Thanks for the input, guys!

Here's my own brief critique of the AI in Civ2 (Based on limited information I don't think SMAC is much better). I'll suggest a couple of obvious improvements the AI could use (IMHO anyway). Since I'm a programmer I'll start couning with 0... ;-)

0) AI needs to expand more quickly, especially at the start. It is waaaay too conservative, and incurs huge "opportunity costs" in size due to slow expansion. The AI should also build cities in niches on the shore that have only a few land squares but could develop into decent sized cities with a harbor...

1) AI should mass units for attacks (right now the AI throws individual units at enemies)

2) AI should have some concept of distance and "striking range" of each civ. I chuckle every time I extort money out of an AI civ half way around the world, that I'd be Very
fortunate to wound in the slightest way. The AI also caves into pressure Much too easily
IMO. It should take a Very serious threat to make it give up money or tech.

3) AI needs to understand the probablility of success of attacks. NO more attacking fortified units on mountains.... (this may have been improved in the recent products of the genre)

4) AI should properly execute surprise attacks (rather than not attacking at all, or with a single unit). When a human surprise attacks it is usually with masses of troops on the frontier or offshore. So you should have a flag tripped when the AI Wants to surprise attack, and then it should wait for troops to be massed before it actually carries out the attack. AI also needs to know what the player can see to do this well. That's so that massing troops doesn't just give the player advance warning.

5) AI should build more diplomats/spies and Use Them. Even used in a ham-handed manner they are pretty nasty. Bribing cities when enemies have a pile of units around the city are especially damaging to the enemy. If you could add logic to let the AIs use the ZOC-cancelling functions of diplos and spies AI attacks and counter-attacks could be Much more devastating.

I haven't included anything in this list that is particularly hard IMO... I think just improving these could help the AI to be a significantly better challenge.

When you get into difficult things I'd add a notion of geography: with this goes fewer defensive units in interior cities, control of strategic choke-points on the map, knowing who natural allies are against an enemy (what good is an ally that can't Reach the enemy?)

That's probably enough ranting for now

Good Luck!

From SMAC, I have a few off the top of my head suggestions:
- have the AI build roads straight from one base to the next rather than filling all squares with roads. Filling every square with roads is such a waste of time. The "construct road to" command is great and works well, (I use it all the time) but the AI doesn't use it.
-be better at placing new bases. The AI squeezes bases as close as possible when placing bases more apart would use the city radius more efficiently.
- coordinate battles with allies. The AI often has enough units to try an attack but it keeps the units endlessly circling its base. Even when I asked the AI to attack a specific base using the "coordinate attack" option in diplomacy, it didn't.

In terms of strategies I use, that the AI should copy:
-I use amphibious assaults very often. put as many infantry/rover units as possible on ships and land them on enemy shores within striking distance to attack on the next turn.
-I often attack where the AI does not expect, like on the opposite side of where we are fighting. The AI then has fighting on both sides.
- for units with more than 1 mvt point, I move then close enough so than they can attack on the next turn, but not adjacent to the AI base. For example, a rover has 2 mvt pts, so instead of moving them adjacent to the enemy base to have 2 pts to attack with on the mext turn, I move the rovers 1 tile away and wait to the next turn to attack. And, I attack with all my rovers at once.
- once air power comes around, I always use my air force first then move in ground troops. If the enemy base was weak enough, my airforce often wiped everybody out, my ground troops can just walk in.

Thanks Chris Pine for asking about the AI.
Just be prepared to read A LOT of stuff.

I begin with a remark: on many issues I think the rules of CivII have to be changed. But all my remarks here apply to CivII as it is now. And it should be pointed out that I have only a very dim notion of the way programming AI works.

-It is obvious the AI doesn't have a plan and doesn't recognize an emergency. It doesn't understand whether it is weak or strong and is capable of making outrageous demands when it is on the brink of disaster. It doesn't comprehend what it most needs in an emergency. When its capital is conquered and its Palace destroyed it needs Masonry to build a new Palace, not Gunpowder or Railroad. When it happens to start on a small island it should research Map Making to build ships and colonize other continents as soon as possible. When I would gladly help an ally by giving it Flight for free when attacked by Bombers, it will not accept it but ask for Space Flight instead. The AI waits normally way too long before it changes to Monarchy.

-In general the AI should explore more. Its units very easily end up in a loop, making every turn the same movement and never passing a bend of the coast. The AI also tends to explore in one direction making its capital extremely vulnerable, because it lies not at the centre of its empire but on one of its borders.

-Border defence of the AI is incoherent. It will often forget to build City Walls in an important, but rather vulnerable city. Often a harbour town will not get the Coastal Fortress it deserves. And it very often builds Fortresses without garrisoning it, thus helping the attacker who gets a strategic bridgehead. I will only build a Fortress on the border and station troops within.

-The difference between land and sea seems for the AI an insoluble problem. Quite often it will concentrate half of its fleet in a small lake, where it is totally useless. Only by accident will it build a city on an isthmus, where it would act like a canal. A caravan just ends its voyage on the coast of one continent, never arriving on its destination, while its owner often has a huge fleet of two hundred ships of the line, all concentrated around its capital and blocking all naval movement, even of the most harmless Transport with Freight. When there is some virgin territory, fertile and spacious, the AI will generally prefer to found a colony nearer to home on the Tundra.

-In my opinion the settler unit is the true hero of the game: it costs a lot of shields, eats food, but is also capable of bringing about the most important changes: founding new cities, building roads, mines etc. It is vulnerable and should be well protected. The AI will send it to the war frontier, without any escort, where it will often meet an inglorious end.

-Supply management is not one of the AIs strengths. In general it tends to build too many units. In a city producing ten shields every turn only it will continue producing units until it takes fourty turns to produce one. Or it will build a new settler when there is certainly no food surplus, causing shortage. As far as I know it almost never disbands units to upgrade them, nor will it change the city out of which supply is provisioned. So we do regularly meet some amiable Archers or Frigates in the Nuclear Age.

-Often the AI forgets to build a road, which takes only two turns, in a tile it exploits and has irrigated, thus missing out on trade revenues. And of course its mines will not be provided with Railroads, while most Forests will be cut down. I belief it never changes any terrain to Forest, which in a region without Hills could boost shield production. Simultaneousy their Engineers roam about aimlessly or build Railroad in Farmland where it adds nothing to production, though it might help foreign attack.

-Often their choice of improvements is rather illogical. It builds the same Wonder in five different Cities, or tends constantly to change its capital when there is no apparent danger. When the Wonder is built somewhere else, it will not change to another Wonder but prefers to build a Musketeer: about 300 shields are lost. Often a Factory is build in a city without significant shield production, or a Bank in a city without Trade. The AI prefers to build a Colosseum or Sewer System in a City of four heads, while the much cheaper Temple is omitted. Neither seems it to rate a Granary, an essential improvement in my opinion, at its true value.

-The AI Civs seem never to have grasped the concept of budgeting. They spend money and luxuries in imitation of Louis XV: 'Après nous la déluge!' Because of massive cheating it will not ruin their empire, but it irritates the hard-working, honest Civer who has to think before he spends his money. Their royal coffers turn out to be inexhaustible, though they spend 40% of the budget on luxuries. And it is quite possible under Democracy with only 10 or 20% luxury to make a yearly profit and still invest in research.

-The AI inclines to stack units, while with the current rules that only makes them vulnerable to heavy losses. Only for slow units with a low defense value, like Catapults and Cannons, does it make sense to combine them with stronger units. The AI very often sends those in the open, an easy prey. And I hope the AI will learn to use the defensive possibilities of some terrain types. Nor should it sacrifice five Cruisers by attacking a city protected by a Coastal Fortress. Shouldn't it remember how well a city is protected, only attacking when its defenses are weak? It could use its Diplomats and Spies to examine city defenses. Would it be possible to change the order of moving? Often the AI starts an attack with the wrong unit.

-I think it should be possible to program the AI in such a way that it controls the happiness of its citizens more efficiently. It was one of the easiest things for me to learn, especially since happiness is almost 100% predictable. Build a Temple as an essential improvement, a Marketplace and Bank when there is some Trade! Under a Democracy most units should just stay home. And why not use other specialists than entertainers to make more money or research?

Basically the faults of the AI are easy to point out, at least for a human. Solving the problems will probably be very difficult.

Never target a single city with your whole army. Depends of the army of course. For large armies, I suggest splitting them up and going for different cities. This would be also the ideal tactic when you want to surpress the enemy, so that you can build up either more offensive units or more defensive units. When the army is smaller, you can either choose a guerilla tactic or mass it altogether and try to capture a city.
Even if the enemy is able to capture the city back next turn, you have inflicted heavy casaulties! Of course be careful, when you are technically advanced and the option to get an advance when you take a city is on, dont go for this tactic and make sure you can hold the city you are capturing. If you are not able to hold a city go for it. Capture it at least for one turn. Of course this depends on the importance of technology you have over others.

Use air attacks to soften cities before you waste your ground troops.
Use ships to soften cities. Use anything to bring the defenses of the city down, before you are going for capturing it.
Also use spies to destroy city walls.

Lurking around a city will let the enemy stay in the city. So you can maybe win a few turns, that you need. Even if the army is not very large or powerful, two seperate stacks lurking infront of a city can achieve that the enemy, doesnt go out. This can give you the required turns. So, yes military units have a purpose besides fighting.
Remember a lot of bullets in a war are just shot to make the enemy duck!

Send scouts in the enemy terrain and watch how many turns it gets if they are slaughtered. This way you will now if the player has offensive capability in that area. Of course the AI knows if the scout was defeated with defensive or offensive units.

Try to make alliances with players near your enemy and tell them to attack them.

