AI Brag Thread (well me bragging for them)

[Blake]

I'm playing a pretty amazing Monarch game atm on a large continents map with about 3 extra civs.

I roll Inca and found Buddhism, it spreads poorly but I do manage to convert Alexander who is down the other end of our continent and Washington who is between us. Hannibal founds Conf and converts the other 3 civs on the landmass.

In this game I lose the Oracle in 1080 and a little later the Colossus goes, it was that Ramsesses guy, he musta run mass priests+engineer and lucked out on the engineer for Colossus, or maybe he built the thing really fast... that happens now...

Anyway on my land mass it quickly comes to pass that the 3 Buddhists become the top dogs on the land mass. The unlucky Koreans were my neighbours so I kill them off while Alexander brawls with Augustus, who I declare war on for mutual struggle but he can't get to me due to closed borders. I eventually finish off Korea and Alexander had been doing well against Augustus.

As I enter the industrial era I tweak the AI's to make them build Railroads better and also tweak the food balance for very large cities, since it got very out of whack once Biology came along. Shaka had got frisky so I invaded him and took him over.

Now the incredible thing is, despite the fact that I've devoured two neighbors, that damn Washington is STILL #1 in most everything except production. I got to Assembly line after getting Railroad first, my capital packing a whopping base 70hpt (thanks in part to 4 settled engineers), boosted by a full-powered Ironworks. And yet Washington BEATS me to the Pentagon! And Washington manages this feat without conquering any additional land. The Exp+Cha traits are crazy good for builders and Washington can really work them now.

But unfortunately for Washington his undoing will be that he rejected his friends after getting Free Religion. So it's now just me and Alexander ( ) who, once he's finished feasting on Augustus, will help me drag down Washington.

I'm so happy that I can go into the Industrial era - and have the AI's actually keep up with my GNP, Production, Food and Land Area. In 2.00 once I had my coal plants and biology and state property the AI's would only have like 1/3rd of my MFG, the amount of production they can spew out now is incredible. I almost fear my war with Washington (who is considerably more advanced) because his MFG is so high... thankfully I have a very strong thug on my side, Alexander with #1 Territory...

In my next post, interesting screenshots and more rambling!

[Blake]

Washington used me! He fricken used me!



Great Merchant missions are seriously one of my most favorite aspects of friendly MP games and I just LOVE watching the AI do them. That screenshot was from slightly before Washington decided that his worst enemy was Alexander...

Note that the unruly techmonger is running Free Religion already. So first he grabs Liberalism then he gets a giant influx of gold, no doubt from Economics Merchant...


In this game I am currently researching Industrialism.

As something of an overview, here is the minimap and scores.

Also shown is the entire Carthage empire , not all AI's manage to grow like weeds. But Hannibal is keeping up in tech with his little patch of cottage.

Anyway the minimap shows the all-devouring Blake, digesting his neighbors and suggestively embracing Washington. Down in the south is the Giant Killer Alexander who has made Augustus his ***** (or love-slave, knowing Alexander ). Alexander is the biggest in terms of land area.

Sandwiched in the middle is Washington:



He has a beautiful core of nicely developed cities, making excellent use of Biology to grow his cities to maximum useful size.


Over on the other continent are a bunch of misfits. As it happens Asoka and Kublai Khan are both powerful in the research department, in fact KK has the highest GNP thanks to having open borders with everyone except his enemy the Egyptians and Washington, since KK is also running Free Market that means loads of trade routes and an awful lot of commerce. Thankfully Washington is being his usual isolationist self and only has a couple of open border partners, if he was a open-border whore he'd be #1 gnp too (but with rep and a lot of specialists he doesn't need #1 gnp, he's generating like 300-400bpt in beakers from specialists alone).



Here are the Demographics as I research Industrialism:


I am in the lead in MFG and Food, but the amazing thing is it's not by much! Usually it'd be like my MFG is 600 and the next best AI's is 200. I've massively out-hammered Deity AI's. It would be unreasonable to expect the AI's to beat my hammers because I am the god of hammers and my capital alone is packing 210hpt, I'm running US and State Property and have heaps of mines, lumber mills and workshops. But the AI's are trying!

