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

[Stalker0]

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.

 

[CppMaster]

Isn't that Prince?

 

[Zanteogo]

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.

 

[CppMaster]

Pretty sure your joking.. but no.

I wasn't joking, I was just wrong. Vanilla Prince had sth like equal footing: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ5)

 

[Stalker0]

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]

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]

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]

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]

It makes sense to have a net-zero difficulty.

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

 

[Solic]

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.

 

[CppMaster]

Can we change the name then? "Vanilla" difficulty or sth

 

[Stalker0]

Can we change the name then? "Vanilla" difficulty or sth

Call it “human” difficulty?

 

[CppMaster]

That may be too vague. Maybe "Equal" or "Base"

 

[pineappledan]

Why change the name? Change the descriptor where it says “computer receives no bonuses”

 

[CppMaster]

There is a descriptor? Ok then!

 

[Recursive]

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.

 

[CppMaster]

Ok, how about an option for it in advanced settings to keep difficulties consistent?

 

[Recursive]

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]

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.

 

[CppMaster]

So there is no way to do that?