As unfortunate as it is, it seems as though the progression of the AI over the past few builds has been pretty stagnate. Its taken steps forward, but obviously still needs help.



However, I feel fairly confident in saying that this is because the AI programmers have been busy specializing each faction's AI so that the AI can take advantage of its uniqueness.



And when I say "Each Faction" I really mean, the Cultists.

"ThorTillas(AIProgrammer)" wrote:
[badfaith]

Really? something change because of the cultist? never hear anything like that... touss touss...



We hate cultist... not the faction's gameplay in fact, but the modifications implied by it... ^^

[/badfaith]



That said, you should have a gui modification in the city information panel in the next build which should show you the amount of population AND the amount of village worker.



After reflexion, I don't know if it's already in the current public build or not...

But good news, the Cultists may or may not be close to completion (one never knows :sarcastic So that should hopefully free them up to buff up the AI in general.



I honestly have no idea how much the AI programmers play/test the AI from the player's perspective, but I thought it might be nice for them to have some solid, statistical idea of what the players think about the AI.



And no, while "all of it" is and always will be the right answer, keep it to what realistically needs the most improvement before release.



Please limit yourself to 3 choices btw ^^



City Building: Things such as borough street placement, Improvement building priorities, etc.



Technology Selection: The technologies they pick and the order in which they do so.



Combat tactics: The Ai's use of the battlefield and consideration of available actions and abilities.



Military Development: The AI's strategy and ability to build and army that can give player's a run for their money.



City Settling: The AI's consideration of terrain and other effects when settling cities.



Diplomacy: The AI's competence in interaction with the other empires.



Market Usage: AI's capability to chose what to buy, or even whether or not to buy anything.



Minor Faction Diplomacy: How well the AI empires deal with their minor neighbors.



Economy: The AI's consideration on such things as buyout and upkeep.





Feel free to use this as a discussion of the AI in general and/or explain your choices.





As for my three choices:



1) Military Development



In my experience, through all the builds I have tested, the AI cannot seem to put up any kind of long term fight or full scale offensive.



2) City Settling



90% of all the AI cities I have seen are settled on land that gives an immediate and nice bonus, but handicaps itself for long term viability and usefulness.



3) Minor Faction Diplomacy



Beyond the minor factions giving the AIs allot of trouble (even if they don't take over, they still siege the AIs), I have also seen AIs that have the means to parley and easily complete a quest for a minor faction, but choose to destroy all three villages at a high cost to its own army.

Nice thread! I went with military development, city settling and economy. I think the last two are kinda one in the same, but I think the AI suffers from poor placement because of that new rule for settlers still. I would rather just see the AI actually send their settlers out with military units instead of alone and settle bad spots to avoid defeat.

For me it's:



1) Military development - currently the AI mistakes the word "strategy" for "stratosphere" and has no idea what to do with its armies on the world map. Easily #1 issue for me here, in terms of the AI at least.



2) City building - I mean, it's cute how the AI insists on turning its cities into giant letters but a "C" shape is hardly what I would call efficient disctrict placement.



3) Combat tactics - It feels soooooo random. Sometimes the AI units just make the weirdest decisions that in no way make any logical sense. This also applies to pathfinding AI assisting the human armies.

Hm. I didn't read your thread before choosing and I actually chose exactly the same as you, Stealth.

Too many AI-players have been overrun by minor factions due to missing military, too sparse pacification or by being caught redhanded by my expedition armies, after loosing half their army pacifying a random village.

Moreover, the lonely settlers they send out are a nice fodder to just destroy.

Nosferatiel wrote:
Hm. I didn't read your thread before choosing and I actually chose exactly the same as you, Stealth.

Same here.



The AI does the other things fairly well, but these three need some additional effort put into.

Same as you guys, I voted

1. Military Development

2. City settling



From what I have seen, these 2 points seems to be the two majors weakness of the AI at the moment. Good news, Amplimath told in a post that the settling and city placement has been greatly improved, so hopefully we should see improvments in the next build.

I'm getting the impression that we have a fairly general consensus on the top two priorities for the AI improvements:



1. Military Development

2. City Settling



I'd add Minor Faction Diplomacy in the third spot, but better military AI would probably at least keep the major factions from dying so easily to minor factions, so I'll go with



3. City Building



I hardly ever see the AI building an efficient city. Most of the time, it spreads boroughs around seemingly at random. My guess is that the AI simply looks at the current yields and picks the tile with the highest increase, with no regard for approval or district levels.



I can't even begin to judge its ability to deal with ruins and quests, technology selection, or economy, as I can't really look that deeply into their behavior (and I'm too lazy to edit save files and rejoin a game as a formerly AI-controlled faction). Does the AI at least finally use the marketplace? I haven't had a chance to play with the Roving Clans since the latest patch.

Great Poll! My choices in decreasing priority:

1) City Settling

2) City Building

3) Military Development

4) Market Usage



In fact, right now the AI usually chooses the worst possible places to settle. For some reason it likes to AVOID anomalies and rivers! like, srsly that is so silly LOL



It becomes really annoying whenever I capture their cities to find their cities completely useless and/or under-developed. I find myself Salting The Earth as soon as possible...



Also, on Normal difficulty, the AI RARELY uses the market, not even to buy heroes... maybe because they don't get the technology for it at all?

TBH pretty much everything on that poll.



City Settling, Military Development and Minor Faction Diplomacy are the most noticeable to me.

The AI will usually stagnate, past turn 100-150. most of them will have little to no military presence in their cities and let the Minor Factions siege them into oblivion.

Cities are settled on the borders which is almost always terrible placement.



Major Faction Diplomacy is also bad, the AI parts with techs too easily and values Peace too high. You can literally declare peace with all the AI and grab all their techs if you so desired.

I think they should improve City Building, not AI for it, but it as whole. Then they should improve military and city settling. Cause I hate it when my settlers are closing in to best position in region and they settle in nearest position they could cause that seems good in short terms. I then have to kill them and rebuild elsewhere. Annoying.

The AI has a hard time securing an area and then learning where to settle

Also the AI hero party reveals too many minor factions too early thus causing those factions to ramp up production and send out raiders which kill or seige the ai

as for city building I have noticed the ai build the expansion that only works if you are next to a sea tile in almost every city if it is next to the sea or not so some work there

mainly

the ai needs to fight more with a hero led army and less 1 man armies that get wacked easy

I personally went for City Settling, Minor Faction Diplomacy, and Market Usage.



However, if I had read the posts below, I might have voted Military Development over Minor Faction Diplomacy. After all, if the AI actually maintained reasonable standing armies (with heroes from the market), it might be able to deal with the minor factions, and not get bullied in to poor city locations.

So I would just like to report that the AI's military abilities seem to be progressing very well. In the latest VIP build I just got eliminated by the highly competent armies of the AI. And it wasn't a close match. I got outright stomped.