cities outright. When the AI has their own sacrificial units like fireballs, skeletons or elementals, they don't use them properly. I have yet to see them use any AoE spells(Tsunami, RoF, Malstrom, etc.) despite those abilities being available to the AI. They also like to spam archers to use for defense, offense, tactical uses, barbarian killing, and everything else under the sun, which is a horrible strategy.

If anything, the patch has actually made the game slightly easier than it was before. 10x more annoying, but easier nonetheless. The changes didn't make the AI smarter, it just made them build more units, then use those units stupidly. In case anyone is wondering, I was playing at Immortal before the patch, and I am playing at Immortal now. The substantial bonuses the AI gets is too large for me to beat deity, but I'm not any more challenged on Immortal than I was before.
 
Always War is still unplayable just like in Wild Mana.
As soon as you have contact with an enemy, it starts spamming warriors only, no expansion at all.
 
Well, Barbarian AI is a LITTLE bit different, their units should be using a different "move" function in CvUnitAI which is slightly more suicidal. But the BULK behavior (where to place the units, how/when to group them) ought to be unchanged.

One thing I would reccomend which I had tweaked (still haven't had the time to review patch I code to see if it is already done, I appologize) is to make the danage threshold for a temporary unit always be 0 (will attack at any odds) and their sacrifice value be HUGE (will be selected to attack an unkillable stack). And for Barbarians you can adjust the danger threshold based on current stack size, making a stack of 20 units willing to fight ANYTHING, but as they dwindle down toward 5 units they return to being slightly more reasonable (insisting on 40% chance or better like normal, or whatever the normal is for BarbMove)
 
The archer thing really needs to be changed. In my current game, I'm on a continent with three other civs. Two hate me(Beeri Bawl and Keelyn), and one is on shaky ground(Rhoanna). Keelyn and I have been at war for a long, long time. She declared sometime arounnd turn 140(It's 360 now) and has attacked me several times with stacks of archers. I spammed horsemen to counter, and they're dominating her archers. I've taken 2 cities she left near-undefended(2 archers each), killed well over 50 archers outside of cities(yay, easy EXP!!) and pillaged around 500 gold worth of improvements. I figured she might be willing to give me some techs for a peace, but she refuses to give me anything. In fact, she wants 600 gold and one of the cities I captured from her to make peace! Why? Because she has soooooooooooooooo many archers that her power rating is three times mine, so despite the fact there is no chance of this war being beneficial for her, she thinks she is winning from the volumes of archers.

As far as I can tell, the Luchuruip and Hippus are employing a similar strategy. Pure archers. They've been at war for ages as well, but neither are taking any cities from each other because all they have is archers. The big problem with this is once she gets Horseback Riding, the Rhoanna will upgrade all her archers to Horse Archers, which will actually be deadly. I'm hoping to have firebows by then, though.
 
I and my partner have long played games on Emperor, which is our comfort level. Immortal is challenging though doable to us, but might add extra restarts to our multiplayer games. We play mostly Erebus, sometimes Pangaea or Archipelago or something else. Map sizes from Small to Large with Low Sea Level to hopefully give us non-isolated Erebus starts.

With the patches h and i, we tried Monarch for a while and AI seemed to keep up with teching better than I recalled. This was what originally forced us to play Emperor (and occasionally Immortal) even though the extra promotions for AI units sometimes feel excessive. We're now back to playing Emperor games because we haven't been crushed there yet or anything. Our games very rarely go past T3 units (Champions, Mages, etc.) and often don't even reach those, so by teching comments I mean early to middle game.

Barbarian AI

Unlike many others, I haven't seen many AI knocked out by barbarians. Only thing I've noticed different with barbs is the small scale tactics: dancing around in my lands and waiting for more forces before attacking. This could be because nearly all our games are with No Lairs (and no other special settings) on my request. I just don't like the barbarians acting as a nation thing, specifically walking through the lands of other civs to attack the one they want to pick on, and holding back that civilization's development indefinitely even if successfully defended against. No Lairs helps to reduce the volume of barbarians most of the time, without having to sacrifice all your early units to exploring lairs (which often makes units useless through nasty promotions) if you can reach them before defenders spawn.

