Random AI thoughts from FireTuner Autoplays

[notque]

Just to follow up on my feedback, I just had a war and lost and I think I need to lower difficulty (which is a great sign!)

The AIs played WAY better with the mod. I didn't see stupid settler behaviour. I will start a new game and see how I go.

Yep, and it's even better in the next version. I'm glad you're having a good experience with it.

 

[Elhoim]

The AI does settle way faster now. It still does some weird "I'll place a city very far away from my empire" thing, but at least it doesn't stay idle settling wise.

For example, Hatshepsut is trying to go north with 2 settlers for some reason when there's place near her home, while Trung Trac is going downwards with two settlers as well (the south green is Confusius, who also forward settle on the right and lost a city to independents).

 

[notque]

The AI does settle way faster now. It still does some weird "I'll place a city very far away from my empire" thing, but at least it doesn't stay idle settling wise.

For example, Hatshepsut is trying to go north with 2 settlers for some reason when there's place near her home, while Trung Trac is going downwards with two settlers as well (the south green is Confusius, who also forward settle on the right and lost a city to independents).

View attachment 719351

Right, it still does happen, but it's due to flavor. I've been having discussions with people. I argue it shouldn't, and flavor is silly. They should play like humans.

Others argue flavor and variety is important.

So I'm trying to sort if I fix it or not. It's now leader specific and not a general problem.

 

[Xaviarlol]

Yep, and it's even better in the next version. I'm glad you're having a good experience with it.

I have a save here that has Benjamin Franklin sending a settler to a stupid place. Would you like to see it so you can find which behaviour tree is driving it? Ive attached it, in case it helps. (it is with your second version of the mod)

 

[Acken]

Oh i should mention, there is a new version out. I'm not sure if you've updated.

I have one more unreleased set of changes, I will probably do more, and then release a new version tomorrow.

I have the 1.01 update but if you are already cooking something for today I'll wait before starting a new game as a player today.

 

[Cruor]

Right, it still does happen, but it's due to flavor. I've been having discussions with people. I argue it shouldn't, and flavor is silly. They should play like humans.

Others argue flavor and variety is important.

So I'm trying to sort if I fix it or not. It's now leader specific and not a general problem.

It's ok to argue what tastes better, vanilla or chocolate, because that is purely opinion. Thats flavor. AI settling far away is bad. It's 1) unrealistic 2) hurts the AI (can't defend itself) 3) ruins the look of the map. I may be biased, but I would go with the "settles closer to home camp" If its that big a deal, maybe have two versions?

Ok so I have what I think is your second version. What I have seen: 1) AI is absolutely better. I won my war (Immortal) but it was not easy. AI actually kept 2 archers at home with walls so I needed like3:1 odds to win, just like an attacker IRL needs. Independant people were going nuts, I almost lost a city to them, as did another AI (city was down to a red sliver before they saved it) 2) AI is doing a better job settling. I have not seen an across the entire map city. I also have seen no idiotic 3 tiles away forward settling on players which I love. No words for how much I hate forward settling in any and all 4X games. AI has done a good job of founding cities, I was like "Damnit, they settled there, guess I'll take it and burn it...wait a minute...uh that spot is great, I couldn't do better, guess I'll keep it" 3) They are founding cities more quickly now, getting closer/hitting cap. It is absolutely an improvement.

The Bad: AI STILL won't use commanders. 1) I had a war where as mentioned above, they made units, they defended their cities, but their commander went for one of my cities alone, and just sat there. I feel this is going to need a Firaxis fix, like maybe rework commanders to be "ghosts" or something, like there, but they don't interact in any way with the world aside from buffing/transporting units. If they are a normal "unit" the AI is always going to be dumb with them. Maybe they will have the commander "attach" to a unit. 2) I had an enemy archer just stand there in the field. I had used my attacks on thier city and he COULD attack me but didn't I attacked him, ended turn, he didn't attack back, or run. Just stood there to die. This was one instance and has not been repeated.

Again, overall, big improvement. Good work. With an AI mod, a few good maps, at least 10 players in a game (still shocked 8 is the cap) religion rework, and a few other extras/tweaks we might actually have a good game here, much better than Civ 6.

 

[pietro1990]

whats the deal with the AI just declaring war on you even though you are on the other side of the map and you have zero negative modifiers on them.
Just decide its time to denounce this player and atack him and the question is allways why ? Because its a bad decision and has no reason to do so


Also why do i get a negative modifiers if the AI settles close to my city he did it not i did it!!

