AI list processing files are very complex... but rules allow you to do a lot, provided enough is 'exposed'. Many, or maybe even most, of the AI problems in CtP have been solved or reduced to a large extent by this work.

Having a dumbed down AI editor is something that can't compare to a conditionally hinting AI script, as you'll find in CtP.

This is EXTREMELY effective. Here's why: the enemy looses a city and for all intents and purposes, cannon get it back. At the same time, the city makes me a ton of money to wage war against the enemy. Best of all, on huge maps this is a method to conquer the world without running into the problem of being overwhelmed by too much city management.

I capture a well-developed, world-class city in their homeland, around size 14 or so. I immediatly have the city build defensive military units to keep the city from enemy hands. I turn ALL citizens into taxman (taxmen = muchos $$$) and laugh at the starving people. Every turn I sell the most valuable city improvement, starting with factories. In just a few turns, I can make an enemy's most powerful city into a worthless villiage. Even if they capture it back, it'll be useless -- they'll have to divert needed war resources to rebuild the city.

In summary, the enemy is doomed to lose. I leave nothing worth recapturing, and devestate the enemy nation. I also avoid the time-consuming act of massive city micromanagement as my forces conquer the world.

1) Treachery: Sounds basic? It is, but I don't know how many times I've made peace with a computer player, given him a few turns to work on other things while I build up and position units, then swamp him. Declare peace, repeat.
2) Explotation of Zones of Control: There's a lot in this, the nastiest being using diplomats to allow military units past enemy zones of control to attack the cities directly. However, I also on occasion use a nice "creeping offense" with two lines of units staggered on diagonals, moving forward by rows to make a nice dragnet the enemy can't slip through. This can also be used to defend wide spaces if you have the units to spare.
3) Use cities to claim large amounts of territory, then fill in the gaps: Send out piles of settlers, obviously, but also scout heavily to find where the computers are slowly expanding, then put cities right in their path. Build back toward your original cities from there, and spank any cities the computer builds in your expansion area.
4) Settler Bonanza: Don't you just love it when the AI builds two cities right next to each other? Not just within each other's radii, but right damn next to each other. Take them both, and have the smaller settle itself to death. Move all the workers onto the best production/least food squares and build settlers until it's gone. Use the other city to support the last couple so you don't lose them when the city dries up.
5) Use Crap cities as unit supporters: This is an offshoot of ICS, really, and only worth it in the early to mid game, but as you space cities with the lovely 21 square thing, there are going to be some unused squares in-between. I like to drop a city in there and limit it to just the squares that are not in the range of other cities, give it almost no improvements, and mine the squares it uses. Then, I bring units through and set their home base to the crap city, leaving my other cities their full production.

Things I do that the AI should too:

My main idea is about Pre-Made Templates - how and when to use them, in order to free up the AI as much as possible, so it can be used more effectively elsewhere.

Things the AI lets me do:

1. Stack some single movement units next to a city, and let them live to attack the next turn. I don't do this much, but when I do, I often get away with it.

2. Likewise, if I have a large group of mobile units within 1 movement point of the AI city, the AI should really kill them off, peace or no peace.

3. This has been mentioned before, but worth restating. The AI should not agree to peace or a ceace fire right after losing a city. I've used this to take over some very powerful civs with relatively little military force, one or two cities at a time. I take a city I couldn't possibly hope to hold, then ask for a cease fire. or better yet, more often than not the AI will ask for peace immediately. Then on my next turn I can often get the AI to declare war on me by demanding tribute, so my reputation goes unscathed. It would be better for the AI to at least wait for the end of it's next turn to make a cease fire offer, after it has tried to counter attack.

4. The AI is almost always far to ready to give tribute in the form of money or technology. Sometimes one can build almost all the early wonders just by buying caravans with money supplied from tribute. Tribute should be a factor in the game, but shouldn't be so imbalancing.

5. The warrior defense. Often my entire civ is defended primarily by warriors, and maybe the occasional phalanx. No way in hades a civ with monotheism should let me get away with this one. (Don't get any freaking ideas, RAH. this is against the computer, not you.)

6. The AI should probably never be willing to give you a wonder tech if the wonder hasn't already been built. Possible exception for allies, bronze working, and map making. Otherwise techtrades might be extremely limited early on.

