A Failed Experiment

I think that it is best to report both successes and failures to the modding community, and I have a failed experiment to report.

I like to play a slow-paced game, building a lot of improvements and Wonders, and play on very large continent and archipelago maps, currently using one of 300 X 200, one of 300 X 180, both created by me, and Rick's Battleground map of 362 X 362. I normally have maybe 5 or so AI opponents, pre-placed so as not to disturb me early in the game. I have boosted the yeilds of the terrain and resources so that I can create cities with high production, without blanketing the map with a city every 9 tiles. Town size is 8-9, city size is 20-21, that idea I got from TeTurkhan's Test of Time scenario.

Side Note: I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to TeTurkhan for many of my ideas for modifying the game. Hopefully, TeTurkhan will see this and accept my heartfelt thanks. It was after seeeing his scenario in the Conquests editor while using my son's high school Windows laptop, that led this dedicated Mac user to buy a surplus Windows computer from the high school and begin modifying the game.

Returning to the main point, because I play slowly, developing each city fully and expanding slowly, the AI civs using their programmed Rapid Early Expansion tend to explode, and while I normally have the technology edge, I still find myself in grinding long drawn out wars later in the game, of which I cannot say that I particularly enjoy.

Therefore, I have been working on ways to slow down the AI early expansion to keep their level of city building similar to mine. So far, what works best is setting the settler cost to 4 population. This gives the AI a growth rate similar to mine without excessively slowing it down. However, because the AI is still creating settlers as rapidly as possible to start with, it does leave the AI with a shortage of workers.

To compensate for that, I set the Palace to auto-create a worker every 10 turns, so as to give the AI a steady trickle of workers. That is where things did not work quite as I expected. I ran both Debug mode, and also finally figured out how to get an embassy in another Civilization's capital, so I could check that way as well. About half the time, the AI did use the auto-produced workers, the best civilizations for that being the Inca, the Aztecs, the Celts, and the Zulu. The remaining civs simply stockpiled the workers in the capital and made no use of them. India had 17 workers in the capital when I finally attacked it, Persia has presently 11 in the capital in another test game, where I varied some of the other conditions to make sure there was not any contributing factor, and what the Germans did, I have no clue, as there is no sign of improvements, and no sign of any workers either. Babylon was a mixed case, as in one game, the AI did a good job with the workers, and another game, it did nothing.

I have been using the randomly generated starting positions when I generate the map for the AI civs, but that does not seem to be a factor. I guess what I am going to have to do is make sure that there is a food boosting resource or terrain in the initial starting location 9 tile box, and drop the auto-produced workers.

I do admit to making sure the starting locations for all of the Sea Faring civs that I play are quite good.

One thing from all of the testing is that I had the AI establish embassies in my capital for the first time, so I figured out how to get one in their capitol. That is something new for me.

Do all civ's use the same worker? Or do civ's get their own flavor workers?

Workers do nothing if the worker actions are not set correctly in the editor. Not sure if something like this may be causing it. I don't believe auto-produced workers in Civinator's CCM have these problems.

tom2050 said:

Do all civ's use the same worker? Or do civ's get their own flavor workers?

Workers do nothing if the worker actions are not set correctly in the editor. Not sure if something like this may be causing it. I don't believe auto-produced workers in Civinator's CCM have these problems.

Click to expand...

All of the civs are set to use the basic worker, I am still not that good at adding units or buildings to the game. The odd one is Babylon, as that used them very well one game and did nothing in the other.

Do the workers have any worker strenght? sometines adding new units in the editor come with 0% worker strenght....also does the various terrain types allow for the terraforming actions? sometimes these are also disabled in the editor when "import" occurs.

But most importantly..did you like the my map? Do you have more sugestions on tweaking it? I´m currently working heavily to improve it as you know.

One thing about the seafaring attribute, is that the starting locations tend to be near the coast, and near the coast the land is always better and the probability of avoiding jungle/desert areas increase, that´s what i sense from playing Carthage a lot on online games, starts always make me smile 75% of the times.

