RA: The biggest Bug never fixed!!!

peddroelm said:
I've tried to make a graphic of the total beakers accumulated for the spaceship victory, because I'm a sucker for graphs :lol:


Spoiler :


I'm aware the graphic is awfully inaccurate - Martin Alvito could probably draw a much more realistic image, but the main problem is the last wave of RA .

~200 turns to go trough ancient+classical+medieval+ renaissance+industrial .
1 frigging turn to burn trough more then 50% of the total beaker count necessary for the space ship. {buffed RAs (PT+rationalism), GS, oxford, scientific revolution}.. Granted it takes a lot of preparation to set up just right, but still...
Click to expand...

50% is conservative. I think it's 75% or so.
 
ArcaneSeraph said:
If you need help testing out any of these ideas let me know BTW :). I have a nice template mod I've written around here that I can send you to help you get started, if you are interested in modding.
Click to expand...

Cool! Would really appreciate it. I want to get into the lua side. I'll send you a PM :).

@Krikkitone

It's not a bad but unfortunately it's very easily manipulated. It might actually make things worse. Consider that towards the end of the game can easily have 2000:c5science:/turn on deity. So even if we cut that in half argument sake. Also let's say our research is 0:c5science: / turn (not possible but for emphasis). What would we get for an RA?

30 * (1000 + 0) / 2 = 30 * 500 = 15000 base

That's generally more than you could get now before right at the end. It's a good thought but not quite balanced that well.

On the GS suggestions:

1. Removing a GS slot from the university I feel would hurt tall empires a lot in the early game. They need to staff those slots to maintain a science parity with their wide counterparts.

2. To make them good enough you'd have to make them equal to a presently overpowered tactic. That would make them overpowered.

3. This might help but again like point 2 you'd have to make them overpowered too.

As myself, ArcaneSeraph, stealth_nsk and others have said, they have to be capped. Either a hard cap or an empire based cap or a raw science cap or something. But capped nonetheless.

Ah - forgot to say. peddroelm nice work on the graph but unfortunately it is a way more than 50%. You basically don't need to research anything from mid-renaissance on. Nothing in the industrial or modern for sure. Considering excalating tech costs I'd say its around 90%+.
 
@peddroelm

You should've made that graph log-linear. Just teasing. I'm remembering a very old discussion from one of my calc classes and couldn't resist. :lol:

stealth_nsk said:
Let me sum it up. We need:

1. Decrease GS effect to make raw tech more important.

2. Decrease RA effect to make raw tech more important.

3. Decrease GS effect to have better balance with other GP. Additionally the thing requires making GA stronger, but that's outside this discussion.

4. Keep GS in the same concept as other GP. This conflicts with, for example, "science golden age" idea.

5. Make RA effect scale with number of opponents.

6. Keep RA diplomatic effect, so RA partners have to think twice before breaking it. This conflicts with ideas of gaining RA benefits each turn while it lasts. Note, what hard limits slightly conflict with the goal - it would be easier to break current treaty and sign another one.

7. Make formulas easy enough to be put in Civilopedia in form understandable for non-math players. The problem here, is what "Median" term is already at the border, and many suggestions here are outside of it.

8. Make PT and Rationalism comparable to other Wonders/SP.

9. Minor goal is making RA and GS effect similar. Not necessary, but would be elegant.

10. Keep strategic value of GS, so they bulb in right tech. This conflicts with "slow effects".
Click to expand...

1. Agreed
2. Agreed
3. Agreed (you mean great artist right? not golden age?)
4. Agreed

5. Maybe... it depends on the cost/benefit ratio of each RA and ultimate implementation. If the RA choice was strategic rather than a no-brainer as it is now, it'd be worth a think.

6. Agreed. Although I don't agree with the benefits over time concept. If you break it at turn 20, you should've still got some benefit from the early turns. It's not necessary to work this way by any means but I don't see the problem with it. Either way is fine with me.

