Basic do it yourself AI tuning

[PYITE]

Basic DIY AI tuning and tips to create a more challenging and flavored AI

It's a lot like tuning the picture on your TV, there is no setting that will suit all personal preferences, game setups, maps, difficulty, etc...but for me these changes have allowed me to reach a higher level of challenge and enjoyment playing the game. I have been beaten by the AI a lot more in the past month then the 10 previous months combined (Nubia is an outright nightmare of a neighbor). Major credit to @Siesta Guru whose forum posts and AI+ files are where I learned about these values. Any mod code that I give is from AI+ . I have done a good amount of autoplay testing and my opinions on values and settings are based off of watching the AI play.

This is mostly about creating a more challenging AI, so all testing that I have done has been deity. The major change that I will highlight is forcing the AI to build larger militaries, this will require a larger gold income from the AI to support the upkeep. The 80% gold bonus on deity is huge and as you decrease this bonus the less likely it is for the AI to be able to pay upkeep. Similarly the 80% production bonus allows the AI to build more units while still being able to build other essential things. I will also go into how to make changes to the global parameters of the base game so that the AI isn't negatively effected by your changes.

I'm suggesting you make changes to your base game; a few notes on this. Copy the file before you make changes and keep in separate folder for reference or to overwrite your changes back to vanilla. If you are a Steam user and you make a typo in your files or just want to be able to go back to vanilla the following steps will allow this; 2nd click on Civ 6, click on properties, click local files tab, then click "verify integrity of local files" to have Steam reset your game files. I will also include the mod code for making these changes, but not a complete downloadable mod. If anyone cares to make mod and post, I'm all for it.

XML document Yields: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Base\Assets\Gameplay\Data\Yields

In this file there are 2 types of tools:

Yields - These effect both the human and AI, and include preferences towards the basic units of the game: food, production, science, faith, gold, and culture. The Yield values have significant effect on worker, citizen, and settler behavior. I don't make changes to these values, but you can see in the AI+ files how you can use these values to create civ and era specific preferences.

Pseudoyields - These are basic values for AI preferences that get put into a formula that tells the AI what to build. I will go over the most significant values to change and how sensitive they are. These values are relative to each other, so if you increase one value you are in turn slightly decreasing all others. If you have the AI build more military units, they will not build as many non military items.
In the agendas xml document you can see how these are used to assign flavors to civs based on agendas and how the values are adjusted.

Some of the changes that I will suggest are based on my views of what build preferences will help the AI the most. I think the AI should build larger militaries, focus more on science, have citizens working improved tiles, build more districts, and settle new cities as quickly as possible.

Unique units, districts, and buildings always have a high building preference. Therefore if you increase military preference, AI's with UUs will produce extra large militaries.

<Row PseudoYieldType="PSEUDOYIELD_UNIT_COMBAT" DefaultValue="1.0"/>

Land military unit and encampment district preference . Recommended range 1.5 - 3.0
This number is the most sensitive of all the pseudoyields by far. You can easily go too high with this number and they will do nothing but spam units, which will in turn be disbanded by a negative gold balance. To go as high as 3.0 you will need to make the map as fertile as possible (highly recommend abundant resources).


Here is an example of how to mod the change:

<Update>
< Set DefaultValue="1.5"></Set>
< Where PseudoYieldType="PSEUDOYIELD_UNIT_COMBAT"></Where>
< /Update>


<Row PseudoYieldType="PSEUDOYIELD_UNIT_NAVAL_COMBAT" DefaultValue="1.0"/>

Naval military and harbor district preference. I've done a little testing on this and it is not nearly as sensitive as land combat. The last Viking King agenda value is 100. So Norway always has this set at 100. If you like island maps with lots of water and coast go for 50 and see how it plays. Sadly the AI hasn't gotten proper naval training yet and tend to leave ships in neutral territory waiting to heal, so I would go into global parameters and increase naval healing in neutral territory above 0 to alleviate this issue.

