Help! AI won't build ships

[Gothmog]

Here are the details.

I'm trying to make a 7 years war scenario based in the Carribean, so the map is mostly water. The AI will builds all possible land units but never any naval units. All of the naval units show up the city menu as a possible build, so there's no tech tree problems.

I'd like some opinions about why this might be happening.

I'd also like some ideas about how to fix the problem short of creating all the ships by event.

I'm willing to send the rules file or scenario to anybody who wants to take a closer look.

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"There is no tiddle-taddle nor pibble-pabble in Pompey's camp."

[SCDARS]

hmm, sounds very strange... Maybe it has to do with the production cost? Or are there any land units with "sea related roles"?
I think some closer examination would be in order...
OK, send it to me and I'll look what I can find...


BTW, there is one issue I just wanted to ask you via mail: Could you help some people wanting to switch Multiplayer options (i.e. simultaneous or round based play) by making a tool which automates this process?
I think this would be quite easy for you, as you've evolved similar programs before.

The problem was described in the following thread: http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum4/HTML/001019.html

As far as I can tell, the flag's adress seems to be variable, but the result of testing two completely different games suggests that it could be a fix location if you count from the end of the savegame, maybe only depending on the Civ Version (MGE or ToT).
For MGE (I did not test ToT yet) I counted in two instances that it was (53*16+7) bytes before the end of the file.

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SCDARS
scenario_feedback@hotmail.com

[St Leo]

Attack ships? Naval Superiority ships? Sea Transport ships?

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St. Leo
http://www.sidgames.com/hosted/ziggurat/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

[Kull]

Heaven knows I've spotted some VERY weird things before, but this is a first for me. Sure, send the files and I'll give her a scan.

[Gothmog]

The naval units have all 3 roles: Attack, naval superiority, transport. I'll try changing attack role to naval superiority and see what happens.

If that doesn't resolve the problem, I'll zip up the files and send them to the volunteers.

BTW: Here's my map.

My gut feeling is that this world is just too watery for this to ever work. I hope my gut feeling is wrong.

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"There is no tiddle-taddle nor pibble-pabble in Pompey's camp."

[Kull]

Even before seeing your map, I was wondering the same thing. Is there some proportion of water-to-land which impacts the AI's decision to build ships? One way to test this would be to replicate your scenario (test purposes only) on a different map (or do the same thing by adding a huge chunk of land to the existing map using Dusty's MapCopy)

[Kull]

Great lookin' map, btw!

[Gothmog]

Tried changing the 1 naval defined as attack to naval superiority. It didn't help. My scenario is on its way for those who offered to take a look at it. What I'm looking for is for suggested changes to some of the unit values in the rules.txt.

I'm gonna try out Kull's idea and add a bunch of land.

[DarthVeda]

you could always give the AI ships in the events file...

[techumseh]

As I recall, Jesus Balsinde had the same problem in Eldorado. He couldn't get the AI to build crocodile units for the "nature" civ. I tried to help, but got the same result.

I have my doubts about the water/land ratio theory. I suspect that only larger civs, with certain hard coded factors for # of cities, units, improvements etc., will have the AI build naval units. Another suggestion: perhaps a more favourable strength/cost ratio might help.

[Kull]

So far I've tried 3 things, none of which helped:

1) Used Cheat Mode to delete all pre-existing Naval Units. No dice.

2) Went into Rules.txt and changed every civ from "Perfectionist" to Expansionist". Nada.

3) There are a lot of one-space islands. To entice the AI I made all of them larger. No diff.

Tecumseh: It's something other than civ-size and/or complexity. The AI Minoans in SoG churn out plenty of ships, often with as few as two cities in existence. It may not be so much a land/water ratio as a "no place to go" problem.

[Kull]

A few other attempts, also without success:

4) Gave the Plumbing pre-req to most of the city improvements and wonders (all except "Church") in the hope that this would stimulate unit building. It did, but only land units. Even when I destroyed all the existing naval units.

5) Tried a "start-from-scratch" game in the main civ directory (copied in all the Indies .gif files plus rules, labels, pedia, city and game.txt) Unfortunately not much can happen since the tech tree doesn't support this kind of thing. It may be worth another look at the tech tree to ensure there aren't any logic loops or other problems.

[techumseh]

Sorry, my memory is faulty. Jesus couldn't get his SNAKE units to ATTACK adjacent ground units. No relation to Gothmog's problem at all.

[Gothmog]

I've been working on this too. I did three things that seems to have resolved the problem. Because I did them at the same time, I don't know which one fixed it. That's a matter for further research.
1. I went through each tribe and increased the city sizes by about an average of 50%.
2. I changed the unit stat for the basic land defensive unit (rifleman) from 6-4 to 5-3.
3. I removed the negotiation triggers from the events file. They were in there to make tribal relations conform to history, but I think I like the scenario better without them, even though it will be less historical.

To test the too much water theory, I started a convential game on the caribbean map. I played quite a few turns, then checked the other tribes and they had built triremes.

I have also tried most of the things Kull tried with the same result.

Kull, there should be no problems with the tech tree. It is unchanged except for the extra techs, none of which depend .

I thank everyone for their help. I got some extra ideas from the postings here.
I'll try to isolate the real cause of the problem and report back here.

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"There is no tiddle-taddle nor pibble-pabble in Pompey's camp."

[William Keenan]

Was the rifleman in the musketeer or knight slot?

What are the ship stats?

[Jay Bee]

Anacondas, to be more precise but I have also run into the same problem in the past. Early drafts for Of Celts and Iberians considered "huge" naval battles between Romans and Carthaginians. The map included also the Italian peninsula, North Africa, Corsica Sardinia and Sicily. I had to drop that idea given my impossibility to get the Romans and Carthaginians to build ships.

I had noticed from regular games that AI civs tend to build tons of ships when they are close to or have reached nuclear power. I played in that direction, gave all techs, took away one or several at a time.... nothing. Thus I do not believe the problem has anything to do with the number of techs or degree of development. I also doubt that the ratio land square/sea square has anything to do with this. If you play in a map with more than 70% water, the AI still builds tons of ships.

After many other failed attempts (unit slots, changes in unit stats, adding or removing coastal cities), I concluded that it all depended on whether the AI had room to "peacefully" colonize other lands or not. I did not test this thoroughly for different settings but it seemed to be true for Celts and Iberians.

In my very old Time of Thunder, the AI English built boats in a very neat way. I haven't played that scen for a long time but I recall that it was very hard to reach the coasts of England by boat with the Spanish. All the ships were consistently and ruthlessly massacred by the English. The English even dared to attack coastal cities in Spain. Pretty good from the historical point of view uh? The thing is that perhaps Thunder holds the clue to definitely solve the problem. I recall that English ships were faster than anyone else's, so maybe the issue of naval superiority (true naval superiority) is another factor.

[Gothmog]

The riflemen were in the extra slots, since they were different versions of the same unit for each tribe. I do not use the musketeer or knight slot ever for AI buildable units. Anyway, after changing the riflemen back to the old values and adding back in the negotiation events, the AI continues to build ships.

I conclude that my city sizes must have been too small. Previously there were a lot of size 3 cities, and the largest city was 8. The largest is now 12 and the size 3 cities were made into size 4, 5, and 6.

After reading JB's comments, I not even sure that the population theory is correct. It might be something else altogether.






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"There is no tiddle-taddle nor pibble-pabble in Pompey's camp."

[techumseh]

What are the relationships between the combat factors of the naval units, and their cost? How do they relate to those of the ground units that the AI can also build? Perhaps if the naval units are stronger, or if the strength to cost ratio is better than equivilent land units, the AI may build them.