Alternative ai - Page 9

Galatea · February 20, 2001, 23:37

Yes, I have. In a stack with tanks and artillery, my artillery was always front and center. Also, machinegunners stand by idle when they could use their ranged attack.

hexagonian · February 21, 2001, 09:26

I know that battle lines are supposed to be drawn by placing the strongest unit front and center. I would assume that range/flank factors become secondary when drawing up those lines, so it can be likely that due to the numbers, ranged units can end up on the front lines. The coracle/archer battle is actually logical from the standpoint of the computer, because coracles have a defend factor, so they automatically will go on the front lines, and the archers line up behind. Factor in the defend modifiers and those boats could of defeated the attacking stack.

Certainly not realistic, but the computer works with numbers, not realism.

One thing I discovered in experimentation is that range factors have to start at 15. A range factor of less than that will put those units on the front lines, so if you tweak numbers, you have to take that into account.

I think that machine gunners have a range of 10 in the default game, so bump it up to 15-20 and see what happens.

Hannibal Ad Portas · February 28, 2001, 09:07

Hi all,

Does any one know if the following is correct,in stratagies where it
has the max eval/ max exec numbers, some of these numbers would need
to be increased if your game is larger than what activision thought we
ought to have,thus bigger map has more citys that equal more units and
then at a certain point the ai will be forced to priortize those of the
highest threat.I think this is what happens but can anyone confirm it
and if so what are the base numbers in strategys ment to allow for in
terms of units present in game.

Thanks in advance for any input.

Nick Spencer AKA Hannibal Ad Portas
spennick@aol.com

Kinjiru · March 1, 2001, 01:22

Along similiar lines, I believe it is due to the popularity of forums like this one that we will never (or at least for the next 6-10 years) see an AI that we, as hardcore gamers, are happy with.

Players get together on boards like this to share thoughts, tactics, strategies. We have the benefit of learning from everyone else that is playing the game. We adapt at an exponential pace. The best an AI can do is 'adapt' to one player's tactics.

Game companies could look at these kind of forums and then change the AI routines, but no company would keep spending the money required to do so. The game has been released and that is pretty much it.

The only place we might see some change on this front is in the massively multiplayer on-line games. In that situation, the game company is constantly monitoring and changing the game. Adapting the AI to the emerging player strategies might happen there. In the offline world, though , I fear that we are pretty much out-of-luck.

We are very fortunate that the developers are willing to support the mod community for that is where constant innovation on existing games will come from. The best we can hope for is that developers take it even further and put the AI engine in an easily modifable format.

March 2, 2001, 04:40

I'm not sure about the technical aspects of what you guys are saying, but from the perspective of a regular player, I'd agree pretty much with the statement that the AI isn't very bad.

However, even though I haven't read many of the strategy posts, and I haven't beaten the civ2 and c:ctp AIs at anything beyond 'Prince', I'm still finding that the CtP2 AI is easier to beat. And it isn't that I'm using any fancy strategy, just doing my own thing and attacking cities when they bother me. So there's definitely something lacking here.

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phoenixcager of the Civgaming Network.
Visit the CGN forums.

herwin · March 2, 2001, 12:57

Has anyone taken the comments here on the AI and other ideas and made the changes to the files? I'm not suggesting Diplomod or Frenzy but simply a set of default files tuned up a bit and with the known errors fixed.

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WesW · March 3, 2001, 01:10

Hannibal, read through the thread Conversations with Richard Myers. He covers these topics in it. Also, there have been various posts in the past on this topic.

herwin · March 3, 2001, 03:47

quote:

Originally posted by phoenixcager on 03-02-2001 03:40 AM
I'm not sure about the technical aspects of what you guys are saying, but from the perspective of a regular player, I'd agree pretty much with the statement that the AI isn't very bad.

However, even though I haven't read many of the strategy posts, and I haven't beaten the civ2 and c:ctp AIs at anything beyond 'Prince', I'm still finding that the CtP2 AI is easier to beat. And it isn't that I'm using any fancy strategy, just doing my own thing and attacking cities when they bother me. So there's definitely something lacking here.

There are nine words that a reviewer can write that will kill any work of fiction: "I don't care if the hero lives or dies."

