AI questions

[DoctorGonzo]

quote: (BTW Like I keep ranting on about in other threads, I think the AI should be open source. It could have a custom language, a bit like Civ2's events.txt, but it could very maybe use VB, even though that is slow - but at least it's easy to learn/program in.)

I agree with the need for an Open Source AI, however using a platform specific language is a bad idea. Mac and Linux users will miss out. They already have to deal with things like not having level editors for Unreal Tournament because someone thought it would be great to do it in the most Windows specific way they could.

I would advise them to make every effort to stick with the most platform independant solution possible.
[This message has been edited by DoctorGonzo (edited June 18, 2000).]

[UltraSonix]

Ok, how about creating a AI editor instead of a language. So using an interface similar Starcraft-editor's triggers-and-events way of setting up stuff, even novice users will be able to customise their own AI if they want. The same editor could be used to alter game settings/units instead of just altering a text file.

------------------
No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Ralf]

You can easily "expand your way to success" by shoving out buckloads of city-founding settlers i a row, early on in the game.
20+ settlers or more, founding just as many cities + another 20+ city-area settler-developers.
Effective, perhaps - but is it FUN?

Its certanly aint very realistic in historic terms, thats for shure. Also, if the AI should have the same early ultra-fast city-founding strategy for each of the (upto 7) computer-civs; the game would probably grind to a halt, in later endgames.

I have the following four expanding-rules suggestions. They should enable a much more realistic game, and allow the AI to compete more easily (i hope):

A/ Max two "empty" cities (= without any city-improvements) at any given time within that empire, can be allowed.
The AI/Human Player HAS to build temple in at least one of above cities, in order to continue founding a new city.

B/ Any city NOT road-connected with some/all of the other cities, gets an proportionally stiff corruption-penalty each turn.
Lack of road-connections to other cities should also give a more noticeable resource-/science-penalty.

C/ A big sized empire of 25 cities or more should be an unstability-factor in itself - increasingly prone to split-up federation-attempts. This should be especially true if the large empire is far ahead in terms of science-/production-/economy- and military might, then the other civs.

(It shouldnt matter if the empire is well maintained: these split-up tendencies should appear anyway, if the empire is self-sufficient and powerful enough (to far ahead the other civs).
The split-ups federations should consist of min 20% - max 40% av the empires cities. A real groundshaker, in other words).

D/ Also (important); the cities in small civilistic-perfectionist 8-12 city empires should in return have less problems with building huge 20+ mega-cities.
Cities in large 20-30 city empires on the other hand, should have increasingly bigger problems with developing indevidual mega-cities.

[SmartFart]

THE ART OF WAR: Ancient Military

-there is no effective war party without Crusaders,Pikemen,Catapults,Settlers and Diplomats
-all militarty units must be veterans
-pick your target carefully before attack,no use of taking a city which you cannot destroy or hold for a long time...it's a waste of time and resources
-use Diplomats to avoid zone of control
-use pre-worked Settlers on rivers/roads to build instant fortresses (for those who aren't familiar with this cute little trick: mine with your Settler 2 turns and click on it to stop working...now your Settler can make instant fort if you have construction)
-stack your Catapults/Crusaders with a Pikeman and move them to most deffensive terrain around your target city
-never left your invasion force unstacked
-explore distant shores with Triremes loaded with a Diplomat and one 4-legged unit. That will hurt early Republicans who prefere to leave distant cities undefended because of loss of shields
-play the cards you currently have : if you have Lighthouse - build lots of triremes, Sun Tzu War Academy - go conquering ASAP, The Great Wall - expand like hell and build defensive units or build barracks and attack civs w/o Sun-Tzu or build a city inside of your enemy territory, fill it with units and go conquering from there (WARNING: be sure you blocked all ways to enemy diplomats )
-defend your cities with at least 3 units,one Catapult is highly recomended,2 vet Pikemen are a must
-make as much embassies as possible,look which cities builds wonders and try to sabotage its production with Diplomats

Of course,all aforementioned depends on early expansion.
On Deity,AI have alot of benefits (smaller food/production boxes,more arrows,knowledge of entire map and cities,lesser unhappiness,etc.).

If you manage to teach AI how to use given benefits,you're doing a great job.

Regards.

SF

------------------
No i ain't doing much,doing nothing means alot to me (AC/DC)

[phunny pharmer]

When I attack and conquer a city, I use a large tresury to buy my attack units, so my attack 'booms' with the number of cities that I take. Not only is this historically inacurate, but the AI gets swaped when I do this.

