MODMOD: ERA and Better AI

[AlexandrJJ]

Yes! Thank you, you have my appreciation; I was JUST hoping that I'd be able to start a new game after I got done making food for the family!

 

[Sephi]

next Version will include some kind of Hippus+. Right now I plan these changes. Any Ideas/Feedback are welcome, especially for the later Eras.

Hippus
Palace gives 2 additional mana (body, chaos)

1. Era of Survival
   1. national wonder: Grand Stable, +5exp to mounted units built in city, +2 GPP great general
   2. national wonder: Guild of the Seven, allows to build UU Light Mercenary. +2 GPP great merchant
   3. UU Light Mercenary: 5, 3, 90 , can be sold to rival civs for 120 gold.
   4. UU Hippus Spy: national Unit (limit 1) 2, invisible, can explore rival territory and investigate cities.
   5. Spy Mission: Steal Map. Costs 100gold. Only Possible in rival Capital. Gives Map Information.
   6. Spy Mission: Steal foreign research documents. Spy gets documents as equipment and can place them in a library to increase research. Only Possible in rival City with a Library.
   one possible strategy: Sell Mercenaries and research at 100%. Use additional Gold for Spy Missions.
2. Era of Growth
   1. UB Horselord Fields. Same as Basic FF, but requires Horselords Tech instead of horseback riding
   2. national wonder: Guild of the Nine. Can only be constructed by Hippus but allows every civ that has Currency Tech to recruit Mercenaries. Non Hippus Mercenaries aren't mounted, cost more upkeep and have a low chance to randomly plunder the land.
   3. UU Mounted Mercenary: 5 +weapons, 3, upkeep 3/turn
   4. can research Horselords Tech
   5. Spy Mission: Sabotage Military Production. Costs 500 gold, -80% to Production of military Units in target City, small chance every turn for the effect to wear off.
   6. Spy Mission: Disorder Mage Guild. Costs 200 Gold, all local arcane Units have a high chance to miscast spells, small chance ever turn for the effect to wear off.
   one possible strategy: Use Spy Missions to weaken the Defense of an enemy and Mercenaries to gain an advantage for a short time.
3. Era of Conquest
   1. 
      ?
4. Era of Domination
   1. 
      HERO: MAGNADINE
      +?

Success of Spy Missions depends on targets civics, for example Scholarship greatly increases the success chance to steal research documents.

 

[Rutee]

I seem to be having a problem with my City of Centaurs not actually adding Strong to my units, which has me out 1000 hammers. This makes Mr. Flibble very cross.

I am using the first patch though. I am loving the computer actually using Magic! Though, with the computer actually using spells osme of my pet peeves with some spells are starting to come back, with Blur the most prominent in my mind. Notably, Blur making whole stacks immune to First Strikes seems very.. uh, overpowerful for a level 1 spell. Maybe it should just add a couple?

Re: Hippus.
Might I suggest the Guild of the Nine mercs also, on hiring, add a very small amount of gold to the Hippus themselves (Not for when the Hippus themselves hire, naturally). Also, a suggestion. I'd tone down the Spy Missions. Pelemoc can't do anything that good, and he's a mini-hero focused on City disruption.

 

[Rutee]

Uh, someone, halp. I seem to be running into an error where the computer thinks I DoW'd it. Except Id idn't, and I can't figure out where in God's Name this is coming from.

Someone help me figure this out? Yes, it's a slightly old patch version.. >>>

 

[Sephi]

DoW could be caused by either spells like maelstorm (you don't get a popup in FF) or Basium?
What are good Abilities of Pelemoc? I find him quite useless but I am no scion expert.

yeah, Blur is strong. But stuff like slow or rust is even worse

I'll fix the City of Centaur in next version. if you know XML, you can most likely fix it without breaking saves by adding Unitcombats to the strong Promotion in XML\Units\unitinfo.xml

 

[Rutee]

No, I figured it out. My wheel of alliances fell apart because I forgot I can't serve as an Intermediary (Which makes it an actual web, instead of a wheel). Tasunke DoWs Capria, I DoW back as a result, and Daracaat and the Doviello jump in on me because they're mean. Ah well, back tot he drawing board.

