Who says AI is stupid?

[jkadabomb]

Well I hear many complaining that the AI will not attack with more then one unit or a few units. Well I was at war with the Mexicans and they hit my capitol with 12 units, balanced between hoplite and archers(there were know flankers at this point in the game cause this was early).

[joey802]

quote: Originally posted by jkadabomb on 11-25-2000 08:40 PM Well I hear many complaining that the AI will not attack with more then one unit or a few units. Well I was at war with the Mexicans and they hit my capitol with 12 units, balanced between hoplite and archers(there were know flankers at this point in the game cause this was early).

Thats nice. Ive never seen something like that before[5 games so far, 2 on impossible]. Maybe next game.

[joey802]

But hey i have seen armies with 12 and all but they just sit there. This current game as soon as I got tanks I had 2 armies with 12 tanks each just rollover about 5 of these 12 ppl armies. Also with globe sat they move around [large armies] but they dont do much, they seem so passive. And have you ever seen a computer knock out another computer or even have a treaty with another?

[jkadabomb]

Well it seems the AI only acts smart when they are at war with you or in negotiations with you. But I never said the AI wasnt stupid, what I meant was that there are some moments it actually acts smart.

[Stratesford]

just like a human.

[colorme]

You're giving too much credit to the AI, Stratesford.
In fact, in frustration, I decided to watch one game that was half developed, using cheat mode (turn fog of war off).
Here are the interesting AI actions (pretty common in fact) :

1. In one city, the dude kept moving his units in and out of the city (one turn in and next out and so on. The same units I mean).
I couldn't see the purpose of that because there was no enemy for miles around.

2. One dude got a transport ship sunk by another AI's three ironclads. Former dude promptly sent another transport ship at the same location in the next turn! ("Slap me on left cheek, I'll offer the other" approach, I guess). No prizes for guessing that that got sunk too ...

3. Feeling sorry for one poor dude who's city was just captured, I used cheat mode to put an army of 12 (2 tanks, 5 artillery, 5 machinegunners), and planted them near his old city. The dude immediately took back the city with above army (impressive ...)

4. Repeated experiment with the army of 12 split into three separate armies, placed a few tiles from each other. Now, no such heroic attack occured. Dude promptly fortified all three army stacks, rather than combine them and take back the city.

5. I air-bombed the hell out of one dude's unit that was fortified outside his city. Instead of attacking my aircraft, or pulling the rest of his units inside the city, it immediately sent out another unit from inside the city! ("Slap me on one cheek ...").

6. Of course, as usual the dude doesn't know what limited fuel for aircraft means. Also, its happy producing aircraft carriers, but it doesn't feel the need to supply them with aircraft!

** Clearly ** , the guy doesn't know what its upto. It lucks out sometimes, and then you see the "flash of brilliance", as jkadabomb mentioned. I mean, do the activision programmers know the meaning of a "full-force strike"? How could they have programmed such a ****ty AI? Especially when they had a couple of years of doing nothing but changing the AI, between CTP1 and CTP2.

Quite a bummer for me, because I was really looking forward to this game ... which is why I'm so angry at this let-down.

If anyone can solve the "cowardly/stupid" AI problem, I'll be happy to play the game once more.

BTW, I haven't seen any of the activision folks post here in a while. I hope they come back here after Thanksgiving.

[joey802]