Things the AI should do.

1. Expand. Perhaps not do much more than expand until a certain number of cities is reached. For balance there should perhaps be some civs that aren't so expansionistic, but some certainly should be. Maybe have a couple civs plant roots, build 4 cities real quick, and start working on wonders real quick, while 3 others try to get 12 cities down before they build much else. Gobble up some land before I get to it.

2. Government.

There's this thing called Monarchy. It's kind of important. There is probably no such thing as a decent human player that does not make either monarchy or republic his first priority. The AI should try to get out of despotism as soon as possible as well.

3. As mentioned before, the AI should not shun putting workers on trade arrows. every turn it should evaluate a city's worker distribution and adjust it according to maximal return.

4. Not a major point, but why investigate my city 5 times on the same turn?

5. I've seen AI cities hang around size 8 or 12 for very long times. Perhaps make construction/sanitation a high research priority once a substantial fraction of AI cities reach size 6/10, and prioritize aqueducts/sewers at size 7/11, provided there is enough food production potential and space availible.

6. I've never seen the slightest evidence of an AI usingit's hordes of goldto speed production. Perhaps it should put the gold to some kind of use.

7. After the first few cities have been built, and the AI is out of despotism, forests and hills should recieve a higher value as potential city sites provided there will be some minimum food availibility in the city radius. This would make a city much more difficult to take.

8. Keep single movement attacking-defending units, like legions, preferentially on defensive terrain when in or near your territory.

9. Feudalism should be a high priority for civs nearest the human player. Also, masonry and city walls.

Things that it might really suck if the AI did.

WARFARE.

1.I know that it's probably hard to get an AI to assemble a battle group, but this might be a simple solution. Give the AI a build option of battle group in a coastal city, provided there is some sea route from that city to human territory. This battle group option should consist of perhaps 3 state of the art vet mobile units, best availible defensive unit, a diplomat, and a boat. ( or more boats if you develope qualms about an AI being able to overload a boat). To speed production perhaps the AI could either use some of that gold sitting around or use some of those shields saved up for a wonder or two that was discontinued. Then move as a group to enemy territory, and, if at war, attack the first coastal city it comes to where the mobile units can land and attack on the same turn. Dip first, with a high probability of taking out city walls if there are any. Seems like it would be a fairly simple algorythm to impliment. In the event of feudalism perhaps the battle group should be changed to the dip, required boat, 2 good single movement attack-defense units like legions, and 6 single movement units like catapults. And of course the dip with an exceptional ability to bust walls. Again go to nearest likely enemy coastal city. Land in 2 groups on two squares adjacent to the city and bust walls with dip. If the human only has 1 offensive unit in the city one of the stacks has a good chance of surviving. Next turn, first attack with 3 offensive units. Then hurl boat or boats at city. Finally attack with lastoffensive unit. Note: I have found very few people who defend a city with more than 3 units. These seem like 2 fairly simple proceedures that may not be too much to get an AI to do. It doesn't have to figure out exactly what to build and how to assemble it, because it is all one build order in 1 city. Granted, these two proceedures are easily defeatable, but certainly not without cost. Even if it forces the human to go for feudalism early, and have at least 2 attacking units in each city near a coast, it's taken effort and resources.

The next few suggestions are about defense, because AI citiea are usually pathetically easy to take.

2. If the AI has engineering, any time a city reaches some threshhold in size, developement, and food availibility, make an engineer. When that engineer is built, It terraforms the city square either into forest,if already on a river square, or otherwise into a hill, then a mountain.

3. Forest all coastal squares adjacent to a coastal city, if food availibility won't be hurt too much. That way landing and attacking on the same turn is not quite so easy.

4. Around any city where food availibility won't be hurt too much, forest all 8 squares adjacent to the city. Have at most 2 roads on any of these adjacent squares, always with a fort on each and occupiesd with 2 units. Forests will slow 2 movement units, but won't provide too much of a defensive bonus. I wouldn't think this would be too hard to do. Just have the AI try to optimize the city radius of any city that does not overlap another. Try to make it look as much as possible like this: inner square the city, next 8 squares forest or mined hills, outer 12 squares grassland. If a minimum food availibility potential is reached, it stops foresting the inner squares. It also forests any squares adjacent to both the city and the sea first. Next, it forests the squares adjacent to the city that are closest to the enemy. If food availibility falls below a certain point, it starts to turn outer squares into irrigated improved grass-farmland. Once the food availibility is restored, it goes back to forresting adjacent to the city. If The food availibility can't be brought up enough, it stops. This all will involve a lot of terraforming, so give the computer a bit of a cheat to speed things up.

