(10) Proposal: Chieftain Difficulty become "Bonus Neutral"

Status
Not open for further replies.

Stalker0

Baller Magnus
Joined
Dec 31, 2005
Messages
9,600
There are players that enjoy the feeling they are playing against an AI that is playing the exact same game they are. No bonuses/no penalties, just their skill against the AI. Further, it would be useful to have the ability to see how good our AI really is without its "crutches", aka how smart has the AI truly gotten?

With that in mind, the proposal.

Chieftain Difficulty
  • Set AI options to 1 (to ensure the AI is as competent as possible)
  • Remove all ABC bonuses/penalties
  • Remove all supply bonuses/penalties
  • Remove all discounts/increases to tech/culture/purchasing/etc etc
  • Remove any bonus/penalty to combat/war weariness/anti-warfare fervor/healing

Stated plainly, once done, the AI should receive 0 advantages or disadvantages as compared to the human.
 

Zanteogo

King
Joined
Nov 13, 2015
Messages
950
Isn't that Prince?

Pretty sure your joking.. but no.

Stated plainly, once done, the AI should receive 0 advantages or disadvantages as compared to the human.

I thought we already had a difficulty level that did this? If not, I see no harm in changing Chieftain to this. Would be interesting to try it, though admittedly it would be extremely easy due to the AI not being anywhere close to the level of a human ability to do long term planning.
 

Stalker0

Baller Magnus
Joined
Dec 31, 2005
Messages
9,600
Pretty sure your joking.. but no.



I thought we already had a difficulty level that did this? If not, I see no harm in changing Chieftain to this. Would be interesting to try it, though admittedly it would be extremely easy due to the AI not being anywhere close to the level of a human ability to do long term planning.
As far as I know Chieftain is close to this but not quite. Also the AI options aren't set to 1, so the AI is "dumber" than it could be. The goal is to have an AI that's the best it can be intellect wise but gains no other crutches, which would still be the easiest difficulty we have.
 

cidk2000

Warlord
Joined
May 24, 2022
Messages
135
Location
Wales UK
Id second this proposal: Im often finding getting beaten regularly on chieftain in warfare and having 40% misc bonuses against my units and rather not editing the diplo files to turn of aggressive boosts as I find i get my behind handed to me late game...
 

Rekk

Deity
Joined
Dec 9, 2017
Messages
2,004
Net Zero is currently roughly between Warlord and Prince, which is where the human stops receiving bonuses and the AI stops taking penalties (the AI also has numerical bonuses in some forms since Chieftain, and an extra starting warrior even at Settler).
 

adac

Chieftain
Joined
Jun 11, 2014
Messages
92
Agreed; I do this manually via editing difficutly.xml and settings in Really Advanced Setup (to the extent that I can), but it would be great to have a difficulty that did it for me.
 

hokath

King
Joined
Oct 3, 2013
Messages
992
Location
London
It makes sense to have a net-zero difficulty.

It might make sense for it to be Prince, for the reason Stalker0 mentioned.
 

Solic

Warlord
Joined
Jul 20, 2020
Messages
186
I think it's confusing to reuse a name on the existing difficulty scale that doesn't adhere to the scaling. Like going from AI plays out of 3 random picks, to the best pick to 2 random picks to best pick again doesn't make any sense nor would I personally want to play this kind of difficulty.
 

pineappledan

Deity
Joined
Aug 9, 2017
Messages
8,439
Location
Alberta, Canada
Why change the name? Change the descriptor where it says “computer receives no bonuses”
 

Recursive

Already Looping
Moderator
Joined
Dec 19, 2017
Messages
3,907
Location
Antarctica
There are players that enjoy the feeling they are playing against an AI that is playing the exact same game they are. No bonuses/no penalties, just their skill against the AI. Further, it would be useful to have the ability to see how good our AI really is without its "crutches", aka how smart has the AI truly gotten?

With that in mind, the proposal.

Chieftain Difficulty
  • Set AI options to 1 (to ensure the AI is as competent as possible)
  • Remove all ABC bonuses/penalties
  • Remove all supply bonuses/penalties
  • Remove all discounts/increases to tech/culture/purchasing/etc etc
  • Remove any bonus/penalty to combat/war weariness/anti-warfare fervor/healing

Stated plainly, once done, the AI should receive 0 advantages or disadvantages as compared to the human.
If implemented as-is, AIs above Chieftain would have policy/tech/production choices higher than 1, which wouldn't make a lot of sense. It also makes the jump to Warlord steeper.
 

Recursive

Already Looping
Moderator
Joined
Dec 19, 2017
Messages
3,907
Location
Antarctica
Ok, how about an option for it in advanced settings to keep difficulties consistent?
An advanced option to alter database values doesn't really work well with the code.
 

andersw

Emperor
Joined
Feb 11, 2008
Messages
1,479
Location
sweden
I like this proposal, I get annoyed at times over AI cheats and while it likely is far too easy for me it would be nice to see what an "equal" game looks like.

Off topic but I find this very interesting, you have those who say "on emperor I can do anything I want to" and those who say "I struggle on chieftain".
Probably good that there is a wide variety of player skills.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom