Rate the new AI

[Senethro]

With AI we have to prioritize the bad behavior and try to improve it. There are fundamentals that have to exist before unit logic matters. For example the AI has to build a competitive city and army. If the AI is flondering with warriors when you have champions then the best unitai in the world doesn't help.

Been thinking about this point. While some people have specific complaints about unit movement, I think the AI is making poor choices in deciding what to build. Specifically, archers. 50 strong stacks of archers (by the khazad no less) were imploding into my cities. The AI needs to build much less recon and archery line units, and to NEVER send them on the attack.

Hypothesis: Warriors have too much preference to upgrade to archers because 1)The low upgrade costs of AI handicaps are causing warriors with city defense behaviour to mass upgrade to Archers preferentially 2) The CPU is building Archery Ranges first and the happen to blunder into the city upgrade radius before they have a chance to upgrade to axeman.

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

One AI action I have noticed is that they tend to have one (maybe two) big stack of defenders that run around trying to beat you to their cities. For example I would have a small stack of champions (about 10+/-) about 5 catapults and about 10 horsemen to harass. Instead of taking out my little army they run to what city they are programmed to think I am heading to. A few times they could have stomped a mud hole in me, but they had to find a week city to protect. The Svarts were the ones doing this, they had no magic to bring against me, just a bunch of Warriors, Recon and Archers. They really need to show there mages some love at the moment they are wasting their Arcane trait.

BUT!!!! I got hit by a HUGE barrage of fireballs for the first time last night by Amerite fire bowmen NOW that made me tuck tail and ask for peace!!!

That being said there are way too many archer type units being built by the AI...

 

[Neomega]

Don't get me wrong. im all for the AI playing like me in this particular game, but im not going to say that the AI is broken because it doesn't. I brought up the point of other games simply to show that in video games in which the AI doesn't play just like you can still be fun. I just cant understand why people just cant enjoy what they have. this game is soooooo much fun. how can it be so fun if the basic principles are broken?

I agree. I roleplay my SP games. Hell, if I find an thane or disciple in a lair, and it doesn't match my role, I will not found the religion with them. I am looking fo r achallenge, but I am moreso looking for essentially a randomized RPG.

I am also having some really fun games with this new AI. The barbs are making things always interesting... forcing me to put up forts and citadels in good location in my empire... all sorts of fun stuff.

**********

However, I voted "little better". I love that the AI can and does use magic. that is awesome. But it does not defend even within it's own borders well. This would be good if the AI did not have such awesome upgrade powers, but it does. Also, it should see green units as throwaways, and try to amass a couple key experienced units. The AI will hardly ever even get easy kills by sliding an axeman out onto a roaded tile next to a city and waste a barbarian.

Instead, it makes a mega stack, and then marches it around within its borders and kills barbs every now and then. This mega stack accrues wounded units. It's an interesting tactic, but I am not sure how good it is.

What is *worse* about the AI, is that now if I accidently leave one or two highly promoted units, as I like to call "nutz hangin" (meaning alone, with no stack defenders) in enemy territory, the AI no longer gives priority to wasting these high value targets in a counter attack. The old AI was guaranteed to. It would mean perhaps they would lose 5 or 6 green units, but they still would do it.

 

[Emptiness]

Thanks again for your help on this, and all the tiem you spend answering questions here. If you didn't notice, with patch "h" your name was added to the thanks main menu graphic.

I hadn't noticed. Thanks very much for the recognition.

The holy grail of Ai testign is if you can provide a save where you have the problem condition occurring. Thats perfect for me since I can play with the values and have the AI retry, rather than just making a change and hoping it address the issue you are seeing.

I haven't been making saves, but I can try to replicate the problems I've seen (on small maps for easy distribution).

 

[Smakemupagus]

Honestly I havent seen the issue you describe (the ai failing to attack when it has superior numbers).

I also have seen this issue in my three patch (i) games. AIs have big (~6 unit) city garrisons plus a mobile stack of 60 or even 100 champion level units vs. my 2-longbow border towns and my mobile force of maybe 30. The AI could easily have done a ton of damage or probably wiped me entirely off the map.

Even after I declared war (with AI still having a power graph advantage) it still used the stacks very timidly, most of the time not venturing out of its own territory. I ended up winning the war by grinding them down slowly with e.g., Shadows, while the AI armies milled about. Only once was it even brave enough to even counterattack a captured city, winning easily but too little to late.

By the way, In the poll I voted "A little improvement," since i was definitely impressed with the AI handling its economy well enough to build big stacks of champions.

p.s. re: magic & promotions. Mixed bag, i'd say. i've seen it using summons and fireballs correctly. But, it still doesn't do a great job valueing veterans or heroes. As an example an AI lost a high promoted Bambur attacking a Black mirror illusion of one of my soldiers in between turns, at probably something like 50/50 odds

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

Is the AI building rituals in patch i or j?