The problem with playing CTP2 solitaire is that "After a while waiting for something to happen, I don't care if I win or lose." --It gets awfully boring.

herwin · March 6, 2001, 14:08

Does diplomod 3.3 reflect Richard Myers's comments that were posted here?

Dale · March 6, 2001, 20:41

In what sense? I've read through all the comments relating to AI and diplomacy, and implemented what I see as necessary to bring some intelligence and thought to it. But what specifics were you thinking of?

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Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

herwin · March 7, 2001, 04:10

quote:

Originally posted by Dale on 03-06-2001 07:41 PM
In what sense? I've read through all the comments relating to AI and diplomacy, and implemented what I see as necessary to bring some intelligence and thought to it. But what specifics were you thinking of?

Richard had identified some bugs in the Activision implementation. Are those fixed in diplomod 3.3?--I'm interested in whether diplomod 3.3 addresses known problems other than the lack of diplomatic interaction between AIs so that it is a suitable default configuration.
Otherwise, I might as well play SMAX until Civ3 comes out. Thanks,

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Dale · March 7, 2001, 04:17

Some of the problems with diplomacy are hard-coded problems. IE: the research pact bug. I have tried to counter/elliminate as many as I could, as well as try to enhance the diplomacy activities of the AI. Unfortunately there are some that I can do nothing about. IE: the pay-for-advance bug.

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Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

herwin · March 9, 2001, 01:02

quote:

Originally posted by Dale on 03-07-2001 03:17 AM
Some of the problems with diplomacy are hard-coded problems. IE: the research pact bug. I have tried to counter/elliminate as many as I could, as well as try to enhance the diplomacy activities of the AI. Unfortunately there are some that I can do nothing about. IE: the pay-for-advance bug.

I'm currently running with diplomod 3.3. I'll report any serious problems. Wish me luck!

Grandpa Troll · March 12, 2001, 08:11

I am working on making a setup where I give all civilizations 40 settlers, then exclude settlers and urban planners, also alter risks.txt file to assure no one find any in ruins.

I want to make it so that ai wont build all 40 settlers within a space say a meant for 25 cities....

Could anyone tell me what file determines this distance?

Thanks

Yours in civin

Troll

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Hebrews 11:1

Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for and things unseen

Steve5304 · March 15, 2001, 02:18

Give it up Patton. This forum is as dead as CTP2 Sales. They've dropped to an embarrassing all time low. The AI is inherently Retarded and it cant be fixed. They build 9 battleships in a square lake, they cant stack, they nver attack,they dont use carrier/aircrat right, They never accept your proposals, they simply have no logic. Craptivision isnt going to give us Pbbem or fix Mplayer. So we can forget that.
Go buy Europa-Universalis the AI in that one is really good.

Grandpa Troll · March 15, 2001, 07:26

quote:

Originally posted by Steve5304 on 03-15-2001 01:18 AM
Give it up Patton. This forum is as dead as CTP2 Sales. They've dropped to an embarrassing all time low. The AI is inherently Retarded and it cant be fixed. They build 9 battleships in a square lake, they cant stack, they nver attack,they dont use carrier/aircrat right, They never accept your proposals, they simply have no logic. Craptivision isnt going to give us Pbbem or fix Mplayer. So we can forget that.
Go buy Europa-Universalis the AI in that one is really good.

Well...THE ONLY Game I ever had any success with proposals was when I play a 2 city per civ game...then I got all the proposals I wanted maybe 90%...

I will continue to tweak maybe finding a decent or "acceptable" medium?

Troll

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Hebrews 11:1

Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for and things unseen

Skeeve · March 15, 2001, 11:48

Troll... I found an answer to your question about how to get the AI to space cities further apart.

It was on the CTP2/Suggestions Board in the "Things to include in patch2" thread. (I think that was the name). It's the biggest thread on the board, so you cant miss it. (about 78 messages).

(Reading through those messages will take a while, though).

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My reach exceeds my grasp!

Steve5304 · March 15, 2001, 14:01

good luck then troll

Hannibal Ad Portas · March 15, 2001, 15:06

Troll

open stratgy.txt,look at a line near the bottom of each strategic state
it will look like this

// minimum distance between settled cities
// (eg. new cities must be founded atleast 2 cells from nearest cities collection border)
MinSettleDistance 4

// cells with settle scores below this threshold will not be used
MinSettleScore 600

//
if you check out terrain.txt you will find each tile has a value used to determin if its a good place to settle.hope this solves it for you.