Never head into too much wars at the same time. Especially not if they lie close to you. A war with 3 of your neighbours is deadly. Rather pay some tribut to one or make alliances with neighbours of them, so that they cant fully concentrate on you.

If that transport was followed up with another the next turn, and another the turn after that, and so forth, I'd very probably have a much rougher time.

I suppose it's quite hard for an AI to recognize it has a short term advantage that it has to push quickly or lose, but I think that would be a big help.

Feints would be nifty as well. A single transport or two lands (or land attacks) so that the player thinks `I'll just go mop this up' and sends thier forces over to the invasion, when the AI is actually planing on hitting them with most of their troops somewhere else far away within a few turns.

Another thing. There are a rare-to-few cities which the AI defends well enough. I (persionally) always try to have at least two defensive units in every city, and city walls. Even the most perfectionist of civ2 civilizations have a tendency to leave there cities ungarded in such a way that they can be taken easily by a well coordinated, large attack (esp. one that includes cruse missles).

One suggestion: the AI should think when the human player is making moves. That should allow the AI a lot more time to evaluate the situation. I am sure that's already done, but just can't be sure. After all, just sitting there while waiting for the human player to move is a waste of time.

1. VB is not a scripting language.

2. You don't want your AI routines in VB since its too slow.

Please be influenced by other developers!!

Despite what Steve Clark said, it is still possible to have a challenging AI.

In particular, several old games by developer SSG (Strategic Studies Group, in Australia) had very good AI in comparison to todays modern games:

Warlords 2: The AI would build "taskforces" appropriate to capturing the city. It would hammer weak points. In the original Warlords 2, the player could give the enemy warlords "personalities" that affected their STRATEGIES, not just cosmetic things, ie "ratsbane" fights 'on the cheap', ravager uses 'scorched earth' tactics, ect.

Carriers at War: very good AI.

SSI:
Panzer General, particularly Panzer General II.

The Operational Art of War 2:
Simply because, again, it would attack weak points and build taskforces.

My Suggestions to Improve Civ 2 AI that do not involve many variables:
-the AI must have a low and a high intensity war mode.
-the low intensity is default. In this setting the AI will ATTACK WEAKPOINTS, with spies, battleships, and try to CONTROL VITAL TERRAIN. Vital terrain are the areas near civilizations (and of course the homeland), but not built up, where an enemy force must travel to attack the AI, or vice versa. Examples from earth map: panama canal, the Middle-East, India, Central Asia. Securing these areas is accomplished with the "two move, high attack" type of units, followed by fortresses, followed by cities. Once an area has reached 'x' level of security, the AI moves on to control areas ever closer to its enemies.
-high level war: If the AI is at low-level war for more than 'x' turns without peace, or if the enemy has successfully driven the AI out of more than 'x' VITAL AREAS ('x' should be '1' on Deity), or if the AI has a military advantage over a foe who is inferior and has a poor diplomatic relationship with the AI for 'x' turns, the AI goes into high level war.

-under this setting, the AI BUILDS TASKFORCES, using the following variables: number of cities to be taken (at least one of large size), number, type, and defense strength of units, combat relevant improvements such as barracks, walls, coastal fortresses. The number of units that could be built in the target city before the AI taskforce arrives is added to the final variable.

-the taskforce is proceeded by x number of support units (depending on enemy units in airbases, the sea, fortresses) who carry out a CONTROL VITAL AREAS function in a region of whatever size around the target city (ies). The taskforce is always launched regardless of the success of this "softening up" approach so that humans can't keep the AI at bay by killing a few subs or armours.

-While in high-level mode, no superflous things are built like marketplaces or defensive units. The game should be made in such a way that, after early expansion, a typical AI can put together a TASKFORCE capable of taking one large city in 20-30 turns (at least).

-If the TASKFORCE is successful, the AI EVALUATES following: Has more than x% of the taskforce survived? Does the enemy have a numerical/qualitative advantage? Has the enemies taskforce been more successful? and any other variables, such as a sneak attack by another civ. If these weighted 'IF, Then' questions add up to more than x% the AI tries to make peace, and if that is refused, goes into its defensive low level posture again until it can build up another taskforce. If the IF, THEN questions add up to LESS than x%, the AI will immediately examine a new target city, sending appropriate force to CONTROL VITAL AREAS around it, and immediately build up a new taskforce (in this scenario, 80% of AI cities are building offensive units)

If the TASKFORCE is unsuccessful, the computer will EVALUATE a more lengthly IF, THEN list to make a yes/no decison. This list would contain relative military strenghts, how far ahead/behind the civs are economically and scientifically, attacks on the AI homeland, diplomatic vendettas, ect. You should get the spirit now.
The yes/no decision is to see if the AI should build another TASKFORCE of that is +x larger (growing larger with each defeat), or try asking for peace. If peace is refused, and the AIs EVALUATE list still gives results unfavourable for AI success or existence, it returns to low-level war (ie, CONTROLLING VITAL AREAS, defensive units, science and taxes, ect., until such time as it recieves a favourable result from its EVALUATE list. (or makes peace).

