RHQ Artificially Intelligent AI Mod RHQ AI Mod 2.10

[Morgawr]

<Affinities>
<Row Affinity="AFFINITY_FRIENDLY" HostilityChance="0" NeutralityChance="0"/>
<Row Affinity="AFFINITY_NEUTRAL" HostilityChance="80" NeutralityChance="100"/>
<Row Affinity="AFFINITY_HOSTILE" HostilityChance="80" NeutralityChance="100"/>
</Affinities>

Isnt that some kind of mistake that neutral and hostile have the same values?

That's by design, I'm pretty sure I heard the devs mention it.

 

[Morgawr]

I think part of the issue is - in my experience, quickest way to deal with IP is to prioritize their unwalled village and disperse it as early as possible then deal with the remaining units.

The AI doesn't do that, and on top of that it doesn't fight IP offensively like it does other players (as if this is temp war and it wants to leave option to befriend them later). It tends to fight defensively only. Therefore it is very ineffective and stuck in eternal wars with tiny villages on their border that could have be so easily wiped out.

I think solution is AI should not treat hostile IP with kid gloves, if hostile then go for the kill, eliminate and move on. (Unless they are indeed in the befriend process already)

(I am talking about 1.07, haven't tried 1.08 yet)

 

[Squibie]

I think part of the issue is - in my experience, quickest way of dealing with IP is prioritizing their unwalled village and dispersing it as early as possible then dealing with the units.

The AI doesn't do that, and on top of that it doesn't fight IP offensively like it does with another player (as if this is temp war and it wants to leave option to befriend them later). It tends to fight defensively only. Therefore it is very ineffective and stuck in eternal wars with tiny villages on their border that could have be so easily wiped out.

I think solution is AI should not treat hostile IP with kid gloves, if hostile then go for the kill, eliminate and move on.

(I am talking about 1.07, haven't tried 1.08 yet)

In my experience its nearly always possible to just hold them out with single slinger that hides behind city center. No reason to invest in army just to fight ip.

 

[notque]

IP hostility at zero would be too much. Maybe the fact that AI aggression vs IP has been cut off is the problem?
Even if there's a bug with it, I think that preventing AI to kill IP is too much. The bug is pretty rare, probably is better to keep it in order to not break the rest (also because knowing that AI will NEVER attack IP is a bit too much a game changer).

It isn’t rare, I see it regularly. And because it is the most used commander at that point in that army, they lose their best situation and are down a commander.

But I do see the argument, it just really handicaps an AI.

I’ve tried a lot to hack around it. Nothing has worked.

 

[notque]

I can try more weird ideas to try to get them to do something. The target being gone seems to be the issue where they get stuck, and they don’t move on to another one.

 

[Squibie]

I turned off initial hostility for all IP and this is the result after 75 turns. Unfortunately settling nearby still makes them aggresive. I guess I should turn all of them to friendly so this doesnt happen maybe. But still.. These are pretty good numbers for all.

 

[notque]

The AI expansionism is really great in 1.08! I started up a new game on the yneamp greatest earth map, marathon/deity, and the entire old world was filled out by the 7 civs there by the end of antiquity. They also aggressively befriended almost every indpendent on the map, which I think is very good. My only complaint was that there wasn't a single war declaration in the entire era. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing though, because everyone was continuing to aggressively expand, so there was no real reason to go to war as long as they could expand peacefully. There were however 1 or 2 players that got a little boxed in and didn't expand as much as others, so it would have been nice to see them go to war for territory. All in all though, I think it was a good and engaging play, and much better than vanilla where there would likely still be huge swaths of unclaimed land. They also did forward-settle quite a bit, but only rarely did they drop a city that couldn't be connected back into a contiguous empire. I'll report back when I see how the exploration age goes, my hope is that we'll see some fighting for territory now.

View attachment 721393

Yeah, settling is quite good, but as others said the AI is not very eager to go to war. The only war I had in antiquity was the one I started.

Huh, I increased their war ability. In my testing I saw more wars.

I will look specifically into that again. Maybe I just happened to catch some very war like civs in a game, and didn't recognize there are still major issues with it.

I will run an autoplay and test now. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Squibie]

I managed to disable IP getting angry by settling nearby
<Update>
<Where Name="INDEPENDENT_LOWER_AFFINITY_RANGE"/>
<Set Value="3"/>
</Update>
Looks so good they dont have anything else to do but to settle and then get to war. I will update later.

 

[Morgawr]

Just for the record I have been seeing lots of wars and hostility as well, on deity at least. The AI does declare when it's ready and if it wants it. In my three games always been the case so I'd argue that does not need fixing. My last one especially was crazy fun with the rebel crisis event at the end, the whole continent at war and then being invaded it was like the hunger games, danger on every tile.

