Caveman 2 Cosmos

I've started a few games recently (all with start as minors) and the AI seemed to handly itself reasonably well in some, but in my latest one it's 5000BC and I'm already well ahead. I thought it was to do with the change in the animals (returning directly to the cities) but now it makes more sense. I almost never see the units of other civs, in fact I can't recall the last time I saw one. Also my hunters are finding lots of creatures near the cities of my enemies when I would expect their hunters to be killing most of them. Unless of course they don't have any hunters!

I was thinking with the code, would it be possible to link the AI to gaining the writing tech, so that the AI would approach the constant 'war' before writing differently from the wars after it.
 
FYI for everyone.

Don't use 'start as minors' option if you want a challenging game!

It's been reported that in GEM games lots of civs seem to go turtle, and just hunker down in their starting city, not hunting effectively.

This is because they are at war, and they are all trying to not fall behind in pure military power. This has a number of effects:
  1. They don't stop to build 'frivolous' things, like explorers and animal hunting units!
  2. They don't build economy buildings as quickly as they otherwise would (or sometimes at all if they start to fall behind in military power)
  3. They over-expand their military. Not to an extent they cannot finanically support it at all (just to an extent that would be reasonable in a 'real' war), but to the extent that they cripple their science output, which creates a vicious circle
  4. Depending on starting location, eventually a civ may get a sufficient military multiple on its neighbours to actually attack, which tends to result in a runaway dominant AI in that area. Mostly however, they tend to all stagnate together

This leaves the human player laughing (especially if they are geograpically somewhat isolated like being on an island), and makes for a very easily won game

Sometime I'll fix it, but doing so won't be trivial because it will require the AI to have a concept of different 'levels' of war. Obviosuly the 'passive' war that start as minors introduces is not really the same as a 'hot' war later in the game, so the AI will need to respond differently.

For now I strongly advise against 'start as minors'.

lol, I picked start as minors to have a challenge, as I wanted to be able to trade techs only once I had writing, not once another nation has writing. While in normal games the techleader gets writing and I get techs from him by trading gatherers/contacts well before I researched writing myself... so it's just to make it a bit harder for me now it turns out the minor start option is actually easier.. :sad:

One additional info: even in start as minor games there can be a handful of civs having a "normal" economy without too much military. I don't know what factors aside from location (not too close to other civ?) count for that but on GEM I had Mali and Mongolia with normal economies at start as minors.
 
I was thinking with the code, would it be possible to link the AI to gaining the writing tech, so that the AI would approach the constant 'war' before writing differently from the wars after it.

One of the things I have been looking at is some "minor" changes to diplomacy. In C2C writing is too far down the tech tree and makes "start as minor" last far too long. City states and even nomadic nations had treaties before writing.

On diplomacy, I am going to move the Oratory tech to be only available under the "Advance Diplomacy" option. I am going to make two new unit combat classes UNITCOMBAT_SEA_CREATURE and UNITCOMBAT_DIPLOMAT for the new promotions being defined. :sigh: I am going to have to put back the C2C tag in my signature aren't I.
 
I've started a few games recently (all with start as minors) and the AI seemed to handly itself reasonably well in some, but in my latest one it's 5000BC and I'm already well ahead. I thought it was to do with the change in the animals (returning directly to the cities) but now it makes more sense. I almost never see the units of other civs, in fact I can't recall the last time I saw one. Also my hunters are finding lots of creatures near the cities of my enemies when I would expect their hunters to be killing most of them. Unless of course they don't have any hunters!

I was thinking with the code, would it be possible to link the AI to gaining the writing tech, so that the AI would approach the constant 'war' before writing differently from the wars after it.

Quite so. Its not a trivial piece of work though, so it probably won't happen for a release or two, so I just wanted to warn people off start-as-minors a bit for now.

One additional info: even in start as minor games there can be a handful of civs having a "normal" economy without too much military. I don't know what factors aside from location (not too close to other civ?) count for that but on GEM I had Mali and Mongolia with normal economies at start as minors.

Yes. This causes isolated civs to race ahead economically and just adds to the imbalance. Isolated civs with decent amounts of territory especially so (hence the way Australia used to be before a second civ was added there)
 
FYI for everyone.

For now I strongly advise against 'start as minors'.

:( I always liked minor civ, from when was first introduced in RoM/AND.

One of the things I have been looking at is some "minor" changes to diplomacy. In C2C writing is too far down the tech tree and makes "start as minor" last far too long. City states and even nomadic nations had treaties before writing.

On diplomacy, I am going to move the Oratory tech to be only available under the "Advance Diplomacy" option. I am going to make two new unit combat classes UNITCOMBAT_SEA_CREATURE and UNITCOMBAT_DIPLOMAT for the new promotions being defined. :sigh: I am going to have to put back the C2C tag in my signature aren't I.

Do you think Open Boarders and Closed Borders civics should be moved to Oratory tech too?
 
So Oratory is going to be an optional tech? :(

Why not insurance and the rest of the Advanced Economy tech are. It is a whole new branch of diplomacy. Diplomacy with barbarians (Barbarian Envoy mod) and goody villages (WLBO mod), plus the possibility for other types of diplomatic missions to other nations. Goody Villages would also depend on this option being on.

