Why I am concern about including Blake work and Khael FFH work in BTS.

Mutineer said:

Grassland river agriculture farm produce 5 food + 1 commerce.
Grassland forest river agriculture farm produce only 5 food.

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Not really, because thanks to the Fellowship of the Leaves religion, elves can get ancient forests and have 6 food from forest river agriculture farm, and then retain this bonus when switching to other religions. Plus they can also build cottages on forests, you need to take this into account if you speak of the elves and not just stop at farms.

My English isn't great, but it is better than Mutineers.

There are a lot of posters on here for whom English is not a first language but you can understand them no problem.

In my opinion Mutineers written English is very difficult to understand, and I don't think he managed to get his argument across because of this.

I think he may have had some good points, but I cant quite get at what hes saying because of his communication.

Personally I do not see why I shouldnt say that.

klokwerk said:

Absolutely not. He doesn't have to spend money, he just has to wait for the opinions of the people who bought BtS...

Now, he talks about something :
- we don't even know since it's not out
- that can't be changed since the dev is finished and the game is about to go gold

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Other people's opinions are not HIS opinions. Anyways he just put up a critic, he didn't insult anyone. He said that in his opinion Kael and Blake didn't understand global mechanics of the game and made changes based on wrong assumptions, that's far from being an insult or personal attack, it's just an opinion, but you all are bashing him as if he's killed someone, while he does say something interesting and that makes sense (vs. other things more opinable), whatever his use of the english language. At least he tries to speak a language not his own to try and help and discuss with the community. All I can say about Blake's AI is that a work on the AI from the community was already included in Warlords and everyone on this goddamn forum rejoyced saying that the AI was much stronger or cried because they had to decrease their difficulty level. Based on these comments (other people's opinions, as you call them) I went and bought Warlords only to find out that if there was any enhanchement to the AI (I personally didn't see anything worth mentioning) it wasn't worth the money spent on it. A Project I was really looking forward to (Warhammer) even got a huge halt because the devs were convinced that Warlords AI was so far superior to Vanilla's and that it was worth it to waste all the work they had done until then to upgrade to Warlords... while these statements are just BS. Now, I respect any modder of this community, because I do know how hard it is to work to a mod during your spare time, instead of playing someone else's mod, but what I must agree on with Mutineer, and this doesn't apply to Kael's scenario in any way because it's just a scenario, is that it was a bad move from Firaxis to include a mod into the epic game. As long as it stays a mod it's fine, but it must be a choice, and not a dictate, because not all gamers agree with Blake's thoughts.

Blake better AI was good when he optimize city placement, city development, et.., but then he went into direction of exploiting AI bonuses more and increasing AI cheating. Like making AI produce more units just were using AI ridiculous upgrade bonuses more.

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Optimization of city placement = more productive cities. But the AI's get production bonuses, so optimizing city placement is AI "cheating" in your book too!

onedreamer said:

Not really, because thanks to the Fellowship of the Leaves religion, elves can get ancient forests and have 6 food from forest river agriculture farm, and then retain this bonus when switching to other religions. Plus they can also build cottages on forests, you need to take this into account if you speak of the elves and not just stop at farms.

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Farms are mach better then cotagess. Yes, after FoL and ancient forests elves do pick up. They are actially the only race that can switch from agriculture and do not loose mach. Problem is: that happened MACH later in the game. Initially they loose mach compare to most other races.

Kael with later "ballance" changes made it more dificult for elves, as planting forests was moved to divine 3 from divine 2, if I am not mistaken.

Interesting post. If i understand it correctly the main point is that the premise from which these modders proceded to rework the AI is incorrect- and by making these changes the result is that it decreases game options/fun.
The linearity of their approach is amplified by following this false premise. (ex Farms, slavery, production become the only viable mp routes)

What caught my eye is that the op is wondering about negative AI changes in the regular game based on a modders unwittingly bad idea. (Which could happen i suppose)
('Course I am of the belief that all mods (even flavor unit mods -) favor the player's (modder's) notion of gameplay which may have nothing to do with one's own idea of fun from the basic framework-

Mutineer said:

Kael with later "ballance" changes made it more dificult for elves, as planting forests was moved to divine 3 from divine 2, if I am not mistaken.

