What's up with China?

[RedRover57]

In my current game I took over China's capitol around turn 150. According to the Diplomacy window they had adopted 5 SP in Tradition and the capitol had around 15 pop and a very large culture border. However, after puppeting I found out that the capitol only had a granary and market (no monument or library at least?!) and the land was almost totally undeveloped. The only improvements were on the 2 luxuries - there was a huge track of undeveloped river tiles (no farms whatsoever), 2 undeveloped cow tiles and 1 undeveloped horse tile. There were also no wonders built in the capitol, even though China basically turtled in 3 cities the whole game so far. No wonder they were totally gimp and didn't even make it to Cho-Ko-Nus - they "defended" against my longsword Mohawk upgrades plus trebs with a few warriors and archers. This isn't the first time that I noticed the China AI not having a clue how to play post-patch. Anyone else noticing this?

Also, what's up with Monty AI post-patch? He is always friendly now and usually doesn't even care if I place a city near his borders. It's like the patch emasculated him. It's almost like the patch has caused the AI's to do the opposite of what they used to do (for example, Alex usually turtles with Tradition now while Suleiman spams cities). Really bizarre.

Edit: I should note that I am witnessing this strange AI behavior on Emperor (and also King) difficulty.

 

[DemonMaster]

One thing that I noticed in one of my recent games was the Incas just had one city and did nothing, a couple of combat units, but nothing else, no improvements. I did a test, I gave them a worker and a huge sum of money and then all of sudden he started to work land and do stuff, even make war.

 

[TPQ]

Yep, I too have noticed this AI behaviour post 217 patch.

Both examples are on marathon, huge, pangea, maximum Civs and CCs.

I saw Washington sit in his capital, right next to great land to his east he could of settled for ~200 turns, whilst I filled up all the space to his west. He built lots of warriors and a few archers, but didn't seem to do anything else. No wonders. Only one worker with minimal improvements. He just sat there shuffling around his increasingly out-dated army until I decided to liberate his people from his awful leadership.

Most recently I saw Harun al-rashid do the same thing. The only difference was after about 300 turns of doing essentially nothing, he built two extra cities. By then I had about 9 cities and a considerable army, so I added his two best cities to my empire and left him with Damascus, which he has spent a further 250 turns sitting in doing essentially nothing. He is handy to sell all my unused iron to though.

 

[Solver]

Do any of you guys have saves demonstrating the AI sitting and doing nothing?

In general, please understand that, if you encounter behaviour that is definitely wrong, then posting a save dramatically increases the probability of something being done about it. If strange behaviour is simply described, the developers won't always be able to even identify the issue, but savegames help a LOT.

 

[RedRover57]

It's possible that they lost workers and troops to barbarians early in the game and just don't know how to make more. Therefore, they just sit around. When I conquered China in that game they had no workers, none of their other cities had improved tiles either and there were no roads connecting their cities. Pre-patch the AI always made roads as a high priority so something is definitely amiss.

 

[Solver]

That's why I am asking for saves - from them it's possible to establish what the AI was thinking specifically, and possibly figure out what went wrong.

 

[TPQ]

That's why I am asking for saves - from them it's possible to establish what the AI was thinking specifically, and possibly figure out what went wrong.

No, sorry. I've set my game up to autosave every turn (due to crashes and avoiding tedium by having to repeat steps) but it only saves the last 50 turns, so other than the initial save (if that's helpful, I can provide?) of the game where Harun sat around for ages doing nothing and one 50 turns ago form where I currently am in the game as of this post, I don't have anything to offer, other than my account of my experience, which as you say, isn't much help.

I wish I'd of kept the Washington one, it was the perfect example, but c'est la vie.

 

[Solver]

Ah, sorry to hear that. No, the initial save is too early to show anything. But do keep this in mind if you encounter the issue again.

In your game where Washington did nothing, did you perhaps have some non-standard game settings? Say, were you playing without city-states, or a very densely/sparsely populated map, or something else that would be noteworthy?

 

[BobDole]

In my current game I took over China's capitol around turn 150. According to the Diplomacy window they had adopted 5 SP in Tradition and the capitol had around 15 pop and a very large culture border. However, after puppeting I found out that the capitol only had a granary and market (no monument or library at least?!) and the land was almost totally undeveloped. The only improvements were on the 2 luxuries - there was a huge track of undeveloped river tiles (no farms whatsoever), 2 undeveloped cow tiles and 1 undeveloped horse tile. There were also no wonders built in the capitol, even though China basically turtled in 3 cities the whole game so far. No wonder they were totally gimp and didn't even make it to Cho-Ko-Nus - they "defended" against my longsword Mohawk upgrades plus trebs with a few warriors and archers. This isn't the first time that I noticed the China AI not having a clue how to play post-patch. Anyone else noticing this?

I haven't noticed anything this extreme, but I have seen them ignore repairing improvements they've already made.

