45°38'N-13°47'E
Deity
I'm tweaking this option, especially iAIResearchPercent in handicapinfo, which we recently discovered was not working as intended.
Problem now is that when using flexible AI, right from the start some civs have their difficulty increased while other have it decreased, but they mostly keep their handicap level forever. So if Holy Roman is first in score and gets up to Deity level, they start falling behind in score but they always keep Deity. Same for other smaller civs which go down to Settler and keep it almost forever.
In general, it looks like handicap is globally increasing. In my current game, Byzantium was rocketing from Noble to Immortal in first 60-80 turns over 600 (they were leading score table). Now it's turn 275 and they're 16th over 25 civs and still they have Immortal level. I think that's absurd.
IIRC they change level when they are outside 1 standard deviation from the average. Maybe we should change this. Or we should grant some "grace" period at the start of the game; I've seen AI going up from Noble to Deity in ancient era only and not going down from there anymore. I've tried with Blitz gamespeed only but I think slower gamespeeds would make things worse...
Edit: by the way, I think there's something else wrong with Flexible AI. Are we sure about how it works? I mean, if you look at HandicapInfo there's a set of values which are AI specific: iAIGrowthPercent, iAIResearchPercent, iAITrainPercent, etc. Those values mimic their iGrowthPercent, iResearchPercent, iTrainPercent, etc counterparts in other xml files. This is done because if you don't use Flexible AI, AI always play at Noble. Hence when you select harder handicap levels (Prince, Monarch and up), to make things harder for human players some AI values are set to make things easier for them; iAIGrowthPercent, iAIResearchPercent, iAITrainPercent, etc are making things easier for AI if you (human player) are on Monarch. But what happens when you use Flexible AI Difficulty? Does AI always read those values? Because if it does, when AI moves up from Noble to Prince, iAIGrowthPercent, iAIResearchPercent, iAITrainPercent, etc. are making things easier (not harder!) for that given AI. Unless I'm missing something, we have to completely change handicap levels and how AI uses them with or without Flexible AI.
Problem now is that when using flexible AI, right from the start some civs have their difficulty increased while other have it decreased, but they mostly keep their handicap level forever. So if Holy Roman is first in score and gets up to Deity level, they start falling behind in score but they always keep Deity. Same for other smaller civs which go down to Settler and keep it almost forever.
In general, it looks like handicap is globally increasing. In my current game, Byzantium was rocketing from Noble to Immortal in first 60-80 turns over 600 (they were leading score table). Now it's turn 275 and they're 16th over 25 civs and still they have Immortal level. I think that's absurd.
IIRC they change level when they are outside 1 standard deviation from the average. Maybe we should change this. Or we should grant some "grace" period at the start of the game; I've seen AI going up from Noble to Deity in ancient era only and not going down from there anymore. I've tried with Blitz gamespeed only but I think slower gamespeeds would make things worse...
Edit: by the way, I think there's something else wrong with Flexible AI. Are we sure about how it works? I mean, if you look at HandicapInfo there's a set of values which are AI specific: iAIGrowthPercent, iAIResearchPercent, iAITrainPercent, etc. Those values mimic their iGrowthPercent, iResearchPercent, iTrainPercent, etc counterparts in other xml files. This is done because if you don't use Flexible AI, AI always play at Noble. Hence when you select harder handicap levels (Prince, Monarch and up), to make things harder for human players some AI values are set to make things easier for them; iAIGrowthPercent, iAIResearchPercent, iAITrainPercent, etc are making things easier for AI if you (human player) are on Monarch. But what happens when you use Flexible AI Difficulty? Does AI always read those values? Because if it does, when AI moves up from Noble to Prince, iAIGrowthPercent, iAIResearchPercent, iAITrainPercent, etc. are making things easier (not harder!) for that given AI. Unless I'm missing something, we have to completely change handicap levels and how AI uses them with or without Flexible AI.