Lets take a look at the MFG graph:



I have the typical Industrial Dog-Leg kink in the graph, but amazingly Washington and Alexander are following suite! This is because the AI can now properly leverage these mid-end game technologies. I admit that Alexander is being propped up here, I'm feeding him a lot of key techs, but damn, is he making use of them! Yet Washington has done it all on his own without conquering!

The poor saps on the other continent largely lack coal, without coal-fired industry they can't follow until Plastics/Fission and may never get the bonus of railroads. I raised the AI value of Coal (to a bit higher than a luxury) so they can't afford to buy it now.


Now saving the best for last, a spy reveals what's going on in the bastion of evil...


All I can say is "Sweet dear Mother of Jesus!"!!!
Nearly 50 fricken raw production in an AI capital!

Combined with the production discounts is how he stole the Pentagon from me, not even needing a head start!

He's done it by settling all his hammer GP's in the Bureaucracy Capital and he has Angkor Wat so can run extra priests. Of course I'll need to get him to change those farms into State Property Workshops (gogo Communist America!). Oh yeah and it's a crying shame about the Hermitage and Great Artist, I've already fixed that so in the future those things will go to border cities and will have nearly no value in cities with 100% friendly culture. In fact it’s this misplacement of the cultural multiplier builds which is a big reason why the AI’s suck at border pushing later in the game.

And check out that garrison :boggle: !!! I plan to get the AI to move some of the forces out of the capital, but maybe I'll leave that until after I've attacked Washington, because if most of that stack joined up with his tanks and entered my territory I'd have some trouble with it! He's got another stack just as large but much more modern down on his city near Greek Territory, so Alexander is going to have is work cut out for him. I'll be gifting Alex Industrialism and enough cash to upgrade all his units.

Fortunately (for me) the AI is still dumb with the promotions and most of Washingtons Marines are promoted with Woodsman, I guess I'll have to fix that... (does so... there, with the shiny new logic the AI should conclude that Woodsman is never a good promotion, perfect).

Anyway I have made a fair few improvements to the industrial performance as part of this game and I should be posting a new build tomorrow.

[Krill]

Holy ****.

[Krill]

And that is Monarch?

[Solver]

Okay... who wants to play a Deity game vs. Blake's AI ?

[Senethro]

How about 4 humans vs. 2 teamed Deity AIs?

[Solver]

No, better Deity OCC .

[Krill]

Deity OCC without OCC mod on Highlands?

As Org/Cre maybe?

[Krill]

Blake, are you going to enter the EGE competition, or do AI mods not count in that?

[ColdPhoenix]

Er.... Now that the AI is so much better is anyone going to reduce the bonuses on the higher levels. I'm back down to Prince and don't want to stay there for ever!!

[Diadem]

Don't worry ColdPhoenix, you won't stay at prince forever! It will only be a couple of updates before you will be struggling at noble

AIs are really starting to rock. So cool.

Woodsman I eh? Well woodsman can be useful, but very very rarely. It can be useful for a warrior / scout to explore. And it can be useful sometimes for units at key chokepoints. But those are two very specialized scenario's, which are probably not worth implementing.

[Diadem]

Oh and Solver, I won a deity OCC game with 2.08 just two days ago

18 civs on a duel sized map. Slightly crowded. Lots of fun though. Had to build culture for half the game to stop my borders from expanding into the wrong direction. And Mansa was a real challenge, having 4 vassals and twice the score of everybody else. In the end though he died just 2 pieces away from a spaceship victory.

Never knew Gandhi was so good at commiting mass genocide :P

[Todd Hawks]

Originally posted by ColdPhoenix
Er.... Now that the AI is so much better is anyone going to reduce the bonuses on the higher levels. I'm back down to Prince and don't want to stay there for ever!!

As long as you don't have to go below settler there is no reason at all to change the bonuses.

Looking forward to the first stable release!

[fed1943]

Today I tryed vanilla Blake AI, ragging barbs, emperor, few civs to

leave room to barbs.

Quite a difference! Barbs no longer do stupid attacks against strong

positions (hills,forests); instead, they go for weak spots and

menace improved resources and city site.

A lot of times I was obliged to attack them.

Excellent work, Blake.

Best regards,