tackling some AI problems - a proposal

[LM+]

There are a number of problems with the Victoria AI that the VIP modders report themselves as having difficulty with. Among them are:


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- greatly reducing population growth by raising taxes on the poor to 100%.

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- ignoring raw material production in favour of industrial production.
- ignoring the benefits of capitalists
- building railroads only slowly, and the higher levels (steel, integral) often not at all

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- failing to soak up excess research points through tech trading, and therefore usually not completing the tech tree by game end (whereas a human player of most civilized nations will complete it, often well before game end)
- not introducing modern ship designs early enough - certainly not as early as a experienced human player often does. There are innumberable tales of people whupping up on GB's Men-o-War with their new Ironclads.


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In my own game, I use the following methods to handle these problems:

The population growth problem is addressed by simply giving certain AI-controlled major nations (specifically, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, and China) a small (0.2 or 0.3) bonus to population growth. This leads to more historical results, particularly for France and Austria, and for China after 1870. If controlled by the player, these nations get no bonuses.

The other problems are ameliorated through a pair of mods. At the beginning of each game, the player is asked two questions.

- Firstly, whether or not he desires the AI to be given production and efficiency assistance. If he allows it, all AI-controlled nations get significant production bonuses for all mines, also silk and tropical wood, and lesser bonuses to all other RGOs and factories. Bonuses are granted up to five times, as the AI learns industrial and commerical techs up to a certain level. This means that these are mostly middle and late-game bonuses. The end result is to make the industrial power of a late-game AI-controlled nation look dangerously like that of a nation controlled by a experienced human player, skilled at gathering and exploiting resources for profit.

- Secondly, the player is asked whether or not he desires the AI to get free naval techs. If he allows it, AI-controlled nations will get up to 13 naval techs for free, upon satisfying the prerequisities (naval tech, industrial techs), and after a certain date (i.e. 1850-1855 for steamers). This improves the AI's ability to focus research on other fields, and makes it more likely that, first, modern ships will be introduced at roughly their historical time-frame and, secondly, that a number of nations will have semi-modern navies (as opposed to Brazil having Frigates in 1890 and Monitors in 1920).

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These three mods make, in my experience, for a more interesting, and in some ways more historical, VIP game. A rough draft may be found at:
http://st24.startlogic.com/~runegold/aar/general/AI_assistance_mod.zip

 

[OHgamer]

Ideas sound quite plausible. Once we get 0.4 finally out the door I'd like to revisit the AI in general, and this would be something that could definitely be considered for inclusion in 0.5

 

[LM+]

Thank you for the response.

The quality of the AI certainly is important. There are at least three ways to address the shortcomings of the AI in comparison with an experienced human player:

1. Wait for Paradox to fix or ameliorate them. Probably won't happen.

2. Tweak the game so that the weaknesses of the AI are less apparent. There's lots of good to be done here, and the VIP contributors have clearly been hard at work. However, past a certain point - hard to see in advance - such changes more and more often take the form of annoying the player with mandatory restrictions. Let's be honest with ourselves: Among the reasons why almost all of us like Victoria so much is precisely that we can more-or-less abuse the rules and do things the AI can't. Who doesn't get his jollies out of claim-stealing?

3. Give player-determined bonuses to AI-controlled nations. The game already does this when the player chooses Hard or Very Hard difficulty, but for a lot of players the difficulty settings are either insufficient (when playing some nations), or not moddable enough. People want control. So I've been working on rough-and-ready ways to more finely adjust the difficulty settings of the game. This is the method I propose that VIP add to its toolkit.

 

[OHgamer]

As I said once we are past the release of 0.4 then we can take a look at these ideas and play around with them. Probably start of March once the dust of 0.4 settles .

If you haven't checked out the VIP section at coremod.org that is becoming the central discussion place for the mod. Just click on the addy in my sig.