[Vote] (6-26) No AIFreeXPPercent Increase to XP Gain In AI vs AI Combat

[Legen]

Spoiler AIFreeXPPercent handicap :

From Recursive's 1-05 proposal:

Difficulty Setting	What does it do?	Settler	Chieftain	Warlord	Prince	King	Emperor	Immortal	Deity
AIFreeXPPercent	% increase to XP gain from combat	+0%	+0%	+0%	+20%	+40%	+60%	+80%	+100%

Proposal

• AIFreeXPPercent no longer increases XP gain in AI vs AI combat.

Rationale

Currently, AIFreeXPPercent increases XP gain from combat regardless of whether the AI is fighting a human or an AI unit/city; it even applies when fighting against barbarians. However, the intention of this handicap is to help the AI against humans, who can make more intelligent military decisions; when fighting against an AI or barbarian unit, the AI is facing an opponent of equal intelligence.

By limiting the bonus XP gain from combat to work only against humans, we can prevent some important undesired effects such as:

• Distortion of AI tests: with this handicap applying in AI combat, AI tests end portraying how combat unfolds in each era with promotions that are normally out of reach for a human player.
• Distortion of UU potency: UUs with free late promotions (e.g. Carolean with March) have diminished potency against AIs, since their late promotions are quickly obtained by their AI opponent as well.
• Distortion of civ's militaristic bonuses: with all AIs quickly earning promotions, the relative potency of militaristic bonuses from a civ's uniques is lower, since those bonus effects are diluted among more CS modifiers on both sides.
• Distortion of unique leveling uniques: Assyria, Japan and Zulu have extra mechanics regarding leveling that pushes them to perform better than expected on higher difficulties due to this handicap.

 

[Recursive]

I like this idea a lot more than the previous one, especially if combined with a more comprehensive A/B/C bonuses proposal which Stalker is currently working on.

 

[Legen]

I like this idea a lot more than the previous one, especially if combined with a more comprehensive A/B/C bonuses proposal which Stalker is currently working on.

If I knew that the ABC difficulty bonuses would get a rework (adding triggers for military actions), I wouldn't have bothered trying to balance AIFreeXP, as the balance concerns I had from modifying it would have been addressed by the rework.

On a separate note, is there a preview of Stalker's ABC proposal, or Vern's AI test? The latest changes seem to have boosted militaristic civs a lot on my games, so I was predicting that the AI tests would end with a lot more time victories, and someone mentioned around 90% or so of that. I want to confirm it and see if Stalker's proposal will try to do anything about that.

 

[Recursive]

Sponsored.

 

[frktest]

Please be carefull with that proposal, it coud ruins the game play balance. Would AI have not powerfull military unit advantage, the Human player will roll on conquest without serius resistance.

 

[dostillevi]

Please be carefull with that proposal, it coud ruins the game play balance. Would AI have not powerfull military unit advantage, the Human player will roll on conquest without serius resistance.

A valid concern, but I think Stalker's revisions to the ABC bonuses could be used to offset this without the AI having disproportionately high XP units.

 

[Legen]

Please be carefull with that proposal, it coud ruins the game play balance. Would AI have not powerfull military unit advantage, the Human player will roll on conquest without serius resistance.

The AI still gets all its current military bonuses vs a human player with this proposal. It's only a change when the AI is facing another AI.

 

[CppMaster]

Please be carefull with that proposal, it coud ruins the game play balance. Would AI have not powerfull military unit advantage, the Human player will roll on conquest without serius resistance.

It will make balancing easier.

 

[stii]

I thought the idea was that AI loses units so much more than a human so this helps. In AI vs human combat almost no % increase matters as humans are so much better at focusing stuff down.