Exciting AI improvements.

[Kuciwalker]

No, it's always been like this. You get the circumnavation bonus if you have at least 1 tile in every column uncovered.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
No, it's always been like this. You get the circumnavation bonus if you have at least 1 tile in every column uncovered.

Thanks - I've never noticed this before.

RJM

[Crossfire]

Blake, I am playing your newest AI mod and love it. Thanks. I just have a question about the settling (blue circle) code. Almost every time I go to settle if there is a hill around it wants to settle on the hill. Are hills THAT advantageous to settle on (besides the extra hammer) or is this a little too prioritized at the moment?

[khumak]

Originally posted by Crossfire
Blake, I am playing your newest AI mod and love it. Thanks. I just have a question about the settling (blue circle) code. Almost every time I go to settle if there is a hill around it wants to settle on the hill. Are hills THAT advantageous to settle on (besides the extra hammer) or is this a little too prioritized at the moment?

The AI does seem to have a high preference for hills now but I don't mind. Overall the blue circle for Blake's AI is almost always the same spot I would choose myself. I even had a game tonight where at first glance I thought it was wrong because it picked a non coastal spot 1 square away from a good coastal spot. I built there anyway just for the hell of it and sure enough I discovered copper and horses in my fat cross once I discovered BW/AH. I would have missed both if I'd settled on the coast.

I don't really give hills that much priority personally. If I have a choice between a hill or grass/plains that is otherwise equal I will take the hill but otherwise I go with whatever gives a more optimal mix of resources. I tend to favor settling on those annoying little patches of desert to neutralize that tile's uselessness.

[Mr Justice]

aye great work blake, just won my first monarch game, i was isolated on small continent so i couldnt trade to tech in the early game. but i had largest land.
but did it builder style, only 1 war to take out a german city that infected my 2nd island.
my civ only peaked in the mid 1900's and i caught and passed the germans who started building their space ship over 100 turns prior to me (i payed a few civs to go to war with him to slow him down.) i can only have won the game by a couple of turns as the germans had only 1 component left.
definatley a change from vanillia (i dont have warlords) where i generally beat emporer (struggled on next one up).

[rjmatsleepers]

In a recent game, Mansa ended our defensive pact. On the same turn, I went to the trading screen and he was willing to agree another defensive pact. Is this a bug? If so has it always been there, or has it been intruduced by Blake's AI improvements. Could it have been introduced by my own changes to the XML?

RJM

[foudres]

Really good work !

It's easy to found a religion now using the 2.08 patch... I was able one time to found hindouism, buddism, search for whell, bronze working, granary, animal husbanry, mining and still able to found judaism there after !!!!!!

What the hell appened ? Before it was difficult to found on religion and at least in monarch beeing able to found the 3 first religion used to be near impossible even starting with the good techs.

The main problem for the AI seem to be war now.

[Krill]

The AI doesn't seem to like religion as much as building an economy. Personally I like the new balance, because I have seen games where religion gets snapped up asap, but there are others where the game can go 60 turns before Hinduism gets researched.

[Blake]

There's not much difference in early religion preference.
In fact there should be only two changes:
1) Civs with Mining will be slightly more likely to get Bronze Working right away (since it's slightly boosted by knowing about chopping now).
2) Civs with fishing/wheel or ag/wheel will be significantly more likely to get Pottery right away.

Once an AI already has a religion they'll be less inclined to pursue more religions, but that has nothing to do with hind/budd.

It's always been fairly easy to found a religion and it's always been pretty random. I'd say you're just expecting the AI to "excel more in all things".

[binTravkin]

Hinduism not getting researched is a pretty usual scenario in a game where there's a lack of heavy-duty religious freaks like Isabel or Montezuma.
I've seen Isa going Masonry->Monotheism, right after realising hinduism's gone.

[MojoJojoUK]

A post I read on the CivFanatics forum seemd to say that a lot of Blake's stuff had been pulled out of the offical Warlords patch, apparently because it was felt making the game harder might annoy more casual players. Is this true?

[binTravkin]

A post I read on the CivFanatics forum seemd to say that a lot of Blake's stuff had been pulled out of the offical Warlords patch, apparently because it was felt making the game harder might annoy more casual players. Is this true?

As far as I can tell, it's false, I heard that most (if not all) the modifications made it to the patch and that is also seen in the latest reports from players about improved AI performance.

AI city placement improvement as per Blake
Improved AI use of 'emphasize' buttons as per Blake
Pop-rush and draft AI improvement as per Blake
Worker AI improvement as per Blake
Improved civics AI as per Blake
Tweaked AI building priorities as per Blake

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=159018

http://www.2kgames.com/index.php?p=support_patches

Could you give us a link to that post?

EDIT:
And actually this 'more casual player annoyance' bit makes me think of some noobs who're so noob, they wont recognise they can't beat monarch, instead demanding an easier game from Firaxis

[Traitain]

I downloaded the newest Blake Ai Mod from his SourceForge page but I'm really unsure where to put the CvGameCoreDLL.dll.

The release notes say put it in the CustomAssests Folder. But I can't find that folder anywhere! Could someone please kindly tell me exactly where I'm supposed to put the AI Mod?

[sabrewolf]

go to your game folder (typically c:\program files\firaxis\sid meyer's civilization 4\ ) and there's some shortcuts of which one is CustomAssets...

otherwise check in your My Documents\My Games\[YourCiv4Folder]\Assets

[lange17]

When I put the .dll in CustomAssets, there's no indication in-game that the improved AI is being used. When I manually load the mod (and do the necessary restart of the game) there's test in the top right corner of the welcome screen telling me I'm using the BlakeAIMod. If I understand correctly, this is completely normal, but I'm still left wondering if I've done everything correctly. Is there any way for me to tell?