<Row PseudoYieldType="PSEUDOYIELD_IMPROVEMENT" DefaultValue="0.5"/>

Builders and the improvements that they create. Range 5.0 - 10.0
Big help in getting the AI to improve hexes in it's territory. You can't really overdue this one because the amount of tiles available to improve will limit the amount of builders created. The more hills and resources you have on the map, the higher I would go with this value.

<Row PseudoYieldType="PSEUDOYIELD_UNIT_SETTLER" DefaultValue="1.0"/>

Preference to build settlers. Range 10.0 - infinity
Not sensitive at all. I think it is limited by how many settling operations the AI can perform at once. I keep this one at 1000. I've tested many different values but deity AI can't seem to settle much faster than 6 cities by turn 100 (including the 3 starter settlers) and 1 more every 25-35 turns.

<Row PseudoYieldType="PSEUDOYIELD_DISTRICT" DefaultValue="3.5"/>

Preference for building districts. Range 7-12.
This number is moderately sensitive and definitely needs to be increased relative to the increases in other values or the AI will neglect district building.

<Row PseudoYieldType="PSEUDOYIELD_TECHNOLOGY" DefaultValue="5"/>

preference for increasing science output. Will help getting the AI to build campus districts and focus on getting technologies. Not sensitive. I've been using 100, but I've tried larger numbers but they don't seem to change much.

<Row PseudoYieldType="PSEUDOYIELD_GPP_SCIENTIST" DefaultValue="0.5"/>

More science preference help. Not sensitive. Range 10-100

<!-- The following are used to determine which cities to attack, and how high to rate that attack in comparison to all other production or uses -->
<Row PseudoYieldType="PSEUDOYIELD_CITY_BASE" DefaultValue="300"/>
<Row PseudoYieldType="PSEUDOYIELD_CITY_DEFENSES" DefaultValue="300"/>
<Row PseudoYieldType="PSEUDOYIELD_CITY_DEFENDING_UNITS" DefaultValue="80"/>
<Row PseudoYieldType="PSEUDOYIELD_CITY_ORIGINAL_CAPITAL" DefaultValue="200"/>
<Row PseudoYieldType="PSEUDOYIELD_CITY_POPULATION" DefaultValue="125"/>

I have done a little testing with these numbers and have found that increasing City_Base ( I'm using 1500) will cause the AI to have city envy and declare war much more frequently. They are less choosey about which city to attack and will less frequently try to march past small cities to get to your capitol.

There are other less significant pseudoyields available that you can experiment with changing the values for as well.

I highly suggest a few changes to global parameters to help the AI with the changes we have made.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Base\Assets\Gameplay\Data\GlobalParameters

I would suggest decreasing war weariness. The values for per unit killed and combat in foreign and allied lands needs to be decreased or the AI will crumble do to it having so many more units KIA.

<Replace Name="WAR_WEARINESS_PER_COMBAT_IN_ALLIED_LANDS" Value="1" />
<Replace Name="WAR_WEARINESS_PER_COMBAT_IN_FOREIGN_LANDS" Value="2" />
<Replace Name="WAR_WEARINESS_PER_UNIT_KILLED" Value="3" />

There is a mod for this as well : https://forums.civfanatics.com/reso...armongering-raze-penalty-war-weariness.25482/

A few other global parameter changes that I suggest.

These changes effect the human and AI. I haven't found a way to have different global parameter values for Human and AI, if anyone knows how, please let me know.

The idea of the first 2 is to decrease rebels and military disbanding from negative gold for the AI and have the human play honest and not abuse these changes.

Decrease the chances and repeat occurrences of rebels with these values.

<Replace Name="REBELLION_CHANCE_PER_POINT" Value="2.0" />
<Replace Name="REBELLION_COOLDOWN_TURNS" Value="20" />

Decrease these numbers to slow down the disbanding of military units and loss of amenity due to negative gold

<Replace Name="GOLD_NEGATIVE_BALANCE_AMENITY_LOSS_LINE" Value="0" />
<Replace Name="GOLD_NEGATIVE_BALANCE_DISBAND_UNIT_LINE" Value="-10" />
<Replace Name="GOLD_NEGATIVE_BALANCE_SUBSEQUENT_AMENITY_LOSS" Value="-10" />
<Replace Name="GOLD_NEGATIVE_BALANCE_SUBSEQUENT_DISBAND_UNIT" Value="-10" />


10 turns of war/peace is to short for the AI to accomplish much and to easily exploitable by the human player. I've been playing 20/20, which helps the AI to capture cities before peace is declared and makes you think twice about accepting a peace deal for gold and amenities because in 20 turns there is a good chance another civ has swooped in and captured their cities that you made vulnerable. Caution vanilla war weariness can become an issue with longer minimum wars.

