Short Term Fix for AI Combat Problems?

Until the combat AI is improved, I'm considering modding in a -25% penalty for combat as the player. So I'd need a great general within two hexes just to get default odds.

Has anyone else tried something like this? I'm going to play my next campaign on either emporer or immortal. Both of these levels give bonuses to the AI, which give it more troops; but they don't (as far as I know) give the AI any bonuses (or the player any penalties) to combat odds.

When I play Europa Universalis 3, I play on "very hard" difficulty (my own custom version of it actually) and the AI gets a +0.5 bonus to combat morale, while the player gets a -0.25 penalty to combat morale. Without this AI combat bonus/player penalty, battles wouldn't be even close.

So until the Civ 5 combat AI improves, do you think that this is a decent solution? Thanks in advance

 

I was thinking exactly the same thing. Anyone has any ideas about how to implement it? Is it possible at all?

Even if we someday get an "excellent" combat ai, it will still be extremely exploitable and it will still unbalance higher difficulties, as "excellent ai" by today's standards really just means "barely decent" (at least for combat systems as complex as in Civ5).

 

If you want to give the AI players an advantage like that, I'd say give them free Walls early on. The main problem of the combat AI is that it absolutely ignores defense early on and can be easily conquered, Walls would help with that by making the AI a fair bit more resistant to early attacks.

 

This would be a solution, not only for making the AI harder to conquer for the player, but also harder for other AIs. In my last campaign, most of the the AI civs were conquered (or nearly conquered) during The Middle Ages by other AIs; not by me. By mid-game there was no balance left: every AI civ was either down to a couple of cities or had more than 20 cities.

Solver, could you please recommend any other short term modding "fixes" until patches are released? Thanks in advance

 

Could just make it so any time the AI researches a tech that has a defensive building, they immediately get that building in all of their cities.

Bh

 

One could try increasing the AI flavors for DEFENSE and CITY_DEFENSE.

 

I would really like this too. As it is now you can kill any number of AI units using equal-level tech without taking any losses.

Giving out defensive buildings? Pretty sure that would make no difference. AI problems are not isolated to defending their cities!

 

Maybe both the player combat penalty and the free AI defensive buildings would work well together. The former would help make the AI more challenging for the player, while the latter could prevent the AI from wiping out other AIs before mid-campaign.

So far my single biggest problem with my Civ 5 campaigns have been that half of the AI Civs are down to just a few cities by mid-game; and consequently, a couple of AIs have tons of cities. This ruins my campaign because I don't like to have to be a huge empire with tons of cities. I find that once you have an excessive number of cities, the individual decisions you have to make for each become less significant (obviously). But if another AI has completely conquered two or three civilizations (and therefore has several cities), you've got to conquer every easy target you can just to be half it's size.

I think that if a civ goes to war against another and, as a result of that war, captures a single city (or maybe two), that that war should be considered extremely successful. Especially if they got more than just territory (luxury resourses, money, ect) as a result of the peace deal. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any game mechanic which stops the winner from taking almost everything the defeated empire has (unhappiness does to an extent). And when a defeated, weakened AI civ is down, many of the other AI civs jump in for the complete kill. It'd be better if they were more likely to do something to the winner of the war, for disrubting the regional balance of power, rather than just finish off the loser. It's too easy for a single war to result in the near complete destruction of an AI civ.

Also I like to see civs survive into the second half of the game. I like the industrial era, but so far my campaigns have been decided by The Renaisance. So I haven't yet played the second half of a CiV campaign. I know that most of my Civ 4 campaigns made it into the 20th century, because I'll never forget Civ 4's 20th century music! Any suggestions on how to prevent my campaigns from being like this by half-time? Set-up options or modding?

 

I'd test something like that before giving bonuses/maluses. Hoping that would be enough !

 

Another issue is using the full heal promotion while sieging a city. It makes capturing cities with very few units way too easy. Basically, keep the promotion, but not make it available while the unit is in enemy territory or the zone of control of an enemy unit.

Besides that, once the AI notices that the opponent has superior forces, the AI should drop the offensive intentions and focus on getting its troops garrisoned in their border cities. A very simple city defense is garrisoning a unit inside the city, and fortifying a unit in an easily defensible tile next to the city. Then after the enemy units get weakened by attacking the city, charge the weakened units with the two units you've got in the city. Or of course just use ranged units effectively. It's a fairly simple routine for defending, but almost always effective. At the very least it would require players to use siege when attacking.

Last but not least, if this is not enough, program the AI to keep a gold reserve of about 3-400 gold. Then when they still get caugh unawares, they can at least buy an archer or a spearman for a last ditch defense.

 

Those will be much harder to mod, though.

 

Yeah, that's true. Though maybe full heal promotion not being available in enemy territory/enemy ZoC will be possible? I'm not really familiar with how easily moddable such things are.

 

That should be less difficult, I think, yes. I don't see it as an improvement, in fact, but it sounds more feasible.

 

Ok, I'll be integrating the following into my Savage Lands mod (which calls even more for them since barbs get more aggressive )
Would like some feedback before releasing v3:

• Increased AI/CS flavor for DEFENSE and especially CITY_DEFENSE
• AIs get free walls, City States get free walls AND castle, since it's all they have (from the start)

Two changes I'm still considering:

1. Currently the AI has about double the bonus the player does against barbs (those are untouched in my mod). Maybe they could have the exact same bonus as the player, but also get a +25% combat bonus across the board (City States included), so they are even against each other, but at an advantage against the player and barbs.
2. The insta-heal promotion is indeed gamey. How about this: no more insta-heal promotion, instead every two levels a unit gets a 'reserve draft' that can be accumulated (e.g. on lv4 you get a second) and used at any time to heal 5hp each.

If you want to try out when I release a new version but don't want too many barbs, you can simply not check Raging Barbarians and everything should be easy-going (though still more barbs than on vanilla without Raging). It's actually something I'd love feedback on, since I always play with Raging Barbarians.

 

I'm not sure this is possible, but is there a way to give the AI the option to select any promotion when leveled up without having to go through some prereqs first? That way they could get promotions like Blitz very early, instead of leveling up once or twice and then dying. Also, I say remove Heal Instantly, and maybe let the AI start with promotions like March. I think this would make them a bit more formidable, but like I said, I'm not sure if it's possible to give these options to the AI and not the player.

 

personally i think it's that the ai overexpands, before i have a 2nd base on prince, he already has 3-5 cities. which is why i believe its so easy to conquer.

 

What's the easiest way to give the AI free walls and castles? Thanks in advance

 

I think this is a great idea, and am very much looking forward to it.

 

I'll be looking at it and will report back

 

Thanks