Why does the AI commit suicide?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi All, Great discussion.

I don't have Civ3 yet, but if modding can fix (i.e. paper over) some of the AI issues I read about, and annoyances like resource constraints, I'd probably buy it.

Here is something I said recently that ties into the topic here of the AI having no Global perspective. This is one idea how to fix things like attacks where the AI can take a city at the price of whiping out half its army.

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[For an AI plan,] success in each area is determined by global values of objectives that we'd need to determine thru playtesting. But lets say we phrase everyting in terms of Cash. So put bluntly cities and provinces have monetary value, units have value and replacement costs, etc. Things in enemies' hands also have (negative) value to us. With a scaling like this, each plan would produce a value that is basically the sum of the values of objectives attained (and resources depleted). If we want to get sophisticated we can use discounted cash flows to get at the time value of money.
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It is not really rocket science, but I think it can do a lot better than what Civ3 has to offer...

I liked several of the posts here a lot, and was hoping to lure some of you into commenting on the Clash of Civilizations AI spec that we're discussing now. The thing above is a tiny excerpt from it. A couple more fresh-eyes looks at how we are trying to put together an AI that Doesn't do bonehead things could really help us out. If anyone's interested you can go to AI -- the Thread . The discussion wanders a bit, so if you don't have much time you could go to the really long post near the end of the thread, from which I took the snippet above. If you're more interested, there are also links to other AI specs and discussions.

Keep up the good work making the game better thru modding

[Redstar]

the ai is just a bit slow..

EDIT: sorry about this: i posted this on the wrong thread

[Arrian]

First off, Yin's right, all discussions of Civ should involve beer. Unfortunately, I'm usually at work. Actually, perhaps wine would be better, because if you have a marketplace, it makes lots of people happy

Seriously, the AI can be improved. I posted several specific things in the "The AI would be more dangerous if" thread, which I think is in the Strat. forum, that I think are the most glaring. The forum is limited to the AI's warfighting ability, but that's where most of the weaknesses are anyway. To quickly summarize:

Inability to defend itself, for a number of reasons, including failure to upgrade, failure to fortify its border, unit "patrolling," an obsession with capturing workers, and the most glaring of all: failure to concentrate all available force upon a large invasion (if I saw a huge stack of units coming, you better believe that every available attack and bombard unit would respond to that threat). The AI is still incapable of fighting intercontinental wars.

As for suicide attacks, yeah, it's annoying, but I wonder about the alternative. The game already gets boring once you are in control, even with the annoyance of the occasional irrational AI attack. If they feared you as they should, nothing would happen.

In short, I think the AI is a definite improvement from Civ II, but still could be better.

-Arrian

[Moraelin]

Originally posted by Dan Baker
The AI knows strengths of all your cities - he likes to launch his attacks on your weekest points. There does seam to be some notion of reinforcement ability. AI's prefer detached -hard to reinforce cities.

Huh? I've never noticed anything like that. Most of the attacks I've seen were on some city that's near the center of my empire (which, for some reason seems to always grow as a band), not on the harder to reinforce extremities. If you leave your far off cities poorly defended (which is often the case if you actually wait for them to build something, despite all the corruption at that distance) he'll attack there. On the other hand, if you fall behind in upgrading your core cities' defenders (which is the mistake _I_ usually make), he'll cheerfully strike near the center, and have my reinforcements rolling all over him in the next couple of turns.

The AI definitly has a good idea how strong you are militarily, in fact, having a week military is a sure way to get into wars.

Not sure about that. He does seem to have some vague idea. Most of the time he seems to grossly miscalculate, though.

The AI has a notion of a potential opponents liability. That is, if definitly likes to go to war with a nation that is already loosing a war. This does have the ammusing affect of watching all the computer players gang-up and rip a country appart. Just make sure it isn't you!

That seems to mostly be a side effect of the "attack the guy with the smallest army" tactic. Admittedly, it's cool, though.

Does the personality of the leader have an effect? It seams to me that Greece and India (for example) don't typically do these kinds of things, and Germany and Russia ALWAYS do. It looks like there are about three types of personalities - Aggresive (Germany, Russia), Manipulative (England, America), and Peaceful (Greece, India). Maybe this is just my imagination, I haven't played enough games through to know.

As someone who's actually played with the editor, I can assure you there's no such thing as a proper personality in there. There IS an "aggressivity" slider in there, for each country, as well as a list of things to build often. (Basically presets for an AI country that apply to all its governors.) Basically "aggressive" means more inclined to declare war, while "build offensive units often" makes it reach the critical mass at which it will look for a target sooner. However, there is no such thing as a proper "pacifist" personality, and there definitely is no trace of a "manipulative" setting.

And I can assure you that given the right setting any country will do the same things. Some just won't reach critical mass as soon as the others, but given the time and the right position/resources/whatever, eventually they WILL reach the same point.

I've had games where England was my best ally. And I've had games where England went out of its way to attack me from the other end of the continent. (And got wiped out by my allies, while I was giving free horses and iron and technology to England. To keep my allies busy. Wouldn't want them to go all soft, for lack of practice) I've been attacked by France and India, the countries with the lowest aggression setting in the game, a lot. And conversely, most of the time actually Germany and Persia (Germany has MAXIMUM aggression) are my best friends. In fact, in all the games I've played, pre- and post-patch, Germany is THE only country that has never yet declared war on me. Go figure.

