A Simple Change which could make CiV more Challenging -without more AI Bonuses

I've read that lots of Emperor/Immortal players don't like to play on Deity, even if they can win, because they feel that, in order to compete with the extreme AI bonuses of Deity, they have make use of "gamey" tactics.

So I've been thinking of ways to make the pre-Deity difficulty levels more challenging without giving the AI more bonuses (as Deity does). and I believe that the solution may be to make the penalties for unhappiness more severe.

The AI receives extreme bonuses to happiness on all difficulty levels. Apparently, the programmers decided that the AI simply cannot deal with maintaining happiness and therefore gave them such a happiness bonus that they would almost never be unhappy (you can see this by looking at the demographics or with InfoAddict).

So if normal unhappiness (unhappiness 1-10) gave additional penalties (more than just the growth penalty), the AI would almost never be hindered by this because it's almost always very happy.

On the other hand, most players do experience some periods of modest unhappiness now and then. It's usually no big deal if it doesn't last long; just a time to focus cities on production for a short time. My production always increases during unhappiness because cities can't focus on growth (food), so they focus on hammers. I've always found it to be unrealistic that an unhappy population is more productive in hammers.

Now once your population becomes "very unhappy" (10+), penalties become very severe; but this almost never happens to a good player (and certainly not the AI). Then there's "very very unhappy" (I think it starts at 20 unhappiness) which leads to rebels. I've never even seen this. I believe it was added just to stop the gamey tactic of players ignoring happiness.

My suggestion is (and it's extremely easy to modify in the "GlobalDefines" file) to make normal unhappiness give a some slight penalties to other things besides food; maybe -10% production (your hammer output would still be high because there's no point in focusing on food with the -75% growth penalty -just like in default) and -10% science output. Maybe even add a -10% gold output penalty. These would be penalties "across the board", but none of them higher than 10% (except the already existing -75% growth penalty). It's realistic too: an unhappy populace wouldn't just result in farmers going on strike; miners and all of society could be effected.

"Very unhappy" already gives harsh penalties as it is. I would add a science and gold penalty (maybe 10% like my new "unhappy", just so everything's at least as bad as normal "unhappy"). Also maybe "very unhappy" could start with less unhappiness needed (maybe 7 instead of 10).

"Very very unhappy" could remain as it is except that the fairly slight science and gold penalties from the other unhappys would be added. The threshold should also be lowered if we're ever to actually experience "very very unhappy." Maybe lowered to somewhere in between 12 or 15.

Essentially, you'd be making the game more challenging for the player without just giving the AI every bonus you can imagine. and unhappiness is avoidable; you just have to be careful about selling resources for money because you don't foresee any happiness problems for the duration of the deal (30 turns on normal, 45 on epic).

A lot of players find excess happiness too easy to come by with Gods and Kings. One final suggestion, which would make things considerably more challenging without giving the AI more bonuses, would be to set default happiness (from difficulty -it's usually 9) lower for the player. Doing this combined with these new harsher penalties would really create new challenges for the player in managing an empire.

I was about to try these changes myself (as I said, there really easy to mod), but before I did I thought I'd post this to hear what other players think. So what do you think of this? Thanks in advance.

Seems you want to solve the "AI has too many bonuses" by penalising the player?

As you said the AI wont be affected by more severe penalties. But the player will. Isn't this essentially just the opposite side to the same coin?

Unfortunately the only way have higher difficulties no feel "gamey" as you put it is to actually have it make better descissions. But the unfortunate truth is the AI can't outsmart humans not unless you have a very high think time for it to calculate multiple moves ahead like a chess AI. Maybe firaxis should hire Deep Blue?

Civ 5 isn't the only civ game to suffer from this issue. Every civ game has always stacked bonuses for AI at higher difficulties.

Whilst this change will make domination about same difficulty, peaceful approaches will be far more easier I think.

Hyper Nova said:

Seems you want to solve the "AI has too many bonuses" by penalising the player?

As you said the AI wont be affected by more severe penalties. But the player will. Isn't this essentially just the opposite side to the same coin?

Unfortunately the only way have higher difficulties no feel "gamey" as you put it is to actually have it make better descissions. But the unfortunate truth is the AI can't outsmart humans not unless you have a very high think time for it to calculate multiple moves ahead like a chess AI. Maybe firaxis should hire Deep Blue?

Civ 5 isn't the only civ game to suffer from this issue. Every civ game has always stacked bonuses for AI at higher difficulties.

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But it wouldn't penalize the player in all the catagories that the Deity AI receives extremely high bonuses in (like growth rates, building rates, worker rates, ect. -and all that come with them). The super high AI bonuses to happiness are there on all difficulties.

Yes I get that what I meant though is penalising the player (in any aspect) when the AI is not. i.e one rule of one And one rule for another. Is still essentially the same thing as give AI bonuses. Moving the goal posts in all difficulties will also make deity harder leaving you still needing gamey tactics.

Hyper Nova said:

Yes I get that what I meant though is penalising the player (in any aspect) when the AI is not. i.e one rule of one And one rule for another. Is still essentially the same thing as give AI bonuses. Moving the goal posts in all difficulties will also make deity harder leaving you still needing gamey tactics.

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It's far from a perfect solution. As you said, only a much better decision making AI would be that. But I think that playing on Immortal or Emperor with these "unhappiness" changes could be a lot more enjoyable than just moving up to Deity. It's probably a more balanced solution than just giving the AI Deity bonuses.

Yeah, maybe.

It sort of depends on which game. I am currently in an immortal game where I have only gone into unhappiness for 5 turns, and I don't think I'll ever have a problem with it in that game. But it would definitely affect a warmongering strategy, or when you get your third city sometimes you can have a happiness problem.

