TheDS
Regular Riot
We all know that the actual difficulty of a game can be affected by a lot more than the formal difficulty setting, right?
A short while ago, I proposed the idea of alternate ways to start the game. I mentioned that the developers of Civ4 had included the late-start mechanic as a means of jumping into the game at a point other than the prehistoric age. And there's also the Advanced start, which allows you to start with your civilization already founded and somewhat thriving. I like both of them. But there's more options we could consider.
One of the options I mentioned was inspired by the Barbarians scenario in Warlords. It involved having differing difficulties by letting the other players take a number of turns first. Each player picks the turn number they're going to start at, and then when that turn number comes up, they get to start. (Players needing easy difficulty would set all the AIs to start on something like turn 20.) It works very well for multiplayer games, allowing each player to have a truly unique difficulty setting. As things are now, setting difficulty only gives some sort of weird averaged value for the AI players.
As the game is now, changing difficulties alters the rates at which players conduct research, the bonus humