Drakarska
Epic Dadness
Just as an amusing FYI, Cupac will declare at pleased. I've had this happen at least three times in previous games with him as an AI.
Advanced Civ
- Thread starter f1rpo
- Start date
In BtS? I don't even know, is he regarded as quite peaceful? His personality values look pretty similar to Kublai Khan's:
@Conqueror Worm: Not sure what modifiers we mean. There are diplo modifiers like "+1: You gave us help" and the resulting attitude levels. That would be a separate issue, not affected by the Legacy AI option. There are XML settings though, e.g. RELATIONS_THRESH_PLEASED in GlobalDefines.xml and numerous leader-specific settings in Civ4LeaderHeadInfos.xml, some of which can also be changed for most or all leaders at once through the LEADER_DEFAULTS values in that file. The Legacy AI option really just restores the simple BtS algorithm for starting wars, that is: If we already have a war plan, keep building up for a period of time, once that has elapsed, declare war as soon as a city-attack stack reaches the border; no real possibility for a change of heart in BtS, still unlikely in K-Mod. If no war plan yet, roll for starting any war based mostly on personality (what the guide in the screenshot above summarizes as aggression level), check a few necessary conditions for each possible target (attitude, power ratio), make a no-war roll mostly based on personality and attitude (in the guide: peace probability). Plus a fairly complex K-Mod calculation to choose between several eligible targets. And willingness to talk is mostly a matter of time passed and losses suffered. AdvCiv overhauls all that, which is what I've named the UWAI component of the mod. The manual describes that in some detail in the chapter "Utility-Based War AI".
Aggressive AI affects not just the procedure outlined above, but also e.g. victory strategies and unit production. I felt that there is a happy medium - closer to the Aggressive than to the non-Aggressive behavior -, so I enabled Aggressive AI by default, toned down some of its effects and removed it as a game option, making room for the K-Mod/ Legacy AI option. Since I consider the K-Mod behavior to be more aggressive than UWAI on the whole (perhaps not actually true on Deity/ Immortal), I then worried that the K-Mod behavior with Aggressive AI (which I also haven't bothered to tone down in the BtS/ K-Mod war planning code) would be too aggressive for some tastes, so I added the USE_KMOD_AI_NONAGGRESSIVE option in XML. Probably should've just made that a NON_AGGRESSIVE_AI option, i.e. not only for use with the K-Mod AI; that would be simpler. Anyway, yes, I think you already understood how that's supposed to work.
Spoiler :
@Conqueror Worm: Not sure what modifiers we mean. There are diplo modifiers like "+1: You gave us help" and the resulting attitude levels. That would be a separate issue, not affected by the Legacy AI option. There are XML settings though, e.g. RELATIONS_THRESH_PLEASED in GlobalDefines.xml and numerous leader-specific settings in Civ4LeaderHeadInfos.xml, some of which can also be changed for most or all leaders at once through the LEADER_DEFAULTS values in that file. The Legacy AI option really just restores the simple BtS algorithm for starting wars, that is: If we already have a war plan, keep building up for a period of time, once that has elapsed, declare war as soon as a city-attack stack reaches the border; no real possibility for a change of heart in BtS, still unlikely in K-Mod. If no war plan yet, roll for starting any war based mostly on personality (what the guide in the screenshot above summarizes as aggression level), check a few necessary conditions for each possible target (attitude, power ratio), make a no-war roll mostly based on personality and attitude (in the guide: peace probability). Plus a fairly complex K-Mod calculation to choose between several eligible targets. And willingness to talk is mostly a matter of time passed and losses suffered. AdvCiv overhauls all that, which is what I've named the UWAI component of the mod. The manual describes that in some detail in the chapter "Utility-Based War AI".
Aggressive AI affects not just the procedure outlined above, but also e.g. victory strategies and unit production. I felt that there is a happy medium - closer to the Aggressive than to the non-Aggressive behavior -, so I enabled Aggressive AI by default, toned down some of its effects and removed it as a game option, making room for the K-Mod/ Legacy AI option. Since I consider the K-Mod behavior to be more aggressive than UWAI on the whole (perhaps not actually true on Deity/ Immortal), I then worried that the K-Mod behavior with Aggressive AI (which I also haven't bothered to tone down in the BtS/ K-Mod war planning code) would be too aggressive for some tastes, so I added the USE_KMOD_AI_NONAGGRESSIVE option in XML. Probably should've just made that a NON_AGGRESSIVE_AI option, i.e. not only for use with the K-Mod AI; that would be simpler. Anyway, yes, I think you already understood how that's supposed to work.
