For every goal type record in Goals.txt, there is a corresponding entry in one or more of the strategy records in strategies.txt. Each GoalElement specifies (for that particular strategy) what the priority is for performing a particular goal relative to other goals. The priority is sometimes also refered to as the raw priority. Before any units are assigned to a goal, all goals of a particular type are sorted based on their raw_priority modified by any positive or negative bonuses for that goal type from it's Goals.txt record. Only the top "MaxEval" number of goals are ever matched to units. The MaxEval number can be absolute (ie. the best three goals) or relative (ie. two per city, or best four goals if we have two cities). If you increase the MaxEval attribute, you increase the pool of goals that the AI will consider, and usually improve intelligence at the expense of processing speed. If MaxEval is set to 0, then no goals of this type will be performed. The MaxExec field limits the number of a particular goal type that will be performed. This lets you consider the 10 best seige goals, but only actually seige the best two cities so that your troops don't get too spread out.

In general, goals execute from highest to lowest priority. The defense goal type usually has the highest priority so that units will be assigned to defend cities first, and then assigned to seige cities and perform other goals. For example, if the GoalElement for GOAL_ATTACK has a higher priority than for GOAL_SEIGE, then AI units will first try to attack enemy armies, and then with any remaining unassigned units, try to seige enemy cities. However, if two goals have very close raw priorities, then the match priority becomes more important. The match priority is computed based on how good a match a particular army is for a specific goal. In general, the closer an army is to a goal, the better it's match. That way even when seige goals have a higher raw priority, an army right next to an enemy unit will attack it rather than move 20 cells to seige a city.

Hope this brief explaination helps. Although it's a complicated system, with a little work it should be possible for anyone interested enough to tweak and customize.

perhaps, the 2nd aspect of azmel's comment, i.e. the match priority over-riding the raw priority might be skewing the AI into not attacking cities (which is what we want).

In that case, seems like we need to have the AI have ready stacks of tons of offensive units.

Can you also ask him how to improve the transportion of units, and the other AI problems we've mentioned?

What I would really like is if someone would go through each flag, and explain 'exactly' what it pertains to and does, and how the negative sign affects the AI's decision. 90% of the time, these are pretty self-evident, but it's that other 10% that always seems to be the crucial part.

GOAL_DEFEND {
ExecuteIncrementally
NoTransport

SquadClass:CanAttack
SquadClass:CanDefend

TargetType:City
TargetOwner:Self

Execute ORDER_MOVE

ThreatBonus 1000
EnemyValueBonus 0
AlliedValueBonus 1000
PowerBonus -100
DistanceToHomeBonus 0
DistanceToEnemyBonus 0
ChokePointBonus 250
UnexploredBonus -999999
ObsoleteArmyBonus -500
TreaspassingArmyBonus 0

ThreatenType:None
ThreatenBonus 0

ForceMatch efensive
}

GOAL_SEIGE {
RallyFirst

SquadClass:CanAttack
SquadClass:CanDefend
SquadClass:HasZoc
SquadClass:CanCaptureCity

TargetType:City
TargetOwner:HotEnemy

Execute ORDER_ATTACK

ThreatBonus 500
EnemyValueBonus -250
AlliedValueBonus 1000
PowerBonus 500
DistanceToHomeBonus 0
DistanceToEnemyBonus 0
ChokePointBonus 500
UnexploredBonus -999999
ObsoleteArmyBonus 100
TreaspassingArmyBonus 0

ThreatenType estroyCity
ThreatenBonus 5000

ForceMatch:Offensive

TargetProtectionWonder WONDER_THE_FORBIDDEN_CITY
}

GOAL_ATTACK {
RallyFirst

SquadClass:CanAttack

TargetType:AttackUnit
TargetType:SpecialUnit
TargetOwner:HotEnemy

Execute ORDER_ATTACK

ThreatBonus 100
EnemyValueBonus -250
AlliedValueBonus 1500
PowerBonus 500
DistanceToHomeBonus 0
DistanceToEnemyBonus 0
ChokePointBonus 50
UnexploredBonus -999999
ObsoleteArmyBonus 100
TreaspassingArmyBonus 0

