Unaltered Gameplay Mantra

[EmperorFool]

This thread is a continuation and expansion of a common question that has sprung up a few times in other threads (most recently here): Does feature X break the unaltered gameplay mantra of BUG?

Please keep this thread dedicated to discussing whether or not specific features go against the spirit of BUG and even what exactly that spirit is. For the majority of BUG's life (and I think all the previous UG mods), the idea has been to only summarize and display information that can be found elsewhere in the interface. It provides more immediate access to information that can be obtained already often with a lot of boring, repetitive work, information that is practically hidden.

Recently, BUG has included a few features that have stretched that concept. New features like City Founded Alert and Rival Culture Turns show information that, while still available in the regular interface, would be so tedious to collect that no player in their right mind would do so. In that sense, it can be said to expose effectively hidden information.

At a certain point, Ruff explained, exposing such information alters the player's gameplay, if not the game's. Does crossing that line violate the UG mantra?

 

[ruff_hi]

copy of EF's link so that this thread benefits from my wisdom too D)

I agree that BUG's purpose is to provide the player with information that can be gathered from the default interface but is time consuming and painful. The glance screen is a classic example - all of that information is available, you just have to go through the effort of gathering it.

The BUG info screen (victory conditions) currently shows how many turns to an AI city hitting legendary status. This information is not currently available from default interface but BUG includes it because players can look at it on Turn X then look again on Turn X+1, perform some simple mathematics and work it out. Personally, this was a water shed moment in BUG when we decided to put this in as we strayed outside of the information provided by the default interface. However, the stray is pretty minor.

My view is that hidden diplo modifiers were put into to provide some spice and variety to the players interaction with the game. I don't think that BUG will unveil this information as it was probably a conscious decision by the Civ4 team.

Another area that caught me the other day was the new alerts on AIs founding cities. This information has been available from day 1 but the speed that these alerts came warned me that I better get out there and start putting down cities - it actually changed my play style. Is this good or bad? Should BUG have done this? I suppose, for me, BUG revealed a weakness in my own game playing style. It could be argued that BUG shouldn't do this - it should just make playing the game easier - not change how you play the game.

Re WFYABTA - this involves detailed knowledge of the situation, digging into the XML and calculating a number of things and then keeping track of all of this. I would be happy to see BUG include details of what you traded, when and to whom. I would be very unhappy to see BUG provide a warning that the WFYABTA limit is 10 and you are currently at 8.

The current situation (as I see it) is that players know about WFYABTA and have a feeling for when they are approaching WFYABTA. They actively bypass some tech trades because of WFYABTA based on experience and a 'feeling' for where the WFYABTA limit is. I don't think that BUG should unveil the inner workings of this.

 

[EmperorFool]

obsolete requested a feature to display the number of techs that the player has traded with each AI in order to help them avoid the dreaded WFYABTA limit. The player can track this information easily by keeping a pad of paper and marking down a tick mark for each traded tech. I don't really see a problem with this as it's merely assisting the player in bookkeeping.

Where the feature crosses into questionable territory is if it also displayed each AI's limit at which they stop trading. This information is easily available in the XML files, but only if you know where to look. In that sense it is what I termed above effectively hidden.

Where it crosses into clearly anti-UG territory would be exposing the memory decay of each AI. This information is available nowhere--not even in the XML files--as it's based on random dice rolls. Thus it is actually hidden and out of the question.

 

[obsolete]

My view is that hidden diplo modifiers were put into to provide some spice and variety to the players interaction with the game. I don't think that BUG will unveil this information as it was probably a conscious decision by the Civ4 team.

This may very well be due to laziness or sloppy coding. But whatever the case, intended or not, every decent player now knows these factors as they have been posted in other threads and viewed at by people who were frustrated as to why Firaxis' GUI LIES.

We could all keep this hidden, but it will not stop people from knowing this, it will only cause them a little bit of more work in keeping track of things. I also think it's just wrong of Firaxis to mess with people's heads, and trick them into thinking a player is really at friendly when he is not.. or that they will be able to trade or do anything at friendly, when this is not the case. People get frustrated at what's going on because they wrongfully assume the GUI is telling them the truth.

It seems diplomacy was supposed to be a big part of the game, and they intended to reward players for it. As well as give them accurate indication as to what's going on, but they didn't complete it fully. It seems to me more a lack of effort, not intentional. The original coders know what's going on behind the scenes, but MOST of the players don't.