Could the civs have been at war with each other? The workers could have retreated to the cities if they felt threatened?

Attached is a .rar file with the modified .biq file of the test. I have added no units, just modified combat values, changed data for improvements and Wonders, and added some resources.

I have the following Sea Faring civilizations pre-placed on the map with boosted starting positions: England, Netherlands, Byzantines, Scandanavians/Vikings, Spain, and Portugal. I have not added Carthage to this map.

I have pre-designated starting locations for the following civilizations: Aztecs, Maya, Inca, India, and Babylon. I had the Celts in the game until I started using the Gallic Swordsman with boosted hit points for my basic Barbarian unit. They expanded very nicely, but if you put them back in, change the basic Barbarian unit to something else, otherwise, they are going to wreak pluperfect havoc with the other civilizations.

I have run pretty much the same setup with two other maps, and gotten similar results. The Aztec and Inca seem to use the added workers, the Maya vary with every game, except on this map where they do well, Babylon varies, Celts do well, India does very poorly. I ran Persia a few times, again with poor results, they just stockpiled the extra workers, and did no terrain modifications. Germany on another map did very poorly as well. At no time in any of the games were any of the other civilizations at war with another. For the most part, they had not made contact with any other civilization. The Barbarians were causing them problems, and I was loosing units on a regular basis to the Barbarians. Not sure how much a factor that might have been.

I should also say, that because of a problem with Windows 7 and the Civ3 Conquest Editor, I cannot tell where I have located Barbarian camps as they do not appear on the Editor map. I can only see them in the game. Same with goody huts. They do show up, oddly enough, in the Vanilla and Play the World Editor. Very odd.

Also, this modification represents some testing that I was doing, and is not really something that I had planned to post soon. I am planning on adding a resource pack to reflect the added resources, and also I am working on a Mammoth Wonder and mammoth units for the game. I will probably also work in my Cathaginian War Elephant for the Carthage Unique Unit, requiring Ivory as a resource. The Indian War Elephant also requires Ivory as a resource for building.

There is an Iron 25 bonus resource that I use to jump start my playing nation, which is also randomly distributed on the map.

Look it over, gentlemen and ladies, and see if you can figure out what is going on.

RickFGS said:

Do the workers have any worker strenght? sometines adding new units in the editor come with 0% worker strenght....also does the various terrain types allow for the terraforming actions? sometimes these are also disabled in the editor when "import" occurs.

Click to expand...

I have added no worker units, they are the standard worker, and it is standard terrain, allowing for terraforming.

But most importantly..did you like the my map? Do you have more sugestions on tweaking it? I´m currently working heavily to improve it as you know.

Click to expand...

Rick, believe me when I say that I LIKE your map. I can put in a fair number of other civilizations and not run into them for ages. One tweak that you should consider is making the Privateer a "no resources required" naval unit, because of the map size. with a transport ability of one, so that it can carry an Explorer. I also keep thinking about TeTurkhan's Test of Time mod, where the Native American groups did not get horses until Navigation. Having them get a cavalry unit with Navigation might be something to think about.

One thing about the seafaring attribute, is that the starting locations tend to be near the coast, and near the coast the land is always better and the probability of avoiding jungle/desert areas increase, that´s what i sense from playing Carthage a lot on online games, starts always make me smile 75% of the times.

Click to expand...

Yes, if there are Sea Faring civilizations in the game, you will normally get starting locations on or within one tile of the coast. With boosted water terrain yields and boosted and an increased number of water resources, this can really get them going in the game. There is a Kelp resource now that could be used to increase shield production for Coastal tiles as well.

The only thing I can see that might possibly be fluking up some of the AI is that alot of terrain doesn't allow any of the worker actions (cities, colonies, airfields, outposts, radar, forts). Only marsh and volcano allow these. Cities only in marsh, volcano, and mountains.

