[Vote] (5-34) Golden Age Removal Series: Remove GAP From AI Difficulty Bonuses

[Legen]

Voting Instructions
Players, please cast your votes in the poll above. Vote "Yea" if you'd be okay if this proposal was implemented. Vote "Nay" if you'd be okay if this proposal wasn't implemented.

You can vote for both options, which is equivalent to saying "I'm fine either way", but adds to the required quorum of 25 votes in favor.

All votes are public. If you wish, you can discuss your choice(s) in the thread below. You can change your vote as many times as you want until the poll closes.

VP Congress: Session 5, Proposal 34

Spoiler AI handicaps :

From Recursive's 1-05 proposal:

Difficulty Setting	What does it do?	Settler	Chieftain	Warlord	Prince	King	Emperor	Immortal	Deity
AIStartingDefenseUnits	Extra Warriors (or era equivalent unit) at game start	0	0	0	1	1	1	1	1
StartingMinorDefenseUnits	Extra Warriors (or era equivalent unit) at game start for City-States	0	0	1	1	2	2	3	3
AIWorkRateModifier	Workers complete improvements x% faster	+0%	+0%	+0%	+25%	+35%	+50%	+60%	+70%
AIUnhappinessPercent	% modifier to Unhappiness from Needs	+10%	+5%	-0%	-0%	-0%	-0%	-0%	-0%
AIUnitCostPercent	Discount on unit maintenance	100%	100%	100%	90%	85%	80%	75%	70%
AIBuildingCostPercent	Discount on building maintenance	100%	100%	100%	90%	85%	80%	75%	70%
AIUnitUpgradePercent	Discount on unit upgrade cost	100%	100%	100%	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%
AITrainPercent	Modifier to combat unit production cost	110%	105%	100%	90%	85%	80%	75%	70%
AIConstructPercent	Modifier to building production cost	110%	105%	100%	90%	85%	80%	75%	70%
AIPerEraModifier	Additional reduction to building and combat unit production costs (multiplicative) for each game era that passes	-0%	-0%	-0%	-4%	-6%	-8%	-9%	-10%
AICivilianPercent (new)	Modifier to production cost for non-combat units	110%	105%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
AICreatePercent AIWorldCreatePercent AIWorldConstructPercent	Modifiers to production cost for Projects, World Wonders and World Congress Projects	110%	105%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
AIFreeXP	Free XP given to units (except starting pathfinder), scaling with game speed	0	0	0	10	15	20	25	30
AIFreeXPPercent	% increase to XP gain from combat	+0%	+0%	+0%	+20%	+40%	+60%	+80%	+100%
VisionBonus	Extra sight for AI units (except scouting and trade units) in # of tiles	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	2
AIResistanceCap (new)	Maximum anti-warmonger fervor AGAINST the AI	64%	48%	32%	40%	50%	50%	50%	50%
AIBarbarianBonus	AI Bonus VS Barbarians	0%	10%	20%	20%	25%	25%	30%	30%
DifficultyBonusBase	See AI Periodic Yield Bonuses, below	0	0	0	4	7	10	12	14
DifficultyBonusA	See below	0	0	0	320	335	350	360	375
DifficultyBonusB	See below	0	0	0	190	210	230	240	260
DifficultyBonusC	See below	0	0	0	100	123	145	160	180

AI Periodic Yield Bonuses
The amount of yields gained on difficulties above Warlord is calculated as follows:

Yield Bonus = DifficultyBonusBase * (DifficultyBonusA + (DifficultyBonusB * Era) + (DifficultyBonusC * Era * Era)) / 100 (rounded down)
Era = current game (average) era, counting Ancient and Classical as era #1, Medieval as era #2, etc.

The types of yields granted for each trigger are as follows (no Production bonus anymore, Food yield is divided amongst all of the AI's cities):

• Enters a new era (3x normal bonus; Food, Gold, Golden Age Points, Science, Culture)
• Founds its original capital (Gold, Golden Age Points)
• Founds a new city, other than its capital (Food, Gold, Golden Age Points, Science, Culture)
• Wins a war (warscore 25+) (Food, Gold, Golden Age Points, Science, Culture)
• Starts a Golden Age (Food, Gold, Science, Culture)
• Constructs a World Wonder (Gold, Golden Age Points)
• Generates a Great Person (Gold, Golden Age Points)
• Completes an antiquity site dig by building a Landmark or extracting an artifact (Gold)
• Completes a trade route to another civilization or City-State (Gold)

The yield total is multiplied by InstantYieldPercent and divided by 100. InstantYieldPercent is 50 on Quick speed, 100 on Standard, 150 on Epic, and 200 on Marathon.