quote: Originally posted by colorme on 11-26-2000 03:37 AM You're giving too much credit to the AI, Stratesford. In fact, in frustration, I decided to watch one game that was half developed, using cheat mode (turn fog of war off). Here are the interesting AI actions (pretty common in fact) : 1. In one city, the dude kept moving his units in and out of the city (one turn in and next out and so on. The same units I mean). I couldn't see the purpose of that because there was no enemy for miles around. 2. One dude got a transport ship sunk by another AI's three ironclads. Former dude promptly sent another transport ship at the same location in the next turn! ("Slap me on left cheek, I'll offer the other" approach, I guess). No prizes for guessing that that got sunk too ... 3. Feeling sorry for one poor dude who's city was just captured, I used cheat mode to put an army of 12 (2 tanks, 5 artillery, 5 machinegunners), and planted them near his old city. The dude immediately took back the city with above army (impressive ...) 4. Repeated experiment with the army of 12 split into three separate armies, placed a few tiles from each other. Now, no such heroic attack occured. Dude promptly fortified all three army stacks, rather than combine them and take back the city. 5. I air-bombed the hell out of one dude's unit that was fortified outside his city. Instead of attacking my aircraft, or pulling the rest of his units inside the city, it immediately sent out another unit from inside the city! ("Slap me on one cheek ..."). 6. Of course, as usual the dude doesn't know what limited fuel for aircraft means. Also, its happy producing aircraft carriers, but it doesn't feel the need to supply them with aircraft! ** Clearly ** , the guy doesn't know what its upto. It lucks out sometimes, and then you see the "flash of brilliance", as jkadabomb mentioned. I mean, do the activision programmers know the meaning of a "full-force strike"? How could they have programmed such a ****ty AI? Especially when they had a couple of years of doing nothing but changing the AI, between CTP1 and CTP2. Quite a bummer for me, because I was really looking forward to this game ... which is why I'm so angry at this let-down. If anyone can solve the "cowardly/stupid" AI problem, I'll be happy to play the game once more. BTW, I haven't seen any of the activision folks post here in a while. I hope they come back here after Thanksgiving.

Yeah, this is exactly what upsets me about this game! I mean the diplomacy has a lot of new treaties and such, but it doesnt mean anything when the computer cant sign these new treaties with another computer. I mean this when I say that I prefer civ ii's more limited diplomacy/cheating where atleast you discover a huge mongolian civ every so often. I mean the games pretty much over after you conquer a civ as by then you are larger than any other civ, as the comp cant conquer any civ, and its just your choice if you wish to conquer another civ.

[jkadabomb]

Why dont you'll try multiplayer if you dont like AI?

[Stratesford]

Are you guys playing the right game? I'm at impossible and the romans have conquered 2 civs and are attacking me usually with 3 art. 2 machine gunners and 2 facsists. If i was playing civ or civ II at deity or emperor this would never happen to me!

[Triphosphatase]

Colorme is right, the AI is very dumb.

The AI does not know how to organize a full scale invasion. Once in 15 turns, a 4 unit army attacks my city. When the AI does group a 12 unit army, all it does is sit around its capitol. If you are on another continent, its worse! The most I got was a 2 unit army attacking my cities every 20 turns (on impossible level). The AI almost never protects its transports, all the military naval units never get stacked and can easily be killed by bombarding.

[colorme]

Right on. In fact, for all non-believers (i.e. in the AI dumbness), I recommend selecting a impossible-level
game, playing it until about 1800 AD (keep hitting return, until then!). Then,
1. Open the cheat mode, and turn of fog of war.
2. Select "show all battles and moves"
3. Watch the absurdities that the AI does. In fact, I'll be surprised if it seems to be doing anything smart AT ALL!! It's totally clueless!!

For example, you'll see (in a given turn), AI moving an cannon unit from its city A to city B. In the same turn it will move a different cannon from city B to city A!! Exactly what it has achieved with this miracle is unclear.

My conclusion is that, at least as far as the military is concerned, there IS NO AI STRATEGY. So, it can be characterised as an OPPORTUNISTIC AI. i.e. If a weak enemy comes near some of its strong units, it will kill them. But it CANNOT THINK STRATEGICALLY.

My suspicion is that the AI is programmed as a series of sequential conditions to be checked (How I wish games like these were written by computer scientists, rather than by hackers).

e.g. Step 1. Evaluate city B's danger -> if in danger, bring in defensive unit (perhaps from city A).
Step 2. Evaluate danger for city A -> if in danger, bring in defensive unit (perhaps from city B)!!!!
Step 3. ...

Can someone from ACTIVISION comment on whether any of the standard techniques from the computer science field of artificial intelligence (a non-rigorous, yet useful theory) used to develop the game AI? Or was it a bunch of hackers writing code? In the latter case, why did it take two years to complete?

[Triumphus Romanus]

Well, I just played a game well past 2300AD. On medium level, 100X200 map(one big continent with river here and there), 5 AI civs plus me.

