Exciting AI improvements.

[Arrian]

Seriously. Just in case your ego needed stroking...

Nice to see you checking in, Soren!

-Arrian

[kniteowl]

Originally posted by sjm
This would suggest to me, that for one reason or another, the AI has stopped producing as many great prophets (or great people in general?). I don't know if this is a result of different AI (governor?) behaviour, or just a fluke. However, it would be nice to see the AI make a concerted effort to pop a prophet, if it's got a holy city and the religion has a decent following. As it was, Hinduism was the strongest religion in the game, shared by 1/3 of the civs in the game (all the warmongers, so furthrmore, they were all running theocracy! - so it was generally their ONLY religion as well). Upon building the shrine, it was worth a good 60 gpt - so I'd definitely think it was worth a prophet!

Well If The AI has to Create a Prophet and build a Shrine it should at less do it with at least 10% of the world following that religion... you wouldn't want the AI to build a Islamic Shrine when it's only 1% of the World's Religon t5he AI is better off settling that guy 4 5Gold and 2Hammers

[kniteowl]

Originally posted by lockstep


I can't prove it, but I think I've seen such a thing. In one of my first games, when I was playing as Washington, my neighbor AI civ to the north - Isabella - was gradually being conquered by Bismarck (an AI still farther north). Eventually - I was a builder then - I decided to join the party and to claim some of Isabellas cities for myself. A few turns after I had captured the third Spanish city (and sent Isabella to an island exile), I noticed that another former Spanish city, now owned by Bismarck, had a very large border and threatened to flip my latest 'Spanish' city. Another few turns later, the city actually flipped to Bismarck.

I wasn't familiar with the exact rules of cultural border expansion then, but looking back, it seems very likely that the AI culture bombed me.

That Gives me an Idea when I bribe an AI ally into a war and they capture a City I just Culture bomb a City close by and flip the city into my control.

& Blake I can't find the most recent download that allows the AI to pillage. The most recent 1 I can find it the No-pillage mod. Do you know where it is? where did you put it? I've searched the thread many times :S

[binTravkin]

& Blake I can't find the most recent download that allows the AI to pillage. The most recent 1 I can find it the No-pillage mod. Do you know where it is? where did you put it? I've searched the thread many times :S

1st post I believe.

[Thedrin]

Well If The AI has to Create a Prophet and build a Shrine it should at less do it with at least 10% of the world following that religion... you wouldn't want the AI to build a Islamic Shrine when it's only 1% of the World's Religon t5he AI is better off settling that guy 4 5Gold and 2Hammers

In the very early game buddhism probably won't be the true faith of 10% of the population but it's usually worth building the shrine. An alternative way to determine the worth of a shrine could take account of the percentage of the worlds population not following any religion and the map size.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Thedrin


In the very early game buddhism probably won't be the true faith of 10% of the population but it's usually worth building the shrine. An alternative way to determine the worth of a shrine could take account of the percentage of the worlds population not following any religion and the map size.

In fact this might also be true of the later game where civs should have more “spare” production to dedicate to the spread of a religion. Assuming that it is the only holy city, a prophet generating a shrine should still create a decent return even with a low spread of the religion. Because this can then be a trigger to convert nearby cities and make the shrine very profitable.

A shrine in a wall street city with bank/market/grocers is probably worth about 1000 gold over a 200 turn period where there are already 5 cities carrying the religion. If you can convert one city every five turns, this amount will probably double while a conversion per turn (up to 50 cities maximum) will increase it to over 4000gold which is enough to beat almost any other use of the Prophet.

[ben04]

Anyway, I know everyone wants military improvements but that stuff is a lot harder than economics, feel free to suggest stuff which looks like could use improvement.

What you could probably tweak easily is the composition of the attack force and the order in which a city is attacked. Meaning more siege weapons and when attacking a city siege weapons attack first.

To make the AI take advantage of its new economic strenght it has to expand. Otherwise it can newer compete with an ever expanding humain.

To meet this goal the AI either has to either become good at military stuff or somehow be helped.

I already suggested differently good playing AIs. The better AIs would get a techlead over their not so good playing neighbours and this way the stronger AIs could expand, not because they are good but because their neightbours are bad making the game more interesting.

I'm pretty sure that with a techlead, a better economie and no pillaging the current AI probably could take cities and even destroy other civs.


So this would requiere minor changes to the AI military code (pillaging and who attacks first) and limit most changes to the economic part. At game start some random value decides how good an AI will play. When making economic decision (like for example terrain improvments) this value would then influence the result.