7. Disagree. There are tons of complicated formulae in CiV already. The combat mechanics. The food box scalaing. The true production you get for a GE. As long as the general ideas are sound and can be conveyed easily, that's all that matters. Like with the combat there's a popup telling you how things will likely go. If we had a complex RA system, if it just popped up and said here are the likely results of this, no one would have a problem.

8. Agree. Rationalism should just change. It doesn't need to have anything to do with RAs. It's already more powerful than piety. Removing the RA connection would allow piety and rationalism to be more competetive.

9. It depends what it is. Considering the mess RAs are right now (and the 100 post thread to prove it) I'd hesitate to call connecting RAs and GSes elegant.

10. I'm not sure I understand this part. You mean you want insta-bulb of selected tech as long as the cost is low? I agree with that if that's what you mean.

stealth_nsk said:
So from the suggestions, the following fit the goal:

1. Making GS to give 1/2 of median tech cost. Fitting goals 1, 3, 4, 7, 9 and 10. Other variants of calculating base tech reward (i.e. share of total beakers generated so far) are also good, but need more balancing work.

2. Making PT and Rationalism give only 25% increase. Fitting goals 2 and 8.

3. Making RA cost much more after each signed RA. Fitting goals 5 and 6.

4. Increasing the amount of techs and making tech cost increase smoother will just work.
Click to expand...

1. Hrmm.... I don't know. This seems to actually make GSes worse than RAs. They shouldn't be considering the relative prevelance of each. Also you couldn't use key rushes early in the game with a GS.

2. PT gives 33%, Rationalism does something completely different.

3. Not bad. Cost based on relations could be another twist.

4. Amount of techs, sure. Though that actually wouldn't affect RAs much at present. The only issue with smoothing out the tech costs is it will encourage the hard techers +GSers to just push into the future eras. Usually the techs at the border of the eras are quite powerful and allowing easy access might mess things up. Basically you can do it and it might be marevlous but you'd have to be very careful about the tech tree itself.

EDIT: Honestly? The best idea I've read so far is PasturedCow's Bucket system. It combines some very good ideas. It's only drawback is that it's a little hard to understand. I believe though that with the right civilopedia and popups it could be done elegantly.

Also this whole subject has given me an idea. It should be entirely possible (quite easily possible) to construct a program that would basically tell you, based on current in-game data, what the perfect tech route is to maximize your current RAs and GSes. That's how broken the system is. I've often wondered why the devs never did such a thing for concepts like this or construction priorities. Food / production balances etc. Instead of use these heuristic flavors and such that don't tie in context very well, they could've used the heuristics to select goals and a optimization program to achieve those goals as quickly as possible. This has been done with great effect in other games and is done in most AI courses. If they release the DLL source sometime I'll give it a rethink. C++ is a way better than lua for such things :).
 
PasturedCow said:
Cool! Would really appreciate it. I want to get into the lua side. I'll send you a PM :).

@Krikkitone

It's not a bad but unfortunately it's very easily manipulated. It might actually make things worse. Consider that towards the end of the game can easily have 2000:c5science:/turn on deity. So even if we cut that in half argument sake. Also let's say our research is 0:c5science: / turn (not possible but for emphasis). What would we get for an RA?

30 * (1000 + 0) / 2 = 30 * 500 = 15000 base

That's generally more than you could get now before right at the end. It's a good thought but not quite balanced that well.
Click to expand...

you notice I had a "Factor" in there.

I'd probably make it the total * 0.1 not /2

So in your example, it would be 30*(2000+0)*0.1=60,000*0.1=6,000 less than 15,000

and if that is still too much make it 0.05 or 0.01 (3,000 or only 600)

The key is that it scales with output rather than tech cost (because tech cost ramps up fast->manipulation) if people are manipulating to get the maximum raw science... then we have achieved our goal.
 
Krikkitone said:
you notice I had a "Factor" in there.

I'd probably make it the total * 0.1 not /2

So in your example, it would be 30*(2000+0)*0.1=60,000*0.1=6,000 less than 15,000

and if that is still too much make it 0.05 or 0.01 (3,000 or only 600)

The key is that it scales with output rather than tech cost (because tech cost ramps up fast->manipulation) if people are manipulating to get the maximum raw science... then we have achieved our goal.
Click to expand...