<Replace Name="DIPLOMACY_PEACE_MIN_TURNS" Value="10" />
<Replace Name="DIPLOMACY_WAR_MIN_TURNS" Value="10" />


Map Settings:
Increasing map fertility will obviously help the human as well as AI, but the AI is not good at getting the most out of less fertile lands. They end up working way to many farms while the human efficiently maximizes tile output.

Abundant resources is a huge help to the happiness and gold output of the AI. It also helps the AI to settle in a tighter area because they don't have to venture further out (like 4 hexes from your capitol) to settle in desirable spots. The increase in strategic resources is another huge benefit to the AI.
New world is another huge help for the AI, it gets so hilly in certain areas that it forces the AI to build and work a large number of mines.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Base\Assets\Maps\Utility\TerrainGenerator

In this file you can adjust the percent of desert (vanilla is 25% - I use 10-15%)
the latitude at which tundra and snow form (vanilla tundra/snow is .65/.8 - I use .80/.95)

These changes will create maps with a lot more fertile land. In a standard game there is on average 3 of 8 civs that start in desert/tundra and basically have zero chance of being a threat. Tundra is double trouble because the AI is going to settle away from the tundra and leave an area of fogged tundra that will spew out barbarians for ages.

City States

The point of many of these changes is to make it hard to capture any cities before turn 50, which will seriously slow down standard vanilla advancement via city capture. Here is a great solution to early CS abuse.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1130568132&searchtext=tcs

Free ancient walls for city states! Thanks @thecrazyscot

Usually the first CS doesn't fall until about turn 50

CS bonuses are extremely powerful and I think 1.5 x #number of major civs is to many. If you have a more limited selection you are forced to adjust your district choices accordingly. I find increasing the number of major civs and reducing CS creates a far more challenging game. My standard setup now for a huge map is 18 major and 12 CS (standard map 12/8).

Diplomacy:
Currently very buggy, but here is a change I have made because I didn't make the AI create larger armies so they could sit around and become outdated. Lets stop being so friendly and have some war. The vanilla values don't make sense to me and these values seem to work out more evenly with each civ having a varied relationship standing with other civs.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Base\Assets\Gameplay\Data/DiplomaticActions

Here are the changes I made to the ranges of diplomatic standing

<Row BaseState="DIPLO_STATE_FRIENDLY" TransitionState="DIPLO_STATE_DECLARED_FRIEND" AllowTransitionMin="15" RequireTransitionMax="40" AllowTransitionCheck="CanDeclareFriendship" OnTransitionAction="OnDeclareFriendship"/>
<Row BaseState="DIPLO_STATE_FRIENDLY" TransitionState="DIPLO_STATE_NEUTRAL" RequireTransitionMin="-10" AllowTransitionMax="15"/>
<Row BaseState="DIPLO_STATE_NEUTRAL" TransitionState="DIPLO_STATE_FRIENDLY" RequireTransitionMax="40" AllowTransitionMin="15"/>
<Row BaseState="DIPLO_STATE_NEUTRAL" TransitionState="DIPLO_STATE_UNFRIENDLY" RequireTransitionMin="-10" AllowTransitionMax="15"/>
<Row BaseState="DIPLO_STATE_UNFRIENDLY" TransitionState="DIPLO_STATE_NEUTRAL" RequireTransitionMax="15" AllowTransitionMin="-10"/>
<Row BaseState="DIPLO_STATE_UNFRIENDLY" TransitionState="DIPLO_STATE_DENOUNCED" AllowTransitionCheck="CanDenounce" RequireTransitionMin="-35" AllowTransitionMax="-10" OnTransitionAction="OnDenouncePlayer"/>
<Row BaseState="DIPLO_STATE_DENOUNCED" TransitionState="DIPLO_STATE_WAR" AllowTransitionCheck="CanGoToWar" RequireTransitionMin="-5" OnTransitionAction="GoToWar"/>

Mods:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/settlers-retreat.25732/

Settlers retreat is a required mod for a challenge. My estimate is that for every 1 human settler that is captured, a million AI settlers are captured.