Pelemoc's stuff is useful if you're willing to spend the money, and don't mind the diplo hit. But none of it is really instant and large payoffs, so I guess I can see why he looks useless. I always focus on the long term, generally tot he detriment of the short, in Strategy games..

Anyway, since you're adding spy missions, you can add more stuff for him when you get to him. Not sure how much Scions need added though, they're already pretty insanely different.

 

[jacktannery]

Using your modmod playing with the Lurchip, and I have noticed that occasionally my dwarven adepts learn chanelling 2 when they go up a level. I gather that this was supposed to be a Amurite-only trait. My lovely magical lurchip also have five palace mana, but perhaps that was added in FF previously. Anyway the difference your AI work makes to the game is HUGE, and it is far more challenging and much better as a result. Congrats.

 

[Sephi]

Anyway, since you're adding spy missions, you can add more stuff for him when you get to him.

Exactly what I have in mind

Using your modmod playing with the Lurchip, and I have noticed that occasionally my dwarven adepts learn chanelling 2 when they go up a level. I gather that this was supposed to be a Amurite-only trait. My lovely magical lurchip also have five palace mana, but perhaps that was added in FF previously. Anyway the difference your AI work makes to the game is HUGE, and it is far more challenging and much better as a result. Congrats.

great to know things work as they should. The channeling II your adepts get with levels is an ability all magical civs share (you get it by researching arcane mastery). I recently added 2 more mana to all palaces to spice things up now that the AI can understands magic a bit better.

 

[Pohlmann]

i play on monarch now (normal ffh emperor++) and the only change i can see is that the ai is getting incredibly ridiculous boni.

turn 30 and ljosfalsar already have their 2nd city. turn 65 they have their religion. in NO way u can even keep up building settlers and then in turn 170 they got 8 cities at pop 6+ while u have 4 or 5 cities beyond 1 population and then they attack with 20 units while u may have ~ 10 - 15 warriors and few axemen/archers

cant ANYTHING be done without giving the ai 300% production bonus???

elves are rly unstoppable this way.

now that i checked it. rofl. how can u not find this incredibly imbalanced?

the ai has its 1st worker out after 5 turns. after 20 turns they built additional 3 units and their city has grown faster than my city if i dont build a worker.
then they start building their 1st settler requiring 12-15 turns to finish. (at this point after 35 rounds have passed, the ai is already 30-40 turns ahead of you)
and with their 50% bonus research ljos get their ancient forests (which means +1 food and hammer for every single field) already in turn 70. they build up 4 times your power in 150 turns and just overwhelm u.

most imba . .. .. .. . ever seen imho

 

[Sephi]

thanks for your feedback. Giving more resources to the AI is a key concept of CIV4 and any mod/modmod. Even the BTS Better AI mod doesn't change that.

A BTS Deity AI virtually starts with 2 cities and an immortal AI will start with a worker. So if one AI player in your game build a city turn 30 he is rather slow

Difficulty settings are not to be fair or balanced, they are supposed to make up interesting and challenging games.

I didn't change any general handicap settings from BTS, so the %bonus to Production the AI gets is the same as in the base game. I did compensate for their lack of dealing with barbs by giving them a flat bonus over the first 100 turns and greatly lowering their bonus XP.

Keep in Mind that you can always reduce your difficulty setting if you think the AI gets too many bonuses. It works just as in base CIV4.

 

[Pohlmann]

1st of all sorry for my harshness ^^

just had to quit 2 games in a row because ljos were my direct neighbours.

try to play against them on a small map.

the 2 food and 2 hammers are like increasing their production by 200%.

if it were just in the capitol it would be fine. but in turn 55-60 they have 3 cities, meaning +15 which is way above normal deity bonusses. if the enemies start far off its ok but if they are close then they will wage war against u and u cant hold them off. and even if u can they tech so incredibly fast.

the biggest prob with ljos then is that they get their religion so damn fast that before turn 100 they have 5+ cities with ancient forests which are like 2 normal fields meaning that with their boni they have 300 - 400% bonusproduction compared to normal ffh

most other civs are ok but they really need to be toned down.

