Solving AI's weakness in warfare by increasing AI Combat Strength bonus

[nauberry]

Personally I'd prefer to change those mechanism than add an arbitrary combat bonus to the AI. There is already too many immersion breaking elements in the game for my taste.

For example introducing limited combat unit stacking (3-4) would already allow the AI to reflect its higher production at higher difficulty on the field. 1UPT combined with 2 tiles ranged combat is killing it, literally.

I had this idea, where you could combine any two units to a corps or any three units to an army. That way the AI would have the possibility to protect their siege unit with a melee unit, or for example if the enemy would have a lot of cavalry, buff their archers with some spearmen for example. Do you think this would make the AI play better?

 

[Naokaukodem]

I had this idea, where you could combine any two units to a corps or any three units to an army. That way the AI would have the possibility to protect their siege unit with a melee unit, or for example if the enemy would have a lot of cavalry, buff their archers with some spearmen for example. Do you think this would make the AI play better?

Actually that's, IMO, the way to go. Except that there is more unit types than the 3 slots evocated. A balanced army should have nearly all types of units, in different proportions depending on tactics and availability. Though I can't imagine that IRL the perfect army defeating all other combinations exists, because factors are much more numerous than in a video game, strateges are all different and armies as well, not speaking about conditions. (hills, bows, retreat, false retreat, etc. etc.) It's all a combination of opportunism and mind games. That's why generals or the likes should be very important in such a game (or, the orders you can give to troops during an attack), and the armies recombinable at will. I know, warfare in modern times is more or less "reasoned", it is to say that every army of every country is more or less awared of all sorts of tactics and reactions, so that the means (and politics) are more important than the strategies. That's what we see, I think, in modern wars at least. But again, it's Academy vs. inspiration, and sometimes the weight of the first is simply overwhelming, especially in times like ours (globalization), where it tends to exist only one bell ring. (and you know how armies do not tolerate that we disobey them : commanders don't want to fail in shame, and so conform to "reason" (aka "norm") as much as they can, and the soldiers don't want to be imprisoned or executed) It's the same phenomenon we see in Science, I mean the weight of Academic thought. (nobody knows how to unite Relativity and Quantism, that's why we are stuck on Earth, if it would be just me you only have to divide by zero)

 

[nauberry]

-snip-

You have good points that gave me some ideas again: What if combining armies does not immediately grow their combat power as it does now. If you combine two crossbowmen and one swordsman, you could fire two times the normal ranged attack. In the case of two swordsmen and one pikeman fighting another army of the same formation, the strongest units would fight, maximum three times a turn, untill they become so weak, that the next strongest unit takes the lead. This would be limited to maximum of three fights a turn and limit your movmement (as is with the melee class 4th promotion that allows you to fight two times a turn.)

Those armies coulc then be combined and dissasembled at will, so if you want to move troops efficiently trhough narrow passages, you can combine it to an army and then dissaseble it to occupy more territory on open areas. Maybe the combined unit could have a small combat strenght boost to all units in it. SOmething akin to strength in numbers, +3 CS for corps and + 6 for armies.

Another interesting thing this could allow is collateral damage for some untis. For example if an artillery fires against an army, all the units take damage. Ranged units would gain this as a promotion. Bombers and Battleships should also have collateral damage.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Did you play Civ4 ? The system you are proposing looks like stacks of doom. (except the number of units in them was unlimited, but there was artillery that did collateral damage to some number of units in the enemy stack)

 

[Trigan Emperor]

I doubt changing to more than one unit per tile is going to happen with this edition of the Civilization series. Maybe some future edition.

The easiest and most obvious solution to solving this edition's biggest problem - that the AI can't compete with the human player in combat as it can at other aspects of the game - is to boost AI Combat Strength.

The day that an AI civ can tactically compete on equal terms with a human player is probably a long, long time away. So that means, if one wants to make the AI more challenging in war to a human player, one must boost either its quantity or quantity (or both together). If going for quantity, then one is going to have to give the AI probably five or ten times as many units as an experienced human player for it to win in a war. I don't mind the AI having a few extra units, but huge hordes of mindless AI units would feel more like a zombie survival game than a game of civilizations.

By improving AI's quality through increased Combat Strength, one can, in theory, play with equal army size to the AI. That is a much better and more immersive solution, in my opinion.

It would probably take just a few lines of code to make it possible. I'm not a programmer, but my uneducated guesstimate is that it would probably take less than ten minutes to do.

I'm not that bothered whether this is integrated into the official game - no-one has to play with a non-incompetent AI - but I am bothered that this can't be modded. They half-allowed it, so one could get a tantalizing glimpse of how much better it made the game, but did not allow it to be fully used, thus horrendously unbalancing the game by not letting city-state units get any Combat Strength along with the AI civs.

To be honest, it's made me lose the will to play the game anymore. I'd be reminded of it every time I mowed down a dozen AI units like daisies, without the loss of any of my own units. It would make me think of all the epic wars I could be having with the AI in some alternate reality.

 

[Trigan Emperor]

Just one thing to add, if this is ever made possible: when a human player levies city-state units and takes control of them, the units should get the same bonuses or penalties as human player units, if they don't already (haven't checked).

 

[cvb]

The easiest and most obvious solution to solving this edition's biggest problem - that the AI can't compete with the human player in combat as it can at other aspects of the game - is to boost AI Combat Strength.