Here is a personal mod that I gleaned from AI+ that I use to makes campus and commercial districts favored by AI and HolySite non favored. It also makes declaring formal war favored by the AI and declaring peace non favored so they will all negotiate peace similar to Gorgo.

<AiListTypes>
<Row ListType="DistrictForcer"/>
<Row ListType="WAR"/>
</AiListTypes>

<AiLists>
<Row ListType="DistrictForcer" LeaderType="TRAIT_LEADER_MAJOR_CIV" System="Districts"/>
<Row ListType="WAR" LeaderType="TRAIT_LEADER_MAJOR_CIV" System="DiplomaticActions"/>
</AiLists>

<AiFavoredItems>
<Row ListType="DistrictForcer" Item="DISTRICT_CAMPUS" Favored="true"/>
<Row ListType="DistrictForcer" Item="DISTRICT_COMMERCIAL_HUB" Favored="true"/>
<Row ListType="DistrictForcer" Item="DISTRICT_HOLY_SITE" Favored="false"/>
<Row ListType="WAR" Item="DIPLOACTION_DECLARE_FORMAL_WAR" Favored="true"/>
<Row ListType="WAR" Item="DIPLOACTION_MAKE_PEACE" Favored="false"/>
</AiFavoredItems>

A small but very significant change to the Tech Tree.

I really dislike the spam of holy sites along with intense competition to found a religion. The solution I have found to this is to do a slight rearranging of the ancient tech tree to have Astrology be a leaf tech that requires writing and archery as a prerequisite. I also move stonehenge to masonry to push civs towards having earlier access to building walls. This has tremendous effects on district choices for the AI. It varies with agendas but no longer does every AI build a holy site in each of their first 3 districts. They will spend the first 20 turns churning out military units with archers coming early and often. Greece for example will build an acropolis as it's first district in most cities, England goes straight for RNDY, a lot more early campus builds from everyone. It's a huge help to allowing civs to express their agendas and flavors. If you want a religion you can get one, it's still a significant early investment but one that might be worth it because you have a lot more time to found a religion before they are all gone. With standard civ numbers rarely does the max number of religions get founded. I haven't had a chance to make it into a mod (anyone interested is welcome to make it and post) pretty easy to make the changes in

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Base\Assets\Gameplay\Data\technologies

Astrology increased from 50 to 55 beakers (so it will go to the right of archery and writing)
Astrology new prerequisites are writing and archery
Astrology moved to UITreeRow="-1" (for positioning)
Remove astrology prerequisite from Celestial Navigation
Celestial Navigation moved to UITreeRow="-3" (for positioning)
Changed ship building prerequisite from sailing to Celestial Navigation .

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Base\Assets\Gameplay\Data

Changed Stonehenge prerequisite tech from astrology to masonry

House Rule: You must pay the Iron price for obtaining cities

I don't play with any city trading as a house rule because it is an exploit that will nullify any efforts that you have made to create a challenging game. You can't prevent many of the AI's mistakes, this one you can, so take advantage and stop abusing the AI and then complaining that the game is not challenging. I sometimes play without allowing myself to take anything from a peace deal in order to up the challenge a bit more. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself if roles were reversed would you still except the deal.

 

[universecreep]

I got tired of placing my spies to counterspy every 8 turns so I went in and changed the default setting for counter spying from 8 to 30. Better but I wish there was a repeat option for counter spying.
To do this: you find the "unit operations" xml file in this directory --> program files x86/steam/steamapps/common/sid meier's Civ VI/base/assets/gameplay/data

Down about 2/3 of the way is this line below. Change the number after turns to whatever you want. I believe the default it 8.

