AI Army in the Field (REALLY)!!

[Antrine]

Thanks, I am actually getting more and more 'fond' of this TechTree!

Anyways I won't post anymore 'pictures' of AI Armies to save bandwidth, but I have what I believe to be interesting observations after many 'repeats'.

The AI routines for to use Armies in battle is sound, after three layers of impediements are removed.

One, give the AI, Armies with the Palace. (every 15 turns)
Eliminate ALL great Wonders. Reduce them to Small Wonders and even some to an improvement. Three, have many of same act like Zeus, spitting out units every so many turns.

Why, the AI does not convert leaders. The AI wastes the best producing cities on Wonders, and this in the very cities the units need to appear in order to stuff the Armies.

If you take all that, then this happens EVERY game, especially with AI aggression set HIGH. All the AI's field Armies filled with 'offensive' units, additionally they stack or escort their Armies to the front with fast moving 'defensive' units. Even bringing two such stacks to bear on a single target, (city) and with a general front of 10 or more supporting units that both attack and harrass improvements.

Actually, the AI uses overall tactics a human player could be proud of. Drawing off my reinforcements with secondary targets that include nearby cities, hitting with Armies I cannot easily hit back.

I also note, that in contrast I never escort my Armies and lose them in battle when I carelessly 'leave' them 'winged' near the front. Especially when the AI has plenty of hard-hitting offensive units about, for they will take those Armies out forthwith.

So one my conclusion is there is now in CIV III just two many things going on for the AI to manage. I mean, two many victory conditions and paths. Two many Wonders to ferret through etc.

Satifisified with these now consistent results, I am going to move on to getting the AI to field siege and artillery well, first across a wide battlefield and maybe to even 'siege' cities.

This for to better emulate Napoleon and Civil War era battles. Or fictitious Ancient Era battles.

Straight off, the 'enslaving' feature of siege and artilery with the necessitating of 'escort' is the place to start. This is just too complicated. Anyway this are my thinking on these issues.

Happy gaming, er modding.

[Antrine]

Here is an update on Army use with an unique twist!

I now have four different types of Armies, however the point of this update is how the AI used one of them. The AI built this Army via an Small Wonder that spits them out. I bill it and call it an early ancient Amphibious Army. The Army Icon is Multiple Warriors, army load of only one and ticked with Amphibious attribute.

Now here is the UNIQUE AI use of said Army, built by said AI (the Greeks mind you) via a Small Wonder. Drum Roll please...

It put a hidden nationality unit in it (a powerful Monk) and used said Army to invade without war, taking advantage of the Hidden Nationality of the Monk loaded into the 'load of one Ancient Amphibious Army'!! Clever, the Monk Army is now over twice powerful able to wage undeclared war on my turf willy nilly!!

This is just beautiful, a clever AI is 'teaching' me how to use units I created!! Supreme Kudos to Soren! As I understand his genious may behind this AI and Kudos to Firaxis!!

[Arnelos]

I seem to recall that we saw an Aztec army in the first Civ3 Democracy Game... I can even go dig up the original thread with the screenshots if you'd like.

[Antrine]

That would be great! Was it stuffed with any 'hidden nationality' units? I am not familiar with what might have been available to Aztecs at that timing. I only signed on after CIVII, once Conquests was available and purchased both it and CIVIII at once. Until this 'incident' I had not considered that 'hidden nationality' designation would pass through and color the Army characteristic once so loaded. A fine idea and advantage for 'undeclared war'.

[TheArsenal]

Originally posted by Antrine

One, give the AI, Armies with the Palace. (every 15 turns)
Eliminate ALL great Wonders. Reduce them to Small Wonders and even some to an improvement. Three, have many of same act like Zeus, spitting out units every so many turns.

Read this a bit back, so I tried a variation:

Modded the palace to allow growth over 12 and produce an army every 20 turns. Changed Templar and Zeus to small wonders not tied to resources. Changed Pyramids to a cheaper small wonder producing a worker every few turns. Reduced pop cost for settlers, and eliminated them for workers. Gave all ancient military units the ability to enslave and produce a like unit.

In short: a different game.

Quite enjoyable and more challenging. The AI still leaves its armies in the capital longer than I would like and used them only defensively until attacked (but I didn’t modify the aggression levels either. Civs are agitated enough with me as is ).

But when attacked the AI did it bring the armies out into the field to decent effect. Even so, the reinforced larger cities are nice touch. I actually lost two armies of veteran Gallic Swordsman taking down the Aztec capital.

Also: made dromons available to everyone (took Byzantines out, and eliminated the Golden Age ability), put them and Frigates in the destroyer upgrade path and modded G Lighthouse and Magellan to produce dromons and Frigates, respectively, at a pretty quick clip. Tied both wonders to harbors to prompt the AI to upgrade when available. (Don't know if this works).

Over all affect of land and sea changes at Monarch: made the AI more competitive militarily without my having to move up a level and give it bonus units and production. The seas in particular were not readily ruled as normal.

Good tips.

[Antrine]

Wow! Great, I too found having difficulty levels beyond Monarch was no longer necessary, as with this scheme the AI's are finely muscled and a lot to handle. Your sea changes are similiar, I now have harbors spitting out Dromans and other seaside improvements giving Privateers and later ironclads.