Most civ fans haven't seen this charts like this in their life..... but once they do they never forget them:

Spoiler :

 

[EmperorFool]

I think the hidden modifiers is pretty clearly intentional. It would have been a trivial amount of work to display them along with the visible modifiers (simply add a few XML text entries with translations and presto!). It took more work to hide them, actually.

And I think they hid them so that there was some unpredictability to the AIs. The things you can control (give in to demands, don't Dow, don't trade with WEs, etc) are shown to you since you had a direct action in causing those modifiers. The other things (Toku just hates everyone, Monty is a madman, etc) are hidden so that you have to play the game to get to know each leader and their behavior. This adds flavor at the expense of ease of play.

I think the forum community players tend to favor winning and predictability; that's why we read strategy articles and build these charts. The question is: Should we cater to both types of players? I myself have never investigated the hidden modifiers and AI variability. Sure, I know a few such as the upper/lower half of the scoreboard thing, but I don't know it exactly. I know each AI has differences, but I haven't looked at the numbers. Not knowing is part of the fun for me, but I don't discount how others feel, nor do I want to dictate my play style to them.

For that reason, I lean more to the side of showing these things as an option and letting the player decide. I don't think there's ever a chance of BUG being used for HoF or any other competitive league, so the issue of unfair advantage is moot. If I'm wrong about that, please speak up.

So the only question is whether or not we want to make these features available. Will we "ruin the fun" for casual players by exposing things to them that they might otherwise enjoy learning on their own? I dunno. We could turn them off by default. If they're that casual, they probably don't even know BUG has options!

 

[JujuLautre]

I feel there are a few different crossable lines:
(a) show things that are in the interface of the main game (tech to trade)
(b) show things that are in the interface of the main game, but tedious to compile (new city founding?)
(actually, I think that these two categories should not be distinguished, but that is just my own point of view)
(c) show things that can be found in the XML/forums but are not shown in the interface of the original game
(d) make changes that change gameplay

(d) is definitely crossing the line of UG.
(a) is, on the other hand, not.
(b), as I said, I believe is not. However, I have a problem with (c). First because we could argue "it was not in the intention of the designers to provide this information". But also because, for some stuff, there should be just no way for us to calculate the values; wfyabta, for example, depends on a random decay factor and of the fact that an AI C is aware of a trade between a human A an an AI B. If the human does not know C yet, he has no way to think that the trade was witnessed. As for the random factor, displaying it would be very bad I think.

I'm not against something which would *help* the human player to make up his decision; something like: "Hammurabi was the witness of 7 tech trades between you and other AIs". But no more.

At least, if you decide to include such "spoilerish" information in BUG, I advise you to turn them off by default. Or to make two versions of BUG.

 

[r_rolo1]

About WFYBTA:

I would be happy if there was simply a log that recorded the tech trades that the player does ( player X traded Aesthetics for Alphabet and Fishing with you ). that alone would be enough for my needs

Exposing the WFYBTA XML limits IMHO is not more spoilerish than the already existent BUG poll......

About the interface showing innacurate Diplo: well, I'm not convinced that we should show all the hidden modifiers that concern one LH. But one thing that I do not consider spoilerish is to show explicitly the real diplo stace when vassals meddle in. There is no justifiable reason to induce a player in error thinking that a certain civ is friendly with you , when in fact it is cautious/annoyed because it is furious with your 2/3 vassals ( or vice versa, as it happened in PH -14, where vassaling Saladin actually improved our diplo stance in the other continent , becuse Saladin was a popular dude there and we weren't.

 

[EmperorFool]

Several things factor in to WFYABTA:

1. Trade Count
   In this case, all 3 civs must know each other for the trade to be known. This is bookkeeping that the player can do if they desire.
   
2. Trade Limit
   This is a constant XML value per leader that the player can look up.
   
3. Memory Decay
   This is random and out of the hands of the player.

I feel that (1) is clearly UG, (3) is clearly non-UG, and (2) is debatable--thus this thread.

Regarding the averaging of vassal/master attitudes, does anyone know the actual algorithm? Are the total (hidden) attitude values averaged to get a common value for each player in the bloc?

Monty is -5 with me: Furious
Monty is +7 with Tokugawa: Pleased
Monty is +2 with us: Cautious

 

[ruff_hi]

Exposing the WFYBTA XML limits IMHO is not more spoilerish than the already existent BUG poll......