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Hmm, I didn't know this, not sure it's correct. Btw I agree that in general farms are better than cottages, especially for elves that can run Guardian of Nature and have massive happiness, but a cottage on a forest is different, since it also provides hammers, while farms (with agriculture) have a penalty with that.

onedreamer said:

He said that in his opinion Kael and Blake didn't understand global mechanics of the game and made changes based on wrong assumptions, that's far from being an insult or personal attack, it's just an opinion,

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Yeah, it's an opinion, but an opinion that a wide majority of people consider absolutely wrong.

onedreamer said:

All I can say about Blake's AI is that a work on the AI from the community was already included in Warlords and everyone on this goddamn forum rejoyced saying that the AI was much stronger or cried because they had to decrease their difficulty level. Based on these comments (other people's opinions, as you call them) I went and bought Warlords only to find out that if there was any enhanchement to the AI (I personally didn't see anything worth mentioning) it wasn't worth the money spent on it.

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So your opinion on warlords 2.08 was another opinion most people disagreed with I don't even understand how you couldn't see the difference, but anyway.

onedreamer said:

A Project I was really looking forward to (Warhammer) even got a huge halt because the devs were convinced that Warlords AI was so far superior to Vanilla's and that it was worth it to waste all the work they had done until then to upgrade to Warlords... while these statements are just BS.

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Another opinion that... well you know.

onedreamer said:

As long as it stays a mod it's fine, but it must be a choice, and not a dictate, because not all gamers agree with Blake's thoughts.

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Nope, it won't be a mod, Blake made the AI this time. Every design choice in a game will please some and other ones will disagree. You don't have to buy BtS, but I'm sure the AI will be brilliant.

The OP is completely wrong. Blake's primary goal was to improve the AI such that it wouldn't need ANY 'cheats' to have a fighting chance against a human player.

I refer anyone curious to view the threads in the "Better AI" subforum under Project and Mod development.

As you can see there, Blake and Iustus continued improving on the Warlords 2.08 AI even after release as a "mod" for the community. This project was (AFAIK) done gratis, with many of us in the Civ IV community playtesting/enjoying the heck out of it. It more or less sucked all of my free time from December-March, and I loved every minute of it. There were some disagreements about what worked and what didn't work, but the ultimate goal was clear, and that was to teach the AI how to play without cheats.

I suspect that if you give Blake and Iustus' last Better AI mod version a try, you will be impressed with what the AI was capable of -- including going for a Cultural victory. I was a Monarch level player even on 2.08 Warlords and had to bump myself down to Noble just to have a fighting chance.


All I can say is: if Better AI is what Blake was able to do for free, I really can't wait to see what he can do when he was actually getting paid for it!

Well, I won't argue with a guru of CivIV -- especially since I don't really understand his complaint.

I will bring up some points about Better AI (BAI), since I've played it extensively for more than half a year. Recently I went back to playing 2.08 to see how it played differently, which gave me a fresh perspective on BAI.

My two favorite things about BAI have to do with the reductions in micromanagement Blake and Iustus implemented.

First, the resource governor (the magic guy who decides which tiles your city population works) is much improved over 2.08, which itself was improved over Vanilla and Warlords. Yes, you may still find the need to manually assign your population, but it will be for rare circumstances and not routine tedium.

Second, the never-used build governor (the magic guy who decides what your city should build next) is improved to the point of usability for non-strategic cities. Yes, it still produces an unwanted worker or fishing boat now and then, but otherwise it can be counted on to develop a city without you having to decide whether you want a Library or Theatre next, etc. I usually find myself actively managing no more than six cities; all the rest I leave to the BAI build governor.