 

[Jenaelha]

I think on first blush this is a lot better. For me, reasonable magic use is huge improvement on its own.
I think Barbarian AI is a little better. To have them not suicide makes them more difficult. An exciting change.
I think the AI is marginalbly better at waging war but I don't have the sample size for a valid evaluation. I'm seeing some good mixing of units but I still haven't seen highly decorated units and haven't seen much pillaging (could learn from the Barbs here).

 

[Breunor]

I voted a lot better. Before the expansion I had won 6 out of 7 on Emperor and had just mvoed to immortal (one of 2). Since the new AI I got crushed my first 2 on emperor - now some of this is that I had gotten used to strategies that I had to change.

I'm winning my third, but there is absolutely no question that the AI is more competitive for me. Indeed, I think it has improved the biggest issue I had with FfH - it used to be that if I got through the early game I could always win. Now I'm finding it a real challenge along the way.

Kudos to everyone (Sephi, Kael) for the improvements.

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Zen Black]

There is definitely an improvement from g to j, but it has created it's own issues.

1.) The AI doesn't attack nearly enough and doesn't use it's unit advantage.
2.) The AI doesn't pick off enough units that are easy xp.
3.) The AI doesn't use it's promotions very well, definitely need to specialize these more.
4.) The AI doesn't suicide it's summons very well.
5.) The AI doesn't build enough catapults (this can probably be used to help fix #1)
6.) The AI doesn't pillage.
7.) Naval AI, I'm sure you know this is broken and makes you only play 1 map type ... Pangaea.

The Archer issue I think is more of a game imbalance rather than just an AI issue. Obviously if an AI doesn't have Copper or Horses it is forced to build Archers as a point of logic, but the AI favors archery and recon units even when they are in need of invasion units which happen to be the worst of the unit lines. If these unit lines were addressed to match the metal and horse lines, it might not be as huge a disparity.

 

[civ_king]

I'm a masochist I guess I love the enemy wiping the floor with me, ala Dwarf Fortress. I love competitive games against the AI, the better the play the happier I am, my most memorable games are being beat up and then pulling a win

 

[zeph2k]

the AI barley declares war. even when the have insanly high numbers (i have agressive AI on)
the AI uses spells
the AI makes huge numbers. then just keeps them in borders. not attacking barbs
when in war the AI barley uses its units. there no longer a big stack of doom but a big stack of wander around

IMO: keep the part of the code that allows units to use magic. scrap the rest

 

[MiKa523]

Specifically what is broken?

I'll mention this now the third time, since I've got no feedback at all (although first time was in wild-mana sub-forum):
Always-War is broken
Try to play an Always-War game in team with an AI and watch how every AI (including your teammate) that is in "war-mode" keeps spamming warriors only - no settlers, no buildings - until its research output goes down to 0, and still it doesn't send out these warrior stacks, because it isn't "enough" power-wise.

While this, of course, is a special case scenario, the way the AI acts during war probalby isn't different to "normal" games.


In general I think that all time big AI stacks aren't much better than giving the AI some bonus so it can keep up with humans. It's the same philosophy, but opposed to a simply bonus, big AI unit stacks slow down your pc and increase the AI turn-time by a lot and sooner into the proceeding game, unless you only play the beginning of games, or you are blessed with a sky-net like pc, or you restrict yourself to rather boring small/tiny maps with only a few AIs.

 

[Humakty]

I have tested a noble diff game on pangaea (rather monarch+ usually), for the sake of seing what has changed, and I must say the AI is really challenging, new players will have some really bad surprises discovering a minor power has at least 7 units per city.

The AI is still teching well through mid game, they always have some I don't have (they only seem to trade between them though, all trade options enabled).

They do use spells, I had to face blurred defenders in one Calabim town, seems it was cast every turn, not of much use against centaurs, but at least they do try.

The Calabim army (the only one I had to face so far) was composed of approximatively 1/3 of archers, and 2/3 of morois. The only assault they sent was composed of morois, as it should baring anything better.

Despite their technological lead, they don't seem to really try to do wonders, rather spend all of their time building troops, it seems.( But I hadn't this pbm in my monarch game.)

So overall I'd say the AI is much better, even if it still lacks insight into what to do with troops/mage (but I don't remember the base game AI being that much of a strategist either), at least their casters cast their spells, a huge step toward a competitive AI. Plus they do develop, even at low difficulties.

I will soon report my late game wars, should show how the AI manages/composes their late game SoDs.

 

[Twan]

In general I think that all time big AI stacks aren't much better than giving the AI some bonus so it can keep up with humans. It's the same philosophy, but opposed to a simply bonus, big AI unit stacks slow down your pc and increase the AI turn-time by a lot and sooner into the proceeding game, unless you only play the beginning of games, or you are blessed with a sky-net like pc, or you restrict yourself to rather boring small/tiny maps with only a few AIs.

