AI has many problems and needs to be improved

[fomalhaut]

Unfortunately I don't know the best way to verify the difference in AI's behavior.
But whenever I play ver 2.5 classic ruleset, I always notice that AI continues to anchor warships at their city.

In addition, I want AI to avoid changing research goal.
Evidently this is a waste of time for a development of AI country.

[cazfi]

I always notice that AI continues to anchor warships at their city.

Thanks for giving such specifics. That might be something gone unnoticed when I have observed AI players. This is unlikely to be AI considering them as "defenders" (ships make bad defenders), but there's some reason it's not using them properly. Do you have an savegame where one could check such a situation?

[cazfi]

In addition, I want AI to avoid changing research goal.
Evidently this is a waste of time for a development of AI country.

Actually i don't know why the AI code bothers with the research goal at all. It should set the current research every time anyway. The (longterm) Research Goal is something I consider mainly a micro-management reduction helper for human players (assuming game with low researchcost so that it doesn't so much matter in which order you research as you will get the tech in a couple of turns even if something else gets researched first)

[cazfi]

Made a ticket about the warships case so it won't get forgotten just to an old forum post: bug #24099

[fomalhaut]

Made a ticket about the warships case so it won't get forgotten just to an old forum post: bug #24099

thx.

I have observed AI-only game again and noticed some problems.

Overview and progress of the game:
6AI (hard) ,tilesperplayer=110 (42*56 tiles), generator =RANDOM, startpos =VARIABLE
Only Westphalian and Pictish shared an island. Everyone else had an own island.

T35: Belgic were producing archers instead of settlers. Pictish were producing settlers in spite of being war with Westphalian.
T50: Although Guanche had the biggest island, they had only 3 cities.
T80: Westphalian...3 cities and 16 archers /Belgic... 6 cities, 10 warriors and 16 archers
They had an excessive number of troops and suffered from lack of production point.
T160: 4 AI players had "gunpowder". But only 1 city among 90 cities in the world had Library. Harbor or Marketplace didn't exist.
T270: Every AI continued to anchor warships(Ironclad, Destroyer or Cruiser) at their city.
T300: There were 91 cities in the world. (90 coastal cities) Harbor...1, Library...12, Marketplace...0, Port facility...66
T337: Belgic built Isaac Newton's College but they had only 1 University in their 16 cities.
T370: Belgic and Khwarezmian were building SAM Battery or SDI Defense. Why was it necessary?
Harbor...1, Library...19, Marketplace...0, Factory...0
T400: Stalemate. AI didn't produce any missiles and continued to anchor Battleship.

Subsequently I was worried that this server settings were unsuitable because the map was smaller than default one.
But even after I set map size as 4 (4000 tiles), similar problems were found.
*Some AI don't try to produce Settlers. And they continue to produce archers even when their enemies are in the different island.
*AI change the technology that they are researching very frequently. Therefore their research doesn't complete and they are wasting the time.
*So many warships are anchored and converted into museum ship.
*Furthermore they don't use Howitzers against adjacent enemy country. There were foolish AI, who had 60 Howitzers and never tried to use them.
*They love to produce AEGIS Cruiser instead of Cruise Missiles. Every turn many AEGIS Cruisers try to suicide attack and sink.
*AI are indifferent about city improvements. After Apollo Program was built, they hardly have Factory in their cities.
*AI don't attack effectively and don't improve their cities. Game is easy to fall into stalemate.

The most incomprehensible question is why AI don't try to attack enemy cities with air units.
Is it an intentional design?

[fomalhaut]

I understand how to upload a savefile.
Please check Kenyan Howitzers and warships.

[djconklin]

>as soon as an AI starts lagging behind its neighbors technologically,

I'd like to see that! I'm playing 2 dozen at novice level and they are two steps ahead of me AND building the wonders for that tech!

[thedarkestcolors]

The ai def. needs to be improved, I couldn't agree more. Its not worth playing like this.

Depending on the starting position and luck with huts (if they are enabled), they can be somewhat dangerous in the beginning with their archers and horsemen. But they don't stand a chance mid to late game. As soon as I manage to hold my borders and start rapturing my cities the ai falls behind.
I often have cities in the 20 - 30ies, while the ai has cities with ~5 Pop. I think they only try to maximise current profit, e.g. max production they can get in the current term to spit out max military units right now. But they totally ignore that e.g. improving tiles, building city improvements will yield much more trade/production later.

