Awesome Aips Official Thread

[Nordicus]

Hey, thanks, guys--for helping out our fellow CTPer
Geez, I almost forgot about this thread!

[Carch]

Could someone post non-exe versions of this mod in the files? People have asked for it before, but now there's a whole new reason: exe-installed mods are worse than useless to Mac users. I'd really like to try out this mod, but I can't.

_/\ C

[skorpion59]

Carch,

Well, if you had an email address in your profile somebody could probably email you the files. Just a thought.



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Don, Apolyton Junkie

[WesW]

Don and I both have the mod in regular files, so just drop us a line if you don't want to post an email on the site.

[Carch]

Thanks guys, email on the way...

I just wanted to suggest posting the lot as a regular archive, since more mac players will be getting CTP soon.

I probably should just add my email to my profile, but I get so damn much spam and I don't know where it all comes from :-(. Web-based email-address harvesters are EVIL! EEEEVIL!

_/\ C

[skorpion59]

Carch,

Got the address. I sent all 3 to you in a zipped format. Let me know if it doesn't make it because of the size of the email.

Side Note: I understand your concern about making email addresses public. An easy fix is to set up a second account for all public use of email addresses and leave your main address for private use, friends, etc. Now days there is a ton of free, advertiser-sponsered ISPs, not Web-based like Hotmail, which you can use for this.

Don

[pchang65]

I have only now been really able to test this thoroughly:

1) The AI is much better at developing/building its empire. The best settings to favor the AI is to play at deity on the biggest map possible, with only a few AIs. They will expand very rapidly. By the time you get to them, they will have a substantial tech lead.

2) Unfortunately, no mod seems capable of giving the AI the tactical smarts to plan and execute a large scale coordinated attack/counterattack.

3) If you can get to cannons, bombarding the AI with stacks of cannons (even when he has superior units) is a slow but inexorable path to victory.

4) If you build up a large army and plan your attack so that it is coordinated across your border and occurs all at once, the AI is much less prepared than before and has very few units built in reserve to defend himself.

Overall, this mod greatly improves the gameplay over the original (especially at the default settings). On the other hand, there may still be room for improvement:

1) I seem to recall reading in CD's Mod that is was possible to encourage stacking. I will look at his readme again and try to figure out how this is done.

2) It might be worthwhile to try tweaking the AI to max out production and really start cranking out units when it goes into a war footing.

3) It might be worthwhile to try tweaking the diplomacy files to make the AIs go into a war footing at lower levels of provocation. Thus, the surprise attack may work on 1st AI, but then the rest will be ready for you.

What are your opinions? Has this been tried before?

[WesW]

The aip you are looking for is probably the getarmy.aip. It contains the unit build queues the AI uses when it is gathering its forces for war. It also contains the lines for force matching ratios.

From what I could tell, the AI already maxes production when at war.

A lot of this is the old "guns or butter" question. Originally, the game was set up for the AI to go primarily for guns, with the result that it often bogged down under the support cost of its military about the Renaissance age.

I reduced the number of units the AI produced, so that it had more production for improvements, and thus was better able to survive in the long run.

If you increase the number of troops the AI builds, and have it do so at lower levels of provocation (and thus more frequently), then you start getting back to the original settings, and thus the original problems.

I felt that the AI built enough units to provide an adequate defense. I mean, if you are strong enough to defeat the units present, a few more won't make any difference.

[Nordicus]

Patrick:
Thanks for the comments
For #1, lowering the cost of all units is the only way to date which allows the AI to stack more units (the underlying rule is that if it has the units, it'll stack them--tested quite a bit by Gedrin, aka. Chris Whitaker) without leaving cities with absurdly low defenders.
Wes hit the other points.

#3 is definitely something I'll be looking into later--since the diplomacy was barely touched, considering. But you're right--there still is room for improvement, esp. in the area of well-organized offensives and invasions.

Your comments are very much appreciated!


[This message has been edited by Nordicus (edited January 24, 2000).]

[pchang65]

When you say the AI maximizes production and unit building when it is at war, does this include building mines instead of nets and farms?

Also, does the AI every disband old obsolete units? I notice that the AI has plenty of archers, knights, and samurai, even though it can build musketeers. Most of the human players I know replace obsolete defenders with new units when they get the chance (and disband the old units in a city building a Wonder). Programming this behavior into the AI might make it a better defender without burying it under excessive maintenance costs.

[WesW]

"When you say the AI maximizes production and unit building when it is at war, does this include building mines instead of nets and farms?"

Probably, though it's hard to be sure.

As far as obsoleting old units; Again, it's hard to be sure, but I figure the AI disbands old units when its support costs get too high.
If the AI doesn't have many of the latest units, it's probably because it hasn't gotten around to building them, yet.

I have wondered in the past if the AI brings its units into its cities to disband them. I don't think there is any way for us to re-program this behavior, though. Maybe this is something the SLIC guys can take a look at. You can try posing this question in one of their Creation threads.

[coldsteel]

Purely hypothetical, but I wonder if the human player could lose early if there was a medieval mod without the awesome aaip's included. In medieval you are stuck with only stockade and no city walls until engineering (a most uncomfortable situation as it is), so on the old 1.2 "lots of troops" patch the enemy could visit you with a stack of nine and you with only a stockade. Ha! Fortunately, awesome AAIP's seem too busy developing to send that stack of 9 until it's too late.

These mods are a tremendous improvement.

cold

[Nordicus]

Patrick:
There's no code that I've seen which proves what the AI does with obsolete units--plus, how can one observe it? I've played extremely long games with the entire map visible, watching every turn, studying what 30 AI civs do, and it's not possible to observe them disbanding units--you can't even see them enter a goody hut; you can see the result of what happened after, but not the actual occurrance (if anyone has, I'd really like to know how).
So, I think it's yet another thing that hard-coded. Like the AI's magical ability to create a settler (sometimes 3 times) when the city size is 1 (I've seen this dozens of times but not the code for it), and the city does not disband.

cs:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts
I think a few people have been playing with both the Med Mod and AAIPs, and I know one has reported that it's more difficult than having either one or the other.

T.

[WesW]

Guys, don't mix the AAips and the Med mod!
The Med mod *already* contains the AAips within it, so you don't need the AAips separately.

If you installed the Med mod *after* the AAips, then the Med mod would have simply over-written all the AAip files.

However, if you install the AAips after the Med mod, then the game may crash, as I altered a setting in the aiploader.aip, a file which wasn't included in the AAips. Even if it doesn't crash, the AI won't use the new units included in the Med mod, and the AI won't perform correctly in certain situations in the early part of the game.

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[ETB]

Nordicus,

I have observed what I thought was the AI recycling units or disbanding units to obtain a temporary production boost during virtually all of my games. They appear to do it with some regularity. I sometimes slow down unit movement after obtaining the GlobeSat wonder. I have watched the AI's unit enter a city, make the "whooshing" sound associated with disbanding, then the unit fades away. It all seems so consistent with a unit disbanding that I have no idea what else it could be.

I have assumed that the AI calculates its settler production early on so that a settler will be "built" on or after the turn in which a city receives its next pop. In the early going, the AI appears to max out on settler production, so it seems likely that it will calculate a new settler as close as possible to the next pop. Thus, you can observe a city of one produce a settler and still remain at a pop of one. I've managed to do just that on a couple of occasions, although it applies to a city of any size.

BTW - I'm still going to try your new, improved, bigger world map. I just haven't had time lately.