5. Once a city reaches a certain threashold, maintain 2 good attack- defense units
(like legions), an attacking mobile unit (like a crusader) and the strongest availible attack unit(like a catapult). They need to be upgraded when appropriate tech becomes availible. These units need to stay in the city.

6. A diplomat fortified in at least half of all cities. When a city is taken, it can be cheaply bribed back on the next turn, if the AI doesn't do something stupid like accept an immediate cease fire. Also, a dip, though low in defense, costs nothing to maintain and is just 1 more unit that has to be taken out before a city can be taken.

7. Expand preferentially towards the enemy until cities begin to overlap or the coastis reached. Then expand elsewhere. This will make expansion harder for the human player.

8. Have an AI player or 2 use a fast expansion policy; building only warriors and settlers, or phalanxes and settlers until either room for expansion is gone or war makes a different policy necessary.

8. Coordinate AI activities more to the detriment of the human player in a single player game. This can be done largely simply by the personality of the various AI's. For example, in a 7 player game, perhaps the 2 civs closest to the human player should have a militaristic expansion personality, provided they share the same land mass as the human. Some sort of balance is sought between building settlers and building attack units to send towards the enemy. The next two closest AI's, or the AI's with the most room for expansion, should perhaps adopt a rapid expansion personality; avoiding war and just trying to get those cities down til seriously threatened or availible land is gone. Thelast 2 civs, either the furthest away or the ones with less room to grow, should try to build 3 or 4 cities relatively fast, then start building wonders, preferentially in or close to the capital, and once built, defend the wonder cities well. They should go for the early wonders people usually like the most, like HG, GL, and perhaps MPE. Leave the Pyramids and GW for the larger AI's to build. (And one of the larger AI's should at least make the effort.)

9. Perhaps defend any city with 2 or more wonders with at least 1 more unit than it has population. That way if the city walls are destroyed the city will be destroyed, along with the wonders, before it can be taken. Dips could make up a large part of the defense force since they cost nothing to maintain.

In Civ2 I won on Deity using a mild-moderate ICS strategy.

In SMAC I win by default: the AI is completely out of its depth after the discovery of air power.

Crucial flaws:
1. The AI doesn't know how to terraform.
1a: Assigning each base a random chance of building a former doesn't work: often, bases are unproductive because the land around them hasn't been terraformed, occasionally excess terraformers on an island sit idle using support. Ideally, the AI should figure out how many formers it needs; less ambitiously it could simply assume it needs 1 former per city.
In Civ, where settlers/engineers require population points as well as maintenance, this would be more tricky.
1b: The AI should figure out which tiles within a base's radius will give the best production, given its current technology, and then terraform those. At the moment it does silly things like building mines instead of forests before mineral restrictions are lifted.
1c: Probably not relevant to Civ3, but it should realize when it needs sea formers, instead of waiting until a port base happens to build one.

The consequence of these things is that over the long run, during the mid-game, the AI grows at about 1% per turn whereas I grow at maybe 2 1/2% per turn. Over 100 or 150 turns that 1 1/2% per turn difference gives me the game.

2. The AI doesn't know how to use aircraft.
At the moment it seems to have two strategies for using aircraft: either (a) attack easy targets, such as unarmoured formers or rovers, or (b) conserve the aircraft, not risking them. These are both good strategies to use at the right times and places, but it needs a third: all-out attack in support of the army, using bombers to kill enemy garrisons that are holding bases the army is attacking, and being willing to lose bombers during these attacks. The consequence of not risking bombers coupled with the AI's focus on building bombers and not ground assault troops is that the AI can't launch anything beyond nuisance attacks after the discovery of air power.
Ideally, the AI's aircraft should also fly patrols. But this is tricky: they shouldn't fly long patrols into areas where they are likely to get attacked by fighters, etc.
Really, of course, bombers should attack like artillery.

