14-11-2002 23:50									#1
	Ideas for a killer AI Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

In the thread titled "Why, oh why does the poor AI...", we identified some shortcomings of the AI in managing its cities. Until these issues are possibly addressed in a future patch, and in preparation for the PTW version of the AU mod, let us use this thread to agree on the best way to improve the AI using the current PTW editor.

So here are my proposals:

1. The AI builds settlers before the city is large enough to produce them: This happens VERY often on Emperor and above. Only the most food-rich cities get to grow past size 3 before the settler is complete in the AI's expansion phase. This more than negates the early-game production bonus on that level. Option 1: Do nothing. The AI is good enough in the early game without improving it. Option 2: Increase Settler cost to 40 shields. This will not affect the AI on Emperor, (since it already wastes at least 10 shields per settler), but it will delay the human expansion.
   
   
2. The AI emphasizes growth even when it has happiness problems. This causes the AI to assign entertainers, losing productivity, and irrigating more tiles to support those entertainers, losing even more productivity. Option 1: Double the happiness generated by entertainers. If we can't make the AI not use entertainers, we should at least make it use less of them. I personally believe that the human player's strategy will not be seriously affected by this change, but the AI will benefit greatly. For a more detailed debate on this subject, see this thread. Option 2: Never flag "Growth" as a build-often preference for the AI. The AI already builds Granaries when it has hess than two excess food without this preference. Building Granaries earlier would make its population growth even more out of control. Option 3: Make the city governor emphasize production for all civs. This couldn't hurt, but I have not seen any effect from making this change.
   
   
3. The AI doesn't build harbors early enough. It often can't benefit from luxury trade without harbors. Option 1: Mark "Trade" as a build-often preference for all AI civs.
   
   
4. The AI doesn't build factories early enough. Even with "Production" as a build-often preference, the AI builds Factories after cultural buildings like Cathedrals and Research labs. Option 1: Mark "Production" as a build-often preference for all civs. Don't mark "Culture" as a build-often preference, since the AI already emphasizes culture over production. Option 2: Increase the maintenance cost for Factories and Plants. The AI does not consider maintenance in its build decisions. By increasing the maintenance of Factories, the AI will at least save some money from building them later.
   
   
5. The AI builds too many units and not enough improvements. The real problem is that the AI NEEDS all these units because it's so bad in combat tactics. Option 1: Similar solution as with the Factories: increase the maintenance cost advanced buildings like banks, research labs, and cathedrals. The AI generally builds these later than the human, so we can save the AI some cash for doing so.
   
   
6. The AI is predictable in its research path. Actually, there is a random factor involved, but it is often outweighed by other non-random factors. The human can bet on being the first to get techs like Mathematics, Literature, Polytheism, Printing Press, et cetera, and sell them to the AI for a fortune. Similarly, the human can rely on the AI to research techs like Nationalism and Bronze Working for him. Option 1: Adjust the tech costs to make them appear more balanced to the AI. This is tricky, and requires some playtesting, but in general it involves making empty techs cheaper and Wonder/Unit techs more expensive. Note that the AI does not look forward when choosing the next tech to research. So it there is a great tech (like Electronics) after a lame one (Atomic Theory), the AI will not know to research the lame one so that it can get to the great one faster.
   
   
7. The AI builds Guerillas when Infantry is available. Credit to Catt for spotting this one. We think it's because Infantry and Guerillas have the same attack and cost, and both have the AI offense flag checked, so the AI sometimes builds guerillas as offensive units. Option 1: Increase the attack factor of Infantry to always be better than that of guerillas.
   
   
8. The AI attacks with weird units. The AI attacks with units that have the AI offense flag. Riflemen, Infantry, Mech. Infantry.... Option 1: Increase the attack strength of those units. This would at least make them more effective against the human. Option 2: Remove the AI offense flag from those units. Then the AI would not attack with them unless its odds are realy good. For the AU Mod, we used option 1 for riflemen and infantry and option 2 for Mech. Infantry.
   
   
9. The Babylonians are too agressive for a builder civ. The Iroquois don't take advantage of the best UU in the game. This one is simple. Lower the aggression of Hammurabi to 3 from 4. Increase the aggression of Hiawatha from 2 to 3 and flag his offensive units as a build-often preference.
   
