City Governor AI Problems- ATTn: soren johnson

dexters · November 9, 2001, 13:00

There was one point that the people at the Soren Johnson AI chat did not get to ask him. and that is what looks to be a problem with the City Governer AI

the problem has been documented by myself and others in this thread

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=32776
As an appendix to that thread, the problem with the Civ governor building Longbowman is that it only builds this unit in times of war. when I made peace, my city governers immediately switched to swordsmen. This may be a clue to the apparentl problem. My most advanced unit is the riflemen, and I was under the impression the intelligent agent associated with the City governor AI would recognize my build order (all riflemen) and learn from it, but apparently, it has either no capacity to learn, nor does it have a capacity to realize the swordsmen and the longbowmen are outdated.

This discussion is of course complicated by the different combinations of units available to us depending on the civilization we chose and the resources available to us. In my case, i have no access to horses, so knights and cavalry are out of the picture and I'm playing the Americas, so the unique unit is out of the picture at this point of the game.

In a previos game, I did have access to horses and thus knights and the city governer accurately predicted that building knights was the way to go when I was at war with a rival Civ. This may provide further clue as to the underlying bug/problem with the city governor.

Or perhaps they don't learn/ or aren't intelligent at all? I'm pretty sure that the City governors no longer follow build orders so it must be something else....

An official response and comments as to what may be behind this problem, or our perception that there is a problem (afterall, there may not be a problem at all) would be appreciated. And to the Firaxis team, if you need me to send my .SAV file to you guys for analysis, give me a holler at dnsy@sfu.ca

Thanks.

dexters · November 9, 2001, 13:17

bump

DarkMatter · November 9, 2001, 14:49

I must not be hiring very good governers, becasue, as I finish up my game in the mid 2020's, the governers still want to build privateers. And I have battleships, carriers, and Aegis cruisers available. Not only that, but every time they suggested to build one, I told them not to build that, but to build something else. So shouldn't they be learning that I don't wan them building privateers?

dexters · November 9, 2001, 16:40

We should have the option to summarily execute one of the governors from a major city to put the rest of thme in-line

Well put darkmatter. You're not the only one experiencing this problem. so yes, the question still stands.

wth is happening!

Flash70 · November 9, 2001, 18:31

Quote:

Originally posted by dexters
We should have the option to summarily execute one of the governors from a major city to put the rest of thme in-line

LOL dexters ...

Yes, I had the same weird behavior from my governor.
During my game, I was at a peaceful time, year 1980, modern age, I had adv armor and mech inf, all I needed was to accelerate my research towards the spaceship.
I ordered my governor to NOT produce ANY units only city improvements. And still he insisted on creating Privateers on several of my coastal cities. Even if I manually changed the current production to something else, after production is done the next item is - that's right, Privateer ....

If there is a learning system hidden in his thick AI skull, he sure doesn't use it ...

amra · November 9, 2001, 18:33

Even more frustrating is when you set the default to NEVER build ANY ground, air or naval units (basically only want buildings) in EVERY city (not just on the continent but EVERY one -- double check that the setting is still set like 5 times)... and one city always seems to want to build a naval or ground unit! In one game, a city I captured way earlier refused to listen to my instructions and always switched to iron clads after finishing a building. In another game, my capitol refused to listen, and tried to pump out chariots every chance it got!

arrgghhh!

Soren Johnson · November 9, 2001, 19:04

Quote:

Originally posted by Flash70

LOL dexters ...

Yes, I had the same weird behavior from my governor.
During my game, I was at a peaceful time, year 1980, modern age, I had adv armor and mech inf, all I needed was to accelerate my research towards the spaceship.
I ordered my governor to NOT produce ANY units only city improvements. And still he insisted on creating Privateers on several of my coastal cities. Even if I manually changed the current production to something else, after production is done the next item is - that's right, Privateer ....

If there is a learning system hidden in his thick AI skull, he sure doesn't use it ...

If you had a save game showing this behavior that you could post, I would greatly appreciate it...

Flash70 · November 9, 2001, 19:25

Quote:

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis

If you had a save game showing this behavior that you could post, I would greatly appreciate it...

No Problem, here you go ...

One of the coastal cities that gave me these problems is called Byzantium. You can easly re-create the problem there.

Regards,
Flash70

dexters · November 9, 2001, 21:24

Soren, Here's my save file as well since I started this thread :P

Basically, the City Governors is showing the same behavior everyone is having problem with.

It a) does not seem to learn from our actions
b) has a fetish for outdated units

Anyways, I know you guys are getting a lot of flack for the bugs and the like, but let me tell you that Civilization 3 is far superior to the previous games i've played, even with the bugs. It is an experience unlike any other.

Thanks for listening.

