AI valuing of strategic resources

EmperorFool

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I'm playing VEM/UP with the diplomatic mod, but I think I saw this without it. When I offer to sell luxury resources to the AIs--and even many other offers--they will tack on a bunch of strategic resources. In almost every case I've been able to remove all the strategic resources and have them accept the deal.

Are they valuing strategic resources correctly? Why do they propose them and then allow me to remove them and still accept the deal? Very strange.

Oh, another thing I've found in my current game. Ram is supremely pissed off at me and won't sign OB. He'll do an RA but not an OB. However, every 30 or so turns he pops up offering an OB agreement, but won't accept the deal when I accept. Is he just teasing me, or is this a bug? ;)
 
I've never seen the AI do that with Vanilla, though. Sure, it'll add resources to the table, but it won't accept the deal if I remove them. In VEM/UP I have to remove them whenever I make a trade.
 
Once an AI is in Industrial it doesn't value Iron or Horses and for some reason throws them into every trade deal. You can do the same when trading later in the game (it's kind of a mini-game to me to see if I can monopolize all the iron in the world!).

If the AI is not valuing era-appropriate strategics then it could be a bug, but this is the first I'm hearing about it.
 
No no, it was definitely at the age where they were mostly worthless, but the backwards civs were still paying for them so I didn't want to give them away for free. But I don't recall the AIs tossing them into every deal in Vanilla. *shrug* Not that big of a deal, just mildly tedious.
 
Maybe it has something to do with the level of relations (friendly, neutral, etc.)?
 
The AI does the same thing in vanilla once the resource is obsolete. Its annoying, I know. It really is a shame that there is so little use for certain resources once the game has progressed.
 
For a while I've thought of providing an economic -vs- military option. Buildings like Circuses would consume an empire resource, instead of requiring a local resource. The total supply of resources would increase slightly to support this. There was a discussion about it a while back, and with no consensus either way, so I put the concept on hold.

Advantages:

  • Gives a lategame purpose to early strategics.
  • Gives an early economic/military choice.
  • ?
Disadvantages:

  • More difficult to balance AI priorities.
  • ?
 
I like that a lot. I could see each iron providing a slight boost to Smithy and/or Factory output. Horses and Ivory to Circuses. And Whales a boost to Aquariums, a new coastal building in VEM unlocked at Biology? :D

One thing I noticed is that while I like the boost in productivity, I don't know if I'm 100% happy with being able to build the local-resource-requiring-in-Vanilla buildings everywhere such as the Circus and Foundry. While I like having the freedom to build my cities without too much regard to resources, I kind of miss that constraint. Is there a thread where you discussed the reason for this change? I get it from a logic point of view since a city could easily ship in Horses for a Circus given that it can ship them in to build Horsemen, but I was just curious.

Edit: This post obviously applies to VEM only. I posted it before it got moved, honest!
 
Moved from bug reports to the main VEM forum. I figure this is more of a feature discussion than a bug report. :)

Basically it's about maximizing the game's challenge. Here's something I posted a while back in the terrain thread:



This mod's primary goal is to move the game towards the peak of the scale. Sometimes this means moving right by equalizing overpowered/underpowered options, sometimes it means moving left by mixing things up.
Some building restrictions move things to the left side of the scale, such as if granaries required one of their resources for construction. Conversely, not restricting some buildings can move to the left. If the stoneworks could be built anywhere, we'd clearly want to get it asap in most cities for the :c5production::c5happy: bonuses. So in that case, adding a restriction moves things right. It's all about trying to reach the center of the scale.

Circus and Stoneworks still require the nearby resource, since they're so powerful. The other buildings can be built anywhere and have situational value. Situational importance is something emphasized throughout the VEM project, later added in a few spots to vanilla (such as Granaries/Lighthouses).

The question of when to build has more strategic depth than what to build. Think of a priority scale:

  • Immediately
  • Early
  • Late
  • Never
If we have two buildings with priorities early/late, blocking one building makes the priorities immediate/never. That is a much less challenging decision.

This is why I dislike a few of Firaxis' solutions to problems. One classic example is city spacing. In vanilla there used to be a problem where cramming in tons of cities 2 tiles apart was an ideal strategy (infinite city spam). Instead of solving the underlying problems that led to this (as VEM does), Firaxis removed the option by forcing cities to a 3 tile distance. It's an easy-to-code bandaid to the problem, but did not heal the complex underlying issues which encouraged players to cram cities together in vanilla. This change in vanilla moved the scale left, so I moved it back to the center in VEM.

Thank you for asking these questions; it's helping clarify some things in my head that were swimming around there for a while now. I'm going to add parts of this writeup to the project goals thread. :)
 
Hmm, I hadn't noticed that I couldn't build a Circus in any cities in my recent games, but I cannot say for certain that I was able to build it in cities without nearby Horses or Ivory. I'll do a sweep through my current game to be sure, but that makes sense.

I mostly agree with buildings like the Foundry that provide an additional bonus that you'll probably want in cities that won't have access to the underlying resource. I say "mostly" because, while I often found myself cursing Vanilla for not letting me build it where I wanted, I also appreciate the longer-term planning it forces you to perform. Carefully crafted, constrained options can deepen the experience of the game.

Oh, and for some reason I read the moderator movement as being to the main Civ5 forum because this issue also applies to Vanilla. :)
 
Hmm, I hadn't noticed that I couldn't build a Circus in any cities in my recent games, but I cannot say for certain that I was able to build it in cities without nearby Horses or Ivory. I'll do a sweep through my current game to be sure, but that makes sense.

You cannot build a circus in a city without horses.
 
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