And of course this varied experience and anecdote is great that's what we want from the game, not every game should be hostile/peaceful for variety fun replayability reasons. The AI gets some extra random peace / warmonger factor each game I think (but don't quote me on it) so they'd don't behave the same way in each game.

 

[Squibie]

yeah I also dont think thats a huge problem, they go to war if they are ready. For anyone not playing on Deity i highly suggest it since the numbers are really not that high with how much it wastes.

 

[notque]

Thanks! Settling down for another 20-40 hour session this weekend, we gonna give the update v1.08 a go, and increase the tile spacing mod as well.

Do you have a buy-me-a-coffee link, or GitHub link? Do you use the GenAI stuff (gpt-o4-copilot or gemini or blah-blah) as well?

No, GenAI is worthless for this activity because it's a custom Behavior Tree implementation, and the complexity far surpasses anything a gen ai can do.

This is normal engineering, and trying to understand why each node is doing each thing.

 

[Squibie]

Turn 90 with all IP turned to friendly and with proximity aggresion turned off. This looks really great and im actually getting overwhelmed. Cant finish any wonder in time. The only thing is no one is befriending IPs beside me. Any idea how to fix that? Could it be that they dont recognize them since they dont have original affinity from database?

 

[Morgawr]

View attachment 721470View attachment 721471Turn 90 with all IP turned to friendly and with proximity aggresion turned off. This looks really great and im actually getting overwhelmed. Cant finish any wonder in time. The only thing is no one is befriending IPs beside me. Any idea how to fix that? Could it be that they dont recognize them since they dont have original affinity from database?

That's interesting, in all my games without exception the AI are very aggressive in befriending IP, so it's gotta be related to the changes you made.. (sorry for stating the obvious, I'm no help in fixing it lol)

 

[Morgawr]

All I can give feedback on is 1.07 since my game was started a few days ago. I know 1.08 was just released, but wanted to give some comparison, although my next game will be played on whichever the latest version of this mod is at.

On Fractal/Standard/Sovereign with 7 total civs on the same starting continent, which is one single land mass...

• Aggressive settlements (including settling right on my border (again), with Pachacuti 3 or 4 cities over the cap
• All but one Independent was bought up early on, and Xerxes even added > 100 influence to beat me from befriending them
• Xerxes did get beat up early on by an Independent, setting him back, but he looks to have recovered
• Charlemagne declared war on me, Friedrich a few turns later, and Pachacuti did, as well, maybe 20 turns later
• I am about 80% of the way through an extended Antiquity age

Looking forward to trying out 1.08, but I don't want to abandon the game I'm currently playing (might just start a super quick side game tomorrow, if necessary, though).

That's interesting, how come 7 on same continent? I thought it was hardcoded to be always 5 + 3 on standard maps? I've never seen or heard it different.

"Standard maps have 5 natural wonders and 4 continents, with 5 players on landmass 1 and 3 on landmass 2"

 

[Morgawr]

Courtesy of a mod, of course. This (hopefully) makes the new world feel like an actual new world (I'm not there yet). Although, in my combing through of many maps, the new world is much smaller because there aren't any civs that start there, which may make fighting for resources more interesting.

Sweet, mind sending the link, might give it a try in my next game.

I prefer Fractal to Continents+ because there is less land mass in the old (and the new) world and the shapes are much more interesting. But due to the island belts, the exploration age resource grab isn't too competitive.

I was going to try Continents next to make it a bit more competitive (no island belts), but the downside is that in Antiquity with only 5 civs and a huge land mass, there's even MORE space so fewer touching borders and less conflict.

P.S. also thought you couldn't combine mods atm? (this one at least)

 

[notque]

Sweet, mind sending the link, might give it a try in my next game.

I prefer Fractal to Continents+ because there is less land mass in the old (and the new) world and the shapes are much more interesting. But due to the island belts, the exploration age resource grab isn't too competitive.

I was going to try Continents next to make it a bit more competitive (no island belts), but the downside is that in Antiquity with only 5 civs and a huge land mass, there's even MORE space so fewer touching borders and less conflict.

P.S. also thought you couldn't combine mods atm? (this one at least)

I don't know why this mod is breaking other mods.

I've tried to change the mod order in the test version.

 

[Squibie]

ye I also get no wars now.

 

[notque]

I am looking more into declaring war.

I see them declare war in the behavior tree. I think I know the cause then.

I will try to fix

 

[notque]

I have to shut off the Behavior Tree and try again. It's the most complex tree the City Attack, and I've made great progress in understanding it, but it is still a big challenge at times.

 

[notque]

notque updated Artificially Intelligent AI Mod with a new update entry:

Artificially Intelligent - V 1.09

The City Attack Behavior Tree is the most complex one, and even though my changes made the AI move armies around, and use commanders more effectively, it also broke the declare war step.

Removing it. I will probably have to go back to the drawing board and try again.

Read the rest of this update entry...