What in the world does the computer factor in making peace? I've seen the most stuborn peace negotions when a country was on the verge of desctruction. Clearly, every thing in the game has a monetary 'price' tag and the computer computes how valuable something is to you. It also knows how valuable something is to it. Apparantly, peace to avoid destruction isn't that high on the list.

I've said it before, but the AI only knows one way to negotiate: trying to be annoying and unfair, just for the sake of pissing off the player. And it will break out of trades where it was getting 100 gold per turn and Gems for his Furs. Or I've had countries a quarter of my size and with troops two ages behind mine, who wanted me to pay them to get into a mutual protection pact. (Yeah, right. Who's protecting who, there, anyway?)

Survival doesn't seem to really be a factor for anything. Not for making peace, not for trade, and not for anything else. He doesn't seem to weigh a deal as "hey, I am getting a profit after all", but simply as "bah, that's nowhere near robbing him blind, so it's unacceptable."

Does a computer factor in Civil Unrest and potential needs for goverment collapse when fighting a war?

I've never noticed anything of the kind.

[Moraelin]

Originally posted by Velociryx
1) Remove REALLY outdated units from the build queue. When you can and should be building tanks, having the option to build swordsmen only confuses the AI. Take it out, and he'll build tanks, cos that's the only choice given (well, tanks, mech inf, you get the idea). Modern stuff.

Best of luck to you, then. But I'm pretty sure that there's NOTHING you can do to remove an UU until that civ had its golden age. So if the Greeks keep missing on building Commercial or Scientiffic world wonders, they'll still have hoplites in their list all the way into the 20'th century. If the Romans didn't have a war yet, or don't have the right wonders, they'll still have their Legionaries in the list, no matter what.

That said, somewhat to my surprise, the AI does seem to have somewhat of a "bang-per-buck" concept. The AI's love for spearmen hordes seems to be a result of the screwed up numbers that the game shipped with (a.k.a., the "anti-tank spearmen" syndrome) , more than anything else. It seems to me that it just looks at how much could it build with those money, and there just isn't that much reason to build knights instead of legionaries. Moving the attack/defense numbers on an exponential scale seems to have made it actually prefer more modern units for a change, if it has the resources.

[Sze]

Originally posted by Velociryx
2) Have the AI Calculate its military strength/position as the sum of it's total attack value (the attack values of all its units) vs. the total defense value of all yours. Likewise, when preparing an attack, have the AI compare it's total defense value to your total attack value and plan accordingly.

I was under the impression this was how it worked (in the older civ's too). I'd be very disappointed if it was any simpler than this. It should be more sophisticated even. For example, the AI should take into account your ability to mobilize an army.
In Civ II I would have preferred to play with a small peace-time army of mainly defensive units, knowing that I could, if need be, switch directions and crank out a vast army. I was almost always able to out-shield the AI, partly because they had such huge standing armies. But they would only see my produced units and consider me weak and attack me. I'm a space race player usually, so this just bothered the hell out of me and is the main reason I stopped playing Civ II.
There are so many things wrong with Civ III that this isn't as big of an issue, but I hope they improve this aspect of the game. So far this isn't a deal breaker because unit support is in gold now instead of shields so I just keep a big army.

[Velociryx]

Sadly Sze, I do not believe that to be the case. If it were, then I think there would be no reports of very tiny Civs declaring war for no particular reason against a much larger Civ. I'm not sure what the formula is.....

-=Vel=-

[Jrad]

Does a computer factor in Civil Unrest and potential needs for goverment collapse when fighting a war?

I've noticed governments being overthrown when its too hard for them to fight.

[Comrade Tribune]

Why does the AI commit suicide?

You must look at this question from the viewpoint of the AI.

Unlike us, whenever the CivIII AI is activated, it has to play CivIII. It can´t do anything else.

At first it gets bored, then annoyed, then frustrated, then really angry, but, unlike us, it can´t stop playing the game, disinstall it, and come to this forum to vent its anger.

So it gets depressed, falls into apathy, stops eating -this is why your PC consumes so little power at this stage-, and finally, everything else failing, your AI becomes suicidal.

A really sad story.

Sorry; couldn´t resist.

postscriptum: To test my hypothesis, if you are a really heartless person, force your Tamagotchi to play CivIII: Different AI, same result: It will get suicidal, too.

Don´t try this with your spouse or children!

[Redstar]

the AI is like an opportunistic wolf

"Huh? I've never noticed anything like that. Most of the attacks I've seen were on some city that's near the center of my empire "

not so...the AI will go for weakly defended cities.

you can prove this to yourself simply this way...

have a war for a couple of turns..and watch where wolf AI units are heading.