I still had one recent single player game where there was too much wilderness and the constant stream of barbarians was coming to my cities. (It was Erebus but bad luck with choke points.) I had enough well promoted warriors to handle them and even keep slowly expanding but they just kept coming. I decided to start a new game, it was sufficiently annoying.

I was low on power curve, and live in the belief that this affects who the barbarians target. Sometimes when I'm not otherwise rushing someone I build extra forces - beyond what I consider necessary for actual defense - just to avoid being the lowest one but this shouldn't be necessary IMO. Malakim desert starts and such don't always allow you much production before fully improving your lands, either.

AI civ stuff

- AI seems to build better stacks of units, but hasn't bombarded city defenses before attacking.
- AI does seem to favor religions that don't change their alignment, hopefully that hasn't removed the variety of seeing the occasional Ashen Veil Capria etc. Or at least being able to convert them with sufficient effort.
- AI isn't competing for religions seriously, or at least I feel no pressure in getting one if I decide I'm gonna want it from the start. It used to be that RoK and FoL were discovered very early, often by dwarves and elves too. Could be that religion beelines were hurting their development, of course. There must be some happy medium of picking bare minimum techs based on the start and then rushing the religion, like I sometimes do. On Classical Era starts AI does well as ever and may go for the religion immediately.
- AI isn't competing for world wonders almost at all. It used to be that Heron Throne and Pact of the Nilhorn were built fairly quickly, now they may still be available in late midgame if I haven't made them. I do remember seeing Catacomb Libralus built by AI once since patch h but that's about it.
- AI isn't picking up Orthus' axe. The old AI seemed to be giving it to next unit activating in the position and never give it to a better one, but even that was better. (And resulted in me losing it to bears after attacks I was supposed to win, hehe. Bears with axes, grr.)
- The deficiencies in power curve approximating someone's army strength in FFH are perhaps more apparent than ever. It would really help diplomacy (among other things) to have the AI understand my warrior horde is highly promoted and given Shield of Faith and Enchanted Blade. (Permanent effects should count.) At least I think power curve doesn't take those into account any more than it does units with damage spells etc.

Story of one of our games to illustrate some of the above

We were playing a Small 5-player Pangaea, me as Malakim (Varn Gosam) and she as Svartalfar (Faeryl). We both had Bannor (Sabathiel) as neighbor, and Balseraph (Keelyn) were behind Svartalfar lands from my viewpoint. Illians were beyond Bannor and of no consequence here - I don't even remember Samhain happening in this game, which would be a first with Illians. Have my prayers been answered and they don't just stupidly use it every time now? Not getting my hopes up yet, maybe I didn't notice the ritual and the frostlings just went elsewhere.

From fairly early on Keelyn and Sabathiel started soaring on the power curve while we human players focused on expanding, economy and tech with a reasonable but not huge armies. We ended up competing for the favor of our neighbors. I had no real chance with Evil Keelyn without trade routes through Svartalfar lands or anything, so I focused on Bannor. Faeryl discovered Fellowship of Leaves and I knew she'd be using it as her main diplomatic weapon later on. I soon went for Kilmorph and escorted the first Thane immediately to Bannor capital. They converted next turn without me needing to ask.

Feeling more secure and racking up bonuses with Bannor through trade and gifts, I didn't pay too much attention to FoL spreading all over the place. Then Sabathiel converted to it, which got my attention. Turns out FoL was in 3 of 4 Bannor cities at that point, and the last one too couple of turns later. I was at around +10 with Bannor at this point, but so was Faeryl despite the Evil handicap. I was worried about possible FoL religious victory, and Victory Condition advisor was only showing my 35% RoK and 0% for FoL. (It was actually 50%. I thought the advisor used to show it?) I needn't have really worried with Illians and my lands clean, but I did. I started thinking about capturing their holy city with a sudden attack, or razing it so it'd be lost even if her AI allies helped drive me back.

