The AI and happiness

[SW-14]

I've noticed that often times the AI has a ridiculously high level of happiness at points where it doesn't really seem possible, so it's clear that they're given some sort of a boost to make them "better." I think this is what's leading to the runaway civs, where those civs that are aggressive early on capture or build lots of cities that grow rapidly due to no happiness problems. As a result, they can hit golden ages much easier and make tons of gold from all their puppets.

Is there a mod that turns off this extra happiness? How does the AI play?

 

[Furycrab]

I've noticed that often times the AI has a ridiculously high level of happiness at points where it doesn't really seem possible, so it's clear that they're given some sort of a boost to make them "better." I think this is what's leading to the runaway civs, where those civs that are aggressive early on capture or build lots of cities that grow rapidly due to no happiness problems. As a result, they can hit golden ages much easier and make tons of gold from all their puppets.

Is there a mod that turns off this extra happiness? How does the AI play?

Playing on lower difficulties?

Runaway Civs are usually a result of them smacking the closest competition out of existence and having the other civs too busy to actually stop them until it's too late.

 

[Spatzimaus]

By default, the AI plays on Chieftain difficulty regardless of what difficulty YOU play at. On Chieftain, among other things, all unhappiness values are multiplied by 0.6. As a result, his cities will grow faster than yours, he'll take less production to finish wonders and such, he'll pay far less maintenance on units and buildings, and he'll have a large happiness surplus.

This can be modded.

 

[SW-14]

No, I've been playing on King and have noticed this a lot. It really sucks when it happens on a completely different continent and by the time you make contact with them, there's not much you can do to stop them.

 

[apocalypse105]

By default, the AI plays on Chieftain difficulty regardless of what difficulty YOU play at. On Chieftain, among other things, all unhappiness values are multiplied by 0.6. As a result, his cities will grow faster than yours, he'll take less production to finish wonders and such, he'll pay far less maintenance on units and buildings, and he'll have a large happiness surplus.

This can be modded.

Thats stupid Normal should be normal which mod do you mean can you give the name of the mod or link where to dowload it?

 

[starrywisdom]

and he'll have a large happiness surplus.

It doesn't seem like the A.I. actually has happiness penalties or something - I've had a few games where an A.I. will have 20+ cities and still be chugging along just fine -- when there is absolutely no way a player could be anywhere close to positive happiness, lol.

 

[spfun]

Just a warning if you go ahead and change this you'll severely cripple the AI in the process.

 

[KungCheops]

Just a warning if you go ahead and change this you'll severely cripple the AI in the process.

Perhaps they could make a decent AI then...

 

[Spatzimaus]

It doesn't seem like the A.I. actually has happiness penalties or something - I've had a few games where an A.I. will have 20+ cities and still be chugging along just fine -- when there is absolutely no way a player could be anywhere close to positive happiness, lol.

You misunderstand; I wasn't giving some sort of conjecture. This has been confirmed by Firaxis, and has been classified as a feature instead of a bug. What I described above is exactly how it works; their Unhappiness is multiplied by 0.6, as if they were a player on Chieftain. Also, for the record, it's not hard for a player to have positive happiness in a 20-city empire, as long as you actually go for happiness-boosting policies instead of only ever taking Rationalism and such.

And when I was saying that it's an easy thing to mod, I mean that it's literally a 1-update XML mod. I don't know of any explicit mods that do ONLY this, but it's a common component to many of the various "balance" mods.

And no, spfun, fixing this does NOT cripple the AI. You see, it looks like the AI is built around the concept of "thresholds". As in, most empires will only go on a conquest spree if they have ~20 Happiness to spare, so it doesn't matter HOW that +20 happens. If you put the AI on the same Happiness scale as the player, and they still have enough ways to gain Happiness (like the player does), then they'll behave exactly the same as before; the main reason why the AI, all other things equal, would tend to fall behind the player is that the AI is built around a probabilistic Flavor system where all possible options are available at any given moment with no concept of prioritization, but that's actually fairly easy to tweak.

 

[Drawmeus]

Both happiness and gold are much better after the patch. Playing a large King game, I'm 2nd for gold income right now and tied for 4th for happiness, out of 9. Persia is way out in front on happiness (more than doubling 2nd place), but that seems reasonable for a Persia-specific happiness emphasis and given that they're in first place by score. A few of the AIs have large gold reserves, but not unreasonably large - 1700, 2400 and 4100 gold. I've gotten up to around 1500 in this game (and am currently pulling down almost 350 a turn), but I just haven't bothered to build up a gold reserve, instead reinvesting gold I earn.

My net happiness right now is 19. My highest this game was 22.

 

[cman2010]

Perhaps they could make a decent AI then...

agreed

 

[starrywisdom]

You misunderstand; I wasn't giving some sort of conjecture. This has been confirmed by Firaxis, and has been classified as a feature instead of a bug. What I described above is exactly how it works; their Unhappiness is multiplied by 0.6, as if they were a player on Chieftain. Also, for the record, it's not hard for a player to have positive happiness in a 20-city empire, as long as you actually go for happiness-boosting policies instead of only ever taking Rationalism and such.