Of course, it shouldn't cause anything strange to happen... it should only do what is checked.

I know I think you said this was done purposely, but I see nothing else that could possibly cause the worker issue. I won't have time till this weekend to run a test though.

tom2050 said:

The only thing I can see that might possibly be fluking up some of the AI is that alot of terrain doesn't allow any of the worker actions (cities, colonies, airfields, outposts, radar, forts). Only marsh and volcano allow these. Cities only in marsh, volcano, and mountains.

Of course, it shouldn't cause anything strange to happen... it should only do what is checked.

I know I think you said this was done purposely, but I see nothing else that could possibly cause the worker issue. I won't have time till this weekend to run a test though.

Click to expand...

Hmm, that does not sound right, as several of the AI nations have colonies out for resources, and I have been building cities on grassland, plains, desert, hills, not sure about forests. I have put outposts in on hills using captured Incan workers. I will need to get on the Windows box and check that.

Edit Note:
I checked the .biq file, and every is okay to be done except Marsh terrain allows only outposts and is impassable to Wheeled Units, with Volcanoes only impassable to Wheeled units. Note sure what would happen with compressing the file that would reverse all of that.

timerover51 said:

One tweak that you should consider is making the Privateer a "no resources required" naval unit, because of the map size. with a transport ability of one, so that it can carry an Explorer. I also keep thinking about TeTurkhan's Test of Time mod, where the Native American groups did not get horses until Navigation. Having them get a cavalry unit with Navigation might be something to think about.

Click to expand...

Nice ideia, i think i´ll take it , let´s see how it goes when i finally make a test run.

tom2050 said:

Do all civ's use the same worker? Or do civ's get their own flavor workers?

Workers do nothing if the worker actions are not set correctly in the editor. Not sure if something like this may be causing it. I don't believe auto-produced workers in Civinator's CCM have these problems.

Click to expand...

I am beginning to think that it has to do with what boxes are checked in the civilization Build Often menu in the editor. The civilizations that seem to be doing best with the auto-produced workers are those with the "Produce Workers" often box checked. I will need to check Civinator's work.

Having a settler cost 4 population definitely slows the AI down, but as long as there is sufficient food at the capital, it does not keep the AI from expanding, albeit slower than in the standard game.

I set your biq to the Debug mod and watched 15 turns. In the Debug-version of your biq you can note the debacle of your workers very clearly. There are a lot of goody huts (that in demigod mostly spit out barbarians)and barbarian camps much too close to the cities. Like Virote_Considon posted, workers retreat, if they feel threatened - but this threat mustn´t come from beeing in war with other civs, it can also come frome the barbarians. The barbarians approach to the cities and fortify, the workers of that civ retreat to the city and do nothing.

Remove the goody huts near the expansion room of the civs and set the barbarian camps to a longer distance to the cities.

Another word to the setting in your biq: You also use accelereated production. This causes additional distortion to workers that are leaving with the old setting as they are much too slow.

Civinator said:

I set your biq to the Debug mod and watched 15 turns. In the Debug-version of your biq you can note the debacle of your workers very clearly. There are a lot of goody huts (that in demigod mostly spit out barbarians)and barbarian camps much too close to the cities. Like Virote_Considon posted, workers retreat, if they feel threatened - but this threat mustn´t come from beeing in war with other civs, it can also come frome the barbarians. The barbarians approach to the cities and fortify, the workers of that civ retreat to the city and do nothing.

Remove the goody huts near the expansion room of the civs and set the barbarian camps to a longer distance to the cities.

Another word to the setting in your biq: You also use accelereated production. This causes additional distortion to workers that are leaving with the old setting as they are much too slow.

Click to expand...

Thank you, Civinator. I will need to put the .biq file on a computer where I can see the goody huts and barbarian camps and then take them out. As I indicated, on the Windows laptop that I normally use for game editing, something in Windows 7 has knocked out the files in the editor that see the terrain overlays except for, fortunately, river.