   
10. The AI doesn't know how to produce units in its core cities and disband them in the corrupt cities. It often uses Wealth when its good cities have nothing else to build. Option 1: Double the value of Wealth. It is still not worth building for us humans, most of the time.
    
    
11. The AI doesn't know how to effectively place its Forbidden Palace. The AI suffers from high corruption. Option 1: Reduce the corruption level for the AI, by making it play at Warlord level instead of at Regent. This AI Level affects content citizens, their combat bonus against barbarians, and percentage of OCN for corruption. It doesn't directly affect research or production. Option 2: Reduce the AI level to Chieftain! Option 3: Make Chieftain unavailable to humans and make the AI play there. Change this level so that it has 200% optimal number of cities (to simulate the FP bonus), and the rest like Regent.
    
    
    
12. The AI uses Communism instead of Monarchy as a Wartime Government. Communism is far worse than Monarchy in most cases. The problem is the high communal corruption. Option 1: Increase the free unit support under Communism. Option 2: Add free building maintenance for Communism. Option 3: Increase worker speed for Communism. The trick here is to help the AI when it switches to Communism, without giving such a boost to this government type that it will become a viable option for the human player.
    

Last edited by alexman on 15-11-2002 at 05:54

	15-11-2002 00:04									#2
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Maybe you should contact Korn on this, I know he has done some extensive and excellent testing on these things.
Especially the settler item (shield & food cost)

	15-11-2002 00:06									#3
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quote: The AI attacks with weird units. The AI attacks with units that have the AI offense flag. Riflemen, Infantry, Mech. Infantry.... Option 2: Remove the AI offense flag from those units. Then the AI would not attack with them unless its odds are realy good. For the AU Mod, we used option 1 for riflemen and infantry and option 2 for Mech. Infantry.

Option 3:Create an additional strategy function for AI units: Offensive Support. Used as defensive cover to stack with offensive units. These support units do not attack unless odds are favorable, and will normally WITHDRAW to friendly territory (or closest friendly units) when offensive companions are gone.

	15-11-2002 00:18									#4
	Re: Ideas for a killer AI Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Jaybe, thanks for your input, but...

quote: Originally posted by alexman ...let us use this thread to agree on the best way to improve the AI using the current PTW editor.

alva, could you give a link where Korn mentions anything about improving the AI?

	15-11-2002 00:34									#5
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This material is interesting and could prove a big plus for PTW games. You have customers waiting for a product!!!

Just a thought: the early game structure already favors stopping settler expansion early to build military units. If you increase settler shield costs, that would tip the balance further toward the pure warmonger style. Fine with me, but maybe not with everyone.

Would it be possible somehow to lower unit shield costs relative to building costs for the AI but not for the human player? For any given number of units, the AI would have resources left for more buildings. Relative to the human player, the AI would have an even bigger cost advantage for units than they do for buildings to compensate for the poor battle tactics.

	15-11-2002 00:47									#6
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The other thread hints at a way to get at the AI's build preferences a bit more aggressively: as noted there, Spain has "build never" for Wealth, and so will not build banks or stock exchanges... but WILL build marketplaces, since they have other uses too. Try checking "Build never" culture and "Build often" production--the AI still remains in love with libraries/universities, but goes for factory, power plant, manufacturing plant right afterwords, only building coloseums and then temple/cathedral later. Still not exactly ideal, but it's an interesting concept: so long as an improvement has ONE function for which the AI does not have "Build never" flagged, the AI will still build it... eventually.

	15-11-2002 01:06									#7
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A. I propose that nothing be done unless they reduce the number of extra starting military units. We do not need to fight that many more AI military units in early game.

B. Option 4: Increase priority of the happinesses imporving structions and in addition, consider raising the luxary bar when there are too many entertainers present and/or rush completing happiness improvements.

C. Change the AI code to ensure that as soon as practicle 1 harbor gets built.

D. Catherdrials should be built before Factories. But Factories should be built before Reserach Labs. In general make Factories the highest priority for pop 13+ cities until built.

E. Don't increase maintence costs instead work on better combat tactics, this could start with considering all cities defended by the number of units that can reach the city by the quickest time the AI can reach the city.