I bring this up because I have never seen the AI do any sort of constructive attack like this. They should coordinate their attacks. Either the whole building system needs to be changed when a city is conquered, or the AI needs to know how to do this too.

A possible way to get around it: make cities that are captured by enemy civs should not have any production for ten turns. Furthermore, a reteating/defeated civ would probably sabotage factories, power plants, etc. These improvements should be considered 'off line' for these ten turns. Also, if the city walls are captured, they are probably damaged, and the enemy will know all the gates and weaknesses of the city just conquered. Thus, the city walls should only give a 50% bonus for these ten turns.

[Smash]

The AI needs to improve in the trade area the most.It just doesn't seem to maximize trade arrows at all.

Cities are built haphazardly.I can't tell you how many AI cities I have seen that are missing 2 nearby specials.It need a higher priority for resource specials.And it should be by resource type rather than resources in general.

Food is a problem.It always goes for food squares over trade squares.It will build Collosus in a desert.Cope's Observatory in a city that will never produce more than 10 science beakers.Caravans don't seem to be a priority and don't follow any plan if they are sent.

Tactically it is not good,but it would be better if it didn't attack armor with elephants.This is where trade comes in.Perhaps putting a higher priority on trade arrows rather than food would help.

The ai does better at spacerace than conquest(for reasons mentioned above) but if I didn't give 80% of the techs it would be stuck in ancient times forever.

Despotism.The ai takes along time to get out of it.It needs to be told to get out of Despo ASAP.And when it does,it seems to change governments at the drop of a hat.Its almost as if it arrives at a decision 1 turn then arrives at a totally different one next turn because some values have changed.It needs to be longer term in it's strategy decisions.

Growth-yes it needs to expand more.And grow cities larger.It is pretty rare I see AI cities beyond size 12.Most are size 8.Although the AI has irrigated and farmed every square in sight.

I don't know how to do it but if the AI could recognize which improvements to build in which city.It will build a factory in a 5 sheild,30 beaker city while a 20 sheild,5 beaker city is building a university.

[Phutnote]

I find wiping out computer civ's fairly easy late in the game. This is my best strategy:

1) Build up average size civ. Avoid wars. Exchange technology. Build caravans like crazy to build good economy.

2) Connect civ to others via railway, or obtain/build bases/city within 1 turn of transport ship range. let them develop their terrain before invading, so it's less work fixing it up for me.

3) Get the robotics advance so I can build howitzers. Sometimes I wait till I have stealth and can sweep the skies. The only units i really need are howitzers, fighters, transports, a few spies, AEGIS cruisers, and a few armour units to clear out light units from cities (missiles, etc), without wasting howitzer attacks.

4) Build a lot of howitzers. Mass them at the border. Get the SDI defense if nukes exist. Build them in every city, get lots of cash to buy em.

5) Attack an enemy civ. Take 10 or so cities, or their entire empire in one turn. Make peace after taking the last city I can. Buy SDI defenses in all cities.

6) Wait for units to repair, then attack again. Can destroy most computer civs at King level in 1 or 2 turns, especially if only on one continent.

Phutnote

[DaveV]

I agree with the early expansion. If the AI could be taught to ICS, that alone would make it dangerous.

More on placing city workers optimally: the AI doesn't seem to value trade arrows - it will put workers on forest before silk. It will also produce a huge food bonus in a size 8 city with no aqueducts. I think the AI should emphasize shields instead of food, to capitalize on its production advantages.

My biggest advantage over the AI is that I have the initiative over the AI for almost the whole game. Two tricks that would help the AI: 1) fortifying a couple units on strong defensive terrain in the heart of an enemy empire. 2) seaborne invasion with 2-movement units (like the barbarians do now). Land a stack of crusaders/dragoons/howitzers on a clear square next to an enemy city, then stomp it.

[Father Beast]

quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 06-18-2000 04:10 AM You can easily "expand your way to success" by shoving out buckloads of city-founding settlers i a row, early on in the game. 20+ settlers or more, founding just as many cities + another 20+ city-area settler-developers. Effective, perhaps - but is it FUN?

Ralf,
I posted the best fix (IMHO)for this problem in the ultimate ICS thread. (can someone give the link, please? I don't know how.)(ell, I huess I do now.)
it's basically to limit the tiles being produced to the number of citizens. no free city square.

of course if ICS is still a factor, then the AI should take advantage of it. I can just see being plastered by the mongol hordes while I'm trying to perfectionist build.
Edited numerous times while learning how to link and fixing the link.
[This message has been edited by Father Beast (edited June 20, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Father Beast (edited June 20, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Father Beast (edited June 20, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Father Beast (edited June 20, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Father Beast (edited June 20, 2000).]