A general guidline: the longer and more thought out the lists of variables(and their numerical weights) that the AI uses in its IF,THEN evaluations are, the better the response will be. If there is enough development energy, these variable lists could be difficulty level dependant, for example a cheiftain AI might look only at numerical values and not at qualitative things like bonuses, firepower and hit points, ect.

For example: If I am playing SMAC (original, not expansion), and I have the HSA, then why do morgan and miriam still throw probe teams at me? It is stupid actions like this that make me wonder if a pocket calculator could play better. Things like this wouldn't be difficult to fix. If you have the HSA then the AI should realise "No point in using probe teams against him/her" and instead put the rescources into military units.

Give the AI a Tech goal.
When researching, I never just sit there and research 1 tech in physics, then 1 in economics, then 1 in transport etc.
If I am going to research I have a far off goal. In SMAC I usually play as UoP. My first research goal is Secrets of the Human Brain. Then I go for Cyberethics (to get knowledge) Then I go for Eudiamonia (With a few stop offs for weapons techs). The AI just tends to sit there and research across the board.

------------------
- Biddles

1) For expansionist civs, go _straight_ for Republic at the beginning. Forget military for the moment -- buy peace treaties, or buy units if it needs them. The diplomat is about the best defensive unit early on!

2) Use luxury bursts for growth -- at appropriate times in Republic/Democracy, put luxuries up really high for a few turns just to grow the cities. Tremendous advantage.

3) Use a third nation's city as a staging post.

Things the AI allows me to do that it shouldn't let me do:

1) Talk it into having a revolution before I buy its city (When at war, if you talk to an AI civ it will invariably overthrow its Democracy so that it doesn't have to make peace. Now it's not a Democracy, you can buy the city).

2) Fortify units on mountains in fortresses the AI has built for me, right in the middle of its own territory.

Things the game lets me do that it shouldn't

1) Use my enemy's railroad.

2) Use spys to 'sneak' entire tank regiments past its units' zones of control.

Things the game lets the AI do that it shouldn't

1) For expansionist civs, go _straight_ for Republic at the beginning. Forget military for the moment -- buy peace treaties, or buy units if it needs them. The diplomat is about the best defensive unit early on when units come one at a time. Anyone comes near, you bribe them!

2) Use luxury bursts for growth -- at appropriate times in Republic/Democracy, put luxuries up really high for a few turns just to grow the cities. Tremendous advantage.

3) Use a third nation's city as a staging post.
Often there will be one city of a neutral country on the continent of a larger civ. Conquer that city and stack it to the hilt with units before declaring war on the real target.

4) Conquer by continent -- concentrate on clearing whole islands to avoid your enemies using 3.

5) Don't go for war when there are still nearby uninhabited continents to claim.

6) Go on goody hut expeditions with a two-move unit and a ship. (Horsy gets off ship to claim coastal goody hut, and can then get back on to avoid the nasty barbarians he just released).

7) Send your caravans only to your own cities. In the long run, the increased income from owning both ends of the trade route outdoes the initial bonus for faraway/foreign cities.

8) Build cities in defensible positions slightly beyond the outskirts of your civ (but on the same continent). Then fill in the vacant area with more cities to support them (and 'connect them up' to your civ). Avoids too many messy border wars early on. In short: grab land quickly.

9) Nuke sea fleets (no pollution)

10) Use airports to ship troops into handy staging posts

11) Phase your growth -- this goes something along the lines of 2, but you make sure you build your settlers in big synchronised waves so that your luxury-fired growth bursts will be more effective. (And it makes settling a continent really quick when you have 20 engineers on the job!)
Ie: declare 'for the next X turns, you're all building settlers & we'll have ten new cities to cover that island.' do the settling and then stop settler production to concentrate on growing the new cities fast.

12) Buy improvements, especially factories (Especially in small underproducing cities that will produce well once you've grown them)

13) Target wonders in your invasions, especially happiness wonders. There's nothing like conquering Michelangelo's and having all your opponents cities instantly fall into disorder and become so much more buyable!!

14) When looking to war, go for a technologically superior opponent. Invade with waves of diplomats, stealing their technology and buying their cities. (Don't forget to steal tech before buying the city so you get 2 techs from the city)

Things the AI allows me to do that it shouldn't let me do:

1) Talk it into having a revolution before I buy its city (When at war, if you talk to an AI civ it will invariably overthrow its Democracy so that it doesn't have to make peace. Now it's not a Democracy, you can buy the city).

2) Fortify units on mountains in fortresses the AI has built for me, right in the middle of its own territory.

Things the game lets me do that it shouldn't

1) Use my enemy's railroad.

2) Use spys to 'sneak' entire tank regiments past its units' zones of control.