E. Of course the AI has Nationalism first. Scientific civs are granted it for free. No change needed.

F. Fix the AI to not build inferior units. If you increase the attack factor of infentry it would have a higher attack factor than Calvary.

G. Have the AI consider the odds before attacking and stop making futile attacks.

	15-11-2002 01:55									#8
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This isn't really a suggestion but I find it very ironic.

Since we can't improve the AI, we need to heap penalties on those tricky humans until their build order matches the AI. Then, with everyone playing like an AI, we can see who the *real* killer AI is!

	15-11-2002 02:32									#9
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If you can't lose to them, join them.

	15-11-2002 02:52									#10
	Re: Ideas for a killer AI Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: Originally posted by alexman [*]The AI emphasizes growth even when it has happiness problems. This causes the AI to assign entertainers, losing productivity, and irrigating more tiles to support those entertainers, losing even more productivity. [*]The AI doesn't build factories early enough. Even with "Production" as a build-often preference, the AI builds Factories after cultural buildings like Cathedrals and Research labs.

I'd be willing to bet my Forbidden Palace that these are related.

He's having happiness problems and losing productivity, so naturally, happiness builds will be more important than production builds until happiness isn't a problem.



At least, I'd be willing to bet that.
I think if you get the AI's happiness problems semi-solved, the production building problem might solve itself.

	15-11-2002 02:59									#11
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I'm not sure about the other AIs, but the Russian AI did build a FP during the Middle Ages. (In Berlin, the Russians wiped the Germans out early on.)

What the Russian AI took until late in the industrial era to do was build a Harbor.

	15-11-2002 03:56									#12
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quote: Originally posted by jshelr Would it be possible somehow to lower unit shield costs relative to building costs for the AI but not for the human player?

Unfortunately, I don't see any way of doing that.

quote: Originally posted by Random Passerby Try checking "Build never" culture and "Build often" production--the AI still remains in love with libraries/universities, but goes for factory, power plant, manufacturing plant right afterwords, only building coloseums and then temple/cathedral later.

This is a GREAT idea, but it doesn't work because Temples and Cathedrals have other functions as well: Happiness. The never-build for Culture would work only if there were buildings that produced culture and nothing else. I tried flagging Production as build-often and Culture as build-never and the AI behaved exactly the same as with just Production build-often.

	15-11-2002 05:05									#13
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I updated the initial post with a few more ideas. Some of these ideas are very radical. I'm suprised there is no reaction yet...

You better speak up because otherwise they'll end up in the PTW AU mod!

	15-11-2002 05:35									#14
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quote: Originally posted by jshelr Just a thought: the early game structure already favors stopping settler expansion early to build military units. If you increase settler shield costs, that would tip the balance further toward the pure warmonger style. Fine with me, but maybe not with everyone.

I agree. By fixing only the builder aspects of the AI we are making it harder to beat them as a builder. Thus warmongering becomes relatively more attractive. Unfortunately we have no control at all over the AI's military tactics.


Re: giving the AI warlord/chieftain level corruption.

The AI already gets a corruption bonus as you move up in difficulty, by way of the penalty to humans. Decreasing corruption is just as drastic as decreasing the AI production costs. If you want to make a "beyond diety" mod so be it, but I thought the goal of the AU mod was to make the AI play better without cheating.

	15-11-2002 05:47									#15
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1. I would avoid changing Settler cost... this is more for me than for the AI, it just confuses me too much when going back and forth between mods and stock.

2. Double the entertainers' effect. WE just have to agree not to exploit this.

3. and 4. I think trade and production should be emphasized... we do it, don't we?

5. and 6. Leave alone.

7. 8-attack for Infantry, yes?

8. Repeat what we did before.

9. Cool!

10. Leave alone.

11. This is the most difficult one... I'd love to hear from Soren.

12. What are the current fixes in the AU Mod?

We still need to talk about build preferences for the PTW civs.

	15-11-2002 05:51									#16
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It appears that I have misinterpreted the data. I looked at the example of Spain building marketplaces with "Never build wealth" on and assumed that Spain was looking at the list of possible roles for marketplaces, ignoring its use for wealth, and opting to build them for their happiness benefit. I'm now beginning to think that improvements may have one and only one role that the AI considers them for, and marketplaces are not considered wealth at all; similarly, never build culture does seem to have no effect whatsoever. It appears my results came from my testing setup, wherein the AI had some very impressive production.

