[Vote] (7-55 & 7-56) AI Difficulty Bonus Change Proposals

[Recursive]

Voting Instructions
Players, please cast your votes in the poll above. Vote "Yea" for every proposal you'd be okay with if it were implemented. Vote "Nay" if you'd be okay if these proposals weren't implemented. You can vote for any number of options.

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.

Host Note: 7-55 and 7-55a are mutually exclusive, but either is compatible with 7-56.

VP Congress: Session 7, Proposal 55
Discussion Thread: (7-55) Handicap from Great People Now Provide Yields Based on GP Type
Proposer: @Legen
Sponsor: @Recursive

Proposal Details

Spoiler Current AI handicaps at Emperor regarding Great People, from DifficultyChanges.sql :

SQL:
-- Yield types given for each type of difficulty bonus trigger
INSERT INTO TriggerYields
  (HistoricEventType, YieldType)
VALUES

  ('HISTORIC_EVENT_GREAT_PERSON', 'YIELD_FOOD'),
  ('HISTORIC_EVENT_GREAT_PERSON', 'YIELD_GOLD'),

SQL:
-- Base amounts by Difficulty Level and Era
INSERT INTO DifficultyBonusAmounts
  (HandicapType, EraType, Amount)
VALUES

  -- EMPEROR
  ('HANDICAP_EMPEROR', 'ERA_ANCIENT', 72),
  ('HANDICAP_EMPEROR', 'ERA_CLASSICAL', 72),
  ('HANDICAP_EMPEROR', 'ERA_MEDIEVAL', 139),
  ('HANDICAP_EMPEROR', 'ERA_RENAISSANCE', 304),
  ('HANDICAP_EMPEROR', 'ERA_INDUSTRIAL', 359),
  ('HANDICAP_EMPEROR', 'ERA_MODERN', 512),
  ('HANDICAP_EMPEROR', 'ERA_POSTMODERN', 695),
  ('HANDICAP_EMPEROR', 'ERA_FUTURE', 906),

Proposal

• AI handicaps from generating Great People now provide yields based on which type of Great Person was generated.
  • Suggested yields and multipliers for this session, by GP type:
    • Great Writer/Artist/Musician: 1x Food and 0.25x Culture.
    • Great Scientist: 1x Food and 0.25x Science.
    • Great Merchant: 1x Food and 1x Gold.
    • Great Engineer: 1x Food and 0.5x Production.
    • Great Diplomat: 1x Food, 0.5x Gold, 0.1x Culture and 0.1x Science.
    • Great General/Admiral: 1x Food, 0.25x Production and 0.125x Science.
    • Great Prophet: 1x Food, 0.25x Culture.

Rationale

At the moment, Great People are a major source of Gold for the AI, and does so without differentiation of GP type. This alters how both civilizations and policies perform, as this Gold influx may cover their weaknesses, or interact with their strengths in unintended ways. Potential cases include Austria having way more Gold than intended due to their Marriage mechanic accelerating how often this handicap triggers (and in turn, how often they can afford marriages...), or Industry's investment efficiency working way better than it should (AI tests pointed to Industry having an unusually high win rate compared to Rationalism and Imperialism).

This proposal aims to align the handicap yields to the GP type, so that the handicap doesn't create a mismatch between the focus of civilizations and policies, and what they get in return. In addition, differentiating between GP type allows another way to balance the handicaps based on how strong each type is at any given patch. This is also a potential new way to balance warmonger AI performance.

The initial suggestion is based on the yields their respective specialists provide, with the modifiers being based around the usual evaluation that > > , and with the Civil Servant's current base yields (211) being roughly 0.5x merchant, 0.33x writer and 0.33x scientist. For military GPs, the yield choice was based on the base yields on the Citadel (11), adjusting them to be half Great Engineer and half Great Scientist for handicap purposes.

Great Prophets are treated as a cultural person for handicap purposes, as Culture is one of the base yields they can provide with Holy Sites (453).



VP Congress: Session 7, Proposal 55a
Discussion Thread: (7-55a) Remove Gold Bonus from Great People Handicap
Proposer: @Recursive
Sponsor: @Recursive

Proposal Details
Proposal: Just remove the instant Gold yield from generating Great People for AI players on all difficulties, with no compensation.

Rationale: AIs which generate a lot of Great People have a significant winrate correlation (as discussed in the thread), the Gold bonus from generating Great People is a significant source of AI income (the rationale of the original proposal), and I'm under the impression that a lot of people on the higher difficulties find it very difficult to catch up to the AI in techs and policies until later in the game, so I'm reluctant to give them more Culture and Science bonuses, especially if this bonus triggers frequently enough to be a significant source of Gold income as things are now.

Also, this means I won't have to make 10 new difficulty triggers. I appreciate the creativity of the idea, though.



VP Congress: Session 7, Proposal 56
Discussion Thread: (7-56) AI Handicap Bonus: City Founding Gold/Food Adjustments
Proposer: @Stalker0
Sponsor: @Recursive

Proposal Details
Proposal: For Prince+ difficulty levels, remove the gold and food bonus for city founding from Ancient/Classical/and Medieval eras.

For Renaissance+ Eras, the gold and food bonus is doubled (increased by 100%).

Culture and Science are not affected.

Please reference the attached excel for exact numerical changes.

Rationale: One of the obvious annoyances with the AI handicaps is when they forward settle, but due to their larger boosts of food and gold on city founding they are always to rapidly grow and develop the instrastucture of that city so quickly that its fully defensible by the time you would want to attack it. This change is meant to be reduce the immediate bonus the AI recieves upon founding cities in the early eras.

However, by Renaissance (aka Pioneer), the AI is still sluggish when it comes to such expansion. So we are doubling the bonus it gets from here onward to help its late game expansion plans keep up with what humans can do.

Overall, this will be a nerf to AI difficulty, how much will need to be playtested, and then further adjustments can be made if the difficulty is changed too much.

 

[KungCheops]

This doesn't look quite right:

• Yea to implementing both (7-55) and (7-56)
• Yea to implementing both (7-55) and (7-56a)

Should be

• Yea to implementing both (7-55) and (7-56)
• Yea to implementing both (7-55a) and (7-56)?

 

[azum4roll]

AIs which generate a lot of Great People have a significant winrate correlation (as discussed in the thread), the Gold bonus from generating Great People is a significant source of AI income (the rationale of the original proposal), and I'm under the impression that a lot of people on the higher difficulties find it very difficult to catch up to the AI in techs and policies until later in the game, so I'm reluctant to give them more Culture and Science bonuses, especially if this bonus triggers frequently enough to be a significant source of Gold income as things are now.

So why is Gold the problem, instead of the Food?

 

[Recursive]

@Stalker0 I'm declaring you the sponsor for these, since you're doing a master difficulty bonus table.

 

[azum4roll]

Then I can't even open that file without crashing the computer or turning off the plugin. There's also no way to auto format files that large.