3) Prebuild wonders (keep building a wonder someone else has already built so I can switch to another in a few discoveries' time)

Things the game lets the AI do that it shouldn't

1) Know which of my cities have SDI

General Game Tweaks:

1) The fact that invasion by diplomat is so superior to warfare indicates that it's too easy & cheap in Civ2.

2) After the development of Economics, the caravan should become obsolete, and trade routes should just set themselves up.

3) (I suspect you'll already have this in your Civ3 prototype by now.) Have a General/Field Marshall unit which modifies attack/defense/movement of stack or confers other bonuses. I'd suggest the general's bonuses could be random and decided at general-create time: eg, 'all units stacked under general count as veteran' or 'doubles terrain defence bonuses', etc.
Special generals (Nelson, Napoleon, Wellington, Montgomerie...) with multiple bonuses could also be created like wonders.

3) There are a number of other elegant modifications to the rules that would improve the game no end (no I haven't posted them here & no I haven't seen them here.). These are short & uncomplicated, but off-topic for this post.
Email me at wbillingsley@crosswinds.net or bill_billingsley@adc.com if you are interested.

expand early. most important.

fill thier own continent before they invade others. stay peaceful if possible until there is no more easy expansion room.

try to conquer all of thier continent.

give a bonus to stacked units, make the ai stack inteligently.

always attack in force, never single units.

always attack with the highest offence units first working thier way down, the best defence units go last and occupy the city.

build coastal cities or build inland, not one square in.

let the ai see unit strength just outside their borders, if it is high, plan for a defence.

protect settlers with a troop, if the settler builds a city, switch support and use it for defence.

the longer a peace treaty lasts, the harder it should be to break and the better it gets.

allow an ask nicely option for tech.

allow an ai to ask for me troops to defend itself from another ai. (the enemy of my enemy...)

monarcy and graneries early.

always build the cheaper improvements first. buy the granery if the civ is rich.

move offencive troops to the borders but keep them supplied from the interior.

recycle any troops two generations old.

extra defences for active wonders.

dont allow the player to buy ai cities.

1) Concentrate on trade and build up a very large reserve over a number of turns.

2) Use multiple diplomats to harass an enemy's capital city and destroy all its defensive buildings. (These same diplomats can be used to force a civilisation out of democracy if necessary).

3) Invade the capital city with overwhelming force.

4) Use additional (multiple) diplomats to buy as many cities as possible.

With a strategy like this, a very powerful CIV can be knocked out of a game fairly quickly and consistently.

Suggestions:

1) Better AI use of Diplomats and other special units that you might employ in CIV III for counter-intelligence.

First of all I'm not trying to sound arrogant and tell you guys what you should be doing, but I think in Civ3 the AI should be improved in many ways:

*In normal empire management the guys above have said it all.
*But I think the main area of improvement is threat assement.
The AI should scan areas of the map, and examine each according to a set of rules. (So obviously the AI would need to scout often with diplomats/scouting units). A particular rule used could be related to the amount of friendly/enemy units there. This would allow the AI to detect an incoming invasion fleet accurately and rush reinforcements there.
*The same area scanning technique could also have other rulesets so that the AI can probe areas for lack of enemy units, but the presence of enemy cities. This would obviously be a weak spot in the enemy civ and the AI sohould respond accordingly (ie go into a special mode or something and continuously pound that weak spot with military units)
This would allow a AI civ to detect and launch a surpise attack on a spot away from the main battle front.
*Once again, the rule-base area scanning can be used to determine which part of an enemy empire is most critical to the enemy - eg a city on/near a vital landbrige/bottleneck, a capital, or a city packed with wonders, or an easy stack of units to kill.
*Of course the same technique could be used to detect weakness in the AI's own civ.

I think if a rule based system is adopted then it shouldn't be too hard to program AI civs of different behaviours. Just change the varibles used in the rulesets.

Most of the military-related AI improvements that the guys mentioned above should be able to be implement with this system.

(BTW Like I keep ranting on about in other threads, I think the AI should be open source. It could have a custom language, a bit like Civ2's events.txt, but it could very maybe use VB, even though that is slow - but at least it's easy to learn/program in.)

1/ Well, theres an very old saying that says "an army marches on its stomach".

You can parafraze that by saing: "An strong CIV3-AI marches on its many city-improvements and well developed city-areas.

A good AI should constantly monitor the human player, an ALWAYS try to accomplish the same infrastructure/ the same number of cities*. Any CIV-AI ignoring above, is gonna be beaten again, again and again...

It is as simple as that. Dont let AI waste time bulding buckloads of "cost-effective" crap-units. For most of the game: build and upgrade max 3 high-class units per city.

(*to avoid cluttering up the map with to many cities, any 20+ city -empire should be MUCH more prone to empire-unstability, then in previous civ-versions. Furthermore:

- No indevidual city should be able to build 2 or more settlers in a row, without building a city-improvement in between.

- 3 totally undeveloped cities at any given time means 20% chance that these cities "break out" and become renegade city-states (have to be conquered).