Conqueror Worm
Warlord
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2006
- Messages
- 297
Thank you for the in depth explanation. I'm using the KMod NonAggressive AI option right now and it does seem more forgiving to me. This time no one declared war on me until after I conquered much of India. Then Rome declared war, but Rome really did not like me at the time. So no one has declared war on me so far while our relations were average or above. That makes the game somewhat more playable on deity for me. I'll let you know more eventually, but I'm so glad I asked about this because I really think we may have found the cure to all of my woes! Thanks again.
Some feedback: Something I noticed about the barbarians. For maps with a "new world" (in this case the terra map), barbarians build a couple of cities. The problem is it makes colonization way too easy and cheap. The barbarian cities have tile improvements and are lightly defended by weak units. A pair of musketmen will take the city in the screen shot. It makes it not even necessary to build settlers to colonize. The AdvCiv manual shows a lot goes into the barbarian mechanics, so my ideas won't really fit. I thought simply making barbarians not build tile improvements and/or barbarian cities will always raze when captured. I'm not sure what to propose here, but I think as it is now somewhat breaks colonization.
P.S I love absolutely everything else about the mod I've seen so far. Thanks a million for making it!
P.S I love absolutely everything else about the mod I've seen so far. Thanks a million for making it!
Attachments
Thanks. I'm not sure that a city like this is such a prize. You're stuck with its position that was chosen only with the inner ring in mind. It'll only be size 5, which is something like 130 food, and new cities can grow pretty quickly at this point of the game – which is also desirable because there is not necessarily much time left for them to amortize, not much time, that is, until the game is essentially decided. It is true that growing a new city fast takes a settler and a worker, perhaps better 2 workers, plus a defensive unit. Barbarians won't swarm toward civ cities until the latter outnumber the Barbarian cities, but I suppose stray attackers still need to be expected. And the matured cottages (Village? Town?) in the screenshot can't easily be attained by a new city. If a couple of Musketmen can capture and hold two Barbarian cities, that sure seems like a problem. Because it'll allow a human player to establish a dominating position in the New World by just getting there a little earlier than the AI civs. And a Musketman is not a Conquistador, so this isn't great from a historical angle either. But I don't think it's so far out of balance that a drastic change needs to be considered.
Stronger defenses would seem like the obvious main remedy. Seems rather unusual that the Barbarians don't have Longbows at this point. Could be an outlier, perhaps more likely comes down to the game settings. Either way, still a problem of course. I've just run a single Auto Play game on a Normal-size Terra on Monarch difficulty; attaching a couple of screenshots. Here 2 out of 3 Barbarian cities are defended by Longbows and they're even able to produce Musketmen. They probably wouldn't have Gunpowder though if it weren't for the AI city founded on the southern subcontinent. Tech diffusion speeds up when Barbarians share a continent with civs. That's part of the "lot" going into the mod's handling of Barbarians. Which might be a bit overambitious given that AdvCiv doesn't make Barbarian tech acquisition any more transparent than BtS did. Could also be that I've been relying on AI Auto Play too much for balancing. A civ landing a couple of ragtag units a.s.a.p. to hunt for cities is not going to happen in those games.
The Barbarians have Walls everywhere, but that's no good against gunpowder units (and I wouldn't want to nerf Musketman by somehow excepting them from this rule), They could easily produce a little bit of culture for some more tile defense, but I think that will make their borders too bulky – one ring per 20% defense is not a good deal in this light.
In my game, I noticed that they did actually spread the borders of one city by founding Christianity. This potential issue was already brought up two months ago:
As for making the Barbarian cities less attractive, maybe they could just be founded a little later. They could be placed in slightly weaker spots, but it'll look strange if there is clearly much better land available. I don't think I want to block Barbarian cottages entirely; they at least give the civs something to pillage when a Barbarian city is too strongly defended to capture it. They could be restricted to improving only worked tiles; that should normally be just 4 tiles (rather than all 8 in the inner ring) because of the happiness cap; they're programmed not to construct happiness buildings. That should also be quite easy to implement.
Stronger defenses would seem like the obvious main remedy. Seems rather unusual that the Barbarians don't have Longbows at this point. Could be an outlier, perhaps more likely comes down to the game settings. Either way, still a problem of course. I've just run a single Auto Play game on a Normal-size Terra on Monarch difficulty; attaching a couple of screenshots. Here 2 out of 3 Barbarian cities are defended by Longbows and they're even able to produce Musketmen. They probably wouldn't have Gunpowder though if it weren't for the AI city founded on the southern subcontinent. Tech diffusion speeds up when Barbarians share a continent with civs. That's part of the "lot" going into the mod's handling of Barbarians. Which might be a bit overambitious given that AdvCiv doesn't make Barbarian tech acquisition any more transparent than BtS did. Could also be that I've been relying on AI Auto Play too much for balancing. A civ landing a couple of ragtag units a.s.a.p. to hunt for cities is not going to happen in those games.
