One thing that jumps to my mind that probably would need to be looked at, that is maybe not OP, but definitely way more useful in human hands, is Aztecs UU (and possibly part of why Aztecs did so poorly in L. Vern's test). From what i recall when seeing Aztecs in my games, AI upgrades Jaguars to Spearmans as soon as possible, instead of aiming for 10 kills to get free Eagle (swordsman) transformation. Also if you get a good luck with barbs, or farm some early wars, you can go for other techs, while getting strong units for free outside of tech reqs.Even if we find OverPowered things in human hands a congress will follow the integration anyway so nerfs/changes will be proposed, so I do not see it as a problem.
Well, I wouldn't be against if it was kept on upgrade to make it AI friendly.AI upgrades Jaguars to Spearmans as soon as possible, instead of aiming for 10 kills to get free Eagle (swordsman) transformation.
I think it's more that people just don't know where to beginI'd assume that a lack of conversation is a lack of concern.
I have to agree with this. My strategy with Aztecs is to try to promote 4-5 jaguars to eagles and give them Shock promotions. This involves carefully only letting my jaguars kill units and not promoting those initial jaguars to spearmen ever, both of which are things I'm guessing the AI never does. It's pretty fun though. Those eagles become Uber units that can tear through cities. With raging barbarians and early wars it's possible to get a few eagles before everyone else even has walls.One thing that jumps to my mind that probably would need to be looked at, that is maybe not OP, but definitely way more useful in human hands, is Aztecs UU (and possibly part of why Aztecs did so poorly in L. Vern's test). From what i recall when seeing Aztecs in my games, AI upgrades Jaguars to Spearmans as soon as possible, instead of aiming for 10 kills to get free Eagle (swordsman) transformation. Also if you get a good luck with barbs, or farm some early wars, you can go for other techs, while getting strong units for free outside of tech reqs.
I know we've talked about this before and it didn't go well. But I think it's important to remember that there's no way the AI is making effective use of a large number of civ abilities, especially with the extra complexity in 4UC. The improvements to the AI in VP are great, but making an AI that could really do all the tricks a human will come up with is just impossible.I would contend we have never had more data for any decision before. 4UC has been published for 6 years, as of last month, and is thoroughly playtested.
Vern has run a total of 1300 test games and produced extensive statistics on all sorts of metrics, even producing a formal paper on the subject. 650 with and 650 without 4UC. Standard 8 players, so that’s 10,400 data points.
I don’t think we have a lack of data, we have a lack of talking.
There has been very little engagement on the threads Vern has set up for these comparisons, if you have questions you are more than welcome to get a conversation going in that thread. I’d love to see a little more active conversation around Vern’s work
I could add the strategy text in the blurb about each component when building the integration proposal post, but it will mostly be a recapitulation of the component's abilities. You say there is too much text, but are asking for the inclusion of a section where I rephrase most things. A tall order.I'd like a thorough explanation of each civ's 3/4th UC and their design intention (how they're supposed to help the civ). The thread is way too long to read through and most of it is outdated anyway.
Lmao xD Then will discuss with people who knows what they want to say.I think it's more that people just don't know where to begin
The thread has too much discussion that's already irrelevant but is impossible to know. I want up-to-date information, and why the components were designed that way. You'll probably get a different kind of suggestions from those who have never played with the mod.I could add the strategy text in the blurb about each component when building the integration proposal post, but it will mostly be a recapitulation of the component's abilities. You say there is too much text, but are asking for the inclusion of a section where I rephrase most things. A tall order.
this would be extremely helpful, yes. would also be helpful for coming up with suggestions for changes to the things that aren't up to snuffI'd like a thorough explanation of each civ's 3/4th UC and their design intention (how they're supposed to help the civ).
the "too much text" is the 150 (!) pages of posts. that's definitely too much text, and there's no way most of that is relevantYou say there is too much text
I've tried to do a Jaguar barb-farm into Eagle rush cheese a few times and it's not very good. You can do ~4 Jaguars to Eagles (any more than that takes too many barbs) but the slight CS edge is pretty quickly researched away by the AI on higher difficulty anyway (even on epic speed).My guess re: the Aztecs’ doing so poorly is actually the eagle’s converting killed units into workers, and then the AI not disbanding them if they have too many workers.
The free upgrade to eagle rarely comes up, killing 10 different units with the same unit is very rare even for humans. it was added because several people in the community demanded adding it, and I would more than happily drop it. I’ve been opposed to the inclusion of that gimmick ever since I wrote it, and you can find statements by me all the way back from when it was originally implemented saying as much.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you and all the developers/maintainers of 4th UC and all the effort & time you put into this amazing this mod; since i tried it i could not really go back to "vanilla" VP.We have >3000 comments on the mod's page. Many players have posted feedback and playthrough information over all that time.
I can assure you that people have given feedback on Babylon's kit. I can also assure you that despite their early unlocks the power of their new components grows considerably in the later eras. We were very conscious when designing Babylon to make sure their components scaled in power, rather than creating an early power spike; this should be evident if you look at their abilities.
It was maybe a bit untoward to just shut it down, but Recursive was clear we have already got the ball rolling on an integration conversation.
I am trying to get the documentation, permissions, and designs of the extra components into a form that can be presented to the community properly. A lot has changed in the last few versions of the mod and lots of things are out of date or not working at their best. I personally do not want this conversation going forward too much before I have had a chance to polish the mod and prepare it for compatibility with all of the things that are going to have to change now that Congress 7 has closed.