- 4 totally undeveloped cities at any given time, means 40% chance..., and so on).

quote: (BTW Like I keep ranting on about in other threads, I think the AI should be open source. It could have a custom language, a bit like Civ2's events.txt, but it could very maybe use VB, even though that is slow - but at least it's easy to learn/program in.)

I agree with the need for an Open Source AI, however using a platform specific language is a bad idea. Mac and Linux users will miss out. They already have to deal with things like not having level editors for Unreal Tournament because someone thought it would be great to do it in the most Windows specific way they could.

Its certanly aint very realistic in historic terms, thats for shure. Also, if the AI should have the same early ultra-fast city-founding strategy for each of the (upto 7) computer-civs; the game would probably grind to a halt, in later endgames.

I have the following four expanding-rules suggestions. They should enable a much more realistic game, and allow the AI to compete more easily (i hope):

A/ Max two "empty" cities (= without any city-improvements) at any given time within that empire, can be allowed.
The AI/Human Player HAS to build temple in at least one of above cities, in order to continue founding a new city.

B/ Any city NOT road-connected with some/all of the other cities, gets an proportionally stiff corruption-penalty each turn.
Lack of road-connections to other cities should also give a more noticeable resource-/science-penalty.

C/ A big sized empire of 25 cities or more should be an unstability-factor in itself - increasingly prone to split-up federation-attempts. This should be especially true if the large empire is far ahead in terms of science-/production-/economy- and military might, then the other civs.

(It shouldnt matter if the empire is well maintained: these split-up tendencies should appear anyway, if the empire is self-sufficient and powerful enough (to far ahead the other civs).
The split-ups federations should consist of min 20% - max 40% av the empires cities. A real groundshaker, in other words).

D/ Also (important); the cities in small civilistic-perfectionist 8-12 city empires should in return have less problems with building huge 20+ mega-cities.
Cities in large 20-30 city empires on the other hand, should have increasingly bigger problems with developing indevidual mega-cities.

-there is no effective war party without Crusaders,Pikemen,Catapults,Settlers and Diplomats
-all militarty units must be veterans
-pick your target carefully before attack,no use of taking a city which you cannot destroy or hold for a long time...it's a waste of time and resources
-use Diplomats to avoid zone of control
-use pre-worked Settlers on rivers/roads to build instant fortresses (for those who aren't familiar with this cute little trick: mine with your Settler 2 turns and click on it to stop working...now your Settler can make instant fort if you have construction)
-stack your Catapults/Crusaders with a Pikeman and move them to most deffensive terrain around your target city
-never left your invasion force unstacked
-explore distant shores with Triremes loaded with a Diplomat and one 4-legged unit. That will hurt early Republicans who prefere to leave distant cities undefended because of loss of shields
-play the cards you currently have : if you have Lighthouse - build lots of triremes, Sun Tzu War Academy - go conquering ASAP, The Great Wall - expand like hell and build defensive units or build barracks and attack civs w/o Sun-Tzu or build a city inside of your enemy territory, fill it with units and go conquering from there (WARNING: be sure you blocked all ways to enemy diplomats )
-defend your cities with at least 3 units,one Catapult is highly recomended,2 vet Pikemen are a must
-make as much embassies as possible,look which cities builds wonders and try to sabotage its production with Diplomats

Of course,all aforementioned depends on early expansion.
On Deity,AI have alot of benefits (smaller food/production boxes,more arrows,knowledge of entire map and cities,lesser unhappiness,etc.).

If you manage to teach AI how to use given benefits,you're doing a great job.

Regards.

SF

Cities are built haphazardly.I can't tell you how many AI cities I have seen that are missing 2 nearby specials.It need a higher priority for resource specials.And it should be by resource type rather than resources in general.

Food is a problem.It always goes for food squares over trade squares.It will build Collosus in a desert.Cope's Observatory in a city that will never produce more than 10 science beakers.Caravans don't seem to be a priority and don't follow any plan if they are sent.

Tactically it is not good,but it would be better if it didn't attack armor with elephants.This is where trade comes in.Perhaps putting a higher priority on trade arrows rather than food would help.

The ai does better at spacerace than conquest(for reasons mentioned above) but if I didn't give 80% of the techs it would be stuck in ancient times forever.

Despotism.The ai takes along time to get out of it.It needs to be told to get out of Despo ASAP.And when it does,it seems to change governments at the drop of a hat.Its almost as if it arrives at a decision 1 turn then arrives at a totally different one next turn because some values have changed.It needs to be longer term in it's strategy decisions.

Growth-yes it needs to expand more.And grow cities larger.It is pretty rare I see AI cities beyond size 12.Most are size 8.Although the AI has irrigated and farmed every square in sight.

I don't know how to do it but if the AI could recognize which improvements to build in which city.It will build a factory in a 5 sheild,30 beaker city while a 20 sheild,5 beaker city is building a university.

1) Build up average size civ. Avoid wars. Exchange technology. Build caravans like crazy to build good economy.