3. The AI doesn't assign the Social Engineering factor of Efficiency a higher priority as its colony grows larger. In one of my games about 30 bases of the 60-base Usurper faction were producing 0 energy due to inefficiency.

Lesser flaws:
4. The AI doesn't build supply crawlers in order to gather resources. When it has supply crawlers left over from building a SP, it doesn't know which tiles they should be used on. (E.g. it will harvest 0 factors of production from a square.)

5. The AI doesn't realize that it should build a new headquarters if its old headquarters is destroyed. (In SMAC a headquarters may -or may not- be added to a build queue somewhere sometime. Instead, it should realise that it needs a HQ, calculate the best spot, and override the governor in that base.)

6. The AI doesn't know how to pop boom. This is a secondary thing, because not knowing how to terraform means that bases' maximum populations aren't very high anyway. (The Usurpers built the Cloning Vats in the game mentioned above and I was surprised to see that it made little difference.

Alot of suggestons 'use bombers,use cannons' type,but main problem stays:

My AI never see anything stronger than pikeman/crusader/catapult.

Or my disk is invalid?

quote: Why the hell can I not build a civilization in Civilization games, but I am forced to build a war machine?

I think we should have the possibility to win the game without going to war. In Civ2 the AI ALWAYS sneak-attack me, very often in a kamikaze way, no matter how peacefull I play and how strong my army is. One turn they are "enthusiastic, peace", the very next turn "enraged, war"! That doesn't seem to me realistic.

It would be very nice to have AI "personalities" which try to win in alternative ways (for ex. becoming a trade power). Making trade embargos should be a powerfull "weapon" to force your enemies to make peace. I'd like to see the time when the AI will be real "scared" when I'm threatening him with a UN meeting or a global trade embargo! I'd like to see that the reputation of a country is really important and influences the behaviour of the AI, not just in relation with the human player but also between 2 AI civs.

I'd like to see the time when we will discuss about how the AI (or at least a peacefull one) can PEACEFULLY win: makes alliances to isolate his enemies, unions to become a trade power, UN-meetings to force peace treaties or embargos, share research projects or wonders and so on.

First of all, it is pointless to use Civ II as the comparison for an improved AI. Either SMAC or CTP should be used.

"0) AI needs to expand more quickly, especially at the start. It is waaaay too conservative, and incurs huge "opportunity costs" in size due to slow expansion. The AI should also build cities in niches on the shore that have only a few land squares but could develop into decent sized cities with a harbor..."

The AI employs this technique in SMAC, and as a result, the AI goes expansion crazy. Instead of developing the cities it already has, it just spreads out. Although this may be a good strategy, it is very annoying for the builder/diplomacy minded players.
A better compromise for a weak AI, would be for it concentrate on building a moderately sized civilisation, with quality cities, rather than numerous poor quality cities.

"5) AI should build more diplomats/spies and Use Them. Even used in a ham-handed manner they are pretty nasty. Bribing cities when enemies have a pile of units around the city are especially damaging to the enemy. If you could add logic to let the AIs use the ZOC-cancelling functions of diplos and spies AI attacks and counter-attacks could be Much more devastating."

There has to be a balance between a really tough AI, and the pleasure of playing the game. To me, having the AI bombard you with spies would make the game unplayable. I've heard that with CTP, all these annoying non-combat type units, like the Lawyer unit, have the potential to make the game very frustrating indeed.

Bkeela

The AI likes to spread its units out (in its defences as well as attacking), therefore someone with a large group of units can easily conquer the civ city by city. The number of defensive units should be proportional to a city's population and other factors should be considered. Such as: is the city a capital? How many wonders (that are not obsolete) does this city have? Is this a city on the edge of my empire? Has this city been attacked recently? The AI should consider this when placing its units or building defensive improvements.

The partisans should act like partisans. Whenever I take a city and partisans appear I take them out before I advance. (Aside: In Civ3 to make partisans more effective, they should be invincible in forest or jungle squares or squares that are not being used by the city's workers) On occasion I don't have enough units to take them all out, so they unfortify and pillage terrain improvements. This gives me a chance to mop them up and the damage they do is a minor annoyance. Partisans would be more effective if they avoided confrontation with normal military units and attacked units such as engineers, spies, caravans or weakened units. And they should pillage squares that are out of the way or near cities that appear to have no extra units near them.

The AI should also know that swamp and jungle squares without special resources are worthless and manpower should be invested to clear them.

On a relevant topic, I believe that difficulty levels should be based on AI "competence" as opposed to just handicapping the player's civ or cheating on the AI's part. This may not be feasible until the AI is "competent" and hopefully this is still not the case in Civ3. But basically at chieftain mode, the AI barely tries. As we advance on levels the AI tries more tricks and lets more AI civs play full out until deity mode where all the AI civs will collaborate and destroy you at all costs.

If Firaxis is able to code an AI that "learns," one could give the AI a better edge if there is a networking option that allows AI's from different machines to exchange information in an attempt to create the ultimate civ AI that eats human players for breakfast.

------------------
Learn the mistakes of yesterday to prevent the ones of tomorrow...

I suggest that before you sell the game,or better at a fairly early developement phase you need to find some of the best civ II players of varying styles. IE warmongerer, perfectionist, trader, infinite city sleezer, tribe of the divine style, and OCCC guru, give them a few weeks to test the game out, and make darn sure each and every one of them is still getting his butt waxed at the toughest two levels, and having a real tough time winning at the third toughest level. Don't just make it very difficult to win at the toughest levels, but so hard that in your mind it is barely concievable that someone just might win at the toughest level someday. Then ask the best players how it could be made harder still.

That way it will at least take a few months for someone to figure out how to reach AC in the game by 1200 A.D. at the highest level without ever building a science wonder or a science improvement in despotism...... well, you get the idea.

Then include a powerful AI scripting language so we the players can make it tougher still.

Remember that SMAC is a far newer game than CivII. yet once someone figured out that you could win civ at Diety with one city, how long did it take someone to do the same thing in SMAC?

By the way. If you kill the Camel in civ III I won't buy the game. I'll stick to Civ II.

The AI is not very good at navigating the map. Thus it is inefficient at many tasks which are map dependant like terraforming, moving caravans, tactics etc. My solution:

Change the game! Take this stuff away from the AI and player both to some extent. It's not like a lot of this stuff is at all realistic or fun anyway. Why should it take years to cross the Atlantic with a caravan for the human (boring) when all it does is give the human yet another advantage over the AI who sometimes can't do it at all? The same is true with terraforming. Why have settlers building roads and stuff (which gets mighty dull when you have zillions of them) when the AI is again so incapable of doing this well? Allow improvements to be made to terrain within the city screen through resource allocation.

By simplifying the areas where the AI is at a large disadvantage you can concentrate your efforts in other areas. Civ is not a great wargame and will never be one in anything like it's present state. Moving tactical units on a strategic map is completely unrealistic (as are the movement / time scales used in every era). Why keep this system when it isn't a good simulation, and is so complicated for the AI that it isn't a challenge either?

I would rather reliquish my ability to (unrealistically) micromanage the operational and tactical details of my armies in order to put myself on a more equal footing with the AI. I enjoy the management and building of my empire more than being overwhelmed by the minute details of unit movement. Since this also seems to overwhelm the capabilities of the AI to provide a challenge why not ditch it and spend your time building a more interesting management game? I really like the Social Engineering aspects of SMAC/X. Why not expand this element of the game by having the player build armies (from unit components) which are given objectives which are carried out (or not) by AI generals? This will eliminate some of the myriad player advantage by limiting his ability to beat the AI by serving as the leader of his Civ at all levels against an inferior foe. Let the player deal with incompetent (or treacherous) subordinates. Let the player act as a true emporer must, by first and foremost maintaining political control over his domain, and if successful, then turning his attention to the other Civs in his neighborhood.

By shifting the emphasis of the game from a 6000 long year wargame to a more realistic game of trying to build a long lasting political and cultural entity, you will shift the game into one where the player spends most of his effort against the management model, rather than thrashing an AI which will not be able to match his capabilities in such a complex game in our lifetime.

I have ALWAYS won the games over the AI as a direct result of better logistics = better resource management + better unit- and city-improvement strategies.

Conclusion: A good AI-civ should march on its belly (= better unit- and city-improvement and city-area management, using force-guiding - but editable - scripts/ templates).
DON’T waste (to) much time in trying to mimic human tactical unit maneuverings – instead why not replace some special key-units all together with perhaps more “AI-friendly” screens instead? The later is the Diplomats (or Sikanders?) idea.

