A Better AI.

[Blake]

This is actually trickier than it might seem to fix - I'll put it like this, at the moment the hamlet and the village are valued exactly equally (modified by progress on development, the hamlet has 1 turns progress the village 0, hence the hamlet is chosen), I've added a slight tiebreaker factor so it favors higher yield in this case.

[DaveV]

Same game, later on. The AIs just don't seem to be expanding as much as in prior games. They only have a few cities each, while I'm still cranking out settlers and filling in the gaps. This is a highlands map, where the pathfinding can be a little challenging and the civs are a little sparse, but I'm not used to having 2-3 times as many cities as the AIs on Prince level.

[Blake]

Highlands is like the ultimate stress-test for the AI, they have a lot of economic trouble on it, mainly because of the lack of coast and the general difficulty of forming trade connections, but also because of the sheer amount of room for expansion.

Once the AI's economy gets in the crapper it stops expanding.

Thanks for the save, I'm going to make a number of changes based on observations from it (mainly to do with getting the AI to build more cottages and work more commerce in this kind of situation).

[joncnunn]

Perhaps this has been addressed by now, but the old logic is even worse when not on the same contients than when on the same landmass.

It's pretty much pointless to declare war on someone whose landmass your galleys can't even reach because of not being allowed to enter ocean tiles outside cultural boundaries.

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

[joncnunn]

Usally that sort of attacks can't be done until you have Galleons, which convently enough is about the same time as Cavalry and Rifles are typically adviable.

Originally posted by Solver
Not if the other continent's civ is behind in tech, while the one on your continent is not. Conquering a civ that has just discovered Gunpowder with Cavalry and Riflemen = easy.

[Maniac]

Playing a game as China with the 12 Dec AI, with Aggressive AI.
I'm wondering, did you change anything about the AI's declaration of war/signing of peace behavior?

When I'm playing with an unmodded aggressive AI, the AI declares war more often on me, but there are also more inter-AI wars. Also if a war drags on without any side winning, the AI is usually willing to sign peace after a while.

In this game however, except for an early war in which Mansa Masu was eliminated, there hasn't been any inter-AI war whatsoever. Declarations of war against me have been plentiful though, as you can see in the screenshot.

Ragnar's and Shaka's war behaviour also seems pretty weird to me. They both declared war on me in what you call a dagger strategy, and each razed a small city of mine. A second attack by Shaka after I refounded a city I was able to repel though.

Though we are still at war, they're now not making any effort anymore to attack me. The last battle I fought with either of those was their swordsmen and horse archers against my defending archers... Currently I'm at grenadier technology. Despite this de facto cease-fire, neither is willing to sign peace with me. I guess this could kinda make sense for Shaka since he is my neighbour and has a much larger army than me (though he doesn't use it...) but Ragnar is on the other side of the world and IIRC our armies are more or less the same size.

A bit early to draw conclusions based on this one game, but I though I'd let you know my experiences just in case.

[Tattila the Hun]

Say, Blake, does your city placement AI take into account the possibility of a "canal"? Two largish landmasses connected by a thin stretch of land, a natural chokepoint in it self, but immensely valuable for moving your ships around. Classic example being the "Panama" canal of mid-America in Earth maps.

[Blake]

Nope. It'd be easy to make it build canals between sea and lake but a canal connecting a single body of water is somewhat more computationally intensive. If this was something that really mattered it wouldn't be too hard to do but I don't tend to think it matters (I like to build canal cities but I've almost never actually USED them as canals towards any decisive ends).

[Willem]

Originally posted by Maniac
A bit early to draw conclusions based on this one game, but I though I'd let you know my experiences just in case.

My experience was just the opposite. With just normal AI behaviour, no extra aggression, I felt it was declaring war more often than it used to. In one game Alexander decided he didn't like the English and eventually destroyed them by the Middle Ages. Fortunately he ran out of steam after taking out my next door neighbour and never came after me. And all my other neighbours were getting into skirmishes from time to time as well.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Willem
My experience was just the opposite. With just normal AI behaviour, no extra aggression, I felt it was declaring war more often than it used to.

Hmm, I don't understand what you say. Are you noticing no extra aggression or extra aggression on normal or aggressive AI?

Anyway, just started a game on normal AI, and there there are plenty of inter-AI wars, but no one has declared war on me.

[DrSpike]

Maybe you are too strong.

[Maniac]

Yeah I got slaughtered in my last game, so I dropped a level and now I'm easily on the lead again... Haven't found a good balance between me and the AI yet.

[Tattila the Hun]

Same here, I generally stomp them on Noble, but get butchered on Prince. Well, a good Prince-game sees me winning, but those are rare. It's a strugle... Come to think of it, that's a perfect balance. I don't want to start a game, and know what the outcome will be...

[joncnunn]

One possible solution to Noble too easy Prince too hard could be to modify the XML in Prince to get rid of the AI extra starting scout.

[Adagio]

Playing with the December 12 AI I noticed Cathrine commit suicide. She was going for a cultural victory, and with her 3 holy cities (and other religions in her cities) she was close on winning (with her 3 cities having culture from 50,000 - 100,000 before 1700 AD)
With a defense agreement with me and Saladin (one of the strongest) it would be unwise to attack her
She then decided to attack the Americans on a nearby continent, who also had a defense agreement with Saladin. Cathrine was among the weaker civs and as mentioned Saladin was among the stronger, so needless to say Saladin could easily take a city (she only had 4). I destroyed one of her culture cities*, so now she has no chance of winning (with only two cities left)

If she didn't attack America, then she would have stayed untouchable and won the game. I couldn't touch her as Saladin would have crushed me if I tried

* couldn't pass a chance to take out my worst enemy, as I was going for a cultural victory too, but was way behind her