The Barbarians have Walls everywhere, but that's no good against gunpowder units (and I wouldn't want to nerf Musketman by somehow excepting them from this rule), They could easily produce a little bit of culture for some more tile defense, but I think that will make their borders too bulky – one ring per 20% defense is not a good deal in this light.
In my game, I noticed that they did actually spread the borders of one city by founding Christianity. This potential issue was already brought up two months ago:
I've decided to block the Barbarians from researching toward any tech that no civ has yet discovered. That's easy to implement if nothing else. Should also help them a little to get military tech faster because they'll no longer waste their research on religion techs. But I don't think it'll make a big difference. Maybe their backwardness is related to the map size or difficulty level; if so, that shouldn't be difficult to tweak. Getting them to station an extra defender could also help a little.
As for making the Barbarian cities less attractive, maybe they could just be founded a little later. They could be placed in slightly weaker spots, but it'll look strange if there is clearly much better land available. I don't think I want to block Barbarian cottages entirely; they at least give the civs something to pillage when a Barbarian city is too strongly defended to capture it. They could be restricted to improving only worked tiles; that should normally be just 4 tiles (rather than all 8 in the inner ring) because of the happiness cap; they're programmed not to construct happiness buildings. That should also be quite easy to implement.
Attachments
@DeepWell: Hippodrome granting twice as much slider happiness is part of its unique ability. BtS Pedia text: "The Hippodrome [...] provides [...] an increased happiness bonus from money dedicated to your cultural slider." It's 1 happiness per 5% culture in BtS vs. Theater's 10%. In AdvCiv, I've swapped the slider abilities of Colosseum and Theater because I felt that Colosseum badly needed a buff due to no longer being sped up by the Creative trait (which had needed a nerf) and also having lost the culture rate effect that K-Mod had added. I also wanted to make Theater and Colosseum more distinct, high culture vs. ludi. The manual covers this too (in the "Immortal Culture" chapter, change 908b), but it doesn't say there that Hippodrome's slider ability has been adjusted proportionally. The AdvCiv Pedia also only explicitly covers the Theater/ Colosseum change (under "Strategy"). I think that should be OK; the Strategy text of the UB correctly describes how it differs from the default version. So, all is well, I feel. Well, Hippodrome replacing Theater rather than Colosseum is weird to begin with.
Drakarska
Epic Dadness
I'm really glad you didn't ask me that question Kel
@Drakarska
Ohh as a veteran of the community,
Your opinion is greatly important for us
)
But one could extrapulate from your response.
Ohh as a veteran of the community,
Your opinion is greatly important for us
)But one could extrapulate from your response.
The manual says that "Steam users need to revert to the Game Spy version in order to run AdvCiv"
When I followed the link and registered the support page gives "
oops
You're not authorized to access this page
"
I don't see any reference to this using the thread search.
Does anyone have the details of what is required?
When I followed the link and registered the support page gives "
oops
You're not authorized to access this page
"
I don't see any reference to this using the thread search.
Does anyone have the details of what is required?
DeepWell
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2020
- Messages
- 45
My bad then. The culture slider swap between Colosseum and Theatre is spot on though.
@Dazzle: Looks like 2K has added a sign-in wall for their support pages. The Wayback Machine still has a capture from this July, so this is a recent development. The archived version from July says that the guide was updated in the summer of 2023, so I'm assuming that the info is still good. I'll put a link to the archived version in the manual, thanks for making me aware: https://web.archive.org/web/2024070...eamworks-Civilization-IV-Unsupported-on-Steam
It doesn't clarify whether one needs to uninstall. Says "Before installation" upfront, later it says that "Steam should now update," which sounds like it might update an existing local installation too. But I take keldath's Liking your last post to mean that uninstalling is necessary.
I had long assumed that DLL mods can't work with the (non-GameSpy) Steam version at all (and wasn't able to try it for myself), but, a while ago, I learned from Walter Hawkwood that Realism Invictus actually works with the Steam version, and so K-Mod (basis for RI and AdvCiv) apparently also has no trouble with Steam. If I ever do get Steam (tall odds), I could probably get AdvCiv to work too. Currently, as keldath has let me know, at least my runtime changes to the EXE that shrink the resource bubbles will only work with the original EXE. But I don't actually know if using AdvCiv with the Steam version causes any critical problems.
It doesn't clarify whether one needs to uninstall. Says "Before installation" upfront, later it says that "Steam should now update," which sounds like it might update an existing local installation too. But I take keldath's Liking your last post to mean that uninstalling is necessary.
I had long assumed that DLL mods can't work with the (non-GameSpy) Steam version at all (and wasn't able to try it for myself), but, a while ago, I learned from Walter Hawkwood that Realism Invictus actually works with the Steam version, and so K-Mod (basis for RI and AdvCiv) apparently also has no trouble with Steam. If I ever do get Steam (tall odds), I could probably get AdvCiv to work too. Currently, as keldath has let me know, at least my runtime changes to the EXE that shrink the resource bubbles will only work with the original EXE. But I don't actually know if using AdvCiv with the Steam version causes any critical problems.
