How does AI advance so fast in science?

Seek said:
I also just realized that the science-from-happiness mechanic is also certainly a factor in tech runaways (I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier!:crazyeye:) - perhaps lowering this bonus would even things out a bit. Since peaceful AIs frequently have 30+ happiness that would account for some of the disparities here.
Click to expand...

This would help some, since the AI is typically ahead of v137 human happiness. The downside is that it hurts tall human civs more than wide ones, and they're already having a hard time. That's why I keep looking at AI-only adjustments.

It looks like this is what Thal did in v137.1, and I'll be starting a new game as soon as I finish my work today. Thal: what are the medium-difficulty levels that you adjusted - Warlord through...?

Other v137.1 changes: Collective Rule is probably a good idea... although you could take pity and make it +25%!
 
I adjusted things under the assumption the AI needs some basic military bonus on all difficulties to compensate for its lack of skill in that area. In my experience the Emperor+ difficulties appear balanced well between military and economy. Based on the feedback in this thread, it seems on middle difficulties (Warlord-King) it favors economic bonuses too much:

AlextheGr8 said:
I can fight off and beat the AI when they have double what my army has. I just am annoyed that they are advancing soooo fast in science.
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So what I did is "smudge" the military bonuses downwards from the harder difficulties. Here's an example on Prince:

v137
+8 :c5war: + 2 :c5war: per era
+0 visibility
-5% :c5gold: maintenance
+4% :c5production: per era
+4% :c5science: per era

v137.1
+20 :c5war: + 4 :c5war: per era
+2 visibility
-9% :c5gold: maintenance
+2% :c5production: per era
+1% :c5science: per era
 
How do you see the connection between production and science output to population and beakers? To what degree does production affect all of it, versus science? I ask because I always worry about nerfing tall civs (AI and human) while nerfing wide (runaway) ones. If it's too broad of a question, no problem.

Also, will you address the runaway science issue on Emperor on a future beta?
 
I worry with moving the happiness science mechanic to apply to all cities will only exacerbate the problem, but we'll see.

@pthmix - I see, thank you. When the mechanic was introduced it was stated that DoFs increase the science from RAs by 50%, and when it was recently increased the paradigm changed (150 -> 200%). I was justifiably confused I think!:p
 
Seek said:
I worry with moving the happiness science mechanic to apply to all cities will only exacerbate the problem, but we'll see.
Click to expand...

Agreed, because I thought that mechanic was in place to help tall empires, a larger portion of whose science comes from their capital compared to wide empires.
 
One way of nerfing wide, but not tall empires would be by altering the empire science rate per net happiness from 1% :c5science: to (1 - average satellite distance from capital/100*)% :c5science: Like an old school corruption mechanic.

* 100 used for illustrative purposes and would need to be dependant on the map size.
 
@Txurce
I did adjust higher difficulties, but by less than medium difficulties; it's complicated to show all the numbers. I haven't seen runaway AIs in my emperor games. In each round of changes I'm still achieving scientific, cultural, and military victories without much trouble. It seems like most feedback is on warlord-prince-king difficulties so I'm trying to target that range.

@Seek
I recognize that mixing up descriptions is confusing, which is why I often try to express things as a percentage of the total... so 200% is a +100% bonus. To put it another way... allies get double RA rewards.

@Zaldron
The main goal of :c5science: from :c5happy: is to make happiness more useful. It balances peaceful-vs-conquest empires now instead of tall-wide. Warlike empires have much lower happiness than peaceful ones.
 
Thalassicus said:
@Txurce
I haven't seen runaway AIs in my emperor games. In each round of changes I'm still achieving scientific, cultural, and military victories without much trouble. It seems like most feedback is on warlord-prince-king difficulties so I'm trying to target that range.
Click to expand...

You probably haven't seen them in your King-level games, either! I'm about to give v137.1 a whirl, but a lot of the posts about runaway science civs came from Emperor-level players - enough that Dunkah reminded us not to forget the King players!
 
Emperor is the only setting I've played on civ for five years or so (other than a few months on immortal at Civ 5's release, before this mod made it harder). This is why I rely on feedback from the community to get a sense of how to adjust higher/lower difficulties. :)
 
Thalassicus said:
@Zaldron
The main goal of :c5science: from :c5happy: is to make happiness more useful. It balances peaceful-vs-conquest empires now instead of tall-wide. Warlike empires have much lower happiness than peaceful ones.
Click to expand...

Degrading :c5science: from :c5happy: by average satellite distance from capital will hurt conquest driven empires more than peaceful ones.

If possible, a better solution would be to calculate the boost for each individual city. Again, degrade the boost by the distance from the capital, but only the capital and cities connected to your trade network would be eligible. That way newly planted or conquered cities will take a while to integrate into your empire and start contributing towards the spread of information and ideas.
 
Thalassicus said:
Emperor is the only setting I've played on civ for five years or so (other than a few months on immortal at Civ 5's release, before this mod made it harder). This is why I rely on feedback from the community to get a sense of how to adjust higher/lower difficulties. :)
Click to expand...

I think the feedback on this thread (and others) is that Emperor in particular needs an adjustment.
 
Well I dropped down a notch and have been playing a fun game. I guess I'm not good enough even for the normal difficulty. I do play 12 civs on a huge map, so there is a lot of competition. Maybe my strategy just doesn't work well to build up as fast as the Ai early on, but I'm catching up later.
 
There is no 'normal' difficulty anymore. I changed the descriptions to represent that. :)

Settler - "Let me learn the game."
Chieftain - "Let me relax."
Warlord - "Let me relax."
Prince - "Give me a challenge."
King - "Give me a challenge."
Emperor - "Test my limits."
Immortal - "Test my limits."
Deity - "I would even survive a zombie apocalypse."
 
I'm on Warlord I think. Fell too far behind on Prince. They expand fast on Prince but I am superior in everything else. Prince they just took off with science and I couldn't keep up.
 
My experience is that most AI's follow suit no matter what. I have no idea why... If I could just figure out how to do this right, I'd like to share a couple of illustrative pictures, and then maybe someone could help me make sense of them. Cudos to the guy who made infoaddict btw :goodjob:

The first one is science output graph, which I pretty much own:


Next up; Number of tech advances, which is pretty much the same for everyone... Why?



Edit: Okay, so pictures didn't go too well. Where can I link pictures from again? I've used some kind of service for it before, but I can't remember what it is called...
 
yea, the AI gets some crazy bonuses.

i noticed, that later in the game, once a warrior civ wins a war against another AI and gets the capital, it goes nuts as it gets all the benefits but no drawbacks. This can result in military/sience takeoff where you simply cannot compete anymore, it screwes up the game.

also, the AI seems to tech 2x as fast as the player. infoaddict shows this quite consistantly.

basically, this forces you into military confict, thats the only way to keep AIs in check.
 
I think you *should* have to get into military conflicts to keep the AI in check at the highest difficulty levels. Otherwise the highest difficulties will be too easy for those players who do so.
 
Yeah, this is kind of a big problem now. Funny, as it used to be very well balanced. Now, on Prince or whatever the neutral level is (which I use to test stuff out), I'll barely be into the Classical age and some civs are hitting the Renaissance and giving me a spy. (ca. 350BC).
 
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