It turns out that the AI weighs the production capacity of a city when deciding how soon to build a factory. Here's the test I devised to confirm this:

-The AI is given five ungrowable cities, with production of 5, 10, 20, 30, and 40 (the high production comes from resources). Diety level, accelerated production--so the AI can build things VERY quickly. Never build any units; often build production.
-The 5 shield city went through all the research and happiness culture improvements right off the bat, as usual.
-The 10 and 20 shield cities went through library and university, then went to factory, power plant, manufacturing plant.
-The 30 shield city built a library first, then factory, power plant, manufacturing plant.
-The 40 shield city built a factory right away, not bothering with any other improvements until it had its power plant and manufacturing plant done.

Eager to see if these results could be applied towards getting the AI to build more commercial type improvements, I went in and changed the AI from build often production to build often wealth/trade. In my haste, though, I had grabbed an earlier test and neglected to turn off unit builds. The result? The AI (with about a dozen cities) built one airport, one harbor, and then started pumping out guerrillas to attack me with, with a few odd libraries built here and there. Not a marketplace in sight.

This might explain the impoverished AI problem: if the AI doesn't have many luxuries, it wouldn't want to bother with a marketplace. If it has no marketplace, it can't build banks. I've never been in love with the marketplace's luxury effect--it makes it obscenely easy to keep your cities happy--and would be happy to get rid of it to try and jostle the AI into viewing marketplaces as a money-making proposition, but I'm a bit wary of crippling the AIs that DO have lots of luxuries by adding to their happiness problems. Well, actually, petrified of it, given that Soren has said that the AI only uses the empire-wide happiness boost of the luxury slider in order to fight the empire-wide war weariness unhappiness.

	15-11-2002 05:56									#17
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quote: Originally posted by DaveMcW Decreasing corruption is just as drastic as decreasing the AI production costs. If you want to make a "beyond diety" mod so be it, but I thought the goal of the AU mod was to make the AI play better without cheating.

Chieftain gets 100% of the optimal number of cities. Regent gets 90%. That's a 10% increase. Just for comparison, the Commercial trait is a 25% increase in the optimal number of cities, and you can barely see the difference. So it's certainly not as drastic as increasing production costs.

On the other hand, it IS cheating. But I think it's justified cheating to compensate for the bad AI FP placement. In the end, the AI empire with the bad FP placement will hopefully have as much corruption as a human empire with a good FP placement. One good thing about this cheating compared to production bonuses is that a OCN increase is felt more in the late game when the AI really needs help.

The goal of the AU mod is not to make the AI play better. That's Soren's job, and we have little control over it. The job of the AU mod is to make it appear as if the AI plays better, as Zachriel put it in another thread. Increasing the OCN would make it appear as if the AI had a better FP placement.

	15-11-2002 06:01									#18
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Commenting on RP's post:

F-cking IRRIGATION! That's what !%##%$!$#!@%#$ needs to be changed.

	15-11-2002 06:09									#19
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quote: Originally posted by Theseus 1. I would avoid changing Settler cost... this is more for me than for the AI, it just confuses me too much when going back and forth between mods and stock.

Fair enough. I thought this was a big change anyway. But what about attacking with the AU mod Infantry-on-steroids? Isn't this confusing too?

quote: 2. Double the entertainers' effect. WE just have to agree not to exploit this.

I'm not sure we have to, because it may not be exploitable. I believe that happiness improvements will still be the way to go, but we definitely need to playtest this.

quote: 3. and 4. I think trade and production should be emphasized... we do it, don't we?

Agreed. We didn't used to emphasize trade for all civs.

quote: 5. and 6. Leave alone.

Why? We humans don't look at maintenance costs (we build whatever needs to be built), so increasing them will not affect our strategy - only our pockets. The AI builds many units before improvements. So why not help them save some costs in doing so?

quote: 7. 8-attack for Infantry, yes?

Yes!

quote: 8. Repeat what we did before. 9. Cool! 10. Leave alone.