What has been missing is sensible management of the workers, such that they build hammer improvements in cities that are emphasising hammers, etc. This apparently is coming in BtS. I look forward to it.

In 2.08 the AIs focus on commerce and huge cities. They tech rapidly and trade techs with each other madly. Some AIs may do warfare, but they're going to try to win by Space Race. It's one-dimensional.

With BAI, the AIs can and do build production cities (and GP farms too, I think). The AIs know how to go for Cultural Victory and some will try it. (I've been beaten this way a few times.) Some AIs still end up going for the Space Ship, but others take an aggressive approach. (I've never been beaten by Domination, but that might be because I don't play out such losing games to the end.) All of this means a more multi-dimensional game.

I look forward to the BtS AI that's better at using its military and knows how to do naval invasions (reportedly, anyway). This alone will make the game more interesting and exciting.

I wouldn't say BAI is perfect, but it is a big improvement over 2.08, Vanilla and original Warlords. Therefore, I expect that the enhanced AI in BtS will be seen a refreshing improvement for Civilization by the vast majority of players.

Remember everyone, that this is an international forum and not everyone here is an expert with English. For many, it's not even their native language, but their 2^nd, or 3^rd, etc.

Yeah, it's an opinion, but an opinion that a wide majority of people consider absolutely wrong.

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A nice thing about opinions though, is their neither right or wrong. It's an opinion.

Don't worry, to this point Firaxis continues to resist my suggestions to add the Golden Girls Coalition to the epic game. I think they fear the power of their special cottage upgrades (cottage, hamlet, village, town, nursing home) and the population boost they get at the discovery of viagra.

Aaaaarh. And you've been trying so hard to get them to accept it, too. Maybe they'll add it in along with TEH_ALIENZ?

Kael said:

Don't worry, to this point Firaxis continues to resist my suggestions to add the Golden Girls Coalition to the epic game. I think they fear the power of their special cottage upgrades (cottage, hamlet, village, town, nursing home) and the population boost they get at the discovery of viagra.

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LOL... Wow, Bea Arthur would totally kick ass as a Civ leader... What would her traits be?

I've also played the BetterAI mod (made by Blake and Iustus) for quite some time. This mod was continuously improving the AI during the last months of the previous year and the first ones of this year. It was very interesting to see the AI do new things and improve with each iteration. Some mistakes were made along the way as not everything that you try will work, but still it kept improving over the weeks. So I think, I'll have to disagree with the Mutineer's opinion that "Blake did not understand game dynamic and balance issues".

About the hiding of money in BetterAI. In Warlords 2.08 and all previous versions of Civ4, the AI would always trade away all of the money it owned if you had something to offer that was worth that money. It wouldn't consider using the money for upgrades or using the money for research (researching at a higher research rate than the break even point). The AI would even trade its money away for one of your useless technologies the turn before it would declare war while it should use the money for upgrading units for the war. Of course, that is not smart. The AI should consider leaving some money for other goals than trading. And that is exactly what Blake taught the AI. The AI will only use some of its money for trading and will use the rest for other purposes.

About the BetterAI cheating more? Complete nonsense. First of all, we choose our difficulty level so that we have a challenging game. Depending on how good we are at the game, we will give the AI some handicap bonuses. You can't call that cheating as you chose to give the AI those bonuses. It's a handicap like many sports also know the idea of handicaps to level the playing field.
The BetterAI mod has reduced these handicap bonuses for the AI because it doesn't need them anymore. The BetterAI mod also removed some of the AI behaviour that was defined differently for humans than for AI controlled civilizations thereby equalizing the playing field.

I've not yet played the Fall from Heaven mod, I should do so soon. It is viewed as one of the best mods made by this community. The mod that is being included with the 'Beyond the Sword' expansion pack, is a mod that is based in the same world but in a far earlier age, some sort of ice age. Any problems that you have with some agricultural civic in this mod are probably not related to the mod that is going to be included in this expansion pack. Farming just doesn't work that well in an ice age.