/Agree

When I was happy to see AIs finally use some magic and make (a little) better economic and religious choices, I would have been happier with these changes only.

The stacks size inflation and continuous useless random AI troops movements taking a lot of time make the game quasi unplayable with my favorite settings (huge maps, 15+ AIs, epic or marathon speed).

Also, like said in the other thread, I've seen far too much AIs civs being destroyed early by barbarians, and very few early world wonders being made by the AIs, so I can't say that the early game civilization AI is really improved.

 

[Zharkov]

the AI barley declares war. even when the have insanly high numbers (i have agressive AI on)
the AI uses spells
the AI makes huge numbers. then just keeps them in borders. not attacking barbs
when in war the AI barley uses its units. there no longer a big stack of doom but a big stack of wander around

IMO: keep the part of the code that allows units to use magic. scrap the rest

Although I do not second the conclusion, I have observed the same problems yesterday:
As the only evil (calabim by nature) I would expect my jolly good neighbours to crush me, when they have the chance to - and they have. The AI is economicly stronger than ever before, but does not really take advantage of it. They even leave the barbarians alone, even when they could use their territory well.
Though, I would caution against too radical changes - perhaps putting more emphasis on a more aggressive behavior would be enough.
At least the good guys should act, as if they were doing something about that vampires...

 

[dazaris]

The AI not using naval units is a problem (patch g). The AI is also not using high-end units for certain civs, the Clan of Embers and Lurichep in particular. This most likely has something to do with their upgrade paths, or lack thereof.

None of these comments are intended to knock on Sephi's work. The AI is a big step in the right direction. There is just more work to be done, particularly regarding certain civs' military strategies (Hippus should prolly use more mounted units too).

This ^^

Just started playing the mod and have noticed the AI does not use ships at all. In games now I usually just kick out a few privateers and blockade every other civ's naval cities. They sit there uncontested for the rest of the game giving me a steady flow of income and crippling their economy and growth in the process. If I'm on another island they can't get to me at all as well. Will play as the Infernals and Basium and the other goody goodies will keep declaring war on me from the other side of the world but never actually come after me.

The AI also doesn't seem to continue expanding after a certain point. Not sure what point that is exactly but it seems they just give up after a certain amount of time in the game. Could have something to do with the huge "Stacks of Doom" that they build and have sitting in cities. They seem to cripple their economy churning out masses of low quality units to create huge armies which they are unable to support. The Clan of Embers seems to be the major offenders here. They also don't seem to fully upgrade their magic users and you usually see those running around not fully promoted (Glowing blue).

The mod seems to be pretty amazing other than that. Fantastic back story, very well realized and a lot of variation between the play styles and flavour of the different factions (Love the Armageddon component). The AI lets it down however as it seems to be limited to amassing huge amounts of units in their home cities and leaving swathes of territory full of resources unsettled right nearby. Then when it comes to actually get around to fighting it's more of a trial then than an enjoyable experience (Slowly whittling down a giant stack o' doom or facing one in combat if you happen to be on the same landmass as the person you're fighting).

I realize the above is basically just ing rather than offering anything constructive. I'm no modder, but I'll have a look online, read up on Civ 4 AI modding and will see if there's anything useful I can contribute other than my complaints .

Also, is there an older patch version with a "better" AI, i.e. is there a version with an AI that does use ships and play in a different manner but may be worse off in another area?

 

[Senethro]

Patch G (You're probably on patch J) and Turinturambars economic AI will give you a different experience. I don't know how good it does navy but it did landwar pretty good.
G: http://kael.civfanatics.net/files/FfH2041g.exe
TT's E AI: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=323536

 

[Lone Wolf]

For the AI navy, just up the capacity of ships by two.

 

[Tholal]

For the AI navy, just up the capacity of ships by two.

That wont work with the latest version because some of the AI changes included simply remove war and transport ships from the possible build lists for the AI.

 

[Emptiness]

The AI also doesn't seem to continue expanding after a certain point. Not sure what point that is exactly but it seems they just give up after a certain amount of time in the game.

While the AI is at war it doesn't build settlers. This is probably what you are seeing as the halt of expansion. If peace holds until the world fills with cities then everything is fine (in the sense of expansion, that is), but if wars start breaking out before that point then gaps can linger.

There's an official AI feedback thread (Post 0.41h AI feedback needed). You might want to take a look at it, to see what others have reported, and to add anything that you think needs to be (re)mentioned. If you have saves that demonstrate the problems you describe, that will be most helpful.

Sephi has posted an AI fix that should improve AI performance in your games. I haven't tried it yet myself, so I can't say exactly what problems it fixes. Overall, AI performance should be improved. If you do use it, and then report problems, just make sure you mention that you have his fix installed.