 

[notque]

Just trying to understand some of it myself. Hope I am not distracting you too much
For example you reported :

I can see

    <Row NodeType="Check Backup Target" NodeId="59" ShapeId="2">
      <Description>Check if there is too much force at the current target, switch to a backup if available or fail</Description>

and then this is used in 2 different data definitions:

    <Row DataName="Excess Force For Backup" DefnId="0" DataType="int" NodeType="Check Backup Target" Required="False" UserData="True" />
    <Row DataName="Excess Force For Failure" DefnId="1" DataType="int" NodeType="Check Backup Target" Required="False" UserData="True" />

and then used once in the assault tree as node 17:

   <Row NodeType="Check Backup Target" NodeId="17" TreeName="Simple City Assault" />

with these two values for the 2 definitions

  <Row DefnId="0" NodeId="17" TreeName="Simple City Assault" DefaultData="1" />
    <Row DefnId="1" NodeId="17" TreeName="Simple City Assault" DefaultData="0" />

From there are you playing with "DefaultData" to see what it does in the tuner ?

Also where do you see the tree structure/branching ?

You don't have to play with it, all the defines are there. I'm working on Behavior Trees right now though, So I'm going to focus on the work I'm doing with them.

 

[notque]

whats the deal with the AI just declaring war on you even though you are on the other side of the map and you have zero negative modifiers on them.
Just decide its time to denounce this player and atack him and the question is allways why ? Because its a bad decision and has no reason to do so


Also why do i get a negative modifiers if the AI settles close to my city he did it not i did it!!

I haven't touched that part of the code yet. I will get to it.

 

[notque]

It's ok to argue what tastes better, vanilla or chocolate, because that is purely opinion. Thats flavor. AI settling far away is bad. It's 1) unrealistic 2) hurts the AI (can't defend itself) 3) ruins the look of the map. I may be biased, but I would go with the "settles closer to home camp" If its that big a deal, maybe have two versions?

Ok so I have what I think is your second version. What I have seen: 1) AI is absolutely better. I won my war (Immortal) but it was not easy. AI actually kept 2 archers at home with walls so I needed like3:1 odds to win, just like an attacker IRL needs. Independant people were going nuts, I almost lost a city to them, as did another AI (city was down to a red sliver before they saved it) 2) AI is doing a better job settling. I have not seen an across the entire map city. I also have seen no idiotic 3 tiles away forward settling on players which I love. No words for how much I hate forward settling in any and all 4X games. AI has done a good job of founding cities, I was like "Damnit, they settled there, guess I'll take it and burn it...wait a minute...uh that spot is great, I couldn't do better, guess I'll keep it" 3) They are founding cities more quickly now, getting closer/hitting cap. It is absolutely an improvement.

The Bad: AI STILL won't use commanders. 1) I had a war where as mentioned above, they made units, they defended their cities, but their commander went for one of my cities alone, and just sat there. I feel this is going to need a Firaxis fix, like maybe rework commanders to be "ghosts" or something, like there, but they don't interact in any way with the world aside from buffing/transporting units. If they are a normal "unit" the AI is always going to be dumb with them. Maybe they will have the commander "attach" to a unit. 2) I had an enemy archer just stand there in the field. I had used my attacks on thier city and he COULD attack me but didn't I attacked him, ended turn, he didn't attack back, or run. Just stood there to die. This was one instance and has not been repeated.

Again, overall, big improvement. Good work. With an AI mod, a few good maps, at least 10 players in a game (still shocked 8 is the cap) religion rework, and a few other extras/tweaks we might actually have a good game here, much better than Civ 6.

I am still working on commanders. It all takes time. I will get to it.

 

[pietro1990]

I haven't touched that part of the code yet. I will get to it.

are you a developer of the game or is this a personall change to the game?

 

[notque]

are you a developer of the game or is this a personall change to the game?

I am not a developer of Civilization 7. I am a developer. I have wrote AI mods for Civ since 4.

 

[infiniterocks]

Just had the AI troll me. A major power civ attacked my lone city near their borders dropped it to defenseless and one attack from capturing it. They chose to leave it alone for 2 turns allowing my military to chase them away and save my city. If it was the barbarians, they would have took it from me.

 

[notque]

Just had the AI troll me. A major power civ attacked my lone city near their borders dropped it to defenseless and one attack from capturing it. They chose to leave it alone for 2 turns allowing my military to chase them away and save my city. If it was the barbarians, they would have took it from me.