I must agree with one point from the OP though, the first post is quite badly structured and therefor quite hard to read.

Roland Johansen said:

About the hiding of money in BetterAI. In Warlords 2.08 and all previous versions of Civ4, the AI would always trade away all of the money it owned if you had something to offer that was worth that money. It wouldn't consider using the money for upgrades or using the money for research (researching at a higher research rate than the break even point). The AI would even trade its money away for one of your useless technologies the turn before it would declare war while it should use the money for upgrading units for the war.

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Sorry, but it is incorrect. IN average only half of money avalible for trade by AI IN Vanilla and warlords 2.08.

I say in average, because it is not constant.

But if you switch human player to AI in multiplayer only half of his money will be avalible for trade, the rest AI will reserve.

I can see where Mutineer is coming from.

IMO I always thought a lot of the goals of better AI were somewhat pointless. The more the AI acts like an opportunistic human player, the more useless diplomacy becomes. I've always thought a good understanding of diplomacy is what separates the best civ players from the good ones, and the good ones from the merely terrible (myself). There is definitely an argument that by reducing what a person can get from diplomacy, the game becomes more about how well you can micromanage and how many extra shields/food/beakers you can squeeze out every turn. But this isn't Starcraft or WC3 where resource collection and usage (via units, upgrades whatever) are the paramount. The soft factors (diplomacy, religion, etc) should just be as important as well.

Look at the famous SG deity game. One of the most critical turns was when someone let Shaka cash in his GM and the resultant cash bomb was not available for trade. Now while this might be more "human-like," it deprived the human player of a strategic choice. A normal player might not have ever thought of waiting for the cash bomb to hit before attacking, while a noobie one would wonder how Shaka's power jumped after losing 30 units in a battle.

On the other hand, if the bonuses have been reduced, then a hopeful byproduct is that the AI will value money more. I guess we'll just have to wait to see how much less the AI's production advantage is before passing judgment.

"..thought some of the goals of a better AI were somewhat pointless"

If the result is that you have to further out micro-manage the AI rather than further outwit the AI via diplomacy, then ouch. It would be worse than pointless- as per ol mr Mutineer - it would be detrimental.
(Unless you want to emphasise the out micro managing the opposition part of your game)

Mutineer said:

Sorry, but it is incorrect. IN average only half of money avalible for trade by AI IN Vanilla and warlords 2.08.

I say in average, because it is not constant.

But if you switch human player to AI in multiplayer only half of his money will be avalible for trade, the rest AI will reserve.

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I've based my words on an observation where I compared the money the AI had when spying in his cities and when I contacted him in the trade screen.

You could always get the money an AI gained through selling of technologies or cashing in a great merchant. The AI would never reserve that money for other purposes.

ds61514 said:

Look at the famous SG deity game. One of the most critical turns was when someone let Shaka cash in his GM and the resultant cash bomb was not available for trade. Now while this might be more "human-like," it deprived the human player of a strategic choice. A normal player might not have ever thought of waiting for the cash bomb to hit before attacking, while a noobie one would wonder how Shaka's power jumped after losing 30 units in a battle.

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I don't know about this SG, but I don't get you. At the one hand, you want the AI to behave smarter, but on the other hand, you want the AI to trade away all of its money just before a war starts. That would be an utterly stupid move for the AI.

Of course, when you're playing a far inferior opponent, then there are countless ways to beat him and countless tricks that you can use to beat him. So once the far inferior opponent doesn't do the most stupid moves (like trading away all of its money just before a war), the options to beat him become less and smarter moves are needed.

(I don't consider the move of letting the AI use its Great Merchant to get all of its money especially smart. It's just a trick based on the knowledge that the AI will trade away its money afterwards totally disregarding the threat that you pose. It's a trick based on the stupidity of the AI.)

But also not really, since he hasn't seen final release. It's like judging a product by it's alpha version. Obviously, they've been working on this product in private, and anything that was previously released is not the final version.

onedreamer said:

Not really, since he will have spent money on that.

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