This would also give the AIs a bit more personality. Currently there are variations in diplomatie but when it comes to the economic part they are all exactly the same.

[Arrian]

Is there any way to get the AI to take its traits into consideration? Like if the AI is playing a PHI civ, that it places more emphasis on specialists, whereas if it's FIN it places more on cottages? Leaving aside the possibility of inducing schizophrenia in Lizzy, it seems to me that might serve two purposes: improving AI performance and adding flavor.

-Arrian

[Blake]

To a certain degree a philo leader will like specialists more because the numbers are bigger... and I think Agg will like melee units more because they get the free promotion (hmmm checking the code it doesn't appear to know about free promotions... oh well it does now ).

One thing I did was to make Spiritual switch civics more readily.

The problem with the military tactics is that at the moment the units don't really form cohesive stacks - getting the units to do what they're meant to is kind of a herding cats exercise.

I'm going to post a new DLL after working some kinks out of the autoworker... mainly to do with them being chicken**** around barbarians like refusing to work any tile within a zillion miles of a barb city or even barb animals. It's going well so far, the autoworkers will simply move away from a hostile invader and keep right on working, this was actually emergent behaivour it's not what I deliberately programmed them to do but they are doing it anyway *laughs*, however such a thing could have significant side effects namely in making it a bit easier to ambush autoworkers during war but the tradeoff may well be worth it (it does take into account the movement speed of the enemy units and whether they are controlled by a cunning human or not).

[binTravkin]

I'm going to post a new DLL after working some kinks out of the autoworker

Is there any way to get the AI to take its traits into consideration? Like if the AI is playing a PHI civ, that it places more emphasis on specialists, whereas if it's FIN it places more on cottages? Leaving aside the possibility of inducing schizophrenia in Lizzy, it seems to me that might serve two purposes: improving AI performance and adding flavor.

That would be a HUGE fix if Quan Shi would stop planting farms on floodplains!
I think that AI rates farms too high, the only ones rating farms higher than cottages by default should be philosophical and probably expansive leaders.
It's just insane when they change their mind somewhere around printing press and start remaking all farms into cottages..

Lower rating of farms should also lessen the usual disparity between human and AI population figures while retaining and even improving commerce output and not hurting production a single bit.


EDIT: I can even think of how farm value should be estimated (if it's possible to implement such an algorythm).
Farms should be built:
1.If there's no other option (in the best appropriate tile)
2.If there's a farm requiring bonus
3.If there are excellent tiles (5+ if food involved, 6+ if not) in city's radius that cannot be worked due to lack of food.*

* - cottage yield should be counted (start yield + end yield) / 2, meaning e.g. (2-0-1 + 2-0-5) / 2 = 1-0-3 which is not yet an 'excellent tile' (but if cottage has been worked already or there are appropriate techs both start and end yields could be bigger).

In point 3 the farm value is calculated like:
a = how many farms needed to work that tile (2 if the tile has 0 food output, 1 if 1+ food output)
farm value = base farm value + tile value / a

[belchingjester]

binTravkin, for farm building you'll also want to target a certain level of food surplus to allow continued growth and/or whipping and/or specialist use. I think Blake has done that already - he's very aware of whipping...

[kniteowl]

The AI appears Slow and Wonder rushing...

Do the Automated Wrokers know how 2 chop rush a wonder?

Does the AI Governor focus on Production whenever they build a wonder?

or At least growth untill they reach happiness cap then switch to production.

Does the AI build the Wonder in their best Production Cities or near future production cities???

[Blake]

The AI appears Slow and Wonder rushing...

It is. The newer version of my AI has much stronger early production which should help out with wonders.

Do the Automated Wrokers know how 2 chop rush a wonder?

No. I think I'll use this as one criteria for chopping. Thanks.

Does the AI Governor focus on Production whenever they build a wonder?

Yes.

Does the AI build the Wonder in their best Production Cities or near future production cities???

"Maybe".

[Chopper]

Is there any issue with the integration of the options that are set each game e.g. workers leave forests, workers do not amend existing improvments or is this outside the AI improvmenmt role?

[MatzeHH]

Hi there!

Since these changes to the AI have found their way to the official Warlords patch you have earned much fame and honor. This is really awesome!

Well, enough bootlicking

I find it quite hard to merge the patched Warlords files to my vanilla version, because I can't differ between your changes and Warlords' specific changes by Firaxis which I don't want to have in my vanilla version.
It would be easier if I had the original files for vanilla with your changes.
Unfortunately, I just find a link to the compiled DLL in this thread. Would you please share the source code with us?

Thanks,
Matze