A Better AI.

[lange17]

I had the 12/7 build, so that's part of it. I was on Prince level also, FWIW. I'll grab 12/12 and give it a go. Thanks!

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Solver
Also, it would be great to, eventually, see the AI be better capable of cross-ocean invasions, which can be pretty far away .

in which case i'd love to see the AI being destructive. maybe keep a beachhead, but raze everything he cannot hold. with far superior units (eg. marines and tanks vs. grenadiers and musketeers) keep the things, else raze.

also allow surprise attacks by sailing in out of the fog of war, bombing the resources with carriers, suiciding some units by attacking from sea (infantry with combat II and pinch can do some harm even after the 50% penalty), upgrading the units just-in-time and give them amphibious, and so on.

but i guess that's dreaming

[Risa]

Originally posted by sabrewolf


in which case i'd love to see the AI being destructive. maybe keep a beachhead, but raze everything he cannot hold. with far superior units (eg. marines and tanks vs. grenadiers and musketeers) keep the things, else raze.

also allow surprise attacks by sailing in out of the fog of war, bombing the resources with carriers, suiciding some units by attacking from sea (infantry with combat II and pinch can do some harm even after the 50% penalty), upgrading the units just-in-time and give them amphibious, and so on.

but i guess that's dreaming

Suiciding city-raider II (or III) artilleries would be much more effecient, IMO.

[sabrewolf]

Suiciding city-raider II (or III) artilleries would be much more effecient, IMO.

true

hm, let me think, and correct me if i'm wrong:
CR2 artillery has strength of about 19: 18 * (100% + 55% CR2 - 50% amphib.)
typically defending infantry 20 * (100% + 80% culture + 25% fortify + 45% CD2) = net strength ~50.

so the artillery will deal out something like 8% collateral damage to the top 6 or 7 defending infantry.

with maybe 3 destroyers bombarding the city defences to net 50% (from 80%), the infantry are already down to net strenght 45 and the collateral damage already 9%.

if the AI (literally) comes out of the blue, there are seldom so many defences and 3-4 transports (4-6 artillery, 6-12 ground units) can pretty much capture any coastal city

[Blake]

Originally posted by Solver

- The AI will pursue strategic resources (ie weighting Iron Working more if it fails to get Copper or Horses).

Wow, now how hard was that to implement?

. Actually all the hard work was coming up with a good way to do it. After that the implementing was easy.

Note that because I did it in a mod-friendly way it also work for other resources - resources of a class - like there are rush resources (early ones) and modern resources, the AI would if it failed to get Oil make Uranium a higher priority, in the hope of being able to get stronger units.

- AIs will prefer going to war with neighbors, they will be very unlikely
to go to war with a target that is very far away

Hmm... I hope it doesn't mean that wars will only happen between civs who share borders, as that would make it too easy to predict which AIs might invade. Also, it would be great to, eventually, see the AI be better capable of cross-ocean invasions, which can be pretty far away .

The behavior changes on water maps, if there are no neighbors it uses the old logic unchanged. AI's who are inclined to attack will be more inclined to attack their neighbors and they're more likely to just go "Screw that" if asked to attack someone far away.
I actually just wrote that code last night and I haven't finished tweaking it, at the moment the AI (the original code and new) is unfairly biased towards attacking someone they share a lot of border with... I'll probably reduce this bias a bit to make it more along the lines of attacking anyone they share any border with - like as long as their empire will still be contiguous - I think that's a requirement for most human wars. That should reduce the "Monty backstabs his friend just because they were closest" syndrome...

[Solver]

Blake, what does your AI think about Uranium? Does it treat it like a strategic resource only, or does it also recognize it as a nuclear resource?

I'll probably reduce this bias a bit to make it more along the lines of attacking anyone they share any border with - like as long as their empire will still be contiguous - I think that's a requirement for most human wars. That should reduce the "Monty backstabs his friend just because they were closest" syndrome...

Sounds very good, as long, again, as cross-ocean wars will be possible. Same goes for humans, I think. On land, I attack civs that I share a border with 90% of the time. However, I do sometimes invade other continents, which obviously have no borders in common.

Blake .

[Blake]

As I said in cases where there are no other civs capitals on their land mass they simply resort to the old logic.


So far as resource class...
Horse, Copper and Iron are in the "Rush" class.
Oil, Uranium and Aluminum are in the "Modern" class.
Coal is in the "General" class along with every other resource - but others, being revealed from the start, are ignored for this code.

Because the code I wrote is mod friendly it can only look at the classes and hope they are sensible. It works well for the rush resources, not so well for the modern resources (but I don't think it's harmful). Coal is do-nothing because it's the only resource it in it's class (ie steam power is valued normally).

[Solver]

So Uranium isn't treated separately/valued more because of its nuclear weapons capacity, then?

[Kuciwalker]

Are nuclear weapons particularly powerful?

[Solver]

Maybe not as powerful as they could be, but certainly powerful enough to give Uranium some special consideration. Nukes are pretty devastating economically in certain circumstances. If you have a high-pop and high-food city that is running tons of specialists and producing tons of GPP, a nuke will totally undo that.

[Saurus]

War Changes:
- AIs will prefer going to war with neighbors, they will be very unlikely
to go to war with a target that is very far away


-Iustus

Again many great improvements. My thanks.

About this one, however, I´m not quite sure what to think about.

For instance, on a pangea map, If I share borders only with Ghandi and Hatsepshut, does this mean I almost will be 100% safe of not beeing attacked during the entire game? Takes the fun out of the game pretty much!

One of the fun factors on playing pangea-games has always been that you are actually not safe from anyone. That EVERY civ on the continent is a potential military threat and this beeing part of the equation.

[Blake]

Wouldn't you be at more risk from a warmonger eating Gandhi/Hatty and then moving on to you . This change is required to allow AI's to expand their empire by conquest, rather than just destroying stuff.

AI's should also be inclined to march if they have no close neighbors they really hate.

But bear in mind humans don't really go for long distance wars when there are closer targets.

[Solver]

Humans go for soft targets, though. If there's one very strong civ on your continent, and another an era behind in techs on another continent, you'll probably go invade the other continent. Distance is a big factor when deciding, of course, but power and possible gains are bigger factors.

Looking forward to AI domination victories. And good cross-ocean assaults on my underdefended coastal cities .

[Willem]

Originally posted by Solver
And good cross-ocean assaults on my underdefended coastal cities .

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

Ah, I see the Santa smilies are back.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Solver
Humans go for soft targets, though. If there's one very strong civ on your continent, and another an era behind in techs on another continent, you'll probably go invade the other continent. Distance is a big factor when deciding, of course, but power and possible gains are bigger factors.

Unless I'm intamentily friendly with my continent-mate, i'm going to secure my continent before looking outwards. This is especially true if the neighbor poses a military threat. How does it go?
"When your armies' away, the backstabbers come out to play "