So, how is the new patch K AI?

[Sanityfaerie]

Toning down the "cheating" advantages is easy. Just play on a lower difficulty level.

 

[Tholal]

Toning down the "cheating" advantages is easy. Just play on a lower difficulty level.

Quoted for emphasis.

 

[mcwill123]

My question is based on my understanding that the advantages are there to compensate for a bad AI. Of course playing at a reduced difficulty level is always an option.

 

[Morkonan]

I really think that the AI is MUCH improved over J for example. Maybe now is the time to tame down some of their "cheating" advantages? Otherwise human players are going to have to abandon many options just to keep their military strong enough to survive.

I agree.

I'm having to run Crusade just to keep up with the Calabim and their waves of vamps, assassins and horseman led by immortal Losha who has more promotions than Patton... What's more, he just got Blood of the Phoenix so I'm expecting a double assault anytime now. (IF I can fix my hung-turn game..)

But, the straights I have to go through on a low-difficulty game just to keep from being overwhelmed are a bit offputting. I really ENJOY the current game, don't get me wrong. But, it can get tiresome and I don't see how non-Bannor civs not able to run Crusade could handle the Unit count necessary to survive the late-game and conduct some sort of offensive. It seems it's almost entirely necessary to do a non-stop "steamroll" from turn 1 if any hopes of a conquest victory would be realized.

But, to me that's something for a "final tweak" as mucking around with the AI has proven difficult enough as it is. Some games may be just fine and some may be a bloodbath arising from small variables you can't easily plan for. Finish fixing the AI, preferably working on sea assaults, fix the crash/hung-turn/hidden nationality unit problems and then, when it's all done, ramp down the AI's Handicap if that is then considered necessary.

 

[a_civilian]

My question is based on my understanding that the advantages are there to compensate for a bad AI. Of course playing at a reduced difficulty level is always an option.

Essentially all that the difficulty level setting does is to control the AI bonuses and player handicaps, so playing on a reduced difficulty is essentially equivalent to reducing AI cheats.

That said, there are some bonuses the AI gets regardless of difficulty level, mainly the massively reduced upgrade costs which they get even on Settler.

 

[Tholal]

But, the straights I have to go through on a low-difficulty game just to keep from being overwhelmed are a bit offputting.

What's your definition of low-difficulty? If I recall correctly, Noble is the default difficulty. If you're playing anything above that, the AI is going to get bonuses. That's just how most games work and is the easy way to create a more difficult experience. I play on Monarch and find it to be an appropriate setting for my skill-level. Others with more experience and better micro-management skills tend to play on higher difficulty levels. Try some different options until you find what works for you.

 

[Morkonan]

What's your definition of low-difficulty? If I recall correctly, Noble is the default difficulty. If you're playing anything above that, the AI is going to get bonuses. That's just how most games work and is the easy way to create a more difficult experience. I play on Monarch and find it to be an appropriate setting for my skill-level. Others with more experience and better micro-management skills tend to play on higher difficulty levels. Try some different options until you find what works for you.

I'm not sure what difficulty level my last game was on and can't start it up atm to check. But, it's below Noble. I'm "new" to the BTS version of FFH2 but have been playing the vanilla version for a long while.

The game works great for me right now. It's a lot of fun. But, I'm having some problems with the Calabim who can send several SODs at a time every four turns or so. I admit, as I hope I indicated in my above post, that this might just be a quirk of this particular game I'm playing. Not all games may be as difficult. (It's complicated by the fact that the Calabim have a Losha that I've killed 10 times or so by now and she's promoted so heavily it takes half a stack just to kill her. )

I'm terrible at micro-managing workers. Well, not "terrible" at it.. I just don't like to have to do it. So, I normally don't play above Noble either.

 

[Renaud]

I rated the new AI 'vastly improved'. Definitely more than just a minor tweak improvement. Seeing ships again is worth the update alone. Barb behavior seems improved too. The game difficulty has increased such that I had to ratchet down 1 level, and it's still much harder. The prior AI SOD behavior was very easy to predict: not as predictable now. Seems like all aspects are improved (economy, magic, worker improvements, movement, battle, etc.)

I lost 3 games as grigori (my first go-round with this civ) in a row rather quickly (all between t60 and t250) while I adjusted to the new AI, but managed to survive the 4th (so far through turn 320 and looking strong) due to my placement and playing off one AI civ against another to keep them attacking each other instead of me. That and I ruthlessly stamped out the elf hordes (damn things breed like rabbits) to my south prior to them getting iron for their longbows. I'm playing emperor techtonics/mediterranian/arid/standard map + 8 AI civs.

There's probably no way i'll win unless Khazad and Calabim clobber each other into bloody pulps, but I hope to survive to the end in good shape. Next session i've got to go begging to Khazad for iron to upgrade my units. Which reminds me, the AI negotiation is much improved - no more easy cheating of the AI or taking a city and having them hand you a ton of goodies in return for a cease-fire. That's been tightened up it seems.

 

[a_civilian]

Some other AI issues (041m):

-The AI favors the conquest civic too much. It doesn't seem to understand that it stops city growth. For example, I frequently observe that even a hundred turns after blight hits the AI cities will still have single digit population because they never switched off conquest.

-Hyborem put manes in his stack of doom. (Screenshot.)

