RHQ Artificially Intelligent AI Mod RHQ AI Mod 2.10

[Morgawr]

during the stream we found a bug in modern where AI aren't assigning resources correctly - ada's capital had -17 happiness while happiness resources were assigned elsewhere. might happen earlier than modern as well

Could it happen in Antiquity too, theoretically? Coz last night's game I got the happiness crisis (for the first time) in Antiquity and all 4 AI on my continent struggled a lot and lost / swapped cities from each other. They weren't overexpanded either. I gained a city myself. So maybe they could have assigned happy resources better there too.

 

[notque]

I don't know anything about the ai resource management, so i will have to learn about it, and see what options I have.

 

[Morgawr]

Yeah and I bet there’s nothing in the code about redistributing resources once assigned.

But this falls into higher level play IMO - in other words if this is your top worry of the day then we (= the mod) are in good shape

 

[bumpyglint]

I don't know anything about the ai resource management, so i will have to learn about it, and see what options I have.

To enhance the player's experience with AI, I believe the way AI manages resources is not particularly important. In the worst case, the AI can receive yield bonuses to compensate for its inefficiency in resource utilization, as is the case at virtually all difficulty levels in this game.

The main problem is not their micromanagement of yield (that can be compensated with various bonus in any moment without the human player never knowing), the real problem is how they handle war, where the "trick" bonus is seen too much clearly by the human players and doesn't feel right.

Then obviously feel free to improve what you think

at the moment played 1 game with last version of the mod in antiquity and exploration and I've seen many wars (AI vs me and AI vs AI), and the AI seemed way better than vanilla.

 

[notque]

I’d be inclined to keep war where it is (I have only played 2.0 not 2.02; was the bug fix you talk about in 2.01?), even if some folks feel there is too much war. A peaceful antiquity era should require taking active measures to ensure peace, settling in nonconfrontational places, spending diplomacy, respecting/attaxking IP strategically. Right now, it feels like you can play a peaceful builder game with just a little bit of peacekeeping (so that AI attack each other and not you). If I am playing a builder game where I feel interrupted by a war, that means the AI’s proper play was to DOW me. If I have enough army that I can defend myself or even benefit from the war, I have already payed the opportunity cost and should benefit from that.

It’s not in 2.0 - gotta try 2.02 for the full effect

 

[ggalindo001]

Just finished an antiquity era deity run on 2.02 and the AIs had a couple wars between themselves, even swapped a couple cities. Sadly nobody ever declared on me, despite being unhappy with me and having touching borders. Also the IPs seem to be bugged, the would march around my building while I attacked them but never attacked me back. They did pretty well though, I only came in 2nd in the rankings.

On 2.02 Soverign difficulty, I had 3 AIs declare war on me on the 5th or 6th turn on Exploration Era.

I was at war with 2 of them during the Antiquity Era -- I declared war on one, then a few turns later, the other declared war on me.

I'm in a pretty good fight with the 3.

 

[notque]

Did it last an extended period of time? Because bear in mind you can only reallocate resources when you acquire or lose a resource. It’s fully possible she had war support causing a sudden shift in happiness, but had no ability to shift resources to fix it. A human player would go make a trade route asap or buy a rural tile to expand to a new resource, but that’s definitely beyond the AI’s ken

The exact case was she moved her capital in modern, and never moved a single resource to it.

 

[notque]

i'm experimenting with the latest version. Am I right this mod removes the +20 friendly modifier for first greeting with a new civ?

Yes, although I am testing the mod without that setting, and I am trying to bring it back now that things are working nicer.

We went very heavy trying to create war, and now we can pull back a little bit now that it's working.

 

[notque]

cool i can understand why removed it. theoretically with lower relations it could lead to more wars.

Yep, you got it.

But in testing so far, if I put it back, there are still lots of wars.

I assume next version I post it will be back.

 

[notque]

I don't know enough about diplomacy to know what the best way forward there is.

 

[notque]

Yeah, testing with it off shows it's fine. I think I'll remove that.

But I'm also testing experimental changes right now, so I can't release something.

 

[Morgawr]

I too would prefer this mod as a “better AI” only mod touching AI behavior only, not bonuses. People who want to change the diff level / bonuses can pair with another difficulty changing mods. But ultimately up to the modders of course.

 

[notque]

Hello,

First of all, thanks for your continued efforts and the excellent mod.

I played through approximately 80% of the first age using the latest version (2.02) and noticed that the AI did not attack me even once. I did experience some attacks from IP, but they quickly retreated as soon as I purchased archers—it seems they're overestimating my defenses.

Could you let me know what kind of information or logs I can provide to help identify and resolve these issues? I appreciate the hard work you've put into the game, and I'd be glad to assist in making it even better.

Thanks again—your efforts are greatly appreciated!

The intention is not that the AI will attack the player. It is that the AI will attack often, and intentionally.

There is no expectation that you will not have games in antiquity where you are not declared war on.

It will depend on the texture of the game.