You went a different direction with Settlers and workers, as I, I found ancient cities on rivers can climb to 15 early on; so too many of these in the AI's hands makes a lot of powerful cities fast. So I put fewer CIV's on very large map (250) and keep access to Settlers a little harder for everyone.

Hey, it is truely great to hear of your experiences with these various modifications, I too am of the opinion, the game plays a lot better as regards my own tastes. Differently only, maybe to others.

Oh, and if one sets the CIV's profile to aggressive and additionally with game to highest aggression, you will indeed find the AI's on the Attack with even mulitiple armies, especially if you build near their Capitol.

With these changes I have more 'space' and starting units for the humans player.

[TheArsenal]

Originally posted by Antrine

You went a different direction with Settlers and workers, as I, I found ancient cities on rivers can climb to 15 early on; so too many of these in the AI's hands makes a lot of powerful cities fast. So I put fewer CIV's on very large map (250) and keep access to Settlers a little harder for everyone.

To clarify - I set it so only the palace increases growth in that city, and before aqueducts and hospitals, no other cities than the capital can grow past 6 and 12 respectively without a palace jump. (The downside is in the modern era I get a slew of nonsense messages telling me a city needs sanitation and should I switch to the build to a palace).

I reduced the pop for settlers and (eliminated) for workers because I’ve seen when establishing embassies these units were sitting in AI build queues too long waiting for the city to hit the right size. I set the starting basic Barbs as a swordsman and I’ve reduced the bonus against them radically. So now, the AI often, but nowhere near always, adds an extra escort or two. This balances out crazy REXing just a bit (it probably would more so, if the Barbs were not behaving inefficiently).

Also, because of the number of armies quickly produced, I also pushed the Pentagon (renamed “The Round Table�) and Heroic Epic back into Middle Ages to reduce the number of small wonders/wonders the AI could build early before it had the production to do so.

There is a certain satisfaction tailoring the game so it works better to my taste (better AI wars, without moving up a level).

FYI: large map, 12 civs.

[Antrine]

Terrific ideas and implementation! Yes truely, the AI wastes alot of build time on those two units. I give each AI 6 settlers for start and require tech and improvements built to get more. The best mix I have so far found is bringing the Pyramid down to a small Wonder and with pottery the Capitol can build the Pyramid and it then gives one settler every 7 turns. This way growth is more strictly regulated and not taking city que time. For the ramdom feel, which I think adds to game play I added the 'Monk' unit which enslaves Settlers. This add a variable into game.

Well with your use of Pentagon and Heroic Epic, I might say great minds work along similiar paths, however as well, once you modify along these lines, certain things become obvious to do, given the current game mechanics.

I am now experimenting more and more with invisible and hidden units for the AI's uses them so well and they have the advantage of taking cities even during peace. Especially handy when armies so loaded take on these characteristics.

Happy Modding
Great to talk with you on this thread.

[TheArsenal]

Originally posted by Antrine
I am now experimenting more and more with invisible and hidden units for the AI's uses them so well and they have the advantage of taking cities even during peace. Especially handy when armies so loaded take on these characteristics.

In a mod that produces armies, a potential stealth army sounds plain scary.

Let me know what you come up with in your stealth experimenting.

Stealth units are very much in the early testing phase for me as well. There are still unsolved issues. Since it had no use, in a test mod I took the Explorer, pushed it back to Polytheism, renamed it Shaman Warrior and gave it a 3/3/2 (all terrain as roads) with stealth, the ability to see stealth units and enslave ability. With those stats, I am unsure how powered/overpowered this unit is, so I put some limitations on it. I’ve made it 70 shields, the price of most Knights/Knight UUs and also limited its stealth attack ability to units produced through to Chivalry (assuming a beeline to Chivalry) and no stealth attack on settlers or workers.

My primary issue is tied into the “sub bug�. It hasn’t happened yet, but I would hate to trigger a war because a unit clumsily bumps into my stealth unit on accident. The second is what to do with it in the upgrade path. I haven’t tested far enough, but I suspect since it is not tied to resources and has decent stats the AI would continue to build them past the point of usefulness. I may consider creating Stealth Guerillas and placing them in that path. We’ll see.

[alexman]

Not sure if you care, but reducing the Settler population requirement encourages big time ICS.

[TheArsenal]

Well, I defer to your knowledge in all things Mod. Anecdotally speaking however, as noted above, the near zero bonus against starting swordsmen barbs has been making the settlers move with larger escorts (sometimes) which I would think slows ICS down a bit as cities need to produce these additional units. And if the barbs ever are patched to where they attack escorts and cities as they once did, this may eliminate it altogether in this mod.

That said, ICS bugs me to no end. So far it has not been a problem (and this too may because I play at Monarch, no AI production bonus) but if it did become a problem, I’d definitely tweak in more changes.

[Antrine]

Invasion Force, check out this line up coming my way!

[Antrine]

They declared war and sent two 'ancient armies to soften the lines and this is still what follows!

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?file=31481_InvasionForce.gif

Well I gave up posting this picture here


Notice this invasion force of 28 units plus five armies! Now this is a stack!
And I thought my earlier bribe would have kept them from attacking me!

[player1]

hmm...

And what do you think of this:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=3094499