Hannibal

Azmel2 · March 15, 2001, 21:24

A friend of mine found a pretty obvious and obnoxious AI bug and I spent the day hunting it down. It turns out that a simple text file change will fix your mayors so they keep your cities happy. To fix the bug, just overwrite the file pop.txt in your ctp2_data/default/gamedata directory with a new pop.txt that has the following first record (before POP_ENTERTAINER) :

## Mayors ignore the first pop record, this fixes the problem
## with low happiness not being handled correctly by mayors.
## (REM031501)

POP_ZERO_IGNORED {
EnableAdvance ADVANCE_CLASSICAL_EDUCATION
Food 0
}

Actually, you should probably do this in a scenario and not overwrite the default pop.txt, but do what ever you think is best.

If you want to try it with a game in progress, the easiest way to get it to re-read the pop values is to quit and reload the game and then to bring up the cheat menu and remove the "drama" advance. Then add the drama advance back in. I tried it using a game I was sent and it immediately brought most of the unhappy mayor controlled cities to a non-rioting level. There are a few cities that are still under the magic 73 happiness, but I think this has to do with the mayor not adequetly adjusting for unhappiness caused by pollution. There's nothing I can do about that from text file changes.

I haven't played an entire game with this change, but you should notice the AI plays better too since all AI cities are effectively under mayoral control.

My apologies to the CTP2 community for not finding and fixing this stupid bug before we shipped.

-- Richard

Grandpa Troll · March 15, 2001, 21:33

quote:

Originally posted by Azmel2 on 03-15-2001 08:24 PM

A friend of mine found a pretty obvious and obnoxious AI bug and I spent the day hunting it down. It turns out that a simple text file change will fix your mayors so they keep your cities happy. To fix the bug, just overwrite the file pop.txt in your ctp2_data/default/gamedata directory with a new pop.txt that has the following first record (before POP_ENTERTAINER) :

## Mayors ignore the first pop record, this fixes the problem
## with low happiness not being handled correctly by mayors.
## (REM031501)

POP_ZERO_IGNORED {
EnableAdvance ADVANCE_CLASSICAL_EDUCATION
Food 0
}

Actually, you should probably do this in a scenario and not overwrite the default pop.txt, but do what ever you think is best.

If you want to try it with a game in progress, the easiest way to get it to re-read the pop values is to quit and reload the game and then to bring up the cheat menu and remove the "drama" advance. Then add the drama advance back in. I tried it using a game I was sent and it immediately brought most of the unhappy mayor controlled cities to a non-rioting level. There are a few cities that are still under the magic 73 happiness, but I think this has to do with the mayor not adequetly adjusting for unhappiness caused by pollution. There's nothing I can do about that from text file changes.

I haven't played an entire game with this change, but you should notice the AI plays better too since all AI cities are effectively under mayoral control.

My apologies to the CTP2 community for not finding and fixing this stupid bug before we shipped.

-- Richard

Well Azmel2 Thats 1 MORE BUG FIXED>>Thanks and ifin you or your buddies have anymore time..READ FORUMS..We got plenty more where that came from!

But still Thanks for that ONE FIX!!

Troll

------------------
Hebrews 11:1

Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for and things unseen

Grandpa Troll · March 15, 2001, 21:39

Im sorry...but I kept reading this post of yours..OVER & OVER & OVER Again..

You said "STUPID BUG"

Now I'm not an English Major..but in order for you to annotate "Stupid"..then since there so many "OTHER BUGS"..perhaps they may be of a higher Intelligence?

Work with me Babe....

I'm thinking "OUTSIDE-THE-LINES" Here....but perhaps maybe you could make those "Smart Bugs"..change there name to say..."AI"..because the AI you all shipped sucks the big one..and well..it would save you from any further harrasment?

LOL..just a thought?

Troll

------------------
Hebrews 11:1

Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for and things unseen

Hannibal Ad Portas · March 17, 2001, 14:24

If your int ai modifying take a look at my thread in mods/scn
for playtesters for a new scn that uses an alternative ai with
lots of other stuff as well
Hannibal