It's ok, but doesn't address the main issue.

An interesting idea.

I personally believe a simple and effective solution would be to just give the AI a bit of a combat bonus which increases as the difficulty does. Similar to how the human and AI receive bonuses against the poor, hopeless barbarians (but not as high!). With all the bonuses the AI already receives in all other aspects of the game, it boggles me that they don’t have a combat bonus vs. the human opponent!!

Especially in this version of Civ. In earlier versions, which had stacks, the AI didn’t have to worry about maneuvering its troops. It would just beeline to an enemy city, while trampling things in its way, since most combat took place between city raiders and city defenders instead of out in the field. It just used brute force methods and clumped tons of troops together and threw them at the human. Quantity was all it needed.

Now, quantity doesn’t cut it alone. It just hinders the AI more, especially in tight areas of land or parts where it’s choked by water and/or mountains. What good are all those troops if they all can’t crash upon the human at once and instead are stuck in the rear as they march like lemmings to their doom? The human has the advantage of being able to pull off some really slick maneuvers and tactics with its limited quantity of troops and resources; the current AI cannot with its restrictions (development time, turn-times/playability) and needs something more. The AI needs a bit of quality (combat bonus) along with its quantity bonus (production/maintenance discounts, etc.).

I think if the AI was given this combat bonus, it would provide players with a nice challenge. It’s also a very simple solution vs. more AI coding (which takes a long time), and more development time can be spent elsewhere on other aspects of the game, like enhancing diplomacy further, fixing bugs, balancing things, adding more game concepts, more unique dialogues, etc.

The -10% :c5 gold:, and idea isn't bad. And realistic. Could also be proportional: -3 = -3%, -15 -> -15% , -15% and -15% ...and so on

The 9 bonus can't be taken off from human player at the start of the game, it's really vital. But, later, it could be removed (example: -2 at renaissance, -3 when reaching industrial era, and -4 in modern era)

I'd also like a +10-15% for AI against human. Should take place as soon as you have 75% of AI calling you a warmonger for example. Or +10% when half the AI thinks your a warmongering threat and +20% when they all say it. Would penalize the player when paying for domination, but not if he just has to defend against an aggressive AI

I'm playing an emperor game with 3 tall cities on a small island (on continents!) and I have 102 : seems a bit too easy? Tall empires happiness should maybe get a little balance.

Also, while I sometimes have very rough time at the start of the game, the end is almost always way too easy: once I have a advantage on the AI, it will never fight back and reverse the situation. Maybe the AI could form some alliance against you when you're getting too strong (based on points, or land, or output,...)

Another idea: AI would automatically have specific bonus depending on your aims.
-Domination: if land and army >x : AI gets units bonus, and stop fighting between themselves, and finally make big alliances to strike you together. (last emperor game for domination I had taken 8 cap, and the 3 last ones were still y friends! and 2 were at war..)
-Science Victory: As soon as you have a x techs lead on everybody, AI could get free Research Agreements between them
-Diplomatic Victory: when you're allied to half the CS, AI's influence would grow faster and degrade slower. Example: for each mission, they would earn 60 influence instead of 40. And they'd get a -33% on their lost of influence.
-Cultural Victory: i don't have good idea for that one; doesn't seem useful to give them bonus. Maybe a bonus depending on how may tree you have competed, or how many policies. +5% in every city when you have unlocked 20 policies, or completed 3 trees. +10% for 25 policies/4 trees. +15% when you have unlocked 28 policies (assuming that unlocking one branch counts as one policy; idk)

If this idea is implemented it should definitely not be for lower difficulties. For better or for worse, in my game, I usually sacrifice early unhappiness to grab good locations; it's already quite hard for average players like me to maintain happiness early game and I don't think the penalties for not doing it should be even worse. It would completely destroy my ability to expand. Obviously I build the right happiness buildings, get the right happiness religions when appropriate, and usually only settle cities with at least 1 new luxury, but nevertheless happiness is an issue for me.

is an issue for everybody when settling third city
those malus should maybe apply only upon Medieval Era

I've seen the AI hit -20 or more unhappiness regularly. They overextend their empires (especially noticeable in slower paced games - not so much now in G&K but it still happens). It's really easy to get the AI hooked on traded luxuries and then stop trading them causing them to plummet in happiness as well. Attacking key AI cities (luxury access mostly) will also cause them happiness issues.

There was one marathon game I played where I was the only one with positive happiness and almost every AI was suffering revolts on a regular basis (they also were running deficits in the -100s of GPT).

almost never saw AI when not at war and being pillaged (or after having lost some vital and with luxuries)
AI never trades his last luxury if you don't offer him 3 luxuries he doesn't have
(king & emperor difficulty; maybe you play at lower levels?)

Meh. The key to improving the AI is to fix their overall behaviour and not to penalize the player even more.

If AI players run out of happiness, their priorities should sway towards momenterily stopping expansion/city growth, constructing happiness buildings/wonders and trading luxuries (preferably establishing long-standing agreements if they feel that they depend on them). A severe lack of happiness should also make them call off wars.

However, the underlying problem is actually that the AI doesn't know how to properly place and manage cities.

This would make things even worse/not help anything if unhappiness is managed. Playing on Immortal/Deity is annoying because of how cheap the AI is and how they get ridiculous bonuses compared to the player, with the early game being the most unfun. You may as well increase those bonuses if you're going to make unhappiness penalize the player even more because let's face it, the AI is rarely unhappy.

Question really is this... how easy or hard do we really want the game to be compared to now? It's a matter of opinion mostly...plus, the AI will never behave like a human player, and is therefore simply dumb in it's approach to the game. They will still send units at you without thought of consequence, mindlessly moving towards its futile goal, provided the human player hasn't been ill prepared for the said encounter that is.