A Better AI.

[Adagio]

And in my current game Shaka is in a pointless war he started, but will never end (refuses peace treaty all the time)
The war started a long time ago (in about 1200 AD, now it's 1460 AD)
Zulu is located on a nearby island, but during the time of the war he never attacked me, never landed any troops on my island. The reason for this is simple: He doesn't have Astronomy and my island is too far away for his galleys to cross
I just sent over a few units, burning 3 of his cities to the ground, but he still will not sign a peace treaty, even though it's still not possible for him to attack me

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Adagio
And in my current game Shaka is in a pointless war he started, but will never end (refuses peace treaty all the time)

Aha, so I'm not the only one who experiences this.

[joncnunn]

Proposed handicap info xml adjustments to go with Blake's Mod

AI Animal : Standardize to -40% across the board (human nobel level)

AI Barb: Standardize to -10% across the board (human nobel level)

AI Inflation: Standardize to 90% across the board (human nobel level)

AI Unit Supply, AI Unit Upgrade, AI WW, No Tech Trade Mod: Standardize to 100% across the board.

With the AI taught to reserve money and using Great Merchants for cash, they don't need massive discounts on unit upgrades, or supporting the units they got. The faster building production of revenue improving structures should be sufficent to support their faster unit production.

[Adagio]

Did you make some changes for workers in the 12 dec version? In my current game I have (as always in the late game) workers on automate. But this time the workers seems extremely dumb. While at war against Zulu, my workers kept running over to the borders to work... needless to say, I lost quite a few workers because of that

[joncnunn]

Here's a screenshot of a questionable city site:
(Better AI 06-12-21)

It looks to me like the sugested site one tile west is in every way inferior to the one I'm choosing.

Note: My capital has Stonehidge

[Blake]

It's because of the three peaks and the extra couple of desert tiles I think - while your site is good it's wrong to say "every way superior" when there's actually 5 more dead tiles.

if that's a plain hill the settler is on then I'd probably settle there too, if it's desert hill I would probably go with the top wines which as Mali gives +3c on the city tile while still leaving the grassland open for cottaging, and having the pigs and spices in radius.

It's not what I'd call a clear-cut bad suggestion...

[alms66]

My guess would be that you get too much useless terrain (desert & mountains) in that city site you've selected compared with the one to the west...

[joncnunn]

Well, my "every way superior" may have been a bit much, mostly I was thinking that the red tile gets me Pigs instantly and doesn't steal 2 tiles from my capital and doesn't result in skipped tiles when I found the next city east. Too used to Civ III
Both choices have fresh water.

[Iustus]

New 1/1 Version available for download from SourceForge.

changes:

Start Points:
- Close starts should no longer happen on any map script.
- Polar starts should be less likely.

AI Empire Management:
- The AI can now distinguish between Buildings and Wonders.
- Brand new Wonder Building Logic, should be more human-like.
- New "economic" building logic, should reliably choose the best economic building.
- Slightly better worker/settler training logic.
- AI uses "emphasis" buttons more selectively and less to it's detriment.
- Situational tweaks to the value of commerce vs production for governor.
- Governor should prefer hamlets over cottages (and etc).
- Whipping has been fixed - it was broken.
- Smarter chopping - less likely to chop when the health is needed.
- Fixed minor issues with route-building.

Strategy and Tactics:
- Promotion lines will now be followed to a greater degree.
- Fewer mismatched promotions.
- AI will build barracks earlier (especially if aggressive).
- AI will train and use more pillagers, hopefully to greater effect.
- Rudimentary awareness of which cities are most and least threatened added.
- AI will place more defenders in threatened cities.
- AI will train more defenders.
- AI will train even more defenders in a defensive war.
- Better mix of defenders.
- Intelligent use of defenders - will leave cities to kill off weak interlopers.

Declaring Wars:
- The AI now better takes distance into account.
- An AI with Vassals becomes more aggressive.
- Should be more likely to actually declare a planned war.
- Should be more likely to abort a planned war when backstabbed.

Happy New Year!

-Iustus

[Tattila the Hun]

Heh, Kublai got plenty of seafood in a game I'm currently playing, luckily, I was able to pocket him to his starting location...



Another thing, there were three coppers in my starting area, about what's shown in that picture... And over the years, two more have been mined up. Must have been a vein or something.

Oh, and I have a question. Does the AI take into account it's transport capabilities? Mehmed II, my greatest trading partner to boot, declared war on me. Now, he has an army far bigger than mine, with comparative tech level. But only two galleons. So he loads up three catapults into one, and starts his grand adventure. (The other one is in my lands, pillaging my fishes.) I hope that planned war thing does something.

Oh, has the AI's inability to offer gold for tech been fixed?

[Chaos Theory]

I get a CTD whenever loading games saved with the Jan 1 AI mod (Vanilla). Furthermore, when I conquered some territory containing sugar plantations pre-Calendar, I didn't get credit for having the resource. When I researched Calendar, I still didn't get credit. I can't go back and try other actions because I can't load any of the saves.

[Blake]

Save please? I tried loading a couple of arbitrary vanilla saves (one 1.61 the other BA12/12) and neither had a problem.

[Willem]

Originally posted by joncnunn
Proposed handicap info xml adjustments to go with Blake's Mod

AI Animal : Standardize to -40% across the board (human nobel level)

AI Barb: Standardize to -10% across the board (human nobel level)

AI Inflation: Standardize to 90% across the board (human nobel level)

AI Unit Supply, AI Unit Upgrade, AI WW, No Tech Trade Mod: Standardize to 100% across the board.

I've eliminated all the AI advantages in my Noble game, making everything as level as I can, and I'm still getting a pretty good game out of the new AI. With these new improvements, it no longer needs those bonuses.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Willem
I've eliminated all the AI advantages in my Noble game, making everything as level as I can, and I'm still getting a pretty good game out of the new AI. With these new improvements, it no longer needs those bonuses.

wow... you know what that means: the value system of blake is superior to most people's decisions!

that makes my signature even more valid

[Iustus]

New Build 1/8, we are now feature complete and pushing toward our 1.0 release.

War and tactics:
- Increased the number of defenders trained and used in interior cities.
- Increased the weighting on needed defenders in the presence of hostile units.
- Improved the AI's assessment of whether or not it's safe to leave a city to kill interlopers.
- Decreased the chance of Spearmen being trained.
- Drill promotion line now synergizes strongly (protective should pursue it sometimes).
- Pillagers may join city attacks in progress.
- Changed some things with stack of doom formation and breakup.
- The AI should be more flexible in declaring wars.
- The AI should be more aggressive in offensive wars, especially on Aggressive AI setting (try it!).
- "We have enough on our hands" is now used as a no-war excuse of last resort.

Governor and Workers:
- Fixed the governor bug with expansive workers.
- Wrote new cottage-valuing logic for governor (town > village > hamlet > cottage).
- AI workers should put more weight on production, especially in the later game.
- Certain AI's will put more weight on production according to personality.

Cultural Victory:
- AI's should be slightly less likely to pursue cultural victories.
- Cultural AI's use better logic for deciding when to turn off research.
- Improved Cultural AI war-making habits.

Improved Explorer Behavior (Automated and AI)

Issues:
- Lag issue resolved.
- Infinite loop issue resolved.
- Fixed the crash bug with moving units into a friendly city.

-Iustus