Ah I thought factor meant like PT + Rationalism factors. My mistake.

Using 0.1 as the factor, that implies that the idea is basically the same as boosting the science rate of both civs by 10% of the sum of their individual science rates.

This is a thinker. I'm not sure what to say. How about a table?

We have CivA and CivB and lets try to measure what the % boost to their science will be per RA given certain factors.

Code: 
Civ A science / Civ B science   Factor   Civ A Boost   Civ B Boost
        10                       0.1         11%          110%
        5                        0.1         12%           60%
        3                        0.1         13.3%         40%
        2                        0.1         15%           30%
        1                        0.1         20%           20%

        10                       0.2         22%          220%
        5                        0.2         24%          120%
        3                        0.2         26.7%         80%
        2                        0.2         30%           60%
        1                        0.2         40%           40%

Those numbers aren't bad. The behind civ gets a lot more out of it but that's not really a bad thing as long as its not outrageous. I still like the bucket proposal better but I do like this too. It is simpler and it does seem to produce fairly good behaviour as the equation has an inverse linear factor in it to mitigate gains. Pretty good, pretty good.
 
I think it is weird that the benefits of a RA is based on the cost not on the input. Why not have both parties pay half of the costs in gold each for a certain tech. And then it might take 10 to 20 turns to turn the gold into wisdom? Rationalism and Porcelain Tower could save you some gold.
Of course AI would have to save more money to be able to agree on a RA, therefore AI needed to be changed, but I would prefer limiting the AI spending no more than 80 to 90% of their per turn income on per turn maintenance anyway.

In general I'd like to see research being based on literacy rate rather than science farming, as this would enable occ - one city civs - to keep up techwise, while production prefered huge civs would be forced to build the science buildings in all of their cities to keep up.

Bulbing a new tech seems more gamechanging in civ 5 than civ 4, because you cannot determine/change the research rate so easily. Civ 4 settling a GS or bilding an academy was much better than bulbing - having modifiers not just +xx beakers. So Civ 5 needs rebalancing the benefits of an Academy vs Bulbing.
 
Anyway, RA and GSes needed to be changed! I want Deity AI to catch up and experience longer Industrial and Moderm era myself, which are a joke now. :lol: Using combined RAs and GSes, players can jump from Renaissance to Future easily.
 
ArcaneSeraph said:
0.5 * PT Bonus * Rationalism Bonus * min (your median tech value, your partner's median tech value)
Click to expand...

there don't need to be more rewards for playing at higher difficulties; the AI's ridiculous stockpile of cash that they never use effectively and the increased strength of scholasticism on deity are enough. this would generally be close to no pragmatic change on deity while making RAs never worthwhile on settler.
 
Well, there seems to be a controversy about research agreements.

Personally, I like them the way they are. Even though I have had "friendly" AI's offer them just before declaring war. Even though at times I am unable to find a civ which will sign them with me (I play a "builder" game, huge map, but only 5 AI opponents, and not at a high level).

I am just at the end game in which, so far has been the first game since the August patch where I have not had a declaration of war against me. Yes, I did the last 4 techs needed for a science victory in one turn (rationalism Scientific Revolution and 2 Great Scientists). I have been lucky, but I have been able to take advantage of that luck in my planning. Yes, I have used a lot of research agreements.

I haven't had any future techs in any game since the second patches. I won't get any in this game either.

I guess I'm not as good at playing this game as a lot of the posters on this thread. I do do a lot of hard teching, but the RAs are a big help. They are in the game. I enjoy being able to use them. I often have to sweeten my offers of RAs with 100 gold or so when I am an era ahead of of my research partner.

Maybe if there are going to be changes to weaken the power of research agreements, they should be scaled somewhat to the difficulty level of the game being played. This may be difficult to program, but not everyone is playing at the higher levels. Not everyone feels they are overpowered.

Am I the only one to feel this way?
 