[StormLord]

Hi,

Nearly every major glitch has been mentioned, except this one, which seems to be a unique strategy invented by myself:

Use aircraft/helis for defense! They're fast and effective. If the enemy lands with a small force, bomb them. If they land with a large force, it'll probably be a cheap one, so send in the helis... they can attack several targets per turn.

By the way, there could be more difficulty levels with less difference between successive steps. I beat the Prince-level AI with one hand tied behind my back, while I seem to lag behind at King difficulty.

One last thing... why's everybody so obsessed with bottlenecks? Ships sail around them without trouble. If you had enough naval power to get to the enemy, you have enough naval power to get around a bottleneck. It's as simple as that. (Except on giant linked pangaea style maps ofcourse )

Bye/See you in Civ!
The StormLord ( maybe it should be WindLord, because the wind brings the storm...)

[BustaMike]

I usually stick to the SMAC forums, but since I'm planning on getting CIV3 even if it only gets decent reviews I figure my input can't hurt. I have beaten the crud out of both CIV2 and SMAC on the hardest skill levels with my eyes closed so I have a good idea of where the AI falls short.

I have also seen a lot of good comments on the AI from a CIV standpoint but almost none from a SMAC standpoint. For this reason I will try and give my input from a SMAC standpoint.

First off let me say that the AI is much much weaker in SMAC than it is in CIV2. This is because SMAC has many more choices to be made than CIV2 did. I can only assume that, like SMAC, CIV3 will also be much more complex than CIV2. This means that it's going to be a much bigger chore to make a good AI.

Anyway here are my biggest beefs with the SMAC AI:

[*]Supply Crawlers:

The AI has absolutely no idea how to use these properly and rarely if ever builds them. This allows a human player to gain a ridiculous advantage though the proper use of crawlers. Crawlers are the second most important unit in the game (1st being formers). They allow a city to gain production without using a worker and can be used to rush prototypes and Secret Projects (the same as caravans and freights in Civ2). If the AI could understand how to use these even a little bit it would gain a huge advantage over an AI that does not.
[*]Pop Booming:

The only time the AI will ever pop boom happens totally by accident. A pop boom, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, means that your city or base is increasing a size every turn. In SMAC this is done by getting +6 growth, in Civ2 by getting golden ages in Republic or Democracy. Pop booming will create quite a sizeable advantage if timed correctly and I know several people who absolutely refuse to do it any more in single player SMAC because it puts the AI waaaay to far behind and the game is no longer fun.
[*]Support costs:

I have regularly seen the AI build so many units in one base that it no longer has any minerals free to build anything else. This is dumb. This happens a lot in Civ2 also.
[*]Terraforming:

The AI is an idiot when it comes to terraforming. 'Nuff said
[*]Attacking:

I know that this has already been mentioned, but it is important. The AI has no idea how to launch an attack. Instead of sending one powerful attack force it sends a steady string of units that cannot defend each other and can easily be wiped out by a much smaller strategically placed set of troops. Several times I have defended against well over 30 units with two or three quick units and a monolith to heal every turn at.
[*]City Placement:

The AI in SMAC will regularly spend a ridiculous amount of time moving a colony pod to found a city near a landmark rather than founding a perfectly good base close to home. This eliminates greatly any turn advantage that could have been gained by having more cities quicker and also makes it extremely difficult to defend the new base because it is by itself. The faction in SMAC that is most notorious for screwing itself this way is the pirates. The pirates will always run as fast as they can toward the monsoon jungle to try and get the nutrient bonus; however, this is in vain 90% of the time because if someone elses territory already includes the jungle then the pirates cannot harvest any resources from the jungle because it is outside their territory.[/list]

Anyway those are my biggest gripes. I know that probably only a few of them will actually be relevant to CIV3, but I hope they are helpful.

------------------
"Luck's last match struck in the pouring down wind." - Chris Cornell, "Mindriot"
[This message has been edited by BustaMike (edited June 20, 2000).]

[Sparky]

testing. . .

[Sparky]

Ah, here we go. I'm an experienced civ player -- played civ 1, civ 2, SMAC, and everything in between. I've also observed the AI throughout each version.