DarkMatter · November 9, 2001, 21:34

I think the reviewer for joystick101.org hit it on the head: he wasn't sure what to make of it, as he was a bit disturbed that the first time to play civIII lasted 8-10 hours.

mrbilll · November 9, 2001, 21:48

I get the same thing. Not only do the govs ignore orders to build no units, only improvements, they build outdated ones at that. Why, with mechanized infantry and tanks available, are they still willing and able to build longbowmen and swordsmen? I don't see the U.S. Army of 2001 putting in orders for swords and muskets!

Laszlo · November 9, 2001, 22:51

I noticed this too. I'd have the governors queing up swordsmen instead of riflemen.

PS - Hunt Valley, that's the name of one of the last American city names. Now I'm not surprised at not knowing it.

Soren Johnson Firaxis FIRAXIS
Hunt Valley, MD

Soren Johnson · November 10, 2001, 01:21

Quote:

Originally posted by dexters
Soren, Here's my save file as well since I started this thread :P

Basically, the City Governors is showing the same behavior everyone is having problem with.

It a) does not seem to learn from our actions
b) has a fetish for outdated units

Anyways, I know you guys are getting a lot of flack for the bugs and the like, but let me tell you that Civilization 3 is far superior to the previous games i've played, even with the bugs. It is an experience unlike any other.

Thanks for listening.

I am assuming that your issue in this situation with the city governors is that they are recommending building swordsmen instead of riflemen. The reason for that is that you have set the governor to often produce offensive units and never produce defensive units. An "offensive" unit is one which has an offense value higher than its defense value (like a swordsman...) A "defensive" unit is one which has a defensive value higher than its offense value (like a rifleman...) So essentially, by telling the governor to never build defensive units, it was unable to ever suggest building riflemen (and because you didn't have horses, it couldn't suggest knights or cavalry either...)

Does that make sense? We probably should have been clearer defining exactly what "offensive" and "defensive" units meant...

Trachmyr · November 10, 2001, 02:00

BUT, I have my governors in "ALL CITIES" set to produce defensive/offensive/etc. Units "NEVER"... yet they still "suggest" it... I had guessed that suggesting and auto-production were different, but it is still annoying. Even after I constantly change it from whatever-unit to WEALTH, the AI never "learns". Also, why they suggest privateers over destroyers I have no clue... there really needs an ability to mark units as "obsolete" in the editor.

AuraSeer · November 10, 2001, 02:21

IMHO, the easiest solution to the problem would be a switch to turn governors off. When I take the time to queue a half-dozen different improvements in each individual city, the AI shouldn't go second-guessing me.

Even if the AI learned as well as a human, I'd probably still leave it turned off. Heck, I've played "Axis and Allies" every weekend for years, and my friends still can't predict what I'll want to build on any given turn; I don't think a Civ-level AI governor can realistically hope to be useful.

dexters · November 10, 2001, 03:00

Quote:

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis

I am assuming that your issue in this situation with the city governors is that they are recommending building swordsmen instead of riflemen...

Soren, I actually had thought about that. You can quickly check with the link on the first post of this thread (it links to my original thread fully documenting my attempts to get the governors to work) and I did tell the city governors to produce defensive units only, and then i tried to have it produce offensive units only, with the same result--which is it continued to produce the same old units.

There appears to be a pattern here as the city govs are somehow stuck in the early middle ages producing swordsman, longbowman and privateers. Many other posters have attested to the same thing.

P.S. the post I'm referring to is fourth post down from that other thread. I'm sure youre busy dealing with bugs and all, so I appreciate the time. I've cut and pasted it below for your convenience.

Quote:

.

Thinking the AI might mistake riflemen for defensive unit (it is afterall a successor unit to pikeman -one of the best early defensive units) I gave it the order to contruct defensive land units, but the AI still kept getting longbowmen instead of the unit I wanted.

I remember playing an earlier game where I had the knight, and the system seemed to recognize that was the best unit all around and built that automatically without me forcing the cities to do so. I'm not sure why in this game, the AI is so stubborn it refuses to learn from my action. Even on cities where I'm building altillery, it is still churning out longbowmen. I'm suspecting that because I'm fighting the Aztecs who only really have spearmen, longbowmen , jungle warrior and pikeman that the AI is trying to pump out weaker units? or is it going by a attack/defense ratio and somehow decided longbowmen had to be the best offensive unit given it has a 4 to 1 ratio, but of course, it has only 1 defense point, which makes it woefully inadequate....

any insight into this?

dexters · November 10, 2001, 14:12

bumparoonee

Wexu · November 10, 2001, 14:21

SOREN: One easy fix to many problems. Let we have a list of all units which we can produce and mark the ones we don't want NEVER to be build and they would disappear from production list and the governor won't suggest them. This would help the governor problems and the production list would me smaller. It's quite annoying when you are changing production in modern days and there's units like warriors and spearmen, so you must scroll that big list.

I think this would a great idea. What do you think guys?