The BUG what? Sorry, rolo - I am missing something here - what BUG feature are you talking about?

 

[r_rolo1]

Diplo victory poll in the F8 screens , ruff . The intel displayed there is as UG as the WFYBTA limits IMHO.

@ Emperor

When vassals enter in the mess, the real attitute is the average of the atitudes that the AI feels for the ( vassal + masters ) group. For a example, if a AI is friendly with other player ( human or AI, doesn't matter ) but Furious with his 2 vassals ( very common situation ), the real atittude ( the one that will govern DoW and WFYBTA, for a example ) will be ( Friendly + Furious + Furious ) /3 = Annoyed ( IIRC ).

IMHO this fact that the GUI doesn't show this is a huge flaw......

 

[ruff_hi]

Diplo victory poll in the F8 screens , ruff . The intel displayed there is as UG as the WFYBTA limits IMHO.

Arr - I thought so. Re UG info ... the reasoning behind the voting patterns is pretty straight forward (yes, we lifted it from someone's review of the code) but you can (sort of) work it out from observation and general reasoning. The diplo-relationships used to plug into the underlying voting formula are based on what you can see - not what the AI really thinks (ie with hidden modifiers) so there are situations when BUG Poll will say one thing but the reality is different (I have seen that in my own games).

 

[r_rolo1]

^^Same as WFYBTA limits..... you can get easily a general sense of the limits for every leader just by playing and because of the decay, the XML value is more a upper limit than anything else.

 

[EmperorFool]

Please don't refer to WFYABTA as a whole in this discussion as it's getting confusing. Instead, direct your comments to one of the three aspects: Known Trades, Trade Limit (XML), and Decay.

Memory is Known Trades minus Decay, but most people probably assume you're talking about just Decay when you use Memory. Be warned that using this term will likely cause more confusion.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok:

IMHO...

Known Trades: can't see anti-UG in this
Trade limit: blurry, but , as stated above, I think that showing it is no more UG that certain already existent BUG features.
Decay: definitely anti-UG

 

[ruff_hi]

known trades: UG
Trade Limit: anti-UG
Decay: definitely anti-UG

Re Trade Limits - anyone got an example of other BUG features that are similar? I don't think that we have any other BUG features that vary based on the leader. The BUG voting / poll information might be a candidate but it treats each leader exactly the same based on revealed information.

 

[EmperorFool]

I agree that the Trade Limits is different from the voting prediction. The latter is based on the common game rules (is voting even affected by leader?) while the Trade Limits are based solely on the leader.

 

[Cammagno]

Please don't refer to WFYABTA as a whole in this discussion as it's getting confusing. Instead, direct your comments to one of the three aspects: Known Trades, Trade Limit (XML), and Decay.

known trades: UG, IN and abled by default
Trade Limit: critical but UG, IN and disabled by default (going to the Simple/Advanced BOS, it will go only in the advanced one)
Decay: definitely anti-UG, OUT

 

[EmperorFool]

Now that we've broached this topic, it seems reasonable to consider the hidden diplomacy modifiers. Some are leader-independent (rank comparison) while others vary by leader (peace weight, warmonger respect). All are rule-based and can be found in the code, XML, and forum posts.

Anyone care to comment on whether they should be included?

(going to the Simple/Advanced BOS, it will go only in the advanced one)

Are you suggesting we create a new "Advanced" tab for options like these instead of putting them with their related options? I understand the reasoning, and I'm not arguing against it yet. I just want to make sure that's what you mean.

 

[r_rolo1]

IMO the hidden diplo modifiers that are LH related should atleast be stated in the Civilopedia ( maybe the same spot could be used for the Tech Trade limits.... ). The leader independent ones are safe to put directly in the interface IMO

 

[obsolete]

The other things (Toku just hates everyone, Monty is a madman, etc) are hidden so that you have to play the game to get to know each leader and their behavior. This adds flavor at the expense of ease of play.

I do not believe this was their intention. If it was, the RANDOM-PERSONALITY option would be on by default.

I agree with everyone else that the variables for DECAY should be hidden. It is based on an RNG after all. Knowing this would be as bad as knowing the outcome of a battle before it happens.

But if the rest of the stats/rules, is already known by any vet player, I don't see the problem here.