Easiest and most obvious solution. Ok. I suppose, as single active principle it has also the strongest unwanted effects.
I'd like to suggest a mixture of small dosed actions complementing each other. For example the Starting units of King (or Emperor, but never higher), some reduced yields from plots for the human player (I know, _how happy_ lots of yield icons are making ), softly different alignment of healing and gaining experience, occasional injection of AI units [in the fog of war: offensive if they dowed, defensive if they are dowed on // in human territory: Partisans (regular troops) & Rebels (barbarian) // good mixture strength & experience], maintenance costs ...
... and most important: "dynamic AI Combat Strength" - I doubt, any fix number could satisfy for the whole game. Let's suppose, a Lua script analyzes continuously the human situation / ranking and generates (seldom) a message to save the game and edit Combat Strength directly || use another file out of a set of files and reload the game and continue play.

.

 

[Haig]

How about a patch that lessens the strenght of ranged units and city ranged attack?

I think they are simply too effective for their cost.


Maybe also corps and armies could be more resistant to ranged attacks. AI likes to build them.

 

[Trigan Emperor]

I'm developing a city-states mod for the Terra map, which places all city-states in the New World, so that I can play the game with increased AI Combat Strength. I am rationalizing the +15 Combat Strength AI civs will have over city-states as it reflecting their technological advantage, as well as Old World diseases decimating local populations/soldiers.

 

[Trigan Emperor]

I had an idea to try and get round the city-states/AI Combat Strength issue, not sure whether it would be possible.

What about creating a custom unit promotion? Maybe it would be possible to mod it so that AI civs and city-states' units automatically get a unit promotion that gives them the boosted Combat Strength, the value of which could then be adjusted to one's taste.

If that could be done, then the AI Combat Strength Scaling global parameter difficulty value could be set to 0.

EDIT: Or maybe mod in the boosted Combat Strength as civilization abilities? Might have to do it individually for each civ, rather than as a global parameter. Then could delete the line of code for whatever civ one is playing as for that particular game, so it wouldn't boost the human player's Combat Strength.

 

[Trigan Emperor]

Here's some of the code setting up AI Combat Strength scaling:

        <Row>
            <ModifierId>HIGH_DIFFICULTY_COMBAT_SCALING</ModifierId>
            <ModifierType>MODIFIER_PLAYER_UNITS_ADJUST_COMBAT_DIFFICULTY</ModifierType>
            <OwnerRequirementSetId>PLAYER_IS_HIGH_DIFFICULTY_AI</OwnerRequirementSetId>
        </Row>

Here's another bit of code relating to requirement that player is a minor civ (city-state):

        <Row>
            <RequirementSetId>REQUIREMENTS_INDEPT_MINOR_CIV_HOME_CONTINENT</RequirementSetId>
            <RequirementId>REQUIRES_PLAYER_IS_MINOR_CIV</RequirementId>
        </Row>

Could one not set up Combat Strength scaling for minor civ by setting the requirement that player is minor civ? Changes I've made in red:

<Row>
<ModifierId>HIGH_DIFFICULTY_COMBAT_SCALING</ModifierId>
<ModifierType>MODIFIER_PLAYER_UNITS_ADJUST_COMBAT_DIFFICULTY</ModifierType>
<OwnerRequirementSetId>PLAYER_IS_MINOR_CIV</OwnerRequirementSetId>
</Row>

 

[Trigan Emperor]

There's this code which tells Major Civs to use high difficulty combat scaling:

        <Row TraitType="TRAIT_LEADER_MAJOR_CIV" ModifierId="HIGH_DIFFICULTY_COMBAT_SCALING"/>

I tried adding a new line to make it do the same with minor civs, but it didn't work:

        <Row TraitType="TRAIT_LEADER_MINOR_CIV" ModifierId="HIGH_DIFFICULTY_COMBAT_SCALING"/>

I am now looking into creating a new Leader trait that can be given to all civs that gives Combat Strength bonus.

 

[Trigan Emperor]

BREAKING NEWS: BREAKTHROUGH IN SEARCH FOR CITY-STATE COMBAT STRENGTH BONUS

        <Row TraitType="MINOR_CIV_DEFAULT_TRAIT" ModifierId="HIGH_DIFFICULTY_COMBAT_SCALING"/>

 

[Trigan Emperor]

I've got it to work for barbarians too:

        <Row TraitType="TRAIT_LEADER_BARBARIAN" ModifierId="HIGH_DIFFICULTY_COMBAT_SCALING"/>

So this is big progress. It would be nice if combat scaling could be calibrated independently for AI civs, city-states, barbarians and religious combat, but that would be the icing on top of the cake. For example, in the vanilla game, AI civs get +1 Combat Strength bonus against city-states at King, going up to +4 at Deity. With these modifications, they will be equal at all levels.

Anyway, the cake part of the cake, and the icing in the middle is now there, and ready to eat.

 

[Trigan Emperor]

Mod released: Tough A.I.

 

[Headlock]

I have reduced Archer, crossbow, Machinegunner and other tactical shooters to 1T.

I also bumped the damage from cities, increased city walls damage.

Otherwise in field battles I just sit back and slaughter the AI from a distance, like the Brits v Zulus (later on ).

It also makes early city sieges much harder without catapults.

I'll try out your mod, it should add good resistance.