 

[notque]

Hard thread to keep up with. I thought it was showing me as last poster, but I saw the 2.? notes so decided to go into the thread. It was 16 pages ago that I last posted.

One thought reading some of the comments about the risk the AI becomes generic was a griefer AI. I have little idea of the AI on a practical level. Most of what I know there is from reading this thread. I know nothing of it on a technical level, so I don't know if it's practical to do. The idea is on startup a chance, like 20%, that an AI is running in griefer mode, just being an AH. Things like more likely to attack you if you if you're weaker. Maybe more likely to pillage just to cause misery. Willing to take more risks. Even better would be a level of grief. It just seems it might spice things up to never know quite what you're going to get even setting the leader and civilization. It might also make for some improvements to AI that aren't readily apparent. If you have three levels of grief, then you can try out four different ways of doing something.

I think that's just militaristic civs, and yeah, that would be the ideal state.

 

[notque]

I too would prefer this mod as a “better AI” only mod touching AI behavior only, not bonuses. People who want to change the diff level / bonuses can pair with another difficulty changing mods. But ultimately up to the modders of course.

I think there is a misunderstanding. This really isn't a topic, and would be better discussed one day if it becomes a topic.

My goal is to make it so that the Deity AI is so great, that we have to lower Deity bonuses. That's a good goal for an AI mod.

We might never even make it there. So it's an irrelevant discussion of what we should do when we get there.

 

[notque]

No doubt (that's obvious after half an hour of sneaking into notques twitch streams), my suspicion is just that people judge mod behavior against their memory of earlier base AI and this muddies the picture.
But it's tough to test the mod against the actual current base AI in a real game situation - it's so time-consuming and you can't just take a save game and switch the mod on and off - have to start from scratch every time.

I think it's the normal situation that players are communicating their experience.

A single autoplay shows me the experience of 8 players. So for a human to even get the data of one autoplay, they would have to play 8 games.

So I just listen, and try to see themes. If multiple people are communicating the same thing over multiple games, it starts to build a picture of what needs to happen.

A single game is not very valuable for a lot of input. Some is, tactical AI for sure. Tactical movement. But for a lot of concepts, it requires a lot of data to come back, so I just listen.

 

[notque]

Currently what I'm working on and testing.

AI to build planes, and use them
Different method of specifying Army Compositions to require more ranged units in Army Compositions
Prioritize Army Commanders in City Attack trees, and not stuck at home. They often don't gain XP that way optimally.
Forcing the AI to always slot their unique traditions
Forcing the AI to get their pantheon
Seeing if I can get the AI to attack two cities simultaneously with large armies.
Test even higher AI operation limits.
Improve the AI's resource allocations if possible.
Increase likelihood that AI will disperse independents
Find a way to have the AI pillage aggressively.

No idea what will succeed or not. No idea what will change. I also need to do more for the naval stuff. But those are the things I'm currently working on.

 

[notque]

Agreed 100%, there are certain play styles that intentionally avoid war, the AI could get caught up fighting between themselves, you could spawn on your own island, or you could spawn on a shared continent with lots of room. My issue isn't that it happens sometimes, it's that it happens almost all of the time (I have had one game now with a DoW on me in 2.02, but have had 4 other antiquity runs without any declarations on me), and it happens in situations where they clearly "should" be declaring war. They're penned in and can't expand, we share borders, and they're hostile toward me. I can generally get them to DoW in these situations if I denounce military presence several times, but if I do nothing they almost never declare war.

I hear your feedback. The feedback I get most is that the AI declares war on the player too often. That is overwhelming the feedback I am getting from players right now.

So it's difficult for me to evaluate it. All autoplays I see wars constantly occurring on the map. The majority of feedback is that there is now too much war, and it's unfair.

The only way I can understand your specific experience because it's different than the majority of feedback I am getting, is if you can capture yourself playing the game, and I can watch it and try to understand.

 

[notque]

I also think one of the things that makes the conversations difficult about DOWs from the AI is....

Their feeling that they have for you, does not seem to be what determines if they declare war on you.

It's actually another system called Grievances. So players will often say, they were hostile, or friendly, etc, and that's not the actual metric they are using to determine war.

It's the number of Grievances, which I don't believe is shown in the UI anywhere. It's a different system.

Edit: It's not the NUMBER of Grievances, each Grievance has a score. It's the total score for Grievances.

Some Grievances don't even change the number! But the most normal example is settling within 10 tiles of another civs city. That's a Grievance that's scored.

Do that 5 times, it's 5 times as bad.

 

[notque]

I also think one of the things that makes the conversations difficult about DOWs from the AI is....

Their feeling that they have for you, does not seem to be what determines if they declare war on you.

It's actually another system called Grievances. So players will often say, they were hostile, or friendly, etc, and that's not the actual metric they are using to determine war.

It's the number of Grievances, which I don't believe is shown in the UI anywhere. It's a different system.

Adding on this, it may be worth my time to see if I can sort out how to show this in the UI for the player, like the Transparent Diplomacy option in Civ 5 VP