Soren Johnson · November 10, 2001, 14:25

Quote:

Originally posted by dexters

Soren, I actually had thought about that. You can quickly check with the link on the first post of this thread (it links to my original thread fully documenting my attempts to get the governors to work) and I did tell the city governors to produce defensive units only, and then i tried to have it produce offensive units only, with the same result--which is it continued to produce the same old units.

There appears to be a pattern here as the city govs are somehow stuck in the early middle ages producing swordsman, longbowman and privateers. Many other posters have attested to the same thing.

P.S. the post I'm referring to is fourth post down from that other thread. I'm sure youre busy dealing with bugs and all, so I appreciate the time. I've cut and pasted it below for your convenience.

The AI defines "offensive" units as

Warriors
Archers
Swordsmen
Longbowmen
Chariots
Horsemen
Knights
Cavalry
Marines
Paratroopers
Tanks
Modern Armor

Thus, if you allow the AI to suggest offensive units, it will always try to find the best unit from the above group to build whenever it determines that you need more offense. And if you don't have the right assortment of resources, this might mean that it suggest build Longbowmen because that is the "best" offensive unit, even if Riflemen are available.

btw, the whole Privateer thing is a bug. (it actually has to do with the fact that the Privateer is the last unit in the units array. If you find a city experiencing this problem and you are getting annoyed, just put a defensive unit (spearman, pikeman, musketeer, rifleman, infantry, mech. infantry) in the city. At any rate, I am working on a fix...)

dexters · November 10, 2001, 14:47

OMG Soren, I'm all red in the face you're right (how could you be not)

ok, i got the AI governors building riflemen now and I understand now how to give my governors parameters so that it would build the unit i want.

Just a question. In your interview with Apolyton, you mentioned that the governors will actually learn. I'm interested as to how they learn. What can we do to help that process along?

Thanks

Soren Johnson · November 10, 2001, 15:10

Quote:

Originally posted by dexters
OMG Soren, I'm all red in the face you're right (how could you be not)

ok, i got the AI governors building riflemen now and I understand now how to give my governors parameters so that it would build the unit i want.

Just a question. In your interview with Apolyton, you mentioned that the governors will actually learn. I'm interested as to how they learn. What can we do to help that process along?

Thanks

well, the governors take into account three factors:

1) You specifically set a city to build X (strong positive factor)
2) You tell a city to stop building X (moderate negative factor)
3) You allow a city to finish building X (weak positive factor)

These simply get added up across all you cities, and that value gets factored into the mix when the governor decides what to suggest.

Of course, sometimes the learning gets overweighted by other factors. For example, the Privateers problem comes from a test in the AI which basically says "never build a city improvement if the city has no defensive unit (Spearman, Pikeman, etc...)" Thus, if you have a city defended with Cavalry (not considered a defensive unit), and you have the governor set to not build any units, the govenors literally cannot suggest either an improvement or a unit, so it ends up suggesting the last unit in the units array (Privateers) because the "value" of all units and improvements is 0. (This will get fixed, btw...)

Wexu · November 10, 2001, 15:40

Soren, no comments to the list-idea? Would that be too hard to implement? I think every player would like to see that. I can't see why not.

Well, I guess there's more important things to do now, but maybe in the future?

Earthling7 · November 10, 2001, 17:54

Quote:

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis
btw, the whole Privateer thing is a bug.

Thanks for clearing that. It was driving me nuts, as stated in the original thread...

Looking forward to the patch

btw, is there no way to turn the Governors off, anyone?

adaMada · November 10, 2001, 19:20

Quote:

Originally posted by Wexu
Soren, no comments to the list-idea? Would that be too hard to implement? I think every player would like to see that. I can't see why not.

Well, I guess there's more important things to do now, but maybe in the future?

Not trying to add to to the clutter, and this isn't the most important issue to address, but I'd also really like to see this feature. I'd also like to be able to temporarially tell all of my cities to concentrate on one or two units -- not exclusivley, but have them build a bunch of those. That way, I can crank out tanks for a few turns, crank out marines for a few turns, crank out bombers for a few turns, etc... this would be practically like going in that other list and dechecking everything except two units, except it'd be reversible a few turns later when you decided you had built up enough.

This is just what I'd personally like to see (make playing the game easier for me) -- I understand that there are other things more important than this right now -- either way, great game!

-- adaMada

Wexu · November 10, 2001, 19:59

Yep, there are definetly more important things to do now, but this would be a great addition in the future I think.

Lorteungen212 · November 21, 2001, 18:38

Maybe im just an idiot but i dont get this at all. I set all the options to NEVER and in ALL CITIES. Shouldnt that stop the governor from building more units automatically??? Yet still im producing privateers and jet fighters at an alarming rate in ALL my cities that produce units!!!! Someone said it was just one or a few cities. Its really a pain to go through all your cities every single turn and check if the freakin governor changed the production...which he will......EVERYTIME. Since everybody is happy with the answer I must have missed something.