It always seems that my weakest unit is in the middle. Boats and special units to often fill the front row. I just had a 12 stack of hoplites/catapults/mounted archers defeated my a city defended by 6 coracles and 6 archers. in another battle, 2 hoplites were defeated by 2 slavers/2 arhcers because the slavers were in front and the archers were able to use their ranged attack. Also it seems that the battle AI doesnt understand that units with a shorter range should be in front. In some other post it was discussed that 2 archers would line up next to each other if they attack a single unit. I gave mounted archers less range and attacked a single unit with 1 archer/1 mounted. They still lined up next to each other. being that i've never played thru to tanks, does that mean all future warfare is fought in a line? Also many of my flankers seem to end up in the middle of the line while non flankers are on the end.

Anyone else notice any screwy battle lines?

I'd like to have a place where people could list specific changes to files and their specific results, much like the post about increasing time in the const.txt. You definitely see better decisions by the AI later in the game, but not too much difference early.

Decreased unit costs has a HUGE impact on the AI's ability to wage war. Before reducing costs (25-33%), i rarely saw AI stacks of more than 6. Now I see stacks of 10-12 running all over the place. Since the AI uses the matching criteria to determine whether to attack, the smaller stacks rarely had the firepower necessary to attack entrenched armies. With the larger stacks, they attack more frequently and entrench alot less which also promotes more combat. But again, if you run around with 12-unit stacks, they probably dont have a mixure of units that will make them strong enough to attack you.

I also increased movement factors slightly. The AI tends to think only about this specific turn. The farther it can move in that turn, the more options it will consider.

Always, i hope ya'll get the gist of what I'm asking, so if you have a specific change, plus post it under this thread.

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.

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.

Basically, I came to the conclusion that the AI in CTP2 is not really that bad. I mean, it does what it was programmed/designed to do. It does use all of its options that it has available strategically. Actually, after thinking about the CTP2 AI I'd hate to be playing it as my first ever TBS 4X game. I've been playing games since 1980, predominately high-end strategic, TBS empire-builders, war games and even RPG's. Now all of these games require at the least an adequate AI to make the game playable. How is an AI adequate? I think we can break that down into these areas: a) an AI needs to be able to think high-end strategy (the future/overall picture), nationalised strategy (attack/defense fronts/national modifiers), and localised strategy (city/unit level). This looks easy to do on paper, and because humans minds are attuned to thinking on all three levels at the same time, but what of a PC? Each single and individual command is another line of code. To set values is a line. To compare is a line. How many lines would be needed? Also, you must remember that each line of code takes CPU clock cycles. Sure, a clock cycle is measured in milliseconds/picoseconds, but we're talking about thousands of clock cycles to process here. For an AI to make an informed decision it needs to have up-to-date info which means processing as much current data as possible (and even past data as the case requires) BEFORE it'll even start to think about what it'll do next. The gaming world is demanding faster and better AI in games. Well, using all the above logic (who's going to dare say I'm wrong there ) contradicts this. To make a better AI we need to process more CPU clock-cycles. But processors are getting better and faster. This is where my thoughts led me to a debate question:

After many years of playing games which utilise an AI, does a gamers strategic thinking increase faster than the progression of processors and consequently AI adequateness?

My answer is YES. Quite simply, by looking over the last 5 years of strategy games, I've never really had a problem in defeating an AI. Sure, I may get beaten for a few games, then start winning and end up winning every game on the top level.

My conclusion is that I'd hate to be playing CTP2 as my first ever TBS 4X game, as I believe the AI would in fact be pretty hard. Which is why we occaisionally see posts from CTP2'ers who are being beaten by the AI on the less-than very hard levels.

Ok, now there are 7 civs, because those nice Australians gave me all their cities when I asked them nicely.

Running

// Dale's diplomacy script to make AI do diplomacy with itself.
//
// Modified to include BlueOrange's FRENZY AI script.
//
// Version 2 - 14-Jan-2001

Am I alone in thinking this a bit too nice? who of you would happily give away all his cities (will the game allow you to do that???)

Besides I had watched the AI setup a fortification adjacent to my MAIN city. It built up a stack of 4 Archers in that fortification over a couple of turns. Then I was thinking, well it probably won't attack according to what others say. WRONG! It attacked alright, took over the city and headed straight for my other ones with a bigger army. Of course with the Slavers I could not build up a big enough army that quick to stop this. I did not have enough population, I did have the city to 6 but those Slavers brought it down!

All of this happened very early before I could have a chance to do anything! So what is this about the AI not attacking? I take it many must be talking about the easier levels unless my experience and position was rare. Maybe it was the way the random map was setup or something, I don't know. But I got the hell beat out of me because I could not do anything in that situation. I feel the AI is not NEAR as bad as others say it is because of what I seen here. Anyone else had an experience like this early in the game before you had a chance to do anything?

I remember even playing on one of the easier levels where the AI had sent Destroyers up and down my coast destroying ever net and improvement I had built! Of course I was surprised means I heard the AI don't use naval units. Anyway I was forced to build ships or planes to sink those Destroyers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Start CTPII, press new game button ( ) and press "select scenario". Scroll down to the Frenzy scenario, load it, and then select your game settings.