More War

Introduction
Here is a place to discuss this little mod we discussed on another forum, that increases all leaders traits that increase the competitiveness and hostility tendency of leaders as well as their desire to expand.

The mod does it according to an original idea here where it was originally discussed as well:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12899671&postcount=50

Installation
Install the mod manually by dragging the folder into your mods folder and installing it as per any other Steam mod. I'm too lazy to install it on Steam and anyway I think that Steams forums are lame.

Method
Rather than making all leader traits identical, the mod increases the appropriate traits needed for more leader aggression, by adding an extra value on top of the existing leaders own personality traits. So Maria Theresa won't be a warmonger, but she will be more keen.

So for example, if leader-A has boldness = 2, the new boldness is 2 + (4) +/-2 = (4-8). The game randomizes the leaders traits by +/-2 already. So overall the range of boldness was (0-4) but this mod would increase it to (4-8).

Changing values
If you want to change values yourself, quit your game, open the file GamePlay.sql with a text editor like notepad. Change any value after the (+) sign. Save the file and start a new game.

For example:
UPDATE [Leader_Flavors] SET [Flavor] = [Flavor] + 4 WHERE [FlavorType] = 'FLAVOR_OFFENSE';

To increase the offensive flavor, change ( + 4) to ( + whatever). Remember that the max range is (0-20) and that most leader values are already in the range (2-12).

Conclusion
The mod works well. It is still possible to form friendships, and alliances of leaders bound by friendship agreements, yet leaders will also be more ready to denounce where necessary and push for territory. The mod is especially ideal for people that want to play more dynamic games where diplomacy and alliances shift around more according to territorial changes and conquest. I personally play the mod on marathon, with another mod that makes the AI's combat more challenging as well.

Compatibility
Works with any version of the game at all. Works with any other mods that don't change leader traits.

Change log:
V3
- leader formulas changed from + to *
- less warmonger hate
- scaling AIDeclareWarProb with difficulty (100 warlord - 150 diety)
V2
- Decreased the expansion addition from +16 to +8. The original was too excessive since the range is limited to 0-20 and if all leaders are expansionist, they won't choose other social policies but liberty probably.
- Decreased AIDeclareWarProb from 200 to 150. If AI leaders are too focused on killing humans, they stop thinking about consequences. They will attack humans at all cost and then get swallowed up by other AI's that are not near humans.
- Decreased the addition to ranged flavor from + 4 to + 0 (original). If AI's bring in too much range, they neglect melee and then cannot capture a city and so better leave the value where it was.
- Decreased the addition to mobile ranged flavor from + 4 to + 0 (original). AI's don't know how to use cav/tanks/etc all that well and so better just leave it where it was.

SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE THIS MOD WELCOME

Here are some questions I got via mail:

"I have a few questions about the mod. It worked great for me so far, but I wonder if I can fine tune it a bit more"

Can I just edit the xml file with editor without screwing up the mod?
Yes. See first post. It's not an xml file but an sql file.

What does Wonder competitiveness actually do?
Leader traits are explained here (but not in great detail):
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=409062

Does it increase how angry civs get when you steal wonders or does it make them more likely to build wonders?
You get a diplo hit when you build a wonder that they were planning or desired. If the value is >=8 the AI will have a preference to choose an engineer if they get a free great person in the first half of the game.

And the same question about minorcivcompetitiveness, which I assume is city states?
Similar. How annoyed does the AI get when another player is befriending "their" minor civs (city states)?

Any other questions, shoot. No probs.

A GREAT mod. Genghis just kicked my Mayan ass because I did the thing that works best in regular Civ - spamming buildings and wonders combined with some expanding (I installed a mod that removes -science penalty per city, so it's viable now). I really shouldn't have let him eat 3 CS's and build 3 other cities while my military was laughable. I didn't even start building units when he declared war though, because I didn't like how my Mayans started on a desert.

The game is much harder now, but wonders are much easier to get. Getting them makes you very vulnerable though, so it's fine.