<Row InterfaceMode="INTERFACEMODE_SPY_CHOOSE_MISSION" Description="LOC_UNITOPERATION_SPY_COUNTERSPY_DESCRIPTION" Icon="ICON_UNITOPERATION_SPY_COUNTERSPY" CategoryInUI="MOVE" HoldCycling="true" VisibleInUI="true" OperationType="UNITOPERATION_SPY_COUNTERSPY" Turns="30"/>


I also would like to see the range of a spy cover the whole city. It's needless micromanagement to have to place a spy on your science district, production district, etc just to protect the city. I haven't found any way to change the spy coverage.

 

[Buckets]

This is excellent. Thank you for putting all that together.

Here's a few of mine (in SQL):

UPDATE AiFavoredItems SET Value = 2 WHERE ListType ='StandardSettlePlot' AND Item = 'Inner Ring Yield' AND StringVal = 'YIELD_FOOD';--was 1
UPDATE AiFavoredItems SET Value = 2 WHERE ListType ='StandardSettlePlot' AND Item = 'Inner Ring Yield' AND StringVal = 'YIELD_PRODUCTION';--was 1
UPDATE AiFavoredItems SET Value = 8 WHERE ListType ='StandardSettlePlot' AND Item = 'Resource Class' AND StringVal = 'RESOURCECLASS_LUXURY';--was 2
UPDATE AiFavoredItems SET Value = 8 WHERE ListType ='StandardSettlePlot' AND Item = 'Resource Class' AND StringVal = 'RESOURCECLASS_STRATEGIC';--was 2

^These increased values get the AI settling more aggressively in my tests. Not by much -- on average less than +1 city by t100 but every bit counts.

UPDATE AiFavoredItems SET Value = -20 WHERE ListType ='StandardSettlePlot' AND Item = 'Nearest Friendly City';--was -10

^Gets AI to cluster more rather than have far-flung colonies. I think it's better for faster settling and defense.

INSERT INTO TraitModifiers (TraitType, ModifierId) VALUES
('TRAIT_LEADER_MAJOR_CIV', 'TRAIT_LESS_DISTRICT_EACH_CITY');

INSERT INTO Modifiers (ModifierId, ModifierType) VALUES
('TRAIT_LESS_DISTRICT_EACH_CITY', 'MODIFIER_PLAYER_CITIES_EXTRA_DISTRICT');

INSERT INTO ModifierArguments (ModifierId, Name, Value) VALUES
('TRAIT_LESS_DISTRICT_EACH_CITY', 'Amount', -1);

^Allows one less district per city. So, you need pop 4 for your first district, 7 for 2nd, etc. I think it's good for game balance all around, but also helps the AI forcing it to build more useful things before spending hundreds of turns on a district.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

This has tremendous effects on district choices for the AI. It varies with agendas but no longer does every AI build a holy site in each of their first 3 districts. They will spend the first 20 turns churning out military units with archers coming early and often. Greece for example will build an acropolis as it's first district in most cities, England goes straight for RNDY, a lot more early campus builds from everyone. It's a huge help to allowing civs to express their agendas and flavors. If you want a religion you can get one, it's still a significant early investment but one that might be worth it because you have a lot more time to found a religion before they are all gone.

Most of these changes are not to my style / liking but I love this one, if no one has made it a Mod by the time I get back from my holidays I might have a go myself.

 

[Victoria]

Nice @PYITE ... now gather it all up into a mod?
The issue with direct changes is they will be overwritten with a patch which is why I tend not to mess. I also like to play vanilla but do like to understand how the beast works
Interesting stuff though, very useful, thanks

 

[PYITE]

Nice @PYITE ... now gather it all up into a mod?
The issue with direct changes is they will be overwritten with a patch which is why I tend not to mess. I also like to play vanilla but do like to understand how the beast works
Interesting stuff though, very useful, thanks

For Deity vanilla I highly recommend changing the combat pseudo yield to 1.5. It will make a significant difference in the military strength of the AI.
I'm hoping in the future the developers will make slight adjustments to the pseudo yield values based on difficulty level selection.

 

[V. Soma]

I would very much welcome a mod made of the things written up in this thread...