The Civ 2 AI improved much over Civ 1's. Civ 2 had costal blockades and smarter pathfinding, as well as nukes, majing the game harder than Civ 1. Still there's much room for improvement:

-Railroads. The computer doesn't know where to build them. The AI doesn't connect specific cities, and instead wastes precious engineers' turns putting down rail and making a sprawling mess. The result? Land invasion is EASY. Almost every square my forces are on is connected by railroad. If I can bomb their cities into being unoccupied, I can easily move all my troops a vast distance inside their territory without losing even a single movement point. Even if their cities are still occupied, I can always find a way to move a howitser from one end of their homeland to another, just because prevalent railroads make movement too easy. Recommend: build roads everywhere for trade, but only connect cities with minimal railroads. Make a web of roads so that you can't get to one city without going through another, or make a wheel-and-spoke style layout where a central (well-defended) city hub has railways leading to every other city making a large circle. An invader must control the central city to make the rail infrastructure useful. Also, don't build rail on coasts. Makes landing from ships very easy: any two-movement unit can land and use the rail to move inside enemy territory within the same turn.

-Forts. This issue is serious. The AI has no idea how to use them. I assume in Civ 2
the idea was for the AI to build lots of forts since it built none in Civ 1. The combination of fortresses and rail indeadly to the computer. Here's what I always do to the AI: take a large force of offensive units (ex: howitzers) and add a single defensive unit. The AI builds tons of forts withing its homeland, none guarded very well. I occupy a fort next to the city I want to capture. I fortify my defensive guy and stack all my howitzers. The AI rarely makes a serious counterstrike, so I can always count on my defensive unit surviving (even if he doesn't, since my stack is in a fort, it's only a single loss). I then use the railways to attack with my entire force at once without any movement penalty. If I fail to capture the city, I retreat with my damaged forces, heal them in the fort, and attack again! Never fails to crush the AI. The remedy: The AI needs to understand the danger of a large army in its midst -- it needs all-out war to destroy them. Sever the railways, bring in troops from other cities to reenforce the garrison, counterstrike the enemy force. As for forts: build fewer so that the engineers aren't wasting their turns. Also, recognize strategic locations and make bottleneck forts in mountains at the edge of the empire, so that the enemy doesn't get in in the first place. Always occupy forts with a good defense, not a single unit. Destroy any old forts that could be used against you.

-I use the above strategy to crush the AI on diety in the WWII scenario. Build many howizers. Load on transport. Sail to Netherlands (there's a single fort on the coast next to Amsterdam). Unload in fort the same turn. Fortify 1 turn. Use German rail against them. March into Berlin. Never fails.

-The AI needs to understand total war. Sometimes, during a devistating attack on your base, you ammass all your men in a last stand against the enemy, pulling every rifleman from across the empire to stop the enemy in his tracks. The AI never understands this and lets the human invade with only marginal resistance. The only exception I know of is the Zulus. They fight like mad to protect their homeland. The AI must recognize *real* danger (full-scale invasion, massive aerial bombing, etc.) and do everything possible to stop it. Anything less and they'll loose.

-Expansion. The AI has trouble with cities. It should build them a little farther apart, four spaces between, instead of two or three. Also, it needs to expand ealry-on faster. I focus on occupying my continent as soon as possible. Then I build infrastructure after all the cities are down. This may not, however, be appropriate for all civs: the Chinese and Babylonians are usually pretty contained, while the Russians sprawl.

-Freight makes great spies. I wander around enemy rails with "peaceful" freight to get a look at enemy territory.

-The AI must coordinate tricky massive air/land/sea attacks simaltaneously to be effective. I emphasive MASSIVE because huge invasions of just a few unit types (howitzers) seem to work best. I say tricky because the AI needs to understand the element of surprise: attack the rea of the island, paradrop *inside* the homeland, capture all the undefended colonies, do blitz on the far-away city that just made a Wonder.

-The AI never paradrops outside cities. I often drop troops in all the surrounding city squares cutting off food, trade, reenforcements. Then I invade with my paratroops already on the ground. Also, seiges are important. The computer never approaches cities with hordes of defensive units to surround it and starve it into submission.

Thanks for reading

[markusf]

The AI is really bad....


Build 30 cities don't get into a war.
build massive amounts of market places/banks/stock exchanges/
Go into dem
80% tax 20% luxeries and then BRIBE 7-8 cities per turn. Once your making 1500 cash per turn none of the AI's can stand up to you. I have taken out 15 cities in one turn before. Bribing is just way to powerfull.

[Sparky]

-Ben Larrimer reminded me: the AI does not use cruise missiles enough. Yes, it strikes ships, but it never fires at cities. If I don't have the means to actually wage a war, I build missiles and hit cities over and over, softening them for invasion.