Proposal

• Remove all Golden Age Points from the AI Periodic Yield Bonuses.

Rationale

This is an AI handicap adjustment intended to remove Golden Age Points as a special balance point for the AI. Right now, the AI has six triggers that grant them GAP, including founding cities ( Capital included), and an injection of yields whenever they start a Golden Age. This means that GAP acts as an alternative source of those four yields that the AI already get from many of their other triggers; in their case, the GAP can be replaced for a direct increase on the yields they already provide.

Of note is that two of those triggers (World Wonders and Great People) create an AI bias towards certain policies and playstyles, namely Artistry and civilizations that favor Great People generation (e.g. Austria, Japan), making them scale exceptionally well with higher difficulties. This is likely a factor on Artistry being the most commonly adopted Medieval policy tree by the AI, and is bound to affect all the other proposals in this congress regarding GAP sources. The abundance of GAP injections in so many triggers also affects the overall balance of GA oriented civs, as they can stay under the effects of their boosted GAs for longer under AI control. Brazil is a particularly notable case, in that they turn such GAP injections into a mini version of Carthage's UA; found a city, gets gold indirectly through their UA's GAP conversion.

It is hard to estimate a numerical impact for how much these GAP injections increase the AI's overall yields. For now, it may be better to observe the impact of the GAP removal before deciding if the AI needs compensation.


Amendment: Removed increases of A/B/C values. Rationale adjusted accordingly.

 

[Stalker0]

WOW, increasing the ABC bonus by 20% to me is going to have a WAY bigger impact than the lose of GAP. Please think of the children!

 

[Legen]

I'll need to discriminate the increase between difficulties, the 20% is a starting point. Checking the current values now, we have injections as follows:

	Prince	King	Emperor	Immortal	Deity
Normal yields from handicap (Ancient Era)	24	46	72	91	114
Increase relative to previous difficulty	N/A	91.67%	56.52%	26.39%	25.27%

For now, I'm thinking of an increase as follows:

Prince: 15% or 20%
King: 10%
Immortal/Deity: 5%

 

[pineappledan]

GAPs are an indirect source of . I think replacement of GAPs should mainly be compensated with by increasing AIs’ free bonuses to those yield types

 

[rkkn]

GAPs are an indirect source of . I think replacement of GAPs should mainly be compensated with by increasing AIs’ free bonuses to those yield types

AI already leans towards culture victories, so I don't think we need to try to mimic the effects of more AI golden age

 

[Legen]

Amendment: Adjusted the increase of A/B/C values from 20% on all difficulties to 15% Prince, 10% King and 5% on the rest.

 

[azum4roll]

I'll need to discriminate the increase between difficulties, the 20% is a starting point. Checking the current values now, we have injections as follows:

	Prince	King	Emperor	Immortal	Deity
Normal yields from handicap (Ancient Era)	24	46	72	91	114
Increase relative to previous difficulty	N/A	91.67%	56.52%	26.39%	25.27%

For now, I'm thinking of an increase as follows:

Prince: 15% or 20%
King: 10%
Immortal/Deity: 5%

Do you have new yield numbers like this?

 

[Legen]

It should be a 15%, 10%, 5% increase based on difficulty. I fixed one value that was used a wrong value (King's A value). The new yields from handicap per difficulty and era are as follows:

	Prince	King	Emperor	Immortal	Deity
Ancient/Classical	28	51	76	95	119
Medieval	50	96	146	186	237
Renaissance	82	160	247	317	407
Industrial	123	242	378	488	631
Modern	173	344	540	700	907
Atomic	232	465	732	952	1237
Information	301	605	995	1244	1619

 

[Zuizgond]

Not really in favor of giving even more research to AI as periodic bonuses

 

[Stalker0]

Honestly this proposal seems so risky, messing with ABC has HUGE implications, I cannot stress that enough. It took a long time to settle difficulty levels with that.

I think we have to see how the GAP nerfs (if any) shake out first.

 

[Legen]

Would you prefer to simply remove the GAP without touching anything else then?

 

[Stalker0]

Would you prefer to simply remove the GAP without touching anything else then?

If your going to make a change, than yeah I would start there. And then if we all think the AI has gotten notably easier we can talk ABC changes.

 

[Legen]

Probably better. And even if we proceed to change something, it may be something else instead of the ABC values.

 

[Legen]

Amendment: Removed increases of A/B/C values. Rationale adjusted accordingly.

 

[Recursive]

Sponsored.