Strange AI

[Volgadar]

During last game (svn, immortal, large continents map) I noticed kinda strange AI behavior. Some examples:

1. Ancient Germany didn't even try to build infrastructure - no roads, no irrigation, almost nothing at all. Friendly Roman Empire at the north and not-so-friendly Russian Empire at the east - nobody prevented them from using field workers. Why? They hadn't even been bothered by barbarians or someone else untill my army invaded them. No resources = weak economy/production = weak army = no chances to survive against agressive neighbours. Still they've built a huge amount of police forces (I have a screenshot with a ~30 units in ~7 size town), which are a bit expensive to maintain.

2. AI civs are collecting large amounts of money, but still prefer not to buy military units, but to draft them. I dont't really know, maybe, they really don't have any choices during defencive wars. But as soon as I reach second big continent, I see just a bunch of really weak states with a few small cities (capital with size 2 or 3 and few great wonders built is normal), defended by a conscript militia, large amounts of gold in their treasuries and stone age techs in XVI century. Most of previous c2c games shared the same problem. As far as I see, this is the main case of AI backwardness - conscription/slavery (as a vanilla mechanic) is really punitive for economy and for civ. Is there a way to restrict it? Maybe, a BUG option?

Plus, maybe there is a point in giving some bonuses to the most agressive AI-civs just for greater challenge? For example, Civ V AI-England usually becomes main enemy in later eras just in case conquering most other civs at the time. And fighting great hostile empire is much more interesting then conquistador-like absorbing smaller ones.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Most of these are known issues and there are plans to address much of it. It will take some serious time to get there though. Thanks for sticking with us!

 

[Volgadar]

Now playing on deity, AI tends to be smarter. Expansion, research, infrastructure became much better. And much more aggressive.

My neighbours often declare war on me. This is good - AI shows some initiative. But AI-players declare "Strange Wars" - not only they aren't trying to pass my borders with army (maybe a few hunter+dog parties), they don't even have noticable atack armies. Defences are much better though. But offence... My intelligence services told, that enemy is much stronger - but as I can see, AI is calculating this value as summary of "strength" param of all units, including medics, dogs and so on (100+ dog packs in one enemy city, not bad, they really could have heart or even wipe out my forces just by straight suicide-attack).

I don't know, if mod options can do this, but maybe there is a way to adjust AI's "willing to declare war" param, making them count only strike teams as army power by some tag? I remember vanila and RoM AI tactics - at first they usually bring few large stacks of doom at my borders and only then declare war. Of course, C2C have much more unit roles and it's harder to teach AI, how to use them. But maybe there is a way?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Now playing on deity, AI tends to be smarter. Expansion, research, infrastructure became much better. And much more aggressive.

My neighbours often declare war on me. This is good - AI shows some initiative. But AI-players declare "Strange Wars" - not only they aren't trying to pass my borders with army (maybe a few hunter+dog parties), they don't even have noticable atack armies. Defences are much better though. But offence... My intelligence services told, that enemy is much stronger - but as I can see, AI is calculating this value as summary of "strength" param of all units, including medics, dogs and so on (100+ dog packs in one enemy city, not bad, they really could have heart or even wipe out my forces just by straight suicide-attack).

I don't know, if mod options can do this, but maybe there is a way to adjust AI's "willing to declare war" param, making them count only strike teams as army power by some tag? I remember vanila and RoM AI tactics - at first they usually bring few large stacks of doom at my borders and only then declare war. Of course, C2C have much more unit roles and it's harder to teach AI, how to use them. But maybe there is a way?

Much more in-depth unit AI is planned.

 

[raxo2222]

Now playing on deity, AI tends to be smarter.

Its not smarter, just faster, as techs and units are cheaper for AI.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Its not smarter, just faster, as techs and units are cheaper for AI.

The way it chooses to expand and improve its land has been made a lot smarter so it would at least come across smarter in that regard.

 

[raxo2222]

The way it chooses to expand and improve its land has been made a lot smarter so it would at least come across smarter in that regard.

I meant switching from immortal to deity by itself.

I know, that AI now has better land management.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I meant switching from immortal to deity by itself.

I know, that AI now has better land management.

yeah true there's no IQ differences between difficulty settings specifically.

 

[T-6000]

I've also run into a strange AI issue, this one on the city production side - I captured a barbarian city and discovered they'd built a modest fleet of 46 work boats. Pretty convenient for me, having other coastal cities I can send them to, but perhaps not the optimal choice for them. They hadn't even built a fishing camp on the one (resource-less) coast tile they had within their cultural border. The city did have the usual 4-6 defenders and had sent out a few small parties to cause minor trouble earlier in the game, but had been quite passive for a while, presumably after developing this fascination with work boats.

There is a shrimp tile two squares from the city, so perhaps they were anticipating a cultural border expansion that never came, and got stuck in a loop of building a new boat when the existing boats couldn't accomplish that goal?

IIRC this is on immortal difficulty, SVN 11348, on a space map and with the latitude-adjusting modmod dealie, without using any of the special barbarian rules at game start. Further detail and a patchwork of saves available if needed.