AU mod: How to help the AI with research choices

[Nor Me]

Originally posted by alexman
There is a new tech property: Non-tradable.
Perhaps that's the reason? I hope so.

I know the techs were tradeable because the AI traded them to me. In one case, I couldn't trade away the tech I had traded for in the same turn to a civ that I'd checked didn't have it to trade before.

[donZappo]

I think that something from this discussion should be added into the initial AU Mod which appears to be set for release in the next week or so. While there are a lot of changes that need extensive testing, I think that a test regarding Fascism/Communism could be quite helpful for testing purposes. It would be easy by using flavors to adjust the value to be equal to, slightly less than, or significantly less than the corresponding techs at the time.

I'm pretty sure that this is the one point that there is the most agreement on, and a simple enough fix to incorporate into the mod. The rest of the major points can wait for a more in-depth analysis.

[nbarclay]

We need to be very careful about adding to the priority of Philosophy or Scientific Method in an effort to make the AIs more inclined to race for them. On one hand, such changes would make the player less likely to win the race. But on the other, AIs that prioritize them over techs with a higher intrinsic value and don't benefit from winning the race to them would get hurt. I'm not claiming to have an answer to how best to address this issue, but it's one that needs to be considered.

Nathan

[alexman]

Proposal for Ancient Age

After lots of testing, I have come up with a specific proposal for the ancient age.

As mentioned in the first posts, the idea is to make the AI less predictable and more likely to take advantage of its traits.

The following 7 flavors are added: Generic, High, Low, Religious, Scientific, Militaristic, Seafaring.

• All civ flavors have a 70% relationship with a the tech flavor 'high'.
• All civ flavors have a 0% relationship with a the tech flavor 'low'.
• All civ flavors have a 50% relationship with a the tech flavor 'generic'.
• A civ with the Generic flavor has a 50% relationship with all flavors except 'high', and 'low'.
• A civ with the Religious/Scientific/Militaristic/Seafaring trait has a 80% relationship with itself, and a 50% relationship with all other traits except 'high', and 'low'.

The high and low flavors are not symmetric with respect to 50% so that we can get a larger spectrum of flavors by averaging.

Proposed Technology Flavors:
Bronze Working: Generic, Low
Masonry: Generic
Alphabet: Generic, High, Low, Scientific, Seafaring, Naval Transport
Pottery: Seafaring
The Wheel: Generic, Militaristic
Warrior Code: Generic, Low, Militaristic
Ceremonial Burial: Religious
Iron Working: Generic, Militaristic
Writing: High, Scientific, Seafaring
Mysticism: Generic, Religious
Mathematics: Generic, High
Philosophy: Generic
Code of Laws: Generic
Literature: High, Scientific, Diplomats, Military Alliances
Map Making: Low, Seafaring
Horseback Riding: High, Militaristic
Polytheism: Generic, High, Religious
Currency: Generic, High
The Republic: Generic, High
Monarchy: Generic, High, Religious
Construction: Generic, High, Low

In order to see the effect of the above changes, I ran tests, and the results can be seen in the attached table. I took five snapshots of the tech tree: No techs, only bronze working, all first level techs, all second level techs, and all but the last tech in each branch. The research choices for an AI of each flavor are shown in terms of percentages. Each percentage in the table is based on only 150 tests, so it is not exact. It gives a good idea of the real percentage though.

[Dominae]

Woah! I'll have to sit down with a big cup of tea later on tonight to look over all that.

I'll preemptively say though.


Dominae

[ducki]

Originally posted by Nor Me


I know the techs were tradeable because the AI traded them to me. In one case, I couldn't trade away the tech I had traded for in the same turn to a civ that I'd checked didn't have it to trade before.

Is it possible you traded FOR it on the AI's turn, then couldn't trade it on your turn due to the AI that traded it TO you also traded it to other AIs?

Just a thought, but I generally kick myself when I make a trade and then realize I did it on the AIs turn, ruining my chances of profitting from it.

[Theseus]

Where is REL for Bronze Working (known) though?

Tea? I ain't gonna try to understand this with TEA!! (Wrong Flavor! ) I need something stronger.

[Nor Me]

I looked at a quick test. I gave Masonry and the Iroquois Flavor1 and they would pay at most 303 gold for it. When I changed the relationshiop of flavor1 to itself from 100% to 50%, they would pay only 93 gold.

That doesn't look good .

Does anyone have a sensible explanation as to why I've never seen a protestant France in Age of Discovery?

[Theseus]

It looks to me like Seafaring is not appropriately researching Mapmaking in the final group... huh? Also, it looks to me like you may have nerfed it for the non-Seafaring civs by setting it at Low.

But overall: Less predictable? WOW!!

The Republic: Generic, High
Monarchy: Generic, High, Religious

Friggin' genius.

[vmxa1]

I would give a provisional thumbs up as well. Check that I revoke the provisional and just flat give you one. That was a lot of effort, well done.

[donZappo]

Good job, Alexman. I was trying to figure out a good relationship between tech costs and research percentage but the results I were getting were somewhat mathematically erratic. I was hoping to figure that out to avoid the lengthy process that you must have gone through to run these tests! Thanks for the work on this as it appears quite invaluable! Your results look quite good and I look forward to incorporating them and see how they run myself.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Theseus
It looks to me like Seafaring is not appropriately researching Mapmaking in the final group... huh?

As I see it, the final group just means that if a Seafaring civ can choose between a) Mapmaking b) getting out of Despotism, it will rather choose b) and research a government tech - not too bad, IMO. And looking at the 'second level tech' group, it seems that Seafaring civs won't have to choose between Mapmaking and a government tech very often, because they will normally beeline to Mapmaking.

EDIT: BTW, the same effect occurs with Scientific civs and Literature.

alexman:

[alexman]

Originally posted by Theseus
Where is REL for Bronze Working (known) though?

You can assume it's the same as generic. Religious civs do have Burial as a priority, but since they start with it, it doesn't matter.

Originally posted by Nor Me
I looked at a quick test. I gave Masonry and the Iroquois Flavor1 and they would pay at most 303 gold for it. When I changed the relationshiop of flavor1 to itself from 100% to 50%, they would pay only 93 gold.

I did not investigate the effect of flavors on AI trade value, but something like this would obviously be enough to kill the flavor idea.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by alexman
I did not investigate the effect of flavors on AI trade value, but something like this would obviously be enough to kill the flavor idea.

I'd rather say 'rebalance' than 'kill'. Obviously, if the AI really wants a tech (100% flavor) that another AI already has, it is willing to pay about 3 times as much compared to the tech being 'generic' (50% flavor). Your initial proposal uses figures up to 80% (which should result in a willingness to pay about 2 times as high), and most figures fall within the 40% - 70% range. If the AI really is willing to sacrifice too much gold with your proposal, tune your flavor figures towards 50%. This still should produce more variation and less predictability in the AI's research choices, although not as markedly as in your initial proposal.

[alexman]

The problem is that with flavors at around 50%, the AI thinks the techs are worth much less than their actual value. That's fine as long as an AI civ trades tech-for-tech with other AI civs, but it's exploitable in trades with the human player, who would just wait for the AI to do the research and then get them for peanuts by trading.

From a quick test, I see that the trade value of a tech with no flavor is the same as when the tech has somewhere between a 99% and 100% flavor relationship (closer to 99%).

So to preserve balance for tech trading with the AI, the generic flavor would probably have to be at around 99%, the high flavor at 100%, and the low flavor something slightly lower than 99%.

Unfortunately, I can't do any extensive testing before two weeks, to see if that's enough to make a difference in AI research choices (I'm away for the holidays).