 

[Meister Maggi]

Most of these changes are not to my style / liking but I love this one, if no one has made it a Mod by the time I get back from my holidays I might have a go myself.

First, thanks to PYITE for the many suggestions.

I am actually interested in more of these changes, but I agree with NobleZarkon that this rearrangement of the tech tree looks interesting, so I embedded it in a mod for changing the speed of science and culture development (I have trouble running the mod tools provided for Civ VI, maybe for lack of disk space).

My observations (using also smoother difficulty, said slowed down science and culture advances, the city walls for city states, and settler retreat) under Demigod difficulty (in between Immortal and Deity):
- Brazil fetched the first Prophet via Stonehenge around turn 45; the next one was right away from the medieval era;
- Brazil and America built first science districts (Brazil then holy site as second, America still 0 holy sites Kongo started with encampment; Egypt with holy site
- decent settler production - Brazil had 2 cities around the same time as me (rembember with smoother difficulty there are no bonus settlers), and even the third before mine

This all looks promising and may mean renaissance prophets on small maps for the first time (for me at least).

Only but: Brazil tends to run around and not settle the new settlers (also egypt is not coming to a final decision) - maybe there is a way to convince the AI to settle more decisively - even if the chosen spot is not perfect, it certainly is better than running around forever...

 

[PYITE]

First, thanks to PYITE for the many suggestions.

I am actually interested in more of these changes, but I agree with NobleZarkon that this rearrangement of the tech tree looks interesting, so I embedded it in a mod for changing the speed of science and culture development (I have trouble running the mod tools provided for Civ VI, maybe for lack of disk space).

My observations (using also smoother difficulty, said slowed down science and culture advances, the city walls for city states, and settler retreat) under Demigod difficulty (in between Immortal and Deity):
- Brazil fetched the first Prophet via Stonehenge around turn 45; the next one was right away from the medieval era;
- Brazil and America built first science districts (Brazil then holy site as second, America still 0 holy sites Kongo started with encampment; Egypt with holy site
- decent settler production - Brazil had 2 cities around the same time as me (rembember with smoother difficulty there are no bonus settlers), and even the third before mine

This all looks promising and may mean renaissance prophets on small maps for the first time (for me at least).

Only but: Brazil tends to run around and not settle the new settlers (also egypt is not coming to a final decision) - maybe there is a way to convince the AI to settle more decisively - even if the chosen spot is not perfect, it certainly is better than running around forever...

Which districts are built are going to be dependent mostly on their 2nd agenda and production costs. I've seen Brazil go all campus, theater or holy sites for their first district builds depending on their random 2nd agenda. Unique and discounted districts will get extra preference because they require less production to complete, this has a significant effect on Japan.

The post from @Buckets gets into the values associated with settling location choice. The values suggested do seem to help but I haven't done much testing. So many factors to balance when picking a settling spot that it's hard to get the AI to make optimal choices. For example the last patch seems to have the AI picking spots based more on inner ring resources than the availability of fresh water.

As for the AI settler dance which happens fairly often and is not civ specific. Things that cause this are spots being taken or occupied, retreat from an enemy or possible threat, bugs associated with escort formations, and 1upt pathing issues. This gets into the decision tree mechanics of where and when to move units. I don't know to fix this, though smarter people than myself have tried and have come away mostly frustrated. I think we are going to have to wait for the release of the full code before anyone is going to be able to make significant improvements to the tactical AI.

 

[Meister Maggi]

Which districts are built are going to be dependent mostly on their 2nd agenda and production costs. I've seen Brazil go all campus, theater or holy sites for their first district builds depending on their random 2nd agenda. Unique and discounted districts will get extra preference because they require less production to complete, this has a significant effect on Japan.

The post from @Buckets gets into the values associated with settling location choice. The values suggested do seem to help but I haven't done much testing. So many factors to balance when picking a settling spot that it's hard to get the AI to make optimal choices. For example the last patch seems to have the AI picking spots based more on inner ring resources than the availability of fresh water.

