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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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Civ4 Expac Questions
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Sorry to bump this thread but it didn't feel like it deserved a new one. I bought BTS and I am curious WHY the AI is significantly better. I couldn't find anything on google other than it IS.
I just wonder if there are documented changes like "blah will now blah when blah" or does no one really know how the AI was updated? I actually had a ~12 ship fleet sneak attack on my very very backline capital on WARLORD, I had to whip off like 10 pop. D: I used to toot around "build every wonder in the game" on noble or prince and now I'm find that same toot-level to be warlord. The enemy AIs are throwing literally hundreds of units at me (ineffectually, but still, JEEZ) and still stealing some wonders.
November 11th, 2016, 05:48
(This post was last modified: November 11th, 2016, 05:54 by GreyWolf.)
They integrated a version of BetterAI, a mod made by a player named Blake and some others. You can search for the old BetterAI subforum in Civfanatics to learn more about its development.
Sometime during Civ4 original a player named Blake decide to make a Mod called Better AI. This was a huge success and Firaxis - realising the difference on AI-quality - hired Blake and incorporated large parts of his AI into Civ4 - Warlords(IIRC). The drop in easily beaten difficulty is around the same all the players experienced when the AI-update was officially released.
As I remember he changed the way the AI managed its cities, which tiles it improves with what improvement, the handling of fleets/air power and naval invasion, increased the AI-urge to win and so on. Sadly it happened such a long time ago that there are scarce information about that time and all the changes. Blake himself took a sabbatical after the work and dropped from the face of the planet. He was a member on civfanatics and here but with all the server-changes, software-updates this history is most likely lost. ... Found something from old patchnotes (Warlords 2.08): AI city placement improvement as per Blake Improved AI use of ’emphasize’ buttons as per Blake Pop-rush and draft AI improvement as per Blake Worker AI improvement as per Blake Improved civics AI as per Blake Tweaked AI building priorities as per Blake
Warlords was the first time Firaxis implemented BetterAI changes. They implemented more of them in BTS. Warlords changes dealt only with the city management, BTS changed also the military side of AI things. That's why BTS Shaka would kill Warlords Shaka.
Today's continuatior of the AI changes is the K-Mod. 
Blake's BetterAI mod was specifically implemented in Warlords patch 2.08, a couple patch iterations after the expansion itself.
Some of the numbers relating to difficulty level were also reduced. Like Immortal difficulty dropped the second starting settler and went from 70% AI costs to 80%. Deity stayed unchanged at 60% and that's why there's still a huge jump between Immortal and Deity.
You need to compare Warlords patch 2.08 with BTS since Warlords patch 2.08 is the one with Blake's BetterAI. I think there were a few more improvements in BTS, but they were mostly minor or taught the AI to use the new mechanics.
If I remember right, the 'aggressive AI' setting in BTS was how the original BetterAI mod version played by default but was turned down since players like to win and dislike getting killed by AI rushes. |