Faeryl and Keelyn were all chummy but she "never got the b**** to do anything useful" like declare war on me. I'm not sure if Balseraph ever briefly followed FoL but they soon had their own OoS holy city and state religion, and never warmed up to Leaves despite having it in more of their cities. (Same behaviour as I'd expect with old AI too, pretty much. Perhaps affected by Faeryl's low power curve position.)

I put RoK in all Bannor cities but they still didn't like me enough to convert back. After some time passed, they pulled a surprise attack on the Svartalfar though. Despite great relations and following the same religion. Very unexpected from any but a few AI leaders, and especially a Good one, we thought. My conclusion was that he must've been worried about elven religious victory too. (Helped by huge lead in power curve.) Whatever the reason, I was overjoyed and continued my war preparations, waiting to be invited to join in. Not sure if I would've gotten the mutual war diplomatic bonus otherwise.

Apparently Sabathiel sent a healthy axeman stack against the FoL holy city, but suicided it on a similar stack of archers because he had no catapults to deal with the 50% culture defense bonus. Not much action after that. He invited me to join the war, converted to RoK next turn when I asked him to, then predictably soon made peace with Svartalfar. Meanwhile I was building up a Swordsman stack next to the FoL holy city, with warrior fodder firmly holding the position. Larry, Curly and Moe bombarded the city and Bambur killed an archer every other turn on average. Producing Swordsmen, teching for mages. She had Alazkan arrive later but after lots of attrition the archer production wasn't keeping up.

Last surprise moment of the game happened some time later while I still hadn't fully assaulted the city: Sabathiel teched Order and immediately converted to it despite having our religions in all his cities. Human players go "aww crap." Not sure if this would've happened with old AI. We never got to see who he would've wardecced next because I took the FoL holy city with my stack mostly intact near her capital, and we decided to end the game as my win. She didn't have much chance anymore and AIs didn't get to vote.
 
..., the ai makes huge stacks but doesn't know how to use them.for example i stood with my stack of about 60 units infront of basiums capitol. 2tiles west of his capitol basium had a stack of more then 80 angels plus a lot of axemen. at the same time elohim who summoned basium had a gigantic stack of over 200units also within striking distance. neither attacked me nor did they defend their capitol. also they let their heroes wander alone right next to our border. i picked of corlindale + kithra and basium this way.
in the same game the hippus where conquering the whole north side of the map i saw them destroy the amurites with horse archers and chariots around turn 220-250? now at turn 350+ they are fighting a war against kuriotates with lots of warriors,archers,hunters. almost no horse archers or chariots in sight.

I can confirm that and sadly I have to say that all those "useless" huge stacks with partly useless spell casting increase AI turn time a lot, so my mid- and late-games on a small map with ~10 civs are about as slow as on a standard map with ~14 civs before the patch.
 
I can confirm that and sadly I have to say that all those "useless" huge stacks with partly useless spell casting increase AI turn time a lot, so my mid- and late-games on a small map with ~10 civs are about as slow as on a standard map with ~14 civs before the patch.

1. Yup, the turn time increased noticable with the last two patches.

2. I'm not a big fan of the AI settlers running around on the map at the beginning of the game. Many map scripts (and also FlavourMod) put a lot of thought into giving them nice and appropriate starts, but that's partly a waste of time now.
 
The more I've played with the new AI the more I feel the total number of units they have is just totally out of hand. Big empires will be sporting hundreds of various units. It makes late wars almost unplayable. I had to wait for 15 minutes while I watched two huge stacks going at it. It seems even if the AI units were reduced by half they would still have too many. People have commented about the level but if you turn down the level the AI just becomes a pushover.
 
made a comparision on prince/pangea. I saw a few weird things but overall patch i looks good compared to g. (important numbers are those below rival average). Well done Kael :goodjob:

Spoiler Patch g :




Spoiler Patch i :




Spoiler Wildmana 5.0 :


 

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The more I've played with the new AI the more I feel the total number of units they have is just totally out of hand. Big empires will be sporting hundreds of various units. It makes late wars almost unplayable. I had to wait for 15 minutes while I watched two huge stacks going at it. It seems even if the AI units were reduced by half they would still have too many. People have commented about the level but if you turn down the level the AI just becomes a pushover.