2) Connect civ to others via railway, or obtain/build bases/city within 1 turn of transport ship range. let them develop their terrain before invading, so it's less work fixing it up for me.

3) Get the robotics advance so I can build howitzers. Sometimes I wait till I have stealth and can sweep the skies. The only units i really need are howitzers, fighters, transports, a few spies, AEGIS cruisers, and a few armour units to clear out light units from cities (missiles, etc), without wasting howitzer attacks.

4) Build a lot of howitzers. Mass them at the border. Get the SDI defense if nukes exist. Build them in every city, get lots of cash to buy em.

5) Attack an enemy civ. Take 10 or so cities, or their entire empire in one turn. Make peace after taking the last city I can. Buy SDI defenses in all cities.

6) Wait for units to repair, then attack again. Can destroy most computer civs at King level in 1 or 2 turns, especially if only on one continent.

More on placing city workers optimally: the AI doesn't seem to value trade arrows - it will put workers on forest before silk. It will also produce a huge food bonus in a size 8 city with no aqueducts. I think the AI should emphasize shields instead of food, to capitalize on its production advantages.

quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 06-18-2000 04:10 AM You can easily "expand your way to success" by shoving out buckloads of city-founding settlers i a row, early on in the game. 20+ settlers or more, founding just as many cities + another 20+ city-area settler-developers. Effective, perhaps - but is it FUN?

Ralf,
I posted the best fix (IMHO)for this problem in the ultimate ICS thread. (can someone give the link, please? I don't know how.)(ell, I huess I do now.)
it's basically to limit the tiles being produced to the number of citizens. no free city square.

Nearly every major glitch has been mentioned, except this one, which seems to be a unique strategy invented by myself:

Use aircraft/helis for defense! They're fast and effective. If the enemy lands with a small force, bomb them. If they land with a large force, it'll probably be a cheap one, so send in the helis... they can attack several targets per turn.

By the way, there could be more difficulty levels with less difference between successive steps. I beat the Prince-level AI with one hand tied behind my back, while I seem to lag behind at King difficulty.

One last thing... why's everybody so obsessed with bottlenecks? Ships sail around them without trouble. If you had enough naval power to get to the enemy, you have enough naval power to get around a bottleneck. It's as simple as that. (Except on giant linked pangaea style maps ofcourse )

I have also seen a lot of good comments on the AI from a CIV standpoint but almost none from a SMAC standpoint. For this reason I will try and give my input from a SMAC standpoint.

First off let me say that the AI is much much weaker in SMAC than it is in CIV2. This is because SMAC has many more choices to be made than CIV2 did. I can only assume that, like SMAC, CIV3 will also be much more complex than CIV2. This means that it's going to be a much bigger chore to make a good AI.

Anyway here are my biggest beefs with the SMAC AI:

• Supply Crawlers:

  The AI has absolutely no idea how to use these properly and rarely if ever builds them. This allows a human player to gain a ridiculous advantage though the proper use of crawlers. Crawlers are the second most important unit in the game (1st being formers). They allow a city to gain production without using a worker and can be used to rush prototypes and Secret Projects (the same as caravans and freights in Civ2). If the AI could understand how to use these even a little bit it would gain a huge advantage over an AI that does not.

• Pop Booming:

  The only time the AI will ever pop boom happens totally by accident. A pop boom, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, means that your city or base is increasing a size every turn. In SMAC this is done by getting +6 growth, in Civ2 by getting golden ages in Republic or Democracy. Pop booming will create quite a sizeable advantage if timed correctly and I know several people who absolutely refuse to do it any more in single player SMAC because it puts the AI waaaay to far behind and the game is no longer fun.

• Support costs:

  I have regularly seen the AI build so many units in one base that it no longer has any minerals free to build anything else. This is dumb. This happens a lot in Civ2 also.

• Terraforming:

  The AI is an idiot when it comes to terraforming. 'Nuff said

• Attacking:

  I know that this has already been mentioned, but it is important. The AI has no idea how to launch an attack. Instead of sending one powerful attack force it sends a steady string of units that cannot defend each other and can easily be wiped out by a much smaller strategically placed set of troops. Several times I have defended against well over 30 units with two or three quick units and a monolith to heal every turn at.

• City Placement:

  The AI in SMAC will regularly spend a ridiculous amount of time moving a colony pod to found a city near a landmark rather than founding a perfectly good base close to home. This eliminates greatly any turn advantage that could have been gained by having more cities quicker and also makes it extremely difficult to defend the new base because it is by itself. The faction in SMAC that is most notorious for screwing itself this way is the pirates. The pirates will always run as fast as they can toward the monsoon jungle to try and get the nutrient bonus; however, this is in vain 90% of the time because if someone elses territory already includes the jungle then the pirates cannot harvest any resources from the jungle because it is outside their territory.

Anyway those are my biggest gripes. I know that probably only a few of them will actually be relevant to CIV3, but I hope they are helpful.

