Suggestions regarding AI mid/late science

[Unreasonablefig]

As others have pointed out, AI science growth often falls off dramatically relative to the player in the mid-game. I can think of at least two factors that might be involved:

1. Trading Posts
The worker AI seems to be in love with trading posts over farms due to the +2/3 gold vs +1 food. You'll quickly notice this if you set your workers to automatically build improvements. Growth is the main driver of science throughout the game, and AI cities are often left in the dust, crippling the AI unless they expand like crazy. Of course, over-expansion leads to happiness issues which themselves hurt science. However, the extra gold is usually necessary due to...

2. "Free" Units
The AI at higher difficulties will get insane influxes of free units. Not only does this make early rushes incredible difficult to defend against, but it also puts an immense strain on the AI's economy. Many players have noted very negative AI gpt in the mid to late game. Obviously this destroys AI science growth.

I would suggest having the worker AI prioritize farms and mines above all else unless the trading post will be very profitable. +2 food is generally preferable to +4 and even +5 gpt unless you seriously need the money. I also like having my workers automate themselves and it would be a big quality of life improvement. Adjustments should be made if the city working those tiles is set to limit growth or gold focus (like in puppets).

I also wish the AI would take more advantage of the wonderful +6 (!) food bonus provided by an early internal trade route. This is a Hanging Gardens for the price of a caravan and a trade route. Insane.

As to the free units, I feel like Gazebo is much more qualified than I am to figure out how to balance this issue out. Flat bonuses to gpt and science are the easy option, but i love this mod in part because the AI doesnt get the ridiculous advantages they get in vanilla, but they play much more intelligently to compensate. I'd be very interested to hear the community's thoughts

 

[frutiemax]

While I agree about the food trade route which the AI should use, I don't necessarily agree with the fact that farms are better than trading posts. If you play wide (6 cities or more) and conquered cities, you don't want too much growth in the cities (so they don't get bored) other than the capital because happiness problems really hurt everything with this mod (culture, science, production, etc.).

In fact, gold is really good because you can produce wonders 25% faster by spending on them. So you get huge advantages by getting a good GNP and you don't have happiness problems. What I prioritize improving is, particularly in this mod:

- Strategic resources and luxury and other special tiles (wheat, cattle, sheeps, etc.): those are generally the best tiles to work and you get a chance to get the monopoly bonus (spices = longer golden age = OP). I often expend a great engineer on top of either horses or iron (more production on a single tile).

If I have a wide empire and not much happiness margin (lets say +3 or less):
- Trading posts on jungle tiles : since it is beneficial to keep jungle for science with university, you can build trading posts on these tiles so they become better tiles!

Else if I have a good GNP (improved tiles cost gold per turn)
- Farms next to river tiles/lakes (obviously for the growth)
- Hills with mines

My opinion is trading posts are really good in this mod and keeps your GNP positive even if all of your trade routes are food.