 

[Willgar]

I like the AI improvements you made. Any chance you'll release the new AI separately, Sephi?

Great to see Sephi tackling the issue of AI - it is far more important than new units and wonders but i suspect it is rather hard to do. The AI improvements are the most useful aspect of this mod. Tweaks on production and commerce values are just icing. A better AI will make for a better game - please can you separate out the AI mod from the balance pass so that people who are happy with the current FF balance can still benefit from your hard work.

 

[WarKirby]

i play on monarch now (normal ffh emperor++) and the only change i can see is that the ai is getting incredibly ridiculous boni.

This is a good thing. If you're being forced down a difficulty, it means he's doingsomething right.

Noble is the "fair" difficulty, I believe. That's where you and the AI are on a level footing. The ultimate aim of any AI improvements should be to make it impossible to win at a difficulty higher than noble, and extremely hard at that.


I believe difficulties below noble give a bonus to human players instead.

 

[Rutee]

I believe difficulties below noble give a bonus to human players instead.

Correct. They work to make it subtle. If I'm not mistaken, bonuses for monarch read as production and research bonuses. When you are below noble, instead the hammer and beaker costs are reduced.

 

[Sephi]

Great to see Sephi tackling the issue of AI - it is far more important than new units and wonders but i suspect it is rather hard to do. The AI improvements are the most useful aspect of this mod. Tweaks on production and commerce values are just icing. A better AI will make for a better game - please can you separate out the AI mod from the balance pass so that people who are happy with the current FF balance can still benefit from your hard work.

If you want to merge my AI tweaks into FF balance setting, you could do this:
1. make a copy of this modmod
2. copy XML folder from FF into the copy of this modmod
3. copy GlobalDefinesAlt.xml from this modmod into the copy
The game will start then, but you will get a lot of python errors because the python code I added will reference to stuff that is missing in the XML files. So you would have to go through the python code I added (it is marked by #ERAMOD) and see what changes you can keep and which you want to keep.

 

[Sephi]

1st of all sorry for my harshness ^^

just had to quit 2 games in a row because ljos were my direct neighbours.

try to play against them on a small map.

the 2 food and 2 hammers are like increasing their production by 200%.

if it were just in the capitol it would be fine. but in turn 55-60 they have 3 cities, meaning +15 which is way above normal deity bonusses. if the enemies start far off its ok but if they are close then they will wage war against u and u cant hold them off. and even if u can they tech so incredibly fast.

the biggest prob with ljos then is that they get their religion so damn fast that before turn 100 they have 5+ cities with ancient forests which are like 2 normal fields meaning that with their boni they have 300 - 400% bonusproduction compared to normal ffh

most other civs are ok but they really need to be toned down.

ok, I will keep an eye on the ljos. If you build your cities on hills and build palisades, they should have some problems to take them with fawns though.

If you want to change what the AI gets as a bonus in the first 100 turns, open XML\buildings\buildinfos and search for halls_. The YieldChanges and CommerceChanges decide how much they get.

 

[Pohlmann]

the prob is not that they take me down. defending is always possible somehow still but i cant expand anymore after they spammed settlers everywhere even if i block them or do everything that is possible to expand quickly (might aswell be the erebus map setting)

but compared to all other leaders except isolated malakim mby they are unequalled. they lead the scoreboard all the time + have enormous science output + large armies. there's no weakness and u cant overcome them with better troops when they have 4 times your science output especially now that the era teching made it way harder to specialize

 

[Skyre Noktis]

Hi Sephi,

Do you have any plans to release the DLL source for this mod? I'm particularly interested in the new arcane unit AIs.

 

[Sephi]

I am like Perpentach, I don't have plans.

 

[Skyre Noktis]

Merci beaucoup.