Early on, it was the usual hunt and peck stuff. I would occasionally have a visit from a single AI unit...who may or may not be hostile.
I methodically started taking the nearest civs cities, Native Americans I think. As I was taking them out, I learned the Irish had conquered the Scots. I then stopped my harassment of the NAs and started preparing for the Irish. And sure enough, here they came. Usually in stacks of 3-5. Kept me busy, and sure enough the stinkin English started taking some of my small cities on my border. So, I now have 2 civs pickin on poor me. I gear up my industrial machine and start pumpin out military units from my big cities. For the next several turns, there was a swarm of English units into my territory, picking off my lone units I use for scouts, and trying to take some cities. I survived, and started thinking how great it would have been if there had been some coordination to his attack. Really, my empire had spread out quite a bit, and my military was tecnologically up to date, but spread thin. A strong coordinated attack could have overrun my outer regions and left me with a small core of cities......surrounded by Irish and English.
Anyway, when I did feel ready to launch a retaliatory invasion, the English AI had its cities fortified well. Mostly tanks and artillery. Also, around several large cities including the capital, there were additional fortifications of anywhere from 8-12 units each. Forced me to go thru basically twice the normal units.
The AI did a decent job of defensing his major cities, yet didnt seem to be able to launch a full scale, organized invasion. So, I must agree, this is unfortunate. And a definate shame, because I really started to panic when the initial swarm started, but it just fizzled out.

[colorme]

Stratesford,

Take a standard impossible-level game. If you look at the power graphs, you'll notice that it usually has huge ups and downs. e.g. you'll see that the romans, who were leading all other civs in military and science until 1600 AD, by a factor bigger than your dad and mine, have been reduced to third place by 1800 AD (say). Now, theoretically speaking, if you began playing as the afore-mentioned romans at 1600 AD, you'd have to be extemely dumb to be reduced to third place by 1800 AD, wouldn't you?

And yet the AI manages to achieve that. This nonsense seems to have been programmed into the game, to give it a feel of "rise and fall of civilizations".

Also, the AI units move around a lot, without achieving anything in particular (turn off fog of war to see this). Seems like more of programmed "eye-candy" to give the game a feel of doing something useful (enough to confuse beginner players at any rate).

[Kautilya]

I haven't played the game on the highest level long enough but if Colorme is right then that is disappointing. I really like CTP2 because it cuts a lot of the drudgery in Civ2/SMAC but it would have been nice if they had managed to make the military AI stronger.

Now the question is : are some of the AI weaknesses modifiable throught the text files? Is it possible that the most glaring weaknesses could be improved in a patch? Any thoughts?

Still it appears that the AI is a definite improvment on Civ2/SMAC especially as far as city managaement is concerned.

[colorme]

Don't get me wrong. I loved CTP1, primarily because
1. better graphics than civ2 (ok, I'm ashamed to admit this liking)
2. unit-stacking, which gave some depth to the military.

But, my grouse is, why did I pay $60 for CTP2, when the only improvement seems to be the mayors and diplomacy.

Lets take these one at a time:
1. Mayors: The AI uses the same code, apparently, for its own cities. Seems like all activision did is allowed code that the AI already used (in CTP1), to be used by players too. Thanks, but that doesn't seem to be too much work for activision (perhaps I'm wrong).
2. Diplomacy: OK, you can do a lot of proposal, counter-proposal business. I'm no Comp Sci guru, but though I appreciate the value of improved diplomacy, I don't quite see how this is hard to implement (check out aidata/diplomacy files to see how easy it is to implement). And the AI has zero intelligence as far as diplomacy is concerned.

So, I would expect that for $60 (total game sales >=
$20 million perhaps, if there are 600,000 CTP1 players), I should get a lot better game.

BOTTOM-LINE: ask not whether CTP2 is (a lot) better than CIV2 (if you're asking that, then activision might as well pack bags and go home), ask whether CTP2 is a (lot) better game than CTP1.

P/S: RTS games have pretty crappy AI too (even AOE/AOK etc.), but at least they have good eye-candy .
CTP2 has neither.