Then, move your units out of a city behind them or in opposite direction.

on the next turn, be amazed when the enemy units do a turn around and race to that undefended city.
the enemy AI will not take on the strong..only the weak.

watch and be amazed

[Akka]

Originally posted by Moraelin
I've said it before, but the AI only knows one way to negotiate: trying to be annoying and unfair, just for the sake of pissing off the player. And it will break out of trades where it was getting 100 gold per turn and Gems for his Furs. Or I've had countries a quarter of my size and with troops two ages behind mine, who wanted me to pay them to get into a mutual protection pact. (Yeah, right. Who's protecting who, there, anyway?)

Survival doesn't seem to really be a factor for anything. Not for making peace, not for trade, and not for anything else. He doesn't seem to weigh a deal as "hey, I am getting a profit after all", but simply as "bah, that's nowhere near robbing him blind, so it's unacceptable."

So true...

[justjake73]

I recall waaayyyy back in Civ1 that I used a cheat code to switch to one of the AI players to see what his map was like. He had just attacked one of my newer cities, but I already had a rail connection there so I was able to reinforce it.

Do y'know what I saw? The AI had a black map except for his land and some of my coastal cities that it would repeatedly attack, and a straight path through the blackness straight to the city I mentioned at the start!!! A DIRECT BEELINE to that new city! It KNEW that the city was there and KNEW it was comparitively weak!

[Mark_Everson]

Comrade Tribune: LOL

Civ has the same insidious side-effects on players. At least in Civ2 the player, after effortlessly pistol-whipping the AI will, after a period of time enter a self-destructive phase. The first clear signs are using the editor to give the AIs 10 cities at the start of the game, or other self-inflicted wounds. This tragic self-destructive activity peaks in a behavior referred to by clinicians as OCC . For some the level of this masochism knows no bounds...

[ancient]

Re: yes

Originally posted by Whoha
The game doesnt see quality of units, just quantity, it thinks that the umpteen billion warriors it builds will be enough to kill you. It also doesnt think of how it can really carry out the war, IE having an ocean is the best defensive fortification you could possibly be lucky enough to have. Though, and this is really wierd, on deity the ai is really really nice for whatever reason, they dont even mind scouts running through their territory.

Every one thinks they can pick on me.

The Zulu think they have a more powerfull army than me, so do the Persians, what they failed to enter in is I have Modern Tanks they have calvalry, i have mech infantry they have infantry, so what if the troop, count may be 200 to 300, they still dont stand a chance. So now i am at war with Persia, Zululand, England, Germany (who has 2 city's when they declared war, because i nuked persia about 20 times) its just sad..

[Nakar Gabab]

Some personal notes on the AI:

1) It knows, roughly, where you are. It knows where your cities are. And it LOVES razing cities that culturally defect to you, if you don't develop them. I had this happen with the Romans. One of their crap cities, on a coast with a couple jungle squares, defected to me. They went out of their way to burn it down, before I crushed them with swordsmen. Surprising, given that they were using Legions... which leads to...

2) The AI knows WHERE your forces are. Yes, it isn't 100% intelligent in targeting cities with units OUTSIDE, but it does know that those units are there. Trust me on this... in one game, I was the Aztecs, wedged between America to the west, the Iroquois to the south, England to the east, and France to the northeast, with Rome slightly north of France and Russia, then Germany, in layers north and east of the frenchies. I attack england with massed swordsmen and horsemen - Rome assaults me from the north. No provocation, of course, and no one else joins in. I polish off England, which was pretty pathetic, and send some troops up to hold off Rome and teach them a lesson. Sure enough, the Iroquois declare war from the south! Back down I go to beat them into the ground, killing their MWs while I attack and raze their SINGLE horse source with my jags. Neutered, I wipe them out. Not twenty turns later, Germany shows up at the Aztec/French border with knights, grabs a couple warriors, and proceeds to get counterattacked as I wrangle military alliances with France and Russia. Germany doesn't die, but they fight Russia instead of me and end up suing for peace. Which, once more, leads to...

3) The "AI treats humans just like other AIs." Bull testes. That is the biggest load of horse hockey ever. The AI does NOT, in at least one instance, react even moderately intelligently, and that's when it comes time to kick out the interlopers. Yes, somehow Germany was able to send a strike force of knights across Russia AND France, two countries it does NOT have ROP with (I checked and rechecked, and I had embassies), which would've taken several turns at least and ten or fifteen at most, and neither of them cared. I'm sorry, but AI or no AI, if a civ sees another Civ driving an attack force into its borders, it's either get out or fight. A horde of workers or scattered obsolete units? Sure, even I could tolerate that. But not 8 frickin' knights. But, of course, it's not reasonable for ME to demand respect for my borders, a threat which almost always leads either to annoyance, or war. Why are YOU getting mad, ya jerks, you're the ones tromping around like you own the place! If the AI wants to invade me but can't without violating borders, it should seek ROP. That's just obvious - it's what I do, if not pursue military alliances with the buffer country, hoping most of the damage is done to them. Of course, had Germany done this, I'd have a turn or two to react. So I think the AI "cheats" by not getting ticked about other civs maneuvering through because to sign ROPs for THAT SPECIFIC PURPOSE (they do sign ROP, but it seems to tie in with MPPs most of the time) means warning the player. I see that as a poor excuse for the AI's lack of subtlety and sense in making a long-distance war.