Report Questionable AI Behavior

[Afforess]

If you notice the AI behaving in questionable or irrational behavior, making poor choices, or just general oddities, post them here.

For me to address the issues, I need a save, your A New Dawn.log file (Located in the root of the Rise of Mankind mod folder), and screenshots, if applicable.

Keep in mind that this thread is not for general bug reports. Those can be posted in the Bug Reports and Feedback thread.

 

[vincentz]

I saw a suspicious AI standing in a tunnel last night. I suspect it selling cracks.
I also saw two underage AI's kissing in the park. I suspect them being betas.
And finally I saw an AI make REALLY BAD war decisions....

Sorry, my bad. It was just Bush.

(sorry, couldn't help it.)

 

[Killtech]

ah yes. a should be an easy one but it's quite relevant to me:

advanced start! AI just doesn't understand what to do and fails completely. it is really nasty as the slowest game speeds and higher difficulty make advanced starts necessary.

some suggestion on how to use advanced start options from an older post of myself:

0. Advanced start
AI makes very very(!) bad choices here. if you find some time you could rework that maybe, Afforess. priories are following:
0. set the capital
1. one defensive unit (it's necessary for the AI but i mostly don't spent points on that)
2. place a single city or a settler if no good place for 2nd settlement is available.
3. increase population in capital by one.. sometimes in 2nd settlement too (huge economy boost for the start)
4. tech depending on resources visible
5. one worker can't hurt (or an work boat if fish is in city radius)
6. culture buildings (if the city will have low hammers and a valuable resource (food) is out of culture borders)
7. tech to speed up the discovery of a religion

also it would be a good idea to turn advanced start costs for cultural expansion down - the costs stand in no relation to the usability of this.

 

[Arayuth]

Barbarian AI is afraid of The Hot Gates,

That mean even in Raging[and World] of Barbarian,
if I build unit and close all path to my capital with one unit per tile
NO barbarian will ever attack me[except transported from galley but by that time I'm ready]

But if u change it maybe I cannot play raging barb in monarch anymore TwT.

 

[Blackflag421]

Just make the AI NEVER add a second culture level. For AI's that don't start with Ritualism, have the AI always buy the tech and build a fire pit + elder council in every city, and 1 worker per city.

Is there a way to tell the AI to build more military if raging barbarians is on, and station them near the edges of culture? If not, might need to recommend no raging barbs.

Also, always buy agriculture or hunting or pottery if the AI doesn't start with agri/hunting. Need food to grow!

The stuff killtech mentioned. It's annoying to start on a high difficulty, then find out you're screwed a couple hundred turns in because it turns out you don't have bronze, iron, obsidian, OR horses within a decent range, and on top of that you have barely any food for growth.

Would need some sort of priority for this stuff, but there's the general idea. Advanced start is great, but there's no point playing it when it turns the game into ez-mode. Usually I see the AI buy military units, a level of culture, and then spend money on things. The capital placement is usually bad, but that's because the blue circle is a lie.

 

[vincentz]

My biggest problem with AI is that it kills it self economically by overproducing units. It also walks around with their units on their own land "scouting" (especially horses and ships), taking up turn time.
They build huge navies with galleys and triremes, but not using them. Also on that front it would be cool to have an event whenever you capture a city with ships in going something like :

A As your forces capture the city, they discover unmanned ships in the harbour
(Ships are captured.)
B As your forces enter the city, the anchored ships sets sail and escapes to sea.
(Ships are moved to closest sea tile.)
C As your forces close in on the harbour, the captain(s) of the ships in port has commanded them set a blaze.)
(Ships disappear as they do now.)


The city placement is unfortunately also very bad. Especially when it comes to sea/rivers. They will often set down the city 1 tile away, so they'll miss out on the (very (almost too) powerfull) buildings that rivers and ocean gives.


When they have the chance they should take it. I played with Ruthless AI on, and the neighbouring AI had an army 18 times stronger than me, but never attacked me.

 

[Blackflag421]

Yeah, I'd weight rivers more heavily. Quite a bit more actually, since in RoM:AND you miss out on +1 per river tile, +1 per river tile, and +1 per river tile as well (+1 per water tile as well if you're Dutch), altho the hammers take until much later in the game.

I've only noticed a few AIs in my current game overproducing units, most of them actually have a reasonable amount of units. Suppliuma massively overproduced military (I had 30 cities to his 3, and yet I only had 3x the units he did) while Ragnar has been underproducing (I gifted him like 5 cities, and 20 turns later 3 of them still had no troops, and the other 2 only had 1 in each).

I play with Ruthless AI as well, if/when coalitions get worked into AND I think Ruthless AI will be a big challenge, as it stands once you're #1 there isn't much to worry about as long as you keep a decent military.

 

[Afforess]

Okay, I haven't made a whole lot of Advanced Start Changes, but here is what I have done:

The AI will not expand the culture for the capital, ever. It's a waste, since the palace does it fine on it's own. Previously, the AI would ALWAYS expand the borders.

The AI will not expand it's culture unless it has a LOT of advanced start points... 50X the points needed to expand the culture level.

The AI will try to add cultural buildings to cities first. Previously, the AI never looked for culture buildings in Advanced Start.

The AI won't put as many improvements around cities if it doesn't have many advance start points to spare. This leaves more for techs.

I also increased the religion tech weights. It's not going to help much... I know, I know, I need to break down and write dedicated religious tech AI.

I also made the river weights increase depending on the number of buildings that exist in the game that require the river. It should make the AI like rivers more...