@RonMar

I like the way they work in general. The problem is that the late techs are so expensive, that it becomes much more beneficial to use RAs and GS instead of normal beaker output. When the predominant (and easily achieved) strategy involves jumping from industrial to future in 1 turn, you know something is not quite right.
 
chazzycat said:
@RonMar

I like the way they work in general. The problem is that the late techs are so expensive, that it becomes much more beneficial to use RAs and GS instead of normal beaker output. When the predominant (and easily achieved) strategy involves jumping from industrial to future in 1 turn, you know something is not quite right.
Click to expand...

Exactly, a key change in RAs would be changing them so the value was proportional to total science produced by the civs, not the cost of the techs they could research.

GSs should probably get capped ~3000+5*science output of city
 
As others have just suggested, there isn't a really ideal solution to any of the more controversial (and even many non-controversial) problems in CiV. There are too many types of people playing on various levels and with different styles and different desires out of the game. Combine that with several fanatical players (to put a pun on civfanatics :)) with strong opinions that will not bend, consensus is going to be nearly impossible. I'd rather try to get the democrats and republicans together :lol:

You first have to manage to convince most everyone else to agree with a suggestion and then somehow get the devs to adopt that suggestion. That's not going to happen without a lot of effort and a great deal of frustration. On the other hand, learning how to mod or merely adapting your playstyle to avoid the features of the game you don't like is trivial.

ArcaneSeraph helped me most of this weekend with getting a mod up and running to change RAs, GSes, and the commerce tree (two of my main annoyances with the game). We had some rinse and repeat moments but the last game we played on Sunday seemed to have hit the right balance. On deity we can't outtech the AIs without a significant investment into actual hard research and yet they use the altered features quite well. They still use their gold (well as much as they ever did) and it's a solution that myself and my 5 LAN buddies seem to find enjoyable.

So for those out there that are really upset about some issue, I'd definitely suggest saving yourself the frustration invovled and just mod. That's what modding is for after all - making the game fun and customized for you. If you don't know how to mod there are several people here that are more than willing to help.

As for myself, I'm done here. I know a few other people who are leaving with me. There seems to be little room for creativity or differing opinions here. There are a lot of people who treat the game as if it is a life and death matter. If you accidently annoy the wrong person you seem to have know contract law and word everything so precisely to even have a discussion. Honestly it's just a game to have fun and it's not really going to matter in a few years to most of us at all anyway. Most people are courteous. Some people aren't. Those that aren't don't seem to be moderated very well. So it's not fun for us and we're moving on with self-modding and greener pastures.

Happy CiVing.
 
I've done some simple calculations today and looks like tech cost to accumulated beakers ratio seems to be more or less constant throughout the game if you don't use RA and GS. So something like "5% of beakers generated from start of the game" should be near the cost of average tech. Needs testing though. I don't have too much time currently for modding, could anyone do it?

PasturedCow said:
ArcaneSeraph helped me most of this weekend with getting a mod up and running to change RAs, GSes, and the commerce tree (two of my main annoyances with the game). We had some rinse and repeat moments but the last game we played on Sunday seemed to have hit the right balance.
Click to expand...

Could you upload the mod? Also, could you describe the changes?
 
another possible ways to do it

add a cumulative penalty -10% to the number of beakers gained per -> pop [GS, RA, oxford, scientific revolution, korea UA] ...

Or limit their use at 2 or 3 per Era with one extra available during each Golden Age... {big buff to deity AIs ..}

or make their returns based on the amount of hard beakers generated empire wide - instead of the researched target tech's cost ...{which is moronic}
 
tommynt said:
easiest solution:

stop playing dumb ai and start playing mp ...

there are NO good solution for 100x of problems which all concur from 1 aspect:

AI SUCKZ ASS
Click to expand...

Your idea is flawed. MP games (unless you only play duels in which case enjoy playing nothing but Iroquois and Babylon until the end of time) pretty much always result in two human players duking it out to win, and all the other humans realising they can't win and dropping - becoming AI.