Enrico what version are you running v1 or v2? just so that we are on the same page.

V2, and I'm very pleased. The game is much harder (as it should be), but the AI doesn't do pointless wars when they're 9000 tiles away and can't possibly reach me as often as in V1. It still happens, but not as often - and when they do this, they are usually DoWing together with another Civ who can reach me.

If I may... it's a little dangerous. Your formula is making low offense flavours MUCH more aggressive than high offense flavours. That usually breaks balance in almost anything.

Perhaps adapt your formula to a FACTOR or percentage...? Apply a percentage on it; that would probably move the whole range proportionally. As it is now, there is no proportion, and you are basically making ALL civs aggressive.

@Aristos
Yes that is a good idea. This mod was put here to help people who were in need for more war and it does that.

So basically instead of FLAVOR_OFFENSE = FLAVOR_OFFENSE (+) 4 we do:
FLAVOR_OFFENSE = FLAVOR_OFFENSE (*) 1.25 etc etc etc

The benefit with (*) over (+) is that the defensive leaders are getting more defensive and not more offensive which probably is necessary if Ghandi is facing Shaka! On the other hand, it is fun to see Shaka swallow Ghandi and then have Ghandi liberated back to life when Shaka cannot hold onto his massive empire. Lots of dynamics!

@Enrico
So far in my one try, I'm seeing more interesting diplomatic arrangements than default. I'm also concerned about dogpiling. Don't want to see an increase in dogpiling. What I like about this mod is that there is more potential for early wars. Aristos is right that initially passive civs like India could really suffer with the mod how it is now what do you think?

glider1 said:

@Aristos
Yes that is a good idea. This mod was put here to help people who were in need for more war and it does that.

So basically instead of FLAVOR_OFFENSE = FLAVOR_OFFENSE (+) 4 we do:
FLAVOR_OFFENSE = FLAVOR_OFFENSE (*) 1.25 etc etc etc

Click to expand...

Yeap. The big advantage of a factor instead of an addition is that it keeps proportionality to some extent; what you want is exactly that, to make all civs PROPORTIONALLY more aggressive. With an added value, say your original +4, you are TRIPLING a civ's flavour of 2, while only making an already aggressive civ with flavour 8 only 50% more aggressive.

If you apply a factor, the less aggressive civs will only be somewhat more aggressive, while the more aggressive one will become more aggressive. That keeps the balance better.

Start low. I would start with 1.25 and see what happens.

Another thingie: AIDeclareWarProb should be escalating, as it is up to King. Make it continue the escalation, perhaps in bigger steps, so that it reaches 150 at Deity.

glider1 said:

@Aristos
Yes that is a good idea. This mod was put here to help people who were in need for more war and it does that.

So basically instead of FLAVOR_OFFENSE = FLAVOR_OFFENSE (+) 4 we do:
FLAVOR_OFFENSE = FLAVOR_OFFENSE (*) 1.25 etc etc etc

The benefit with (*) over (+) is that the defensive leaders are getting more defensive and not more offensive which probably is necessary if Ghandi is facing Shaka! On the other hand, it is fun to see Shaka swallow Ghandi and then have Ghandi liberated back to life when Shaka cannot hold onto his massive empire. Lots of dynamics!

@Enrico
So far in my one try, I'm seeing more interesting diplomatic arrangements than default. I'm also concerned about dogpiling. Don't want to see an increase in dogpiling. What I like about this mod is that there is more potential for early wars. Aristos is right that initially passive civs like India could really suffer with the mod how it is now what do you think?

Click to expand...

Well, if by dogpiling you mean 2 civs instantly attacking another one, it happens pretty much every game even when the second civ doesn't have any possibility of actually reaching me. Usually about 15 turns later I just go to that civ and get a white peace though.

I think multiplying instead of simply adding a 4 is a better solution too. One of the flaws is that right now everyone behaves pretty much the same when it comes to war. For instance, William just keeps DoWing me in the current game despite not having a real possibility of killing me (he has to go through water to reach me, and I've got a lot of Crossbows/Pikes).