I think you missed the point of my post, I didn't say it was impossible at 'mid-end' game. The A.I. can have a tremendous amount of cities where the player would be very...very unhappy. For a specific instance; I'm in a standard/huge/earth game - on turn 120 or so China had 24 cities and was still growing. Maybe I'm not too great at the game - but I don't think it's really possible to have the tech/buildings/policies to have a 24 city empire that early in the game. Of course if you could educate me on that front I would appreciate it

 

[Callonia]

Hrm.. >< No wonder why. I hated their ability to expand so fast, been trying to match only to find out its a cheat. pfft. pathetic.

 

[Becephalus]

It doesn't seem like the A.I. actually has happiness penalties or something - I've had a few games where an A.I. will have 20+ cities and still be chugging along just fine -- when there is absolutely no way a player could be anywhere close to positive happiness, lol.

In my last game I had over 30 cities, most of them captured, less then 5 were puppets at any one time. I had no happiness problems. This was on Emperor.

 

[Callonia]

In my last game I had over 30 cities, most of them captured, less then 5 were puppets at any one time. I had no happiness problems. This was on Emperor.

You need to be more specific.

Don't just drop a bragging line dude.

 

[Drawmeus]

You need to be more specific.

Don't just drop a bragging line dude.

Honestly, it's just not that hard. It's not even a brag at this point. Happiness is a challenge to manage but it's not a problem.

 

[Spatzimaus]

I think you missed the point of my post, I didn't say it was impossible at 'mid-end' game. The A.I. can have a tremendous amount of cities where the player would be very...very unhappy.

I didn't misunderstand you, you're just wrong.

If you were playing on Chieftain difficulty, you could do exactly what the AI is doing and support a truly massive empire with ease. This is how the x0.6 works. The thing to remember is that in Civ5, Happiness is a differential. (So are Gold and Food.) That is, to use hypothetical numbers, let's say you're gaining +110 from buildings, policies, etc., and your cities are costing you -100, so you see a net +10; barely enough to compensate for city growth, not nearly enough to expand. But play on Chieftain, and that +10 becomes +50, because the 100 becomes a 60. Think that'd make a small difference in how many extra cities you could support, many of which would provide you with new luxury resources and so pay for themselves?

And think about happiness-boosting buildings. Nearly all of them cap by population; only the Circus Maximus, Notre Dame, and Eiffel Tower don't. Every other building or Wonder is limited to +1 per population. On Prince or higher, that +1 per population cancels out the -1 per population that you get automatically, so no big deal, right? But play on Chieftain and the -1 becomes -0.6, and suddenly you're gaining +0.4 per population for all of those happiness buildings. Since the base 3 unhappiness is also reduced to only 1.8, this means that any AI city of size 5 or higher will add more happiness than it costs, assuming maximum happiness buildings.

There's one last Happiness factor that hasn't been mentioned: luxury trading. Ever notice how in the diplomacy screen, you rarely see AI empires having spare luxuries? It's not that they don't have them; it's that because of the way the turn order is structured, as soon as an AI hooks up a spare resource he tends to offer it first to other AIs, and AIs aren't quite as insistent on luxury-for-luxury even trades as a player would be.

So again, those huge happiness values are perfectly reasonable once you realize that the AIs are running on easy mode all of the time. If you actually try to calculate the numbers you'll see that there's no other cheating mechanism for the AIs, it's just what I've described above.

 

[snoochems]

Hang on. I thought the ai played on prince difficulty... Hence why playing prince yourself is considered to be "normal".

Anyways, I knew someing was wrong, as even blind freddy could see that the ai has massive happiness cheats. I would actually like to be able to play by the same rules tbh. I don't really play for the challenge though.

 

[SW-14]

I would actually like to be able to play by the same rules tbh.

It would be interesting to see how it works out, at least. Has anyone tried playing a game with the AI not getting a happiness bonus? (And only this - no other mods) Were they competitive at all?

 

[Misterboy]

It would be interesting to see how it works out, at least. Has anyone tried playing a game with the AI not getting a happiness bonus? (And only this - no other mods) Were they competitive at all?

Uh... if I'm understanding Spatzimaus correctly, all you need to do is play at Chieftan to nullify the AI's bonus. So ask yourself: "Is the AI competative with me when I play at Chieftan difficulty".

Personally, I was also under the impression that the AI received no "bonuses" until King difficulty, thereby making Prince an "even" playing field. Sounds like I was mistaken.

Also, Spatzimaus, I thought I remember reading that the AI is given limited options...something to the effect that it chooses from a wider range of the calculated "best" choices at lower difficulties and at higher difficulties only chooses from a smaller pool of decisions at the top of the probability curve.

I could be remembering incorrectly, however.