A Better AI.

[Todd Hawks]

I'm with Diadem on the auto-improvement issue.
If I set the option to leave improvements alone then that's exactly what I want it to do.

Let's say there's a tile with a town on it and a resource shows up beneath it.

Scenario 1: You leave it as it is:
I notice it sooner or later and if I want to get the resource, I destroy the cottage and build the corresponding improvement. No problem here, I have the freedom to chose whether I want the resource or the town.

Scenario 2: You change it:
As soon as the resource shows up, my workers go ahead and destroy the cottage. Which I cannot prevent at all (!). I'd have to disable all worker automation at that point if I didn't want the town to be destroyed.

[Tattila the Hun]

That noticing part is what allways bugs me. A generic fix for the next Firaxis update, you know how you can get the resources shown up on the map by pressing ctrl-r? Pictures of resources with green borders. I'm sure they could make the border red for unconnected ones.

That worker strike happened again, but with hamlet on top of iron.

[JimMac]

Add another vote for the leave improvements 'completely' alone when so selected under the auto-improvements option.

Actually, I see the other bug as a bigger issue: out of the four games I have played with the latest patch, then Blake’s AI, I have had two games when automated workers stopped over a tile and didn’t do anything until I noticed and manually selected them.

On one occasion it was a ruined city, and the other was when Uranium appeared under a town. I’d rather not have to check automated workers each turn to ensure that they are doing something!

[Harrier UK]

Originally posted by ColdPhoenix
A difference I've noticed with the new workers AI is that they now improve terrain with a special resource that you can see but don't have the tech to use yet (eg farming silks before you have calender). If it is going to do this then personally I would like them all to get changed to plantations.

I suppose your suggestion is good as I would at least get one of them to use and could manually change the rest when I feel like it. That would be better than all my towns on uranium being changed to mines on discovery of scientific method.

I actually do that myself. I will sometimes farm a resource that needs plantation etc., because I know I will not research the required tech for a lot of turns. So in the meantime I get the benefit of the extra food. When I get the required tech I then change the tile improvement.
Therefore IMHO Blake is right.

[Blake]

A Vanilla 1.61 version (meaning, for non-Warlords) is now up on the Sourceforge Downloads Page, I think it should be fairly obvious which is which.
The Vanilla download has VANILLA 1.61 in all caps.
The Warlords download has WARLORDS 2.08 in all caps.

This build was created by Iustus (he did the work of synchronizing the code) and includes all cumulative AI fixes in the Warlords builds and also some bug fixes like whipping bug and tech overflow. It should bring the Vanilla AI fully up to speed with the latest Warlords AI.

[Forwarn45]

Just skimmed the posts since the - so you may be aware of this one. (Note - this is the latest version of your AI.) I think you may need to tinker a little more with the AI worker-threat issue. In my game, Hatsuphet happily had 3 workers adjacent to my cultural borders and almost my entire army (consisting mainly of chariots and warriors). Our relationship was cautious. A 4th worker was 2 spaces away. Needless to say, I don't need to build more workers for a while. If possible, I'd suggest having the AI protect workers by having one or more units accompany them when working the border. Alternatively, if the AI only exposed one worker in this situation it would be better. Also, if we had been friendly - this may have been a little less problematic.

Other than that, I am impressed. I am industrious, monarch difficulty - and some AI or other keeps edging out my "wonder"ful plans.

[Kuciwalker]

Re: worker threats: at some point they have to just give in and move the worker adjacent so they can upgrade the tile.

[Forwarn45]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Re: worker threats: at some point they have to just give in and move the worker adjacent so they can upgrade the tile.

I agree - but stand by my suggestions as to how to improve this (assuming they are possible to implement). I also note that the AI was getting ahead of itself considering the size of the city.

[Backpack]

Bug Report

Blake -

I may have found a problem -

Crashed to desktop 3 times now. Using November 7 version. I 'think' its due to the worker active in this save building a road. (There is another active worker that I also have been telling to build a road.)

Hopefully you can figure out what is causing the crash.

Thanks

EDIT -

I just had a second crash on a similar map. No Worker near an edge (at least not one of mine), but I had a scout next to the edge).

This was (on both problems) a Tiny Highlands map Flat world.

This may be a problem with the upgrades, or it may be a generic bug with Warlords 2.08

[Blake]

This crash bug is known and is caused by cities on the edge of the map. It's fixed for the next build.

[Senethro]

Just had the same crash.

Also, is there a way to make a shortcut so that Civ4 starts in a particular mod insted of having to load the game twice?

[Backpack]

Thanks Blake - I had thought I was using the next build, hence the re report.

[Welshie]

The thing is - when the auto-worker (or me) builds a farm on a banana tile or something because you don't have calendar it's by nature a temporary improvement - something to stop jungle growing on the tile and to give you a little bonus while you don't have the ideal improvement. And it's a damn fine idea. However, this should be overwritten when the ideal tile improvement comes along - this improvement is the ideal improvement for the tile and 9/10 should be there.

It's been raised that you should be able to spot these improvements that are not right and change them yourself if you care so much. But really, I was playing a huge map on marathon speed, I took over 2 nations before I got calendar. I had about 20 workers running around on auto. This game has been trying to move away from micromanagement since Civ3, and I don't think it makes sense to force players to micromanage just to get these key improvements in.

You can say just turn "leave old improvements" off, but I don't want the AI to fiddle with the set ups I did for my early (and most important) cities - I only automate workers when the empire is too big for me to want to manage them myself and the majority of city terraforming has been done.

[Diadem]

If you improve calander resources 9/10 even when you have a very big empire you're just a bad player. I'm sorry, but most calendar improvements are pretty sucky and not worth improving except to get the happiness bonus - so you only improve one in some far-off corner of your empire (but not near enemy borders :P)

Bananas are the only ones that are consistently worth improving. Spices and Sugar are sometimes worth it pre-biology. For them plantations are basicly farms with a slight bonus that do not get upgraded with biology. For the rest plantations are bad cottages.

Leave old improvements should mean that old improvements are left alone. I didn't build them for nothing. It would be another matter entirely if there was an option 'except resources' that could be checked. But since Blake is just editing AI and not the game itself, that option is not there. So leave those old improvements alone.

There's a reason I don't want replace my 0/1/5 towns with 0/0/3 plantations. Or my 1/2/3 watermills with 0/0/3 uranium mines.

[Blake]

Okay would anyone complain about THIS behaivour when "leave old improvements" is on:
1) Autoworkers will never connect obsolete resources.
2) Autoworkers will only connect resources if there is no existing connected source of that resource.
3) Autoworkers will not perform non-reversable actions, meaning they will not pave over a hamlet (or better) or chop a forest on a bonus (ie uranium), under any circumstances.

What this means is that when you pick up calendar, or steam power, or whatever, the workers will all scamper off and hook up all the resources they can find, unless it's hard to reverse. Once one of the resources is hooked up they'll stop hooking up new ones. at this point you can grab a worker and reverse the odd improvement which actually is better off being not improved.

The only problem I see here is if you want EVERY resource paved over with something else, like... I don't know what... maybe stone/marble later in the game but before going entirely obsolete (actually I'll give it a threshold... so any resource less valuable than a health/happy wont be connected).
Yes, it might be a bit wasteful to have to reverse some worker improvements but by automating them you are already accepting some waste.