Investigation of AI personalities

[therother]

At the request of tai4ji2x, this thread is for investigating AI personalities.

These are the offical descriptions of the various options in descr_strat.txt:

These control a set of AI production personalities, which contribute a bias towards building and training (but not retraining or repairing). This bias is fairly small compared to game-generated factors such as "the enemy is attacking me with lots of cavalry, build me some spearmen". Explaining the weighting system which drives the production AI in full is beyond the scope of this document as it would take several days to write.

So in short, the building construction personalities are these: (ranked highest to lowest - therother)

balanced - biases towards growth, taxable income, trade level bonuses (roads), walls and xp bonus buildings

religious - biases towards growth, loyalty, taxable income, farming, walls and law

trader - biases towards growth, trade level, trade base, weapon upgrades, games, races and xp bonus buildings

comfort - biases towards growth, farming, games, races, xp bonus and happiness

bureaucrat - biases towards taxable income, growth, pop health, trade, walls, improved bodyguards and law

craftsman - biases towards walls, races, taxable income, weapon upgrades, xp bonuses, mines, health and growth

sailor - biases towards sea trade, taxable income, walls, growth, trade

fortified - biases towards walls, taxable income, growth, loyalty, defenses, bodyguards and law

These biases are towards building properties, rather than buildings themselves. The game does not know what a "Blacksmith" is, for example, it only knows that it is a building which provides a weapon upgrade, and hence a Craftsman AI would be more likely to build it than another AI personality type.

These are then combined with a troop production personality, as follows:

smith - exactly level

mao - biased towards mass troops, light infantry

genghis - biased towards missile cavalry and light cavalry

stalin - biased towards heavy infantry, mass troops and artillery

napoleon - biased towards a mix of light and heavy infantry, light cavalry

henry - biased towards heavy and light cavalry, missile infantry

Caesar - biased towards heavy infantry, light cavalry, siege artillery

The same system as for the buildings applies. Troop category and class are combined at the time the unit database is loaded to give a unit production type, and the likelihood of the AI choosing to produce a given unit type which can be produced is then modified by the unit type weighting. There is also a random element in the choosing of which building or troop type to produce next, so the effect of the bias is a statistical thing. Another factor that is applied over the top which may obscure the bias is a tendency towards producing troop mixtures (according to what is already in the garrison) and a weighting according to unit strength.

The two sets of types can be freely combined; for example, although Fortified Caesar does not appear in the list of options currently used by the vanilla RTW game, it is a valid combination.

[Bob the Insane]

So this does not effect the aggresiveness of the AI at all?? Are all the AI players equally agressive? Or is it that there is only "the AI" and it applies statisical modificatins to different factions to make them appear to act differently??

I ask because I saw an article on the TW Center which explained this slightly differently...

I have to say that this description looks simpler and more elegant which generally leads to being correct...

[Jambo]

I seriously doubt this affects aggressive stance. Simply put, I think this is just a way if providing a variation to what the AI will tend to build for buildings and units.

[Kraxis]

Well in simple this tells us that we should do our best to get rid of mao as 'he' will face us with the weak mass armies of warbands and such. Replace him with stalin or napoleon is my take on it.

[sunsmountain]

Playing as the Julii, im really trying to trick the Gauls or the Spanish into building a sacred circle to Epona. This will allow the Julii Pantheon to Epona. Here are the western barbarians:

faction spain, fortified mao
faction gauls, religious smith
faction britons, trader henry
faction germans, balanced mao

All barbarians suffer from town level settlements, ie 400 pop because they keep building troops every turn. mao hardly seems to affect this.

According to thereother's list, i should be looking for:

balanced, trader, comfort (this should be comfortable), craftsman.

probably eliminating weapon upgrades because that would encourage them to build Abnoba (their current fetish) or Teutatis.

This leaves:
balanced - biases towards growth, taxable income, trade level bonuses (roads), walls and xp bonus buildings
comfortable - biases towards growth, farming, games, races, xp bonus and happiness

So i'm giving balanced to gaul and comfortable to spain (poorer farmland) to see what will happen. Damn i'll probably have to start a new campaign.

Also, i'm setting both to Smith so no troop preference occurs. Perhaps setting on to cavalry (genghis) will favor the horse temple (to Epona), on the other hand it might as well not do that at all.

Update:

It works!! Gaul now builds temples to Epona, but come to think of it, if you have to mod to get these anyway, why not give the Julii the ability to build these themselves?

...

[QwertyMIDX]

Can we put up a thread for investigation of what makes the AI agressive early on?

[Kraxis]

I have found that sailor Ceasar is great for Carthage, they do in fact become more aggressive as long as they have strength in their armies.
craftsman Ceasar is great for the Seleucids as they now seem to hold up to the other eastern factions, and surprisingly they actually manage to get alliances, even with Egypt.

[MajorFreak]

Personally, seeing how impressive sea trade can be for one's economy (and how many things depend on blacksmith) i'm going to go with "Trader" / "Smith" for all the factions. I'll be playing VH campaign level, with 4 turns per year, and HUGE unit size scales...

• i'd have gone with "sailor" but that doesn't bias weapon upgrades, which is so important

i think i might have to boost the city populations to prevent the AI from being silly. But, on the other hand, it might be wiser to watch what happens first.

I'm seriously considering giving each province a temple/shrine at the start of the campaign, but i'm curious as to what temples this AI personality will prefer.

hmmmm...there's a danger of wardogs running amok (figuratively speaking) so i think i'll have to restrict those to the resources

[sunsmountain]

To come back to Gaul: Even though "explaining the weighting system which drives the production AI in full is beyond the scope of this document as it would take several days to write", it is quite clear to me that Gaul only builds:

Temples to Abnoba and temples to Teutatis (unmodded), as a Religious Smith.
I have yet to witness any RTW player stating otherwise.

This leads me to believe that there is no chance involved when it comes to temple choice (it's exclusive: ie choose one god and stick with it). If it isn't, ie random rolls, then these are triggered way too often to allow for the other temples to Epona or Esus.
This means that the chance roll favoring temple A or temple B ensures temple A and B get built. Unmodded, you would have to give Gaul close to 40 Regions in order to begin seeing 1 to Epona/Esus, and even then odds are probably against them, similar to AI re-checking and re-establishing all of its troops every time you reload.

A further corollary is that it is impossible for the Julii to get their Panthenon to Epona (+5 XP, the best battle-temple there is in my opinion), with an unmodded version of the game. So you have my leave to give the Julii the option to build the first 3 levels of said god.

[tai4ji2x]

ok, took the plunge and am trying out 1.5 w/ the terrae expugnandae mod (by lusted). noticed the same problem i remembered back when i was playing w/ 1.2 last year. gaul (comfortable stalin, in this mod, at least) and spain only seem to build temples of esus and occassionally teutatis. ugh, i just don't get it. getting the AI to complete their diverse pantheons seems impossible.