Just so you know, even though I've been saying I can't be bothered fixing the AI, I'm looking into the one section as I see as needs work. Diplomacy, and it's prioritys. So last night I ran some experiments.

1 - I changed the prioritys on sending and receiving certain diplomatic events (namely pacts and alliances).
2 - I set the regard bonus amount for each turn at peace/pact/alliance a little higher.
3 - I changed a couple of the response priorities as well.
4 - I fiddled with roads to make them more 'attractive' bonus wise for the AI, and added roads to the lists of improvements to build for all categories (growth, production, etc).
5 - As an expansion on diplomacy-war, I made the ATTACK and SIEGE goals almost irrisitable to the AI.

Here's what happened. Remembering that at this point I'm working on extreme conditions and will narrow down to something balanced.

Setup a mid-size planet with 8 civs on impossible. I cheated and gave each civ advance: cannons (and everything below it added in auto), 10000 PW and 20000 gold. I also gave each civ 4 settlers. Basically, I wanted it to be a bit further on than a beginning game. Myself as a player did nothing but build defense units (keeping 6 in my city at all times, disbanding excess). I didn't improve or anything. I quickly ran through 50 turns. Turning off FOW I saw:

1 - The AI had spread all round the globe.
2 - The AI had built roads EVERYWHERE! It had gone nuts with them. I even saw a roman city in the centre of 6 cities with double roads to each city. Even roads going to nowhere.
3 - Units flowed down these roads comfortably. There was no congestion of stacks, no blockages or whatever. Just stacks moving comfortable to where they were going without hindrance.

I took a look at the diplomacy of every civ. 3 civs were fighting an all-in war (with stacks of cannon/riflemen on the borders). But the interesting thing was that these three civs had built roads to this triple-border area and had connected. Therefore, battles were occuring between AI stacks. 2 civs had research pacts with each other, one of them having a normal pact with civ number 8 as well. Civ number 7 was on an island all by itself, and only had a couple of contacts, but couldn't do anything as it hadn't got diplos to them yet. I kept the turns rolling. I noticed:

1 - The AI would declare war, fight an intesive battle with someone, then after a while when one sues for peace the war ends. The wars were short and bloody. I saw one civ send three stacks of 6-8 units at another civ at the one time. When peace reigned between two civs, the regard went up quickly till the next war (or sometimes turned into a pact).
2 - During peace, the AI built roads like nuts for infrustructure. During war, it built roads near the frontier (reminding myself to add forts to the improve lists as well) thus making unit movement good.
3 - The diplomats of the AI civs actually interacted. Admittedly it was usually an extreme (refuse a pact and they declared war) but it was something.

Maybe there is life in there afterall. Will go back to moding tonight.

Meanwhile I would keep playing, dying a lot but progressing through the levels. Killing the boss meant dying a few times until you found their vulnerable spot. For some reason, my female friends could take this with Mario Bros, any other game made it too intense. (There were a lot of 'Fighters' but only the Simpsons brought both sexes, and you die a lot in that game!)

My point is, some of us want to play a peaceful game of Civilization or Call to Power. Others want to die and deal death and convert the planet to a wasteland.

Second, how can I keep the barbarians from ever changing out of the barbarian strategy? Altho I'd like them to minimally build garrisons and buildings when they capture a city, I mainly want them to pump out tons of units. My latest theory is that they seem to change to the default strategy as soon as they get a few cities and/or I build the great wall. I do love seeing the Vandals and Visigoths I must admit and had given a small ability to them in the barbarian strategy to expand. They also tend to become totally passive thus my theory that they've changed strategies to default.

Thirdly, how can we force barbs and AI units to stack before they attack? I just had 2 stacks of barbs attack one by one instead of forming an army. Being that rally is part of siege and attack i would have expected the entire stack to have attacked together.

Thanks.

Although it's very odd, it does not really affect gameplay because there is no way for the AI to build enough obelisks to make the wonder. So I just continue playing. The only problem is the AI devoting resources to the Gaia Controller instead of other things. Oh well.

If anyone knows why this would happen, please let me know. As magma12 says, the computer obtains the pre-req advance for Gaia but does not have ANY of the pre-req's for THAT advance. Very strange.

------------------
Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

But here's an example of what I did in diplomacy.txt

The original:

ProposalElement {
Proposal PROPOSAL_TREATY_ALLIANCE
SendPriority 100
AcceptPriority 110
RejectPriority 100
SenderRegardResult 200
ReceiverRegardResult 200
ViolationRegardCost -100
ViolationTrustCost -30
}

The moded:

ProposalElement {
Proposal PROPOSAL_TREATY_ALLIANCE
SendPriority 200
AcceptPriority 200
RejectPriority 50
SenderRegardResult 250
ReceiverRegardResult 250
ViolationRegardCost -300
ViolationTrustCost -50
}

As I said, an extreme. But the increased priorities made the AI consider them. By increasing accept priority to the same, it makes the AI accept more alliance requests, as lowering reject makes it not want to reject it. The violation costs make the AI want to hold onto it a little longer. For example, with a -50 trust, by violating an alliance, the other party is going to take a LONG LONG time before it trusts the violator again. More in line to how I think.

I'll try and fine-tune the diplo a bit more tonight and let you know tomorrow.

------------------
Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

STRATEGY_BARBARIAN {

// must inherit from default
Inherit STRATEGY_DEFAULT

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 02-07-2001 08:21 PM AW, this paste fron the strategies.txt should answer your second question. STRATEGY_BARBARIAN { // must inherit from default Inherit STRATEGY_DEFAULT This means that the Bars will use the default settings unless new ones are listed in their section.

This is true, however, they should using the barbarian strategy but instead are buildings wonders and buildings which means they switched to the default. My theory was towards the "why" not the "what". No doubt in my mind that they switch but I cant figure out the circumstances that cause the switch. I cant change the default strategy for fear that it will have adverse effects on the other civs especially new breakaway civs. I'd like to keep the barbarians confined to their own strategy so i can define their behavior in a primarily barbarians way

Just call me Prince of the Barbarians OOPS, make that Settler of the Barbarians

- They requested 200 gold in a haughty tone.
- I refused.
- They threatened war.
- I still refused.
- They declared war.

After declaring war, they sent a couple of stacks at me, which I brushed off and they requested a cease-fire.

This is the weekends goals:

1 - Make the AI build diplos.
2 - Make the AI pursue diplo functions as per their government (communist with other communist, repub with other repubs, etc) Birds of a feather flock together basically.
3 - Make the AI pursue diplo functions based on their personality. Eg. Militarilist leaders pursue demands/threats. Scientists pursue advances/research pacts. Etc.

Keep the ideas flowing.

quote: Originally posted by pchang on 02-08-2001 12:52 PM All you have to do is fill in the Barbarian strategy and get rid of the inherit STRATEGY_DEFAULT line.

I tried that once and got all kind of errors. At some point the AI expects the barbarians to switch and if it cant, LOOKOUT!!!!

- Name change to Diplomod 2.1.
- Made it generic, should work with any other mods, not just frenzy AI.
- Supports frenzy AI 1.02 (just a little change of the script is needed)
- Cleaner and meaner.

Edit: I've found the problem. I used a "Consider" statement when I should've used a "Change" statement. Will fix for version 2.3