I just noticed that Advanced Diplomacy is set in both Custom Game options and in BUG options. I am not sure what that means game play wise with optional techs.
 
Isn't it possible to have the AI see "minor Nations" as Barbarians rather than Nations, at least until they have researched Oratory (or Writing) techs?
Of course a good Human player could use this to great advantage (but we already can as it stands now) as most AI's won't actively hunt down Barbarians (maybe some should anyway, if not all as animals are considered Barbarians too) but it would mean mainly keeping defense rather than overproducing military and not getting those frivolous units going.

Haven't had time to think that one through but putting it out there anyway.

Cheers
 
Why not insurance and the rest of the Advanced Economy tech are. It is a whole new branch of diplomacy. Diplomacy with barbarians (Barbarian Envoy mod) and goody villages (WLBO mod), plus the possibility for other types of diplomatic missions to other nations. Goody Villages would also depend on this option being on.

I just noticed that Advanced Diplomacy is set in both Custom Game options and in BUG options. I am not sure what that means game play wise with optional techs.

The more techs that are "optional" the harder it is to make sure the tech tree works. It also limits what can interact with them. Personally I want all techs (except alternative timelines) to be non-optional techs.

Please don't make Oratory an optional tech.

We have a hard enough time balancing thing to have them be optional and thus have to balance it both with and without it. Much of the optional settings where it adds core-like stuff (ex. Advanced Economy, Advanced Diplomacy, Advanced Guilds, etc) I think should become core features and then balanced out to C2C.
 
please give more information about option - "Minimize AI turn time"
it much more faster, but that about AI - how much he has become less intelligent?
 
The more techs that are "optional" the harder it is to make sure the tech tree works. It also limits what can interact with them. Personally I want all techs (except alternative timelines) to be non-optional techs.

Please don't make Oratory an optional tech.

We have a hard enough time balancing thing to have them be optional and thus have to balance it both with and without it. Much of the optional settings where it adds core-like stuff (ex. Advanced Economy, Advanced Diplomacy, Advanced Guilds, etc) I think should become core features and then balanced out to C2C.

If Advanced Economy etc. become not optional then I won't be playing C2C as I find they reduce the fun.

please give more information about option - "Minimize AI turn time"
it much more faster, but that about AI - how much he has become less intelligent?

As far as I can tell from Koshling's comments, there is no change in AI just in the way the code is processed, ie all at once rather than in bits and peices when you have your turn. It may cause problems with multiplayer because of this which is one reason it is an option.
 
Love the mod. Only recently found it, and haven't played a whole game through ... yet, but loving it already.

As to the problem with 'minors' and war status, would it be feasible to add the option to declare peace as an ability of the Cooperation Tech? Yes, it's intended to be in-Tribe, but not being at war with people is a form of cooperation too. If not actually declare peace, then perhaps when that tech is researched finding a new neighbor does not automatically result in war? Obviously that would also have to apply to Non-Player Civs (NPCs) as well or it wouldn't help much. Barbarian cities could still be auto-war though, and probably should be.
 
One of the things I have been looking at is some "minor" changes to diplomacy. In C2C writing is too far down the tech tree and makes "start as minor" last far too long. City states and even nomadic nations had treaties before writing.

On diplomacy, I am going to move the Oratory tech to be only available under the "Advance Diplomacy" option. I am going to make two new unit combat classes UNITCOMBAT_SEA_CREATURE and UNITCOMBAT_DIPLOMAT for the new promotions being defined. :sigh: I am going to have to put back the C2C tag in my signature aren't I.

That sounds good. I think that to have some kind of early diplomacy would be great. Perhaps there could be time limited truces from say Cooperation, longer truces, something like 'brotherhood agreements' (need a better name here!) at Tribalism, with trading resources becoming possible at Trade and finally, permanent peace treaties and technology trading arriving at Writing.
 
:agree:

Also, there should be 'signs of goodwill'. For example, you could gift animals you subdued.

Only such animals that allow AI to build a myth or herd it still lacks could be gifted;
you would get a +1 relation for that bonus.

Or if the heiritage/political leaders feature is implemented one day you could offer your youngest daughter -- your warmongering neighbour Chief DirtyMind would be pleased and distracted for a while, that much is for sure! :cool:
[-->Chief PimplePie would not be pleased to get this news as the daughter was espoused to him, and in his nerdy anger he refuses to have any further (tech) trading.]

That way better relations come at the price of a stronger neighbour or less cooperation with an other . The direct relation bonus would vanish after a few hundred years but there would also be a longtermTrust value that could disappear a lot slower, albeit faster the more techs are aquired.
 
Cooperation is too early I think. Some other prehistoric tech would be good.
 
I'm playing a new game as ragnar on GEM on immortal difficulty and i have 8 cities (no city restrictions from civics) but most only have 1, some have 2. I think AI needs to prioritize gettings tribes out quicker.
 
I'm playing a new game as ragnar on GEM on immortal difficulty and i have 8 cities (no city restrictions from civics) but most only have 1, some have 2. I think AI needs to prioritize gettings tribes out quicker.

Hey, how are the turn speeds on that map? I want to download a standard size Earth map (as soon as someone tells me how), because even on huge the first turns take 20 seconds.
 
since Koshling doubled the turn speed in the svn a couple of days ago currently (around 2500 bc) its probably less than 10 secs b/w turns
 
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