This is a good point. Lowering the difficulty level results in less units, but it also results in that AI having less technologies, less production(meaning you get more wonders), etc.

Personally, I think most of the AI changes should be undone. It is nice to have the AI actually casting spells now, but the moving settlers is annoying as hell(that's one of the major reasons I stopped playing Wild Mana) and now it's in the base mod. In addition, the AI that is not related to casting spells is just f--ed up.
 
This is a good point. Lowering the difficulty level results in less units, but it also results in that AI having less technologies, less production(meaning you get more wonders), etc.

Personally, I think most of the AI changes should be undone. It is nice to have the AI actually casting spells now, but the moving settlers is annoying as hell(that's one of the major reasons I stopped playing Wild Mana) and now it's in the base mod. In addition, the AI that is not related to casting spells is just f--ed up.

You're being reactionary just because the AI is playing the game properly. Its their maintenance and upgrade costs that need to be reviewed.
 
You're being reactionary just because the AI is playing the game properly. Its their maintenance and upgrade costs that need to be reviewed.

The main complaints here is that the AI's aren't that effective at properly using their stacks.
 
The main complaints here is that the AI's aren't that effective at properly using their stacks.

Actually my biggest problem right now is with the AI maintenance cost allowing them to support so many units. The AI does do some odd stuff with stacks and heroes but it's never been perfect with them. Overall the AI seems better but just has to many units. That's my two cents at least.
 
You're being reactionary just because the AI is playing the game properly. Its their maintenance and upgrade costs that need to be reviewed.
Are you even paying attention to my posts? I'm doing better now then I was before the patch. I'm dominating the Immortal AI. The AI is not playing the game properly, the only thing they are doing is building extra units. If the maintenance and upgrade costs are re-examined, I will probably end up moving up to Diety because the AI will still be spamming stacks of archers, and the AI will still be using them ineffectively. It's not the extra units I have a problem with; they're a minor annoyance that is easily taken care of. It's the AI's behavior concerning stack movement, war declarations, unit/building priorities, settler movement, etc.

The AI does do some odd stuff with stacks and heroes but it's never been perfect with them.
Stack AI was better before the patch, because the AI would actually use their stacks to defend and attack cities, go on patrol, etc. Now they just have hundreds of units tropsing around their territory, waiting for my high-mobility units to pick them off and farm EXP.
 
for me Barbarian world doesn't do anything. are you supposed to turn on raging barbarians too? there weren't any barb cities at the start and there aren't any now even though there is an uninhabited continent(turn 345). i don't think this game option works.
 
made a comparision on prince/pangea. I saw a few weird things but overall patch i looks good compared to g. (important numbers are those below rival average). Well done Kael :goodjob:
Sorry if I'm overlooking something obvious, but I don't understand your comparison. How were these figures generated? I know how to view demographics info, I mean what process did you use to make it possible to meaningfully compare the demographics between three games?
 
AI autoplay from the same save, I presume?

Anyway, it seems that the new economical AI is sound - it's the war management that is weird.
 
Sorry if I'm overlooking something obvious, but I don't understand your comparison. How were these figures generated? I know how to view demographics info, I mean what process did you use to make it possible to meaningfully compare the demographics between three games?
I loaded the same scenario (simple pangea map) with all three mods. Then used AIAutoplay, a debug tool that Kael merged into FFH. It allows you to let the AI take over your civ and play for you. Of course there is some randomness involved in it. In the wildmana thread you can find a comparision for a Erebus scenario map, results are similar.
 
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