So if you make the AI better, MP becomes better too. Anyway, the thread's moved on to talking about great scientists as well, so it's relevant to MP in that way also.
 
PasturedCow said:
As others have just suggested, there isn't a really ideal solution to any of the more controversial (and even many non-controversial) problems in CiV. There are too many types of people playing on various levels and with different styles and different desires out of the game. Combine that with several fanatical players (to put a pun on civfanatics :)) with strong opinions that will not bend, consensus is going to be nearly impossible. I'd rather try to get the democrats and republicans together :lol:

You first have to manage to convince most everyone else to agree with a suggestion and then somehow get the devs to adopt that suggestion. That's not going to happen without a lot of effort and a great deal of frustration. On the other hand, learning how to mod or merely adapting your playstyle to avoid the features of the game you don't like is trivial.

ArcaneSeraph helped me most of this weekend with getting a mod up and running to change RAs, GSes, and the commerce tree (two of my main annoyances with the game). We had some rinse and repeat moments but the last game we played on Sunday seemed to have hit the right balance. On deity we can't outtech the AIs without a significant investment into actual hard research and yet they use the altered features quite well. They still use their gold (well as much as they ever did) and it's a solution that myself and my 5 LAN buddies seem to find enjoyable.

So for those out there that are really upset about some issue, I'd definitely suggest saving yourself the frustration invovled and just mod. That's what modding is for after all - making the game fun and customized for you. If you don't know how to mod there are several people here that are more than willing to help.

As for myself, I'm done here. I know a few other people who are leaving with me. There seems to be little room for creativity or differing opinions here. There are a lot of people who treat the game as if it is a life and death matter. If you accidently annoy the wrong person you seem to have know contract law and word everything so precisely to even have a discussion. Honestly it's just a game to have fun and it's not really going to matter in a few years to most of us at all anyway. Most people are courteous. Some people aren't. Those that aren't don't seem to be moderated very well. So it's not fun for us and we're moving on with self-modding and greener pastures.

Happy CiVing.
Click to expand...

What changes were in your mod?
 
stealth_nsk said:
Let me sum it up. We need:

1. Decrease GS effect to make raw tech more important.

2. Decrease RA effect to make raw tech more important.

3. Decrease GS effect to have better balance with other GP. Additionally the thing requires making GA stronger, but that's outside this discussion.

4. Keep GS in the same concept as other GP. This conflicts with, for example, "science golden age" idea.

5. Make RA effect scale with number of opponents.

6. Keep RA diplomatic effect, so RA partners have to think twice before breaking it. This conflicts with ideas of gaining RA benefits each turn while it lasts. Note, what hard limits slightly conflict with the goal - it would be easier to break current treaty and sign another one.

7. Make formulas easy enough to be put in Civilopedia in form understandable for non-math players. The problem here, is what "Median" term is already at the border, and many suggestions here are outside of it.

8. Make PT and Rationalism comparable to other Wonders/SP.

9. Minor goal is making RA and GS effect similar. Not necessary, but would be elegant.

10. Keep strategic value of GS, so they bulb in right tech. This conflicts with "slow effects".


So from the suggestions, the following fit the goal:

1. Making GS to give 1/2 of median tech cost. Fitting goals 1, 3, 4, 7, 9 and 10. Other variants of calculating base tech reward (i.e. share of total beakers generated so far) are also good, but need more balancing work.

2. Making PT and Rationalism give only 25% increase. Fitting goals 2 and 8.

3. Making RA cost much more after each signed RA. Fitting goals 5 and 6.

4. Increasing the amount of techs and making tech cost increase smoother will just work.

These changes are not big and probably not fix the whole problem, but I don't believe this sort of problem could be fixed in 1 iteration.
Click to expand...


This. Especially the last point. Every time you sign an RA, the cost should go up by 10%. Note that this means that both parties in an RA agreement might not pay the same - but I dont see that as a problem.

Also, RAs need to scale with the number of civs in the game (or rather, the number of civs at the start of the game). Otherwise the larger the map the more important RAs become, which doesn't seem quite right.
 
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