The Civ 2 AI improved much over Civ 1's. Civ 2 had costal blockades and smarter pathfinding, as well as nukes, majing the game harder than Civ 1. Still there's much room for improvement:

-Railroads. The computer doesn't know where to build them. The AI doesn't connect specific cities, and instead wastes precious engineers' turns putting down rail and making a sprawling mess. The result? Land invasion is EASY. Almost every square my forces are on is connected by railroad. If I can bomb their cities into being unoccupied, I can easily move all my troops a vast distance inside their territory without losing even a single movement point. Even if their cities are still occupied, I can always find a way to move a howitser from one end of their homeland to another, just because prevalent railroads make movement too easy. Recommend: build roads everywhere for trade, but only connect cities with minimal railroads. Make a web of roads so that you can't get to one city without going through another, or make a wheel-and-spoke style layout where a central (well-defended) city hub has railways leading to every other city making a large circle. An invader must control the central city to make the rail infrastructure useful. Also, don't build rail on coasts. Makes landing from ships very easy: any two-movement unit can land and use the rail to move inside enemy territory within the same turn.

-Forts. This issue is serious. The AI has no idea how to use them. I assume in Civ 2
the idea was for the AI to build lots of forts since it built none in Civ 1. The combination of fortresses and rail indeadly to the computer. Here's what I always do to the AI: take a large force of offensive units (ex: howitzers) and add a single defensive unit. The AI builds tons of forts withing its homeland, none guarded very well. I occupy a fort next to the city I want to capture. I fortify my defensive guy and stack all my howitzers. The AI rarely makes a serious counterstrike, so I can always count on my defensive unit surviving (even if he doesn't, since my stack is in a fort, it's only a single loss). I then use the railways to attack with my entire force at once without any movement penalty. If I fail to capture the city, I retreat with my damaged forces, heal them in the fort, and attack again! Never fails to crush the AI. The remedy: The AI needs to understand the danger of a large army in its midst -- it needs all-out war to destroy them. Sever the railways, bring in troops from other cities to reenforce the garrison, counterstrike the enemy force. As for forts: build fewer so that the engineers aren't wasting their turns. Also, recognize strategic locations and make bottleneck forts in mountains at the edge of the empire, so that the enemy doesn't get in in the first place. Always occupy forts with a good defense, not a single unit. Destroy any old forts that could be used against you.

-I use the above strategy to crush the AI on diety in the WWII scenario. Build many howizers. Load on transport. Sail to Netherlands (there's a single fort on the coast next to Amsterdam). Unload in fort the same turn. Fortify 1 turn. Use German rail against them. March into Berlin. Never fails.

-The AI needs to understand total war. Sometimes, during a devistating attack on your base, you ammass all your men in a last stand against the enemy, pulling every rifleman from across the empire to stop the enemy in his tracks. The AI never understands this and lets the human invade with only marginal resistance. The only exception I know of is the Zulus. They fight like mad to protect their homeland. The AI must recognize *real* danger (full-scale invasion, massive aerial bombing, etc.) and do everything possible to stop it. Anything less and they'll loose.

-Expansion. The AI has trouble with cities. It should build them a little farther apart, four spaces between, instead of two or three. Also, it needs to expand ealry-on faster. I focus on occupying my continent as soon as possible. Then I build infrastructure after all the cities are down. This may not, however, be appropriate for all civs: the Chinese and Babylonians are usually pretty contained, while the Russians sprawl.

-Freight makes great spies. I wander around enemy rails with "peaceful" freight to get a look at enemy territory.

-The AI must coordinate tricky massive air/land/sea attacks simaltaneously to be effective. I emphasive MASSIVE because huge invasions of just a few unit types (howitzers) seem to work best. I say tricky because the AI needs to understand the element of surprise: attack the rea of the island, paradrop *inside* the homeland, capture all the undefended colonies, do blitz on the far-away city that just made a Wonder.

-The AI never paradrops outside cities. I often drop troops in all the surrounding city squares cutting off food, trade, reenforcements. Then I invade with my paratroops already on the ground. Also, seiges are important. The computer never approaches cities with hordes of defensive units to surround it and starve it into submission.

What *I* would like to see is more diversification in the AIs. SMAC made some good improvements in this area - there were somewhat distinct personalities at work in the way the AIs would behave.

I would like to see some civilizations that take on different roles. Some should be insular and xenophobic, building to a point and jealously guarding its borders, almost never venturing out to attack others, instead concentrating on holding what they have and ensuring that nobody, NOBODY gets in. Others might care more about moving quickly to gobble up territory, while avoiding battles. Some might be attempting to build a giant world-encompasing empire.

The AI does not appreciate the advantages of a massive amount of caravan production. Try to get every AI city have three trade routes.

I agree with comments about dropping piecemeal attacks in favor of massed attacks. Since the AI is unlikely to ever be as good in a battle of maneuver as a human, a massed attack is probably the best strategy for the AI. Build twenty units and then attack from as many directions as possible.