ThreatenType estroyCity
ThreatenBonus 5000

ForceMatch:Offensive

TargetProtectionWonder WONDER_THE_FORBIDDEN_CITY
}

GOAL_SALLY {
IsSally
NoTransport

SquadClass:CanAttack

TargetType:AttackUnit
TargetOwner:HotEnemy

Execute ORDER_ATTACK

ThreatBonus 0
EnemyValueBonus 0
AlliedValueBonus 0
PowerBonus 100
DistanceToHomeBonus 0
DistanceToEnemyBonus 0
ChokePointBonus 100
UnexploredBonus -999999
ObsoleteArmyBonus 0
TreaspassingArmyBonus 0

ThreatenType:None
ThreatenBonus 0

ForceMatch:Offensive
}

GOAL_ESTABLISH_EMBASSY {
NeedsEscort

SquadClass:Special

TargetType:City
TargetOwner:Ally
TargetOwner:Neutral
TargetOwner:NoContact

Execute ORDER_ESTABLISH_EMBASSY

// just want to establish embassy at closest city.
ThreatBonus 0
EnemyValueBonus 0
AlliedValueBonus 0
PowerBonus 0
DistanceToHomeBonus -1
DistanceToEnemyBonus 1
ChokePointBonus 0
UnexploredBonus -1500
ObsoleteArmyBonus 0
TreaspassingArmyBonus 0

ThreatenType:None
ThreatenBonus 0

The game is not yet out in the UK so I won't be able to get it for another week or two. I'd really appreciate it if someone would e-mail me the most important AI files; this looks very interesting.

Thanks,

Peter

I have no idea if that is a well known fact or not so forgive me if it is but to increase the performance and the combat capacity of the AI the first thing on you're todo list should be to increase the Production, Gold and Science bonuses it gets.

As it is the AI gets 0 (that's right ZERO) bonus on those 3 things onless it's already 25% weaker than the human player (which means that it's already dead aniway).

The production bonus is particularly important because the AI can do much less than a human with the same ressources and it doesn't have much left to build an offensive army with.

Why as Activision shipped the game with those difficulty settings is beyond me, at first i tought the AI was very bad but once the settings are correctly set it's...still bad but much better.

Also what I would call the Gold Bug (the player end up with so much that it's hard to spend it all) is partly because of game balance and partly because they didn't set the Wages Right, medium wages is 4 instead of 12 and maximum wages is 6 gold instead of 20, as it is you should always pay you're peoples maximum wages because it cost almost nothing and it gives you extra happiness.

MAX_HUMAN_ADVANCES--------3
MAX_AI_ADVANCES ----------6
HUMAN_SCIENCE_BONUS--------0.4 # % amount to add to advance cost for the player
HUMAN_FOOD_BONUS-------- -0.2 # % amount to add to food collected for the player

-----------------------------------------------------
UNIT_WAGES 1.0 # what does 1 notch mean
BASE_WAGES 4.0 # gold per person when slider is zero
-----------------------------------------------------

Wich means that the Wages at the middle of the slider is 4 gold and that each tick on one side or the other is worth 1 gold and for example

UNIT_WAGES 4.0 # what does 1 notch mean
BASE_WAGES 12.0 # gold per person when slider is zero

would gives possible wages of 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20.

I am not sure I understand you're comments about handicapping the AI, i can tell you that personnaly i hate it when the AI start with a lot of stuff because i feel it unbalance the early game and everything becomes a catch-up race BUT i think bonusses through out the game are good and necessary.

e.g. I wrote some SLIC code to select the biggest army the AI (of one of the civs) has, and to make it move to a particular location. The selecting part works (I put in an appropriate message to indicate that), but the moving part of this doesn't work.

I haven't messed too much with this yet, so I could well be way off, but I think that if you want to override the AI completely, you'll have to work very, very thoroughly. Don't just send the AI to it's final destination, send it to an adjacent square first. If it has movement points left, send it to the next square, and then to the next, etc. That will probably work better. Also, there are a lot of ways to move the AI (much be like 5-10 events that are movement related), so trying a different event might help.

If you get stuck, send me what you've got and I'll have a look at it, I'm currently working on a more or less similar thing for a scenario anyway (restricting movement to a certain 'zone' to be more precise, not quite as complicated but still similar), so together we might be able to work it out.