RomanHoliday’s AI Overhaul (Multiplayer Tested)

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Authors: Mysterymilosh, RomanHoliday, Smally

Last revision: 7 Aug, 2023 at 02:27 UTC (6)

File size: 484.35 KB

On Steam Workshop

Description:

This AI script rework makes each Leader far more challenging, unique and fun to play against. I was so frustrated with the passive and mostly unambitious AI, especially in multiplayer games with friends, that I wrote my own AI mod lol
These are the most important areas where I’ve improved the AI scripts / xml / behaviour trees and it’s noticeably better:

• Capturing and maintaining loyalty in cities when invading other civs to potentially develop an empire
• Improved and more extensive strategy for all of the major victory types, including Science, Religious, Domination and Culture (the default victory scripts are very basic, I have further improved them with my recent big update, see my changelog for more details)
• More unique personality and behaviour for each leader. Each leader is more likely to play to their strengths / historical personalities
• All leaders, in particular militaristic, are far more aggressive when it is to their advantage. Attacks are made with considerably larger forces and often multiple cities at once, happen more quickly and are more likely to focus on a border city first or/and the settlement that is the least well defended. Defending units are also handled better, multiple tiers of walls are built when required and leaders maintain a larger standing army
• More intelligent world congress decisions, such as potentially down-voting disaster requests and voting for motions that will help them in their best current victory type and/or military conquest
• AI is much more effective in all other military aspects. Builds and makes use of plenty of fighters, bombers and appropriate anti-air in the late game. Uses Siege units to attack cities far more effectively and builds far more of them when needed
• If Oppenheimer worked on this mod, he would regret it’s development
• Improved naval strategies and more effective naval invasions (as seen in some of the screenshots above)
• AI improves many more tiles and prioritises important tiles first (such as strategic resources and luxuries). However in some cases it still does not improve all strategics properly in the late game (e.g. if a farm is already built on it) and so the AI is given a small amount of strategics at higher difficulties and in the later eras to make up for this.
• AI is more competent at diplomacy and more often will catch you off guard with a surprise war (it’s life passion seems to be backstabbing me when i’m not expecting it in multiplayer games)

Smaller Improvements Including:

• More Rapid Expansion in the early game, with the AI being able to carry out 2 settler operations at once instead of the default 1 and higher prioritisation of settlers in the early game (and the settle city operation). Additionally city settlement placement has been slightly improved, especially for specific leaders such as some militaristic civs to forward settle more or to settle near resources they have a bonus for (such as woods, jungle and coast for the Mauri) and for all civs to have a bias towards settling near important strategic resources
• Pillaging other civilisations if it is the best strategy to do so (Using Delnar’s custom pillage operation) and to heal / plunder during battle. Great for pillaging focused civ’s like Norway
• Many other small improvements / tweaks

For an even harder challenge (multiplayer compatible) I recommend using this small 6 mod AI collection:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006484183
(RED’s AI Diplomatic Reservations is important as it helps increase the chance the AI will attack you if you annoy it by increasing the diplomatic penalty for negative actions by 50%)

Important Multiplayer Advice: To prevent desyncs, make sure to host the game on the person with the slowest processor (a useful tip for all multiplayer games, discovered by Spiffing Brit.)

Additionally, the game may start, but this mod is not compatible with other AI mods such as Real Strategy (a fantastic mod btw) or AI+. Using both mods at the same time will break the AI and lead to conflicting, likely incompetent behaviour.

Credit:
Infixo for the improved City Defence, Naval Superiority and Great Person AI behaviour trees (probably the best and most dedicated civ modder there is) and for helping me understand the best ways to mod the AI so much more
Delnar for his custom pillage operation and documentation

Additional Info:

• This is my best attempt at an AI mod using the available game files, that makes the AI aggressive when it has an advantage, better at winning, more unique and works in multiplayer. Of course because we do not have access to the actual DLL files there are still a few aspects of the AI’s behaviour we cannot improve as much. However, thank you very much to Firaxis for developing the game in a way that means there are still such a huge amount of game files than can still be accessed and edited despite this
• AI’s starting military units (not civilians) at higher difficulties are reduced from vanilla to even out the difficulty / to prevent the AI from ending your game with the aid of free warriors before you have a chance (especially on Deity)
• Custom Leader personalities for a few historical modded leaders (JFD’s Soviet Union, Germany and Italy)
• Thank you very much for supporting my mod! 🙂
• Deity Gandhi, is waiting for you 😉