Why leave alone 10? We made this change in the AU mod. Do you build wealth more often as a result?

quote: 11. This is the most difficult one... I'd love to hear from Soren.

I'd love to at least know he's reading some of these threads.

quote: 12. What are the current fixes in the AU Mod?

Not settled yet. AU 1.05 had free maintenance. AU 1.06 has increased free unit support. Both had fasted workers.

	15-11-2002 06:19									#20
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Well, all of the changes are sorta confusing... I just can't deal with any changes to Settlers!

5. and 6. I'd like to see more of PTW first... I think the AI civs should build MORE units, if anything (but that's my warmongerin' way!).

10. Sorry, I forgot.

12. Man, I just don;t know what to do with Communism, but we gotta do something. Unless people really disagree, I suggest we *try* making Communism the uber-government for how and why the AI civs (SI, whatever) seem to function. Now that the AI civs are getting 'polished' we seem to be focusing more on later-game performance... well, that probably means at least some warfare, and thus Commies. This'll be 1.07/PTW? Fine let's consciously experiment, and give Communism everything... in fact, is there a way to increase the likelihood of Factories?

	15-11-2002 06:19									#21
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quote: Originally posted by Random Passerby I'm now beginning to think that improvements may have one and only one role that the AI considers them for, and marketplaces are not considered wealth at all

Soren has already told us that buildings belong to several groups. He also said to be very careful when setting something as build-never. But from our tests it appears that build-never means that you never build something just for that category, but you build it if it falls in another category that you are allowed to build. Marketplaces belong in the Happiness, Wealth, and Trade categories, BTW.

quote: It turns out that the AI weighs the production capacity of a city when deciding how soon to build a factory.

Your tests are very enlightening. Keep up the good work.

quote: This might explain the impoverished AI problem: if the AI doesn't have many luxuries, it wouldn't want to bother with a marketplace.

Buildings belong to different categories, but have a certain amount of strength in each category. I think marketplaces are weak in trade and happiness, but strong in Wealth. In any case, did you repeat your experiment with units turned off? It would tell us much.

Again, thanks for sharing your experiments!

	15-11-2002 06:24									#22
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alexman, we cross-posted... look for my response on the first page.

	15-11-2002 07:18									#23
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Oops. I am an idiot. First, fiddling with the multiple-category aspects of improvements in the AI's preferences, I discover that the AI does weigh production capacity when deciding its build order; then when I start looking at marketplaces I go back and ignore both of these. Doy.

Anyways, I went through two more runs on variations of the production scale scenario: the first time, I just unchecked production for build often and put in wealth and trade instead. The results were negligible: the highest production city still started off on a factory, and second-highest went through library-university instead of library alone. All cities ignored marketplaces until they had finished just about everything else.

Then I smacked myself on the forehead and upped the production resources I gave them to have 25 commerce too. The AI built library first everywhere, and marketplace was 1-2 builds later. This is obviously much better.

One thing that is either promising or disturbing: in both scenarios, the AI built airports very, very quickly (I left those out of the above build orders on purpose, since they appeared to have a roughly universal weighting). All the cities I was looking at had strategic resources in their radii (but unconnected), so this wasn't such a bad idea in terms of regular game conditions... except that all the cities were on the same landmass. I'd do some more fiddling with the effects of resources and trade routes on build preferences, but I don't have any more time to spend fiddling.

	15-11-2002 07:46									#24
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6. The AI is predictable in its research path.

IF we decide to change tech costs, here a couple of ideas:
The general cost for tech shouldn't be changed without lots of playtesting, so nearly all changes are balanced within the same tree part immediately before or after. Generally some of the changes might be too small to make a difference but let's try this first.

Ancient
a) Mathematics down one to 7
b) Map Making up one to 13
c) Philosophy down one to 5 (it's cheap already but the AI ignores it anyway
d) Code of Laws up one to 11
e) possibly Literature cheaper

Medieval
f) Engineering down two to 34 (probably too little change)
g) Feudalism up two to 34 (why was it cheaper in the first place??)
h) Printing Press down two to 34
i) Education up two to 46
j) Chemistry down four to 56
k) Metallurgy up four to 68 (keeps the cost for the tree intact but make chemistry more attractive)

Industrial
l) Medicine down ten to 90
m) Nationalism up ten to 130 (probably isn't enough)
n) Electricity down 20 to 120
o) Scientific Method up 20 to 120 (this should make our ToE prebuild more difficult)
p) Atomic Theory down 20 to 180
q) Electronics up 20 to 200
r) Sanitation up ten to 90
s) The Corporation down ten to 90
t) Communism, Espionage would also be candidates for a raise

Modern
Hm, I'm missing experience here, I hardly ever play this far. It seems to be better balanced, though (and we shouldn't forget that our changes in the Spaceship Parts already have quite an impact).