I'll look into it. I assume I'll need to adjust the behavior tree for city attacks.

 

[Elhoim]

Right, it still does happen, but it's due to flavor. I've been having discussions with people. I argue it shouldn't, and flavor is silly. They should play like humans.

Others argue flavor and variety is important.

So I'm trying to sort if I fix it or not. It's now leader specific and not a general problem.

Please do, IMO. Hatshepsup (Egypt) does this extreme "I'll settle very far around the coast" thing, wasting a lot of time in subpar far away cities. Then Confusius (Khemer) and Trung Trac (Maurya) do the hard forward settling, which also leaves them exposed. The one with more consistency is Xerxes, doing a more compact empire.

EDIT: Looking a bit at her code, if I found it correctly it should send her towards navigable rivers, but creates this weird "let's go far away and settle on the edges of the map" thing.

 

[notque]

Please do, IMO. Hatshepsup (Egypt) does this extreme "I'll settle very far around the coast" thing, wasting a lot of time in subpar far away cities. Then Confusius (Khemer) and Trung Trac (Maurya) do the hard forward settling, which also leaves them exposed. The one with more consistency is Xerxes, doing a more compact empire.

EDIT: Looking a bit at her code, if I found it correctly it should send her towards navigable rivers, but creates this weird "let's go far away and settle on the edges of the map" thing.

View attachment 719472

Yes, I understand all of it. I have to prioritize, and right now there are bigger bugs to deal with. I will get to it.

There are just way worse bugs players can't see going on, like armies getting stuck in one spot for 50 turns.

 

[Mezmorizor]

I think you are severely underestimating the complexity of coding AI, if you're saying the AI team just doesn't care and asking if you can just "turn off" forward settling. There isn't a function that says if(care == False){ forwardSettle = True }.

I feel like it's the opposite. Obviously there isn't a "set forward settle=1" function, but based off of what notque said, the AI is factoring in resources already taken by another city in its settlement logic which would cause forward settling due to capitals (at least I assume they ensure this) always being placed at good positions. They basically see the horsehockey tundra city right on a capital border as being ~1/2-3/4 a capital which is a very solid city. Somebody who has played with the mod can confirm if that change actually fixed the behavior I guess, but that's pretty close to "oops I set the forward settle for the lulz function to 1 instead of 0".

Not to say that coding AI is easy, but V and VI really, really dropped the ball hard on the AI side. IV also had some low hanging fruit.

 

[notque]

I feel like it's the opposite. Obviously there isn't a "set forward settle=1" function, but based off of what notque said, the AI is factoring in resources already taken by another city in its settlement logic which would cause forward settling due to capitals (at least I assume they ensure this) always being placed at good positions. They basically see the horsehockey tundra city right on a capital border as being ~1/2-3/4 a capital which is a very solid city. Somebody who has played with the mod can confirm if that change actually fixed the behavior I guess, but that's pretty close to "oops I set the forward settle for the lulz function to 1 instead of 0".

Not to say that coding AI is easy, but V and VI really, really dropped the ball hard on the AI side. IV also had some low hanging fruit.

You are both correct, and incorrect.

It's difficult to discuss this stuff, because you are right, there are logic issues there, but there's also behavior tree issues.

Those aren't low hanging fruit. It's really hard work. Next up is the hard work of the city attack behavior trees.

 

[notque]

I have a save here that has Benjamin Franklin sending a settler to a stupid place. Would you like to see it so you can find which behaviour tree is driving it? Ive attached it, in case it helps. (it is with your second version of the mod)

I'm sorry, the new version we release tomorrow is so much better, that I'm not sure this feedback it helpful at the moment. So much has been done.

The speed of pace will slow down so I can better take in this specific, and important feedback. I'm sorry that right now there is so much to fix, that providing me useful feedback even a few days after the mod released, just isn't useful because so many more things have been added and changed.

I can tell you, settling is worlds better. Like, it's honestly magic watching it in action.

 

[notque]

Just to follow up on my feedback, I just had a war and lost and I think I need to lower difficulty (which is a great sign!)

The AIs played WAY better with the mod. I didn't see stupid settler behaviour. I will start a new game and see how I go.

I appreciate it. Honestly, I think the version before is trash compared to the unreleased version. There's a lot of stuff I have working that simply feels like magic now.

I'm excited to get it into everyone's hands.