@Vincentz,

Actually it consumes the most time for units when they decide to sleep for the turn, or fortify. It means that there was no available action for that turn, for that unit, and that can only be determined if ALL other actions were evaluated. Units that sit in AI cities consume the most time. Next time be thankful for those scouts.

 

[Killtech]

The AI will not expand the culture for the capital, ever. It's a waste, since the palace does it fine on it's own. Previously, the AI would ALWAYS expand the borders.

The AI will not expand it's culture unless it has a LOT of advanced start points... 50X the points needed to expand the culture level.

thx. this will help a LOT.

@Vincentz,

Actually it consumes the most time for units when they decide to sleep for the turn, or fortify. It means that there was no available action for that turn, for that unit, and that can only be determined if ALL other actions were evaluated. Units that sit in AI cities consume the most time. Next time be thankful for those scouts.

i'm no vincentz but anyway...

this is some bad AI concept. it makes sense to rework it from the perspective of faster game play and better AI. first if AI is not at war nor planning one military units should be set on fortify status on important tiles (usually cities). these fortified units should not be available for the AI for any action until someone declares war or AI is thinking of conquest itself. then all units are woken up. the idea here is that it should redistribute all its units in case of a war to the front and leave cities in the mainland with few defenders thus it can bring more units to the endangered territories and prevent them from being conquered.

it's just total nonsense that AI has 3 units as garrison in each city (but no further units) and when i declare war to it it doesn't try to redistribute them to the cities i attack. so it's easy for me to take them one by one since my military is concentrated while his is totally spread over his whole empire.

and since we talk about AI city defense: AI should really consider to retreat with its units from a city if there is no chance it can defend it against a superior force. i mean if you have only 2 defenders in a town with low defense modifier that is sieged by an army of 10 units there is just no sense to try defending it. you lose it without making any relevant damage to the enemy, so you retreat - just like the greek evacuated Athens in the greek war against the persians to defeat them at salamis.

 

[Blackflag421]

They might only be a few changes for advanced start, but I bet those changes will have a HUGE impact on the AI's performance with advanced start. Can't wait to try the new version with them

 

[vincentz]

If DefendCity AI is the last on the list of AI choices then the whole AI priotizing should be rewritten.

DefendCity AI should be the first thing that the AI should consider. Any units not being used to defend cities can then roam around doing stupid meaningless scouting

edit : and when I talk about stupid meaningless scouting, I mean the back and forth, back and forth, back and forth movement of especially ships and horses within the AI's own borders. Seems very pointless. If that could be removed I could see a huge speed improvement.

Edit again : My suggestion would be something like : If AI at peace, then 90% of units should find city to defend. Preferably close to other civs border/Danger area. 5-8% should protect resources, and the remaining could do scouting. Ships should do SeaPatrol close to resources (I'm not sure, but I don't think I ever saw an AI doing SeaPatrol)

 

[Iceciro]

The AI likes cavalry units. A lot. It builds an incredible amount of them. To the point of only having cavalry and siege units around the cannons era, except for city defenders. It makes anti-enemy promotions really easy - formation, formation, formation.

I don't mean just the specific Cavalry unit - I mean the whole mounted line from about Light Cavalry in the Stirrup era on.

 

[Afforess]

If DefendCity AI is the last on the list of AI choices then the whole AI priotizing should be rewritten.

DefendCity AI should be the first thing that the AI should consider. Any units not being used to defend cities can then roam around doing stupid meaningless scouting

Defending City AI is one of the first choices. Skipping it's turn and doing nothing is the very last choice.

The AI likes cavalry units. A lot. It builds an incredible amount of them. To the point of only having cavalry and siege units around the cannons era, except for city defenders. It makes anti-enemy promotions really easy - formation, formation, formation.

I don't mean just the specific Cavalry unit - I mean the whole mounted line from about Light Cavalry in the Stirrup era on.

Is it one specific leader? Some leaders have inclinations to certain types of units.

 

[Iceciro]

In my last game, it was Mansa Musa, Suppiluliuma, and Deganwadia - I can single them out because they were the tech leaders I was shooting at, but I never remember seeing an AI that didn't have roving packs of horse-mounted units on whatever their tech level was.

 

[i_diavolorosso]

In my game, i stationed my battleship near sitting bull border/
And he, irrationally keep spamming privateer to attacked my battleship, which is obviously failed. Maybe if he gather a lot of privateer than attack my single battleship at one time, it still rational
But instead of that, he sent his privateer one by one, which is very weird decision

And please note, that this is on deity!

 

[vincentz]

i think privateers should be connected to a civic.
vassalage or mercantilism ???

 

[i_diavolorosso]

i think privateers should be connected to a civic.
vassalage or mercantilism ???

IMHO it should be with mercantilism

 

[Iceciro]

AI is still stupid when it comes to forts - Mehmed and his workers think it is a fantastic idea to replace the already-built orchard on these olives with a fort. The civic he's running gives forts +1 gold, but that still shouldn't outpace the plantation yield.

 

[xcrissxcrossx]

AI is still stupid when it comes to forts - Mehmed and his workers think it is a fantastic idea to replace the already-built orchard on these olives with a fort. The civic he's running gives forts +1 gold, but that still shouldn't outpace the plantation yield.

This is normal if the olive's are outside of a city's fat cross. In that case, the Yields are useless, and the tile gets a higher defensive bonus. If it is in the fat cross, that is a problem.

 

[Iceciro]

It was in the cross. Otherwise I could see the fort, yeah.