Also, what's up with Monty AI post-patch? He is always friendly now and usually doesn't even care if I place a city near his borders. It's like the patch emasculated him. It's almost like the patch has caused the AI's to do the opposite of what they used to do (for example, Alex usually turtles with Tradition now while Suleiman spams cities). Really bizarre.

Monty definitely isn't always friendly. He blindsided me in my most recent game even though we were buddies (not DoF, but "Friendly" and never had anything negative with him) and tried to force me to accept ridiculous peace treaties even after I beat him back and took 4 of his cities. He's definitely still as crazy as ever.

 

[Bibor]

That's why I am asking for saves - from them it's possible to establish what the AI was thinking specifically, and possibly figure out what went wrong.

Oh my god! Solver's back!
Does this mean we'll get a CIV5 AI patch in the future?

 

[Teperi Blaze]

Too bad I don't have a save of my game last week. But the issue is the same, but maybe with some further info.

As Askia, I shared a small continent with Harun and my warriors just roamed around and picked up 3 workers and 2 settlers (which will be workers if you keep them.) The game setup was just normal settings on Prince and continents, no further changes.

So 2 barbcamps in between our nations, manage to pick off all of Haruns expansionplans, which is just because he never sent a warrior to protect his settlers/workers. I've seen the AI sending out settlers unprotected even after this and it's just wrong.

And how can the barbs pick up workers like blueberries, isn't there a warningsign for the AI, when a barb shows up 2 tiles from a worker. Even CS AI seems to send it's worker into town, when a barb appear.

 

[TPQ]

Ah, sorry to hear that. No, the initial save is too early to show anything. But do keep this in mind if you encounter the issue again.

In your game where Washington did nothing, did you perhaps have some non-standard game settings? Say, were you playing without city-states, or a very densely/sparsely populated map, or something else that would be noteworthy?

The game settings were:

19 Civs (including the one I picked; Songhai).
28 City States.
Pangea.
3 Billion year old terrain
Rainfall: Wet
Climate: Hot
Emperor
All victory conditions enabled
Marathon
Huge

I only have the free DLC (Mongols).

 

[AfterShafter]

Yayyy, Solver!!

 

[Solver]

Rest assured guys, I am working behind the scenes

Anyhow, will always be glad to see saves of strange AI behaviour. From the above description of Washington, I can't really say anything definitive. Might just assume it was in part because of the map being pretty crowded, but yeah, mystifying.

 

[RedRover57]

Too bad I don't have a save of my game last week. But the issue is the same, but maybe with some further info.

As Askia, I shared a small continent with Harun and my warriors just roamed around and picked up 3 workers and 2 settlers (which will be workers if you keep them.) The game setup was just normal settings on Prince and continents, no further changes.

So 2 barbcamps in between our nations, manage to pick off all of Haruns expansionplans, which is just because he never sent a warrior to protect his settlers/workers. I've seen the AI sending out settlers unprotected even after this and it's just wrong.

And how can the barbs pick up workers like blueberries, isn't there a warningsign for the AI, when a barb shows up 2 tiles from a worker. Even CS AI seems to send it's worker into town, when a barb appear.

Interesting. I just saw something similar in another game where I was playing Siam on a standard pangaea (King difficulty I believe). My scout ran into Harun who only had one 3-pop city on about turn 50 or so. The scout then found 2 barb camps near his city - one camp had a barb settler and another a barb worker. I couldn't take the camps with just my scout but I am betting that they were Harun's units since there was no CS close. So at least one of the issues with AI inactivity may be inability of the AI to protect its settlers/workers from barbs. Once they lose them early they don't recover very well. Unfortunately I don't think I saved the game, but this happens frequently enough to me that its pretty hard to miss.

 

[Rince]

Had a similar game on Prince, tiny map, pangaea, playing Siam.

Not a single war broke out during the whole game. Everyone just happily living together, hunting barbarians from time to time. There were circular DoF during the whole time. I eventually won by a science victory.

As you can see from the map, some players did not expand at all. Again, there was no war, all cities are still in the hand of the original owner. Arabia has one single city, Egypt only 3. The only AI expanding rapidly in the late-game was the US. Obviously, both Arabia and Egypt could have claimed that land much earlier.

This is 1969 AD:

 

[Solver]

Egypt could make sense, but Arabia is definitely playing it wrong - this should be an interesting save, thanks, I'll look at it tomorrow. If you happen to have a couple other saves from earlier points in the game they'd also be useful, but if you no longer have those, no problem. Thanks!

 

[Rince]

Here are all the 14 saves that I have of this game.

Thanks for looking into it.

 

[Solver]

Nice savegame spread. Chances are it will show what Arabia is thinking there, sitting around with 1 city

 

[Callonia]

Can u tell us what causes the Ai to think like that please Because I'm really curious.