Just concentrate on below three things, and you should come up with a hell of a Civ-upgrade:

* The AI city-management problem (reduce AI-involvement - read above).
* The ICS-problem (Infinite Cities Sprawl) – the original extreme A variant.

Variant B: The semi-ICS problem (building 12-18 cities and 2-4 early Wonders BEFORE building even the most basic temple/marketplace structures)
Variant C: The “25 cloned New York’s syndrome” (halfway ICS - then perfectionist-style parallel city-improvement upgrades, the rest of the game. Trying to cram each-and-every improvement into each-and-every city should be much more prohibitive).

Your point about superior player economic management is well taken. It is true that my superiority in this realm is what gives me a majority of my edge. Still, one of the reasons that I have this edge is my confidence that I can whip the AI in combat even though I have inferior numbers, and sometimes inferior troops as well. Thus I don't waste time building much military force until I really need it, as I am confident that I can blunt the AI's weak attack and build modern units quickly and efficiently to turn the tide. This allows me to invest early on in infrastructure instead, which usually produces a tech and production lead that the AI cannot compete with.

now create the AI as best you can, but allow for an option for us to create our own AI, and add it into the game. For example, one would assume that you would have AI procedure, like Get_Next_Move, Change_Tax etc. now just allows us to write our own procedures, put them in a dll, and allow the program to call us, say as a guest AI. This way you could allow different leaders to have different ways of doing things, and we could create our own leader, with its own programming.

This way, we could also upload our fav AI, just as we upload modpacks, scenarios, etc.

------------------
Learn the mistakes of yesterday to prevent the ones of tomorrow...

1) the game allows us to buy wonders! This is goofy in moy opinion, when you recieve the message "so-and-so has almost completed this-and-that wonder" you go to one of your cities and buy the thing and you will get it built before they do. It's kinda goofy I think, and I don't think it's fair.

2) Save game before I attack and if my unit dies reload it and attack again and keep going and usually I end up getting through without losing my unit. Do something about mass game saving.

3) Tactic of using GW/UN wonder to take a big city and then talk to the AI who must ask for peace. I don't think it make any sense to me to go attack so loudly leaving yourself so vulnerable to counterattack and expect the computer to want to make peace just because you have UN. And even if they break the peace, re-load the game go back in time to before they did and usually they won't do it again.

4) use of spys/caravans to sneak past everything, this was mentioned before

5) How about the incredibly stupid howitzer blitz? You make a railroad into your prospective enemy's railroad during peace and then declare war, send over a hundred or so howitzers and that's usually enough to take over every single city unless there are some not connected to the RR. And even those left behind will be so small and weak there is nothing left to mount a counterattack. Defensive units NEED to be active on defense, and not passive defenders waiting to be atatcked. A column of 100 howitzer divisions ought to be stopped by a single fighter squadron on active defense. But in Civ2, there is no such thing as active defense.

6) How about the ever cheesy tactic of taking over a whole empire by way of cheese? And by cheese I mean buying cities? I think buying cities is rediculous.

7) Allowing me to peacably sneak a settler or two into the heart of another empire and build a city, and one by one taking squares by putting a unit in the square. Byt the time the AI tells me to move the unit, I already have control of that square. I can do this until every city at the heart of his empire is down to only one square, or until I piss him off so that he attacks me keeping my reputation safe.

8) Its' way too easy to pick a fight and get away with it. All you have to do is put a few units in their territory and tell them to get out of yours. There ought to be some kind of border patrol where crossing over means declaring war, and under a democracy you shouldn't be allowed to do that. It's also too east to go to peace when you're in the middle of a war. Even congress should get to a point when they have had enough.

9) The AI never considers putting cities in strategic defensive places. All I have to do is find a mountain near the border and put a city there at a place the AI is sure to attack first. The stupid AI will never figure out that it doesn't matter what he attacks with he's not getting through, and the AI is too stupid to figure out that he can do the same thing building cities on mountains.

11) The AI wastes too much time and energy building up at the heart of his empire as if it's near the border. Usually when I storm through and take every city in only one turn I find there are more better defensive units deep in the heart away from any of the action than there are near the border where I attack first.

12) The AI does not comprehend the value of intelligence.