The AI and its obsession for food

[alexman]

I just *love* this new debug mode in PtW! Last night I did a little experiment to try and figure out the AI behavior. I created a map with six identical islands, each island made exclusively from bonus grassland and with enough room for just one city.

Then I removed the ability to build any kind of ships and Wonders, turned on accelerated production, turned off civ-specific abilities, cut research costs by a factor of 10, and started all players from the Industrial Age in Democracy.

My goal was to play with the AI build-often preferences and see how they will react in identical environments.

I gave Egypt Happiness, Greece Science, Germany Production, Babylon Culture, and Russia Trade. It didn’t matter. Here’s what they all did:

Build units first (Warrior-Spearman-Spearman). Mine initially, until the city grows so that it needs entertainers (size 3). Then start irrigating to compensate for the food lost from the entertainer. Irrigate more and build a Granary so that the city grows faster. When the city finally grows again, assign another entertainer and start producing Wealth(!). Switch to rifleman when Nationalism is discovered.

Here is a picture of Thebes at this point. Note the lack of a temple, even though happiness is flagged as a preference, and there are obvious happiness problems.

[alexman]

Granted, in an actual game, the failure of the AI to build happiness improvements is less of a problem because in the expansion phase they build settlers and thus reduce population before it becomes a big problem. In the late game they have lots of luxuries so again unhappiness is not a big issue. Still, this experiment revealed the biggest shortcoming of the AI IMHO: AI cities should not try so hard to have a food surplus when they have happiness problems.

This brings me to suggestions for Soren to improve the AI in the next patch:

• When there are happiness problems, stop emphasizing growth and start emphasizing production. Forget the two-food surplus goal and use the increased production to build happiness improvements.
• Make the AI use the luxury slider! Why does the AI fail to make use of this extremely important tool? With entertainers you sacrifice one worked tile for one happy person. With the slider you sacrifice one trade for one happy person. Guess which is better…
• Never build Wealth when there are city improvements to be built

Until the above happens (read: never), here’s a suggestion for modders to improve the AI: Increase the value of specialists. Make an entertainer give two happy faces instead of one. Since the AI uses them instead of the luxury slider, which causes their cities to lose food, which in turn causes them to over-irrigate, he will benefit from having to use less entertainers to get the same happiness result.

Any other suggestions?

[Theseus]

Did you try it?

What about AI city governor settings?

[alexman]

I tried playing with the AI city governor for citizens (food, shields, trade, and any combo), and it made no difference for the above test. Always irrigating like crazy to compensate for the lack of food from assigning entertainers.

I have not tried doubling the value of entertainers to see what happens in the same test. I forgot yesterday, but I will try it tonight. When I proposed this tweak for the AU mod, people thought it would make entertainers too powerful, and they may be right, but now I think that would be a good thing, since the AI uses them so much.

[player1]

Doubled vlaue of entertainers?

Way to powerufull.

That gives you possibilty of totaly ignoring advanced happiness buildings and focus on luxury.

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by player1
That gives you possibilty of totaly ignoring advanced happiness buildings

It also gives the AI a chance to do the same thing, and since the AI doesn't seem too keen to build them (when it should) then it might be worth experimenting with.

[Pyrodrew]

Remove the Growth Option from Rome, Egypt, Russia, America, China, India, & Iroquois. It's sure not helping them.

[Pyrodrew]

...

[alexman]

Originally posted by player1
That gives you possibilty of totaly ignoring advanced happiness buildings and focus on luxury.

As FP said, the AI already does that. If we can't change the AI strategy to become optimal, why not change the optimal strategy to match the AI?

Even if you don't need them, Happiness improvements are not useless because they generally generate lots of culture. Not to mention that you will still need them to get WLTKD in most cases. And don't forget, even with double entertainer value, you still sacrifice precious food for happiness. I'm sure there will be many cases where you want all the food you can get, so you will have to build cathedrals instead of assigning entertainers.

[Theseus]

I hate entertainers... unproductive b-stards.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by alexman
If we can't change the AI strategy to become optimal, why not change the optimal strategy to match the AI?

Because it might dumb down the game to a point where it's not fun anymore?

(BTW: Of the board members who claim that Civ3 isn't as good as Civ2 and/or SMAC, many seem to think that Firaxis has done exactly this: Dumbed down the game so that it matches the AI, but isn't fun.)

Even if you don't need them, Happiness improvements are not useless because they generally generate lots of culture.

I'd rather have buildings that I NEED to build than buildings that 'aren't useless'.

[alexman]

I don't see why this is dumbing down the game. Adding city micromanagement, yes. But dumbing down? I don't think so. It's just a different strategy required to do well than what we are used to.

OK, so you won't have to build catherdrals if you have many luxuries, AND you don't have culture-flip dangers, AND you don't care about WLTKD. But you *will* have to build them otherwise. Weakening Cathedrals will also serve to balance the Religious trait, which is too strong IMO.

And what about ADDING the option of using entertainers? Currently I am like Theseus. There is no choice. I hate to use them. It makes more sense to use the luxury slider and waste commerce in other cities rather than lose the food from assigning entertainers.

[Slax]

Maybe I don't completely understand the luxury slider. If you have unhappy people in one city, but many other cities that are happy, isn't the money spent on luxuries wasted making happy cities more happy just to fix one city?
edit -oops, answered in last post by alexman.

[Arrian]

Interesting study you did, Alexman. Like you said, the key here is an AI tweak, via a patch, to get it to use the luxury slider.

-Arrian

[alexman]

Originally posted by Slax
Maybe I don't completely understand the luxury slider. If you have unhappy people in one city, but many other cities that are happy, isn't the money spent on luxuries wasted making happy cities more happy just to fix one city?

Sometimes that is indeed the case. But the commerce lost to entertainment is always a fraction of the commerce produced by each city. So your larger cities that need entertainment usually produce more commerce, which in turn gets turned into more happy faces. With a 10% luxury value, for example, your size-2 cities will usually not get any entertainment.