	15-11-2002 07:54									#25
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Maybe it's because I'm inexperienced, and therefore, making "bad" decisions on tech research, but I always end up buying Philosophy from the AI.

Actually, I can't recall which factor is significant, but either since I started playing Regent/Monarch or possibly with PtW, the AI always beats me to Philosophy, Map Making, Code of Laws, and Republic.

Unless I realize within the first 40 turns that I'm alone on a landmass and beeline for Map Making, naturally.

Actually, I'm usually last to Mathematics as well.


Am I doing something terribly wrong, or is there enough randomness in research that some people will see the AI ignore certain techs and others won't?

	15-11-2002 08:20									#26
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I think it's PTW... I still don't have a good handle on how research works.

	15-11-2002 09:49									#27
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From my limited experience with PTW in a real game, it seems to me that the AI diversifies more in its research and then trades with each other. That's why it seems like they have a higher research rate.

We need more experience with the game before making tech cost changes. However, based on my experience with 1.29f, this is the list I came up with, before even looking at Killerdaffy's list (note how the increases and reductions balance out in each age)

Bronze Working 3->5
Alphabet 5->3
Warrior Code 3->4
Iron Working 6->8
Mathematics 8->6
Philosophy 6->7
Literature 10->7
Horseback Riding 5->6
Polytheism 12->9
Monarchy 24->25
Construction 20->21
Currency 16->17

Feudalism 32->36
Printing Press 36->32
Engineering 36->32
Theology 40->44
Education 44->48
Chemistry 60->56
Astronomy 56->60
Metallurgy 64->60

Nationalism 120->150
Medicine 100->80
Electricity 140->100
Atomic Theory 200->160
Motorised Transportation 140->180
Mass Production 140->180
Radio 200->190

They are quite similar (even though there are some differences we need to talk about) which goes to say that we have figured out the AI research preferences even with only our own games as reference. Imagine what we could do with everyone's input on 1.04f...

	15-11-2002 10:51									#28
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re: Korn 469

ptw blitz mod

original blitz mod

blitz mod part 2

	15-11-2002 11:07									#29
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this is where I think they started discussing the settler thing in the original mod

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthre...3278#post693278

*Alexman, it's quite alot to go through (+500posts)
A pm might be simpler

ps: they are not so much doing work on improving ai, but for balance issues and possible conflicts/exploits, it could be a good idea to exchange some notes

Last edited by alva on 15-11-2002 at 11:15

	15-11-2002 17:45									#30
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quote: Originally posted by alva848 this is where I think they started discussing the settler thing in the original mod http://apolyton.net/forums/showthre...3278#post693278 *Alexman, it's quite alot to go through (+500posts) A pm might be simpler ps: they are not so much doing work on improving ai, but for balance issues and possible conflicts/exploits, it could be a good idea to exchange some notes

Generally the blitz mod is too far away from stock for us but there are some really nice ideas. Especially adding / differentiating basic units over eras (e.g. special forces) might be a possibility that is easier to implement with PtW's ability to load scenarios (without messing up the original game).

On a related note: After beating the crap out of the English again yesterday I'm starting to contemplate giving them a decent UU that is actually relevant in a regular game. English Longbows (5.1.1 40, replacing regular Longbowmen) or Redcoats (6.6.1 80, amphib, replacing Riflemen) might fit in nicely (they can keep the Man-O-War, makes them special without doing anything, really). It is getting kind of crowded in Medieval in terms of UUs but then that's the time to have a GA.

@alexman
It looks like we pretty much have the same ideas in terms of changing tech cost (with the notable difference of Philosophy?!?). Your changes are a bit more aggressive so we should test them some more. I'll try it once I'm finished with my current game.