Also all civs are slightly too hateful. Whenever I meet someone, I know that chances of friendship are very low. While it makes historical sense, it makes everyone too predictable and kills off the uniqueness.

I'd also love if warmonger hatred decay (whatever it was called) was significantly increased or warmonger hate was lowered. Perhaps even both. It just makes no sense that taking a single city can make everyone hate you.


I'll try changing the .sql file to try make the mod more friendly to me. At first I loved it, but the more I play, the more predictable everything becomes, and some of the leader uniqueness is gone.

Thanks Enrico what you are saying is exactly what would be expected with the very rough initial changes in v1-2. Here is a build that does what you have suggested, at least on paper. Once I try it out in greater depth I'll attach it to the OP.

Release v3
- leader changes * not +
- less warmonger hate
- scaling AIDeclareWarProb with difficulty (100 warlord - 150 diety)

Thanks for the new version, but at the moment I'm trying out my changes. I've done it like this:


I've only increased wonder competetiveness by 1, because I figured having it high only makes it worse for the AI. Why? Half of them will be trying to raise wonder X, but only one of them will be able to get it, effectively ensuring half of them just waste hammers for no reason. In fact, I may lower it further to 0 or even -1 because of this.

The game now pretty much plays just like regular Civ 5, but with wars and with AI's slightly more interested in CS's while everyone's behaving like a slightly more competent version of themselves. Askia actually conquered my capital (yes, this Askia!) because he did a smart attack (3 catapults, lots of archers, several warriors and spears) around turn 130 on Epic and I had to use a time machine to save the Aztec nation from utter defeat by creating one Jaguar more.

Will try your version too, of course, but I'm very pleased with More WAAAAGH, which is how I nicknamed my edit of the mod.

Great, keep experimenting.

Wonder competitiveness doesn't change their actual wonder construction itself (except In the first half of the game, the AI is more likely to build engineers, but not in the second half), it affects just the diplomacy. With high competitiveness, there is more likely to be more war declarations on civs that are trying to wonder spam. Since wonder spammers usually have small military, they are likely to be punished severely (dog piled).

You could try low wonder competitiveness and higher minor civ competitiveness. High minor civ competitiveness means that civs will dogpile Alexander of Greece because he loves to ally minor civs, but he is already very powerful and may not get hurt as badly.

EDIT: I'm not sure whether you can multiply * 1.25 in SQL because you are mixing integers and real numbers and it might just end up as * 1 (no change). If you want to do that with certainty you could do what my v3 does which is * 125 / 100.

I'm no expert on SQL maths though.

Thanks for the advice, I will try it out. Also thanks for explaining what competetiveness actually changes - I'll probably further modify it.

Careful with the Biases for approach, both of you... it affects too many things, APPROACH weights are influenced by a huge amount of factors, without analyzing to detail I am pretty sure you will break balance big time touching the APPROACH biases. I would take that out (only that change may explain a lot of senseless wars making all the other changes obsolete.

APPROACH stances are a beast on their own, and should only be touched as part of a general diplomatic stance rebalance.

Loved this mod. This is what I was looking for.
Thank you very much!

Thanks bane which version are you on so that we are on the same page. Are you trying v2 or v3 there are big differences between them.

Will it work with random personalities?

I have played 2 games with your mod. First the ver3, huge map, 22 total civs, marathon, and a normal speed unit build mod. No war ever unless I initiated it. Assuming I had too many units for the AI to dare attack, what are settings for that. 2nd game,ver 2, same size map and 3 of civs, marathon speed with marathon unit build. I had a spearman, a warrior and a scout and two civs attacked 5 units each shortly after I built GL. 1rst time anything like that has ever happened to me and I have played possibly a hundred games, so something is working. My main issue is that with increased aggression AI's will lose capitals more often, and I want as many civs as possible for as long as possible

Is this thread dead?