I hardly see any tile improvements for ai cities, and they seem to prefer mines over irrigation (--> maximizing current production). If at all they hardly ever build workers, I think they use only the starting ones and if they die, the ai doesn't replace them, if they do, maybe they don't protect them and they get killed by other civs / barbs. Even on maps where they build irrigation, somehow the ai cities stay small, do they now about growing cities with celebrations at all??? (at least the harder difficulties should use it)

Also the ai doesn't seem to understand maps at all. E.g. I started the iberian map with 8 cheating Ais, I was hoping for an intense end battle to see how the ais handle adv. units. 1 got wiped out by barbarians, like it happens so often, all the others have cities in a terrible state. Some of them don't even have neighbors, so they have all the space and time to expand like crazy, instead they keep sending hordes of units on suicide missions. Cannon after cannon walking on its own over the entire huge map, no escort anywhere in sight, somewhere else some alpine troops, a few horsemen elsewhere. Would those come coordinated they could easily(!) take my cities, but the way they are coming, I hardly need to build any def. myself and get free training for them as a bonus. Would the come in a boat it would be much faster, or would the ai build a road towards the target. (ok the last I don't even expect from an ai )

On islands based maps, the ai keeps building tons of settlers, even if it can't currently settle anywhere or the world is allready completly occupied. (some might be left over form times where other civs settlers are still moving from production to founding place, but the ai usually has TONS of useless settlers)

Like this its no fun at all to play a game to the end. Its fun for a few turns, then either I die due to barbarians and several civs attacking me or I get so far ahead that its not worth the time to do the sweeping up / building a spaceship while the rest of the world assumes earth is a pancake carried by some elephants. Its so sad that the Ai sucks so bad, the interface and graphics are near perfect (yes I prefer 2d over 3d any time!), so much better then civ2 that I recently started playing again.

One weird thing I noticed in freeciv not sure if its bug or feature: Barbarians land / other civ comes walking next to my undefended city, no unit of mine anywhere arround. In civ2 the city is lost for good, I can buy a unit, but the city will be taken before its finished, in freeciv it will get finished before and can defend. Logicwise that makes some sense, but gameplaywise, esp. against an Ai coming in groups of 1 its somewhat lame. Is there an option to change that?

Or generally if anyone can suggest any options to use to get a fun game against the ai, please let me know.

I attached some random savegames that show the problems. I'm using version 2.4.2 as that seems to be the latest one packed for ubuntu. If later versions have a much improved ai, I might try to get a later version build from source.

by djconklin » Thu Dec 03, 2015 8:49 pm
>as soon as an AI starts lagging behind its neighbors technologically,

I'd like to see that! I'm playing 2 dozen at novice level and they are two steps ahead of me AND building the wonders for that tech!

Pay some attention to where you build your cities. You get research and taxes from trade, trade is produced on sea tiles, tiles with rivers, roads, some tiles with special ressources (whine, gold. gems.....). --> if you can, settle on/next to a river, special ressources or the coast. Build workers early to build roads and irrigation --> more trade, faster growth of the cities -> more trade -> faster research. Also switching to republic early helps a lot. It brings more trade and cities that celebrate and have food grow every turn.

[djconklin]

> if you can, settle on/next to a river,

I do. No more than two away from a river which I irrigate.

>Also switching to republic early helps a lot.

I do that.

>It brings more trade

Haven't worked on that yet.

>and cities that celebrate

I've tried that and they still don't. Not sure what I'm doing worng there.

>and have food grow every turn.

That's been the biggest bugaboo I've been having. A city produces food, my pop goes up and presto! I starve! I haven't figured out how to ship food from one city to the next. It looks like we can't do that. The Egyptians shipped wheat to Rome in 1,000 ton ships, but we can't.

[cazfi]

In every screenshot you have shown about your food problem, there has been several entertainers in your city. So you need to work on your Happiness.

When your city grows, the new population point automatically goes to fields if possible. But if the now bigger city would go to disorder due to unhappiness, it's made an entertainer instead. End result is that your food consumption increases (more people eating) but the production (of any kind, but most obviously food) does not.
The lesser extend you need to think about what your Worker units (yeah, 'worker' has a meaning both as city citizen on fields, and as a certain unit type) do the tiles around cities. I usually end cutting down most of the forests to have more farmland to produce more food.