Exciting AI improvements.

[Blake]

Hi guys.

I now have a sourceforge project (for source control) organized by Iustus of Realms Beyond/CFC.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/civ4betterai/

There's a Warlords 2.08 download there and the source is also available via Subversion. At some point a Vanilla 1.61 download will be available and I'll put up a source zip at some point.

I'll be announcing this project formally later but for now I would like to know if there are any gamebreaking problems in the uploaded DLL (crash, AI implosion etc), it seems pretty stable to me.

Latest Download for Warlords

Notes:
This is intended for Warlords Patch 2.08 only.
It is a bleeding edge release which means some things may not work well or at all.

Changes 2006-11-02:

- Fix to irrigation chaining bugs (the old code was one big bug).
- General worker unit AI improvements to make them more flexible.
- Autoworker now comes back and routes up resources which had been built before routes were available.
- Workers are now less fearful of enemy units.
- Auto Workers will now stack.
- Tweaks to CvCity BestBuild to better balance food/hammers
- Code to add awareness of jungle chopping when choosing research.
- Great People Golden Age usage improved - needs testing.
- Great Prophet Shrines valued a little more accurately.
- Great Merchant cash bomb logic added.
- AI's will now spend gold to perform deficit (100%) research and will decline to trade gold reserved for research.
- AI Missionary code adjusted - both when choosing destination and when determining the number needed.
- Awareness of freebie promotions when choosing which unit to train.
- Probably more things were fine-tuned...

[Quillan]

I'm currently playing my first Warlords game with the new patch, and while looking over Ghandi's land (I'd just swapped world maps with him when I developed Paper) I saw this:


He founded on the horses, allowing him to bring corn, pigs and two wines within the city radius. Gotta love it, Blake. Nice work!

[Tattila the Hun]

- Auto Workers will now stack.

You're saying, that instead of twiddling their thumbs in a nearby city, workers actually help eachother out, speeding up the process? Yay!

Here's a question, do the workers still build farms into squares not in the radius of any of my cities?


I also wonder, if it would be easy to mod a reminder or something, for if I have unconnected resources?

And tell the game to not play 12 identical sound-effects at the same time, in full blare... A dream, I know.

[ForesterSOF]

Dreamers make the future where everyone else is along for the ride.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
- Auto Workers will now stack.

You're saying, that instead of twiddling their thumbs in a nearby city, workers actually help eachother out, speeding up the process? Yay!

Indeed. They don't exactly stack all that smartly, but it's better than no stacking at all.

Here's a question, do the workers still build farms into squares not in the radius of any of my cities?

Yes. The stock irrigation chaining logic is great, isn't it? That's what they are doing - as a very low priority, workers will build stuff which transmits irrigation (aka farms) outside of city radius. Also acts as a pillage zone I guess and helps bootstrap new cities. It's harmless since they prefer to do more productive things.

I also wonder, if it would be easy to mod a reminder or something, for if I have unconnected resources?

And tell the game to not play 12 identical sound-effects at the same time, in full blare... A dream, I know.

I'm afraid these are outside the scope of this project.



Okay as a teaser for the next version, these are things I have implemented and will post the DLL for tommorow:

- AI's will no longer pillage barbarian cities. No, you can't hug me, sorry. Rejoicing is allowed.
- The AI will now chop wonders (pure chops, no improvement) and the infrastructure is all in place for chopping other stuff (ie military in a war). They are more relucatant to chop if the health or forest (to work) is needed.
- Improved AI city placing. The AI has a much better understanding of tiles being made workable by existing culture and a bug has been fixed which caused the AI excessive resource-obsession, which could lead to founding on resources and such.
- Added variety in AI city placement, creative leaders are greedy and go for big cities which claim a maximum number of resources. Organized leaders are willing to found more cities to claim the same number of resources (to get more resources adjacant to the city). This is experimental but looks promising.

[Arrian]

- Added variety in AI city placement, creative leaders are greedy and go for big cities which claim a maximum number of resources. Organized leaders are willing to found more cities to claim the same number of resources (to get more resources adjacant to the city). This is experimental but looks promising.

See, that's what I'm talkin' about!

When I looked at Quillan's screenshot (above), I looked at that Indian city and I immediately thought "but that's probably 2 cities to me, especially if I'm ORG."

-Arrian

[sabrewolf]

darn, there goes my chance of winning emperor level

[Diadem]

What gunpowder did for war, Blake has done for the AI

[Backpack]

New .sig! - Thanks!

[kniteowl]

Originally posted by Blake

- Added variety in AI city placement, creative leaders are greedy and go for big cities which claim a maximum number of resources. Organized leaders are willing to found more cities to claim the same number of resources (to get more resources adjacant to the city). This is experimental but looks promising.

Why dont you also add in Financial Leader they should be able to handle a larger number of settled Cities as long as they cottage near rivers an get the Citizens to work them in the early game.

[rjmatsleepers]

So the Warlords patch includes some (or all) of Blake's AI improvements.

Anyone know whether there are plans for a patch for vanilla?

How about the other changes (for example, making Mathematics a requisite for Civil Service)?

RJM

[JackRudd]

I'm pretty sure there won't be another patch for vanilla. If you want Mathematics to be a prereq for Civil Service, you can do that yourself.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by JackRudd
I'm pretty sure there won't be another patch for vanilla. If you want Mathematics to be a prereq for Civil Service, you can do that yourself.

I don't want Mathematics to be a requisite for Civil Servce. I was under the impression that this change had been introduced in the latest warlords patch. This puts the "rules" out of step. I understand it makes many of the slingshots more difficult (impossible?) Strategy discussions become more difficult with different game versions.

Also, I feel slightly uncomfortable about using Blake's improved AI dll while it is "unofficial" at least as far as the vanilla game is concerned. But perhaps that's my problem

RJM

[popejubal]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers


I don't want Mathematics to be a requisite for Civil Servce.

I like it. It makes slingshots more difficult (as you mentioned) and that means more solid game play and fewer jackpot tactical gambits. I'm a fan.

Also, Civil Service is all about having a Bureaucracy that runs things. Bureaucracy is impossible without the mathematical foundations to keep track of everything that needs to be done.

[binTravkin]

Makes sense about maths and bureaucracy, although one could say maths, almost as writing should be a prereq to at least half of the techs..

---- "What gunpowder did for war, Blake has done for the AI" - Diadem ----