Speaking of all things culinary and Pavlovian Mmmmmmm.

To quote mister Carrol:

edit: but actually the answer

 might be more fitting to the situation since this answer indicates that in the original situation it was ambiguous to whom Heavenfalls statement was directed.

What I meant with my earlier post is it could learn build orders, sneaky tactics, and other stuff, from humans.  Not that it would try to do everything from the ground up.

It's never that simple. If there was an in-game reason why the AI researched Tech 1 it is pointless to record that it was researched without factoring in the reason.
Recording the fact that Tech 1 was researched due to the AI's successfully implemented desire to do it also does not necessarily have to be connected to "winning the game".
It could have been the fact that the enemy did not use a particular spell or weapon that this tech is especially vulnerable to.

The learning bit itself is simple. That's just recording. Now figuring out which cause lead to which result - that's the tricky bit.
And it's the easiest one to gloss over in suggestions... because it's obvious... to a human. =P

A big part of smart AI is teaching it to "understand". Recognise patterns and situations, recognise 5 armies within 12 squares of each other as an "army buildup".
Doing stuff based on this is easy. Computers are very good at just doing stuff once you tell them what to do.

Speaking of cheese, I like pepper jack. Especially on some johnsonville bratwurst burgers (Cooked in beer, if possible). Most delicious thing I've ever had. How about you guys?

Anyway, I played an online game a while back and was beating the tar out of the AI (Yes, I played my first online game against an AI, mainly because my machine is still getting OOM's) and before it crashed, I had searched the entire map and found them in one tiny city. I had cities all over (City spam ftw) and was consolidating choke points left and right, and the most I saw of the AI before i found their only city was a few adventurers roaming around. The city had a few militia in it and nothing else.

Was the AI code just that defunct (This was 1.08 I believe) that the AI just wouldn't expand or react at all? I've played other games where they've expanded all over the place. What triggers expansion? This particular map was full of resources and good city plots, and with the AI bonuses I would have thought they'd have taken full advantage of everything.

Anyway, looking forward to 1.1. Once the OOM's are gone from my machine I'll be looking to play a little more.

As you say the AI is normally better than that, I think you found a bug in the AI something about that map may have stopped it expanding.

Except for one of the 3 points it looks more like a resource allocation problem. These Points may not have the highest war-strategical value but a very high economy-strategic value. If my eyes dont betray me 2 of the 3 points exhibit Gold, iron, and crystals each of high economical value if it comes to trade and better army tech like magical equipment.

At present, I tend to doubt the AI even knows what its doing, much less the player.  They may have sight of you and all sorts of omniscient information, but they can't do squat with it right now.  They can't even do squat with the information on their own realms.  Fortunately, that looks like it's changing.

Brad, I wanna tell you somethin'.  My biggest gripe with AI in every game I've played to date, is how they value objects*.

*What these are changes from game to game, and is a very blanket term the way I'm using it.  Using Starcraft as an example, I'm talking about Base Structures, Resources, and Units, the three types of objects that make the game what it is.

In every game I've played, the AI is never capable of valuing these objects appropriately.  It generally gives all of them a blanket rating.  Going back to Starcraft, the AI will value base X just as much as base Y, despite base X being on the complete opposite end of the map and almost totally indefensible.  It will also value resources the same way.  Starcraft 2 is a little different in this regard, with the advent of Gold Mineral Patches.  (For those unfamiliar, they yield extra resources per trip compared to their lesser blue counterparts.)  Unfortunately, in SC2, they value these much too highly, and will often over-extend to get their hands on them, consequently making both that base, and their empire as a whole, an easy target.

Still using Starcraft as an example, they also value units the same way.  Playing against a Zerg for instance, I'll be winning a fight, but he'll still have Defilers in the back lines, and a mere handful of Zerglings at the front.  When the AI decides it's time to retreat, it sends ALL the units back.  Zerglings, being much faster, blow by the Defilers, leaving them to be picked off by my forces, despite the fact that with a few more units and the Defilers intact and at home, they could have otherwise prevented me from annihilating them.  Instead they should have valued the Zerglings as absolutely nothing, or rather, as a stop-gap, sacrificing themselves to let the Defilers get away.

I've run into this same problem with GalCiv 2 today.  Granted, I'm playing on Beginner with Sub-Normal AI, so I don't know if that's going to change when I bump everything up later, but even at the most basic levels, players assume their opponents are capable of thinking, "I can't possibly win against all of that, I need to cut my losses and defend what's most important rather than stretching myself thin."

The problem is obviously 'teaching' the AI to prioritize at least semi-intelligently...  But, my two cents are out there now.

Spacial awareness is always something that is harder to programme that you think.  That is why Go is harder to programme than chess.  What you are trying to do is get the AI to maximise the cumulative influence on it territory.  One possible algorithm would be something like this.

Step 1 project influence

give each city a weight based on its current strength (measured somehow -e.g. current army strength plus k*production capability)

Let it project that strength onto a distant tile based on some decay function.

That function would take into account the "distance" of the current best route (say 1/X or 1/X^2 or 1000-x^2)

The distance would accumulate the cost of the route based on how difficult it would be to project force through that route.

Open terrain would be a base cost

water terrain may be a higher cost (infinite without sea invasion)

Enemy territory may be a still higher cost.

Forrest/spawn grounds could also be taken into account as they would be avoided or fought through.

unknown terrain may need a different cost.

Step 2 calculate spheres of influence

if you have the highest influence in a plot it is yours and you count full value for it

if your influence is close to a rival or combination of rivals, then it is borderlands and you count half value for it

otherwise don't bother.

The value for each square will depend upon what it has in it (either a base value for nothing or  a higher value for some resources)

Step 3- evaluate options

what does you territory look like after you have done what you are going to do, is it a good option.

Of couse all this is computationally intensive (path finding is a real pain, let alone keeping track of what each AI knows, and managing the strategic options) - but that is what multi threading will cope with isn't it Brad!

You are correct just like every other computer AI in every other game the AI is not sentient and so does not understand what it's doing . That aside I do agree the current AI is not great and needs improving which is of course what Frogboy is doing and what this thread is all about. I think the rest of your post is really a lot more productive by the way it's much better to say what you think the AI is doing wrong rather  than just saying it's rubbish.

Full rewrites including the ability to work with files and Databases would be serious stuff. Especially if it comes to faction specific ability's one could just stick a file with some code to a existing General purpose Ai.