Drakarska
Epic Dadness
Well, since you asked 
I want to preface this commentary as my own personal perspective. That it in no way insults, demeans, or judges how peeps want to play/enjoy their Civ enjoyment. With that stated, Here. We. Go:
Civ, at it's core, has always been a 4x game. At least through iterations 1-4. Civ V started to drift away from that, with tall or wide being the only viable strats, and having to select specific polices in order to have some semblance of a decent game. Let's also toss in global happiness, diplo insanity, units that walk on water, 1upt, movement issues, and a whole plethora of "seriously? WTH?" moments when the 2 expansions came out. Oh, and let's not forget that playing anything above a standard size map was a lesson in frustration, and modders were having a sheer headache trying to get anything accomplished because of "Reasons" from 2K.
I'm am vastly impressed with the VP Techno-Wizards over in the Civ V forums, and been playing their mods frequently.
Civ VI comes along.... Yeah. This is the first time I have less than 100 hours in a Civ game. Ever. And I've been playing Civ since Civ I.
IMO, 6 is a city simulator with 3x elements. Note, I said 3x, not 4x. There's a whole lot of issues I have with 6. Traders, workers, GP, policy cards ( seriously? Why TF do I need policy cards to change civics), Etc. And similar to V, you are severely penalized in one of the main tenants of a 4x game, eXpansion.
Now we come to 7. Yeah. Suddenly, our 4x is now a history simulator. Joy. If I wanted to play a history sim, I'd buy one. I'm not going to go ad nauseum on 7 because there's really no point in doing so.
I have no prob with dev's taking risks, or even changing things up.. As long as they work, and improves the overall game experience. For me, V and more importantly 6, didn't cut it for me. IMO, 7 is simply a market grab at Ara, Human, and Old World. Not the continuation of a 4X series that's spans the generations.
Lol, I'll get off my soapbox for now. My youngest wants to play the new update from CoM, and i'm in the mood to humor him.
I want to preface this commentary as my own personal perspective. That it in no way insults, demeans, or judges how peeps want to play/enjoy their Civ enjoyment. With that stated, Here. We. Go:
Civ, at it's core, has always been a 4x game. At least through iterations 1-4. Civ V started to drift away from that, with tall or wide being the only viable strats, and having to select specific polices in order to have some semblance of a decent game. Let's also toss in global happiness, diplo insanity, units that walk on water, 1upt, movement issues, and a whole plethora of "seriously? WTH?" moments when the 2 expansions came out. Oh, and let's not forget that playing anything above a standard size map was a lesson in frustration, and modders were having a sheer headache trying to get anything accomplished because of "Reasons" from 2K.
I'm am vastly impressed with the VP Techno-Wizards over in the Civ V forums, and been playing their mods frequently.
Civ VI comes along.... Yeah. This is the first time I have less than 100 hours in a Civ game. Ever. And I've been playing Civ since Civ I.
IMO, 6 is a city simulator with 3x elements. Note, I said 3x, not 4x. There's a whole lot of issues I have with 6. Traders, workers, GP, policy cards ( seriously? Why TF do I need policy cards to change civics), Etc. And similar to V, you are severely penalized in one of the main tenants of a 4x game, eXpansion.
Now we come to 7. Yeah. Suddenly, our 4x is now a history simulator. Joy. If I wanted to play a history sim, I'd buy one. I'm not going to go ad nauseum on 7 because there's really no point in doing so.
I have no prob with dev's taking risks, or even changing things up.. As long as they work, and improves the overall game experience. For me, V and more importantly 6, didn't cut it for me. IMO, 7 is simply a market grab at Ara, Human, and Old World. Not the continuation of a 4X series that's spans the generations.
Lol, I'll get off my soapbox for now. My youngest wants to play the new update from CoM, and i'm in the mood to humor him.
Drakarska
3x? thats a nice term to describe where they went. i like that.since we are still here, i can say i think very much like you.
still have hope, that despite the controversy of 7, it has potential to be a fun and good game, different than our beloved civ, but still a good game.
well , most of my hopes are for a good AI...that will be the judgmental point for me.
being optimistic.
also, a note,
that ARA, has interesting potential.
(sorry for thread hijack boss..)
Hey I wanted to pop in and say thank you for this mod! I used to be really active on here a long time ago but I forgot what email the account is connected to ha. I decided to fire up Civ4 again out of nostalgia and the game is still really good, especially with this mod! The AI on noble is pretty tough, I have to relearn all the strategies again. I can report that it works just fine on the Steam version.
Similar threads