As for the AI settler dance which happens fairly often and is not civ specific. Things that cause this are spots being taken or occupied, retreat from an enemy or possible threat, bugs associated with escort formations, and 1upt pathing issues. This gets into the decision tree mechanics of where and when to move units. I don't know to fix this, though smarter people than myself have tried and have come away mostly frustrated. I think we are going to have to wait for the release of the full code before anyone is going to be able to make significant improvements to the tactical AI.

Thanks for the info on districts, in any case, more of those (different from Holy Sites) are built, which is of course a benefit. Notably, only by this change, it seems that more units and more different districts are built and I am wondering to what extent one really wants/needs to interfere much with these production preferences once not (almost) all AIs try to build Stonehenge first...

I will try the proposed values for settling and see what happens, it may even reduce the settler dance a bit... I still think that this is a major problem as the AI wastes away its head start there on higher difficulties ...

 

[HyJinkx]

Just checking in so I can know if @NobleZarkon makes that mod. I would certainly enjoy the same changes.

 

[PYITE]

Thanks for the info on districts, in any case, more of those (different from Holy Sites) are built, which is of course a benefit. Notably, only by this change, it seems that more units and more different districts are built and I am wondering to what extent one really wants/needs to interfere much with these production preferences once not (almost) all AIs try to build Stonehenge first...

I will try the proposed values for settling and see what happens, it may even reduce the settler dance a bit... I still think that this is a major problem as the AI wastes away its head start there on higher difficulties ...

Here are some more values related to settle plot choice from the Leaders xml :

<Row ListType="DefaultCitySettlement" Item="SETTLEMENT_MIN_VALUE_NEEDED" Value="30"/>
<Row ListType="DefaultCitySettlement" Item="SETTLEMENT_ADDITIONAL_VALUE_PER_CITY" Value="3"/>
<Row ListType="DefaultCitySettlement" Item="SETTLEMENT_DECAY_TURNS" Value="9"/>
<Row ListType="DefaultCitySettlement" Item="SETTLEMENT_DECAY_AMOUNT" Value="3"/>
<Row ListType="DefaultCitySettlement" Item="SETTLEMENT_CITY_MINIMUM_VALUE" Value="100"/>
<Row ListType="DefaultCitySettlement" Item="SETTLEMENT_CITY_VALUE_MULTIPLIER" Value="5"/>

<Row ListType="ExpansionistCitySettlement" Item="SETTLEMENT_MIN_VALUE_NEEDED" Value="-25"/>
<Row ListType="ExpansionistCitySettlement" Item="SETTLEMENT_ADDITIONAL_VALUE_PER_CITY" Value="-1"/>
<Row ListType="ExpansionistCitySettlement" Item="SETTLEMENT_DECAY_TURNS" Value="-3"/>
<Row ListType="ExpansionistCitySettlement" Item="SETTLEMENT_DECAY_AMOUNT" Value="3"/>
<Row ListType="ExpansionistCitySettlement" Item="SETTLEMENT_CITY_MINIMUM_VALUE" Value="50"/>
<Row ListType="ExpansionistCitySettlement" Item="SETTLEMENT_CITY_VALUE_MULTIPLIER" Value="1"/>

The top group of values are the standard and bottom group is for Trajan and his expansionist agenda. Using Trajan's values as standard is helpful in getting civs to keep expanding late into the game when there are only low value spots left. I haven't tested changing individual values. Any guesses as to what ="SETTLEMENT_DECAY_TURNS" Value="9"/> means?

My original post is really just a basic one size fits all way of forcing larger AI militaries, keeping the holy site spam down and having the AI focus more on science. It's mostly about making a domination victory or domination based victories more challenging.

There are a good amount of civ specific modifiers that are in the base files such as favored civics, techs, wonders and yield/pseudoyield adjustments. I'm working on a mod that will make additional civ specific adjustments to try to have them focus more on a specific strategy. The key to this is to make era specific adjustments which the base game has none of. A general example for a science victory is that generating beakers is very important most of the game but when you hit the information era it becomes unneeded and what you really want is production. So I will try to switch the focus at info era by changing yields/psuedoyields. There are a ton of civ specific examples like getting them to do military pushes using their UU. My goal being to create a mod that will have each of the civs play to their strengths and focus on a specific victory type, while not making any changes to base game.