 

[Azhral]

Saw some awesome AI action in an MP game we played last night/yesterday morning.

Elohim were friendly but then DoW'd out of the blue (weird). Anywho, a stack of non-weaponed Axemen show up. Saverous with Fear was in the city they were assaulting and he proceeded to annihilate most of them, the rest ran away. Awesome thing comes when the stack was back about 10 turns later. He hadn't reinforced the stack at all (only had the axemen that ran away in it), but now they all had Courage to deal with Saverous. Pity Saverous was elsewhere and the city was now full of Archers. Once they saw that, they ran away again. All in all, a useless effort, but at least they are trying to think.

 

[ADHansa]

This is for the patch m AI.
I have a few issues with how the AI chooses how to build new cities.
A1) Expansion : The AI are to conservative with expanding beyond the 4th city. Sometimes i think it's taking the right decision by waitng to improving their economy but it's get stock "noexpansionmode" to long. When a 5-city AI clearly have a surplus on 50-60 beakers a turn and it can build a new city that connects 3-4 new resourses it shouldn't be a question that it should haste to build on that spot, still the AI often just leaves such juicy spots alone.
A2) City filling: In a similar mode i think the AI forgets to build cities in the midst of their empire. On occation I see spots where a city would enable 7+ landtiles, where a few are resourses, and the AI just leaves them alone. I am confident the AI is are awhare that theese are tiles outside BFC:s, because they always build farms on such tiles when the BFC ones are improved.
A3) Border cities: The AI are very conservative with building cities close to borders. As a player i am much more comfident to squeese theese in after the juicyspot ones are built. Same here, i can often find spot that would enable 7+ tiles, maybe a few more with a little cultural warfare. I think more aggresive bordercity building would improve the AI.
A4) Resource and Feature valuation: Further comenting the citybuilding, i suspiciously often see cities beeing built with Pearls, Nodes and other questionable resourses in the BFC being created, while features like Yggdrasil and Partria seems to be ignored. The AI is better with unique features that provide Mana Nodes. I am not 100% sure on theese observarions, but it often looks a bit odd. I think this could be improved so that the AI build better cities.

Improvement suggestion: Let the AI value building cities much higher, connecting new resorses higher, being close to a border or barbarian presense lower. And if there is a spot that connects new resourses and have the potantial to be a star city make the AI build it even if it temporarily is a load to the empire. If they can just make it through the dip until the new city is upp and running it will definitly be worth it, and that shouldn't be to hard to check for.

 

[Doug Piranha]

A3) Border cities: The AI are very conservative with building cities close to borders. As a player i am much more comfident to squeese theese in after the juicyspot ones are built. Same here, i can often find spot that would enable 7+ tiles, maybe a few more with a little cultural warfare. I think more aggresive bordercity building would improve the AI.

Odd, in my experience the AI is pretty good at annoying me by building cities three tiles from mine and stealing my resources . Maybe it has something to do with map size or density of AIs? I'm playing on small highlands with 8 AIs, immortal difficulty.

Even more important than building new cities is capturing barbarian cities. The AI builds nice stacks that move over to the barb cities, lose their nerve, and move away. Later, I'm able to capture the barb city with a much weaker stack. The AI does sometimes capture barb cities, but I think the strength ratio at which it will attack needs to be tweaked. It's certainly worth losing a couple warriors or axemen to save building a settler.

 

[ADHansa]

Odd, in my experience the AI is pretty good at annoying me by building cities three tiles from mine and stealing my resources . Maybe it has something to do with map size or density of AIs? I'm playing on small highlands with 8 AIs, immortal difficulty.

Even more important than building new cities is capturing barbarian cities. The AI builds nice stacks that move over to the barb cities, lose their nerve, and move away. Later, I'm able to capture the barb city with a much weaker stack. The AI does sometimes capture barb cities, but I think the strength ratio at which it will attack needs to be tweaked. It's certainly worth losing a couple warriors or axemen to save building a settler.

Maybe it's mostly a matter of how many city an empire has. I watch a lot of games when coding my mods. Sometime i spot good citycites that the AI ignore, then it get mauled in a war looses a few cities, makes peace and then suddenly it decides to settle those spots.

To me it seems odd, with extra traderoutes from civics/tech, a relativly quickly built market/elder counsil and a few cottages on few tiles it should easaly make up for the combined extra maintainance a new city bring in the first place.

 

[DaveGold]

A3) Border cities: The AI are very conservative with building cities close to borders. As a player i am much more comfident to squeese theese in after the juicyspot ones are built. Same here, i can often find spot that would enable 7+ tiles, maybe a few more with a little cultural warfare. I think more aggresive bordercity building would improve the AI.

The AI will build close to steal resources, it seems to me. They don't see any point in getting into a cultural war over a few plains tiles and I can't blame them. As soon as resources are present they will build recklessly, imho.

"Our close borders cause tensions -2". Of course they do you stupid leader. You just built right on the border of my city with 99 culture just so you could steal my wheat field didn't you, idiot!

 

[Azhral]

Still, the AI isn't as bad at stealing city plots as the Ai from Civ3. Got one spare tile of coast? 25 Settlers from various other nations are already on their way.

 

[Tlalynet]

Yeah, they would often get into wars over those three tiles of tundra, even if that war would be devastating to them or at least cost them that settler.