Just want to point out here that it's a somewhat shallow interpretation to say that Aztecs are bad due to their lower winrate. Warmonger and aggressive AIs as a whole do worse, likely from antagonizing their neighbors and getting ganged up on: offense leader flavors have moderate negative correlations with winrate, and seeing a graph of combined offense flavors against winrates shows a pretty clear pattern here - warmongers exist to make trouble and add challenge for a human player, but this AI playstyle does not do a lot of winning. This is something you mention as well, which is accurate and I think is a fairly desirable for a 4x gameTake the Aztecs for example (apparently they're bad according to the data). Even without 4UC, they're super good in human hands. You can make a monument then 5 jags, and go around slaughtering any units you come across, whether barbs, CS, or AI. You can often snipe AI cities. This will guarantee you a lot of gold and an early religion with no investment other than those jags (so you can potentially use a scaling pantheon too), plus weak and farmable neighbours allowing you to expand however you want. That gives you an easy or at least viable game even on deity. It gets even crazier in 4UC with the 10 kills=free upgrade. There's absolutely no way the AI is going to do any of that remotely efficiently. There are lots of other examples... So while AI data is nice, it can't really account for the human element of balance.
AIs that aren't good at winning can still have a huge impact on the human. Aggressive unit spammers for instance. They are gonna have trouble beating a runaway Siam in an AI game, but they can hugely slow down a human player, even though that human player could perhaps find a way to cripple and defeat a runaway Siam.
Overall I agree with this sentiment regarding civ balance. It's useful for identifying exceptional cases and overall trends but certainly provides a very narrow view into civ balance from a human perspective. For this reason, I think it's more useful in combination with human feedback and other metrics than as a standalone.So for these reasons, although I think the AI data is nice and quite interesting, there isn't all that much to discuss. It doesn't capture some important parts of how the game is played and experienced. It's nice to identify/prevent uncontrolled runaway AIs (e.g. Siam or Carthage), but it doesn't give a very strong indication of overall balance from the human perspective because the AI just can't use a lot of the civ abliities/UUs etc effectively, and in general doesn't play anything like a human.
That's a very clear explanation. And we need human feedback and other metrics before integration not after. People's perception of balance as a mode and balance as a standalone is clearly different. 4UC is well balanced enough as a mode. However, as a standalone we need more feedback I think. If this is done successfully, 56UC or more can be done too. (Just imagining it is cool!!)Just want to point out here that it's a somewhat shallow interpretation to say that Aztecs are bad due to their lower winrate. Warmonger and aggressive AIs as a whole do worse, likely from antagonizing their neighbors and getting ganged up on: offense leader flavors have moderate negative correlations with winrate, and seeing a graph of combined offense flavors against winrates shows a pretty clear pattern here - warmongers exist to make trouble and add challenge for a human player, but this AI playstyle does not do a lot of winning. This is something you mention as well, which is accurate and I think is a fairly desirable for a 4x game
Spoiler figures :
Overall I agree with this sentiment regarding civ balance. It's useful for identifying exceptional cases and overall trends but certainly provides a very narrow view into civ balance from a human perspective. For this reason, I think it's more useful in combination with human feedback and other metrics than as a standalone.
However, I would argue that there are many other facets of the AI data that are more or less directly applicable to the human player experience and either have been or are currently being used to improve the mod from a more quantitative point of view:
That being said, I think there's also some data from AI games that have little value for balancing for a human player, policy choices being a great example. Policy winrates have more to do with what civs usually pick them (ex. Tradition has high diplomatic victory percentages, and the top diplo civs: Siam, Austria, Netherlands go Tradition every game. Coincidence?) or the policies contained therein being an engine for churning out more AI handicap yields, which are both completely unapplicable to balancing policies for a player.
- Victory Conditions: If a certain victory type is too easy or much faster than the others, this is a negative for the player - for example, when culture victories made up about 70% of all games, this obviously limits player choice in difficult spots (since this might be the only attainable option) as well as making games containing CV focused civs much more difficult than those without
- Technology Research Times: When some eras are much longer or shorter than others, this is also a negative for the player - not having the opportunity to use cool units because their upgrade comes in 5 turns was a common problem when atomic+ techs were a third of the cost they are now. Sure, the AI average won't exactly match the science output of a human player but it gives a much better and less arbitrary baseline for science output at various points of the game
- AI Handicap Bonuses: While obviously not directly applicable to humans, AI bonuses are very visible to a human player, and manifests in different ways, such as extremely quick city growth, being exceptionally ahead or behind in techs or policies, or just certain civs consistently having way more yields to work with (particularly those that focus on great people). Being able to analyze handicap and instant yield sources by their sources and amounts is invaluable for balancing bonuses across triggers and smoothening out their power over the course of a game and between civs, making for a more consistent and fair experience for a human player
I think we have to have a cautioned start, and an aggressive finish.Ultimately I think balance issues would come to the forefront if 4UC were added to the base mod and get cleaned up immediately through VP congress.
I'm already working to try to strip out the more "out there" bonuses to have something more tame for integration proposal. The next version of the modmod is already going to have some big changes, reworked, or totally replaced components.But then once that grace period is over, I would be on board with rapid balance considerations. The flip side is the 4UC veterans have to be open to the notion that with the inclusion to the wider mod, yes balance on 4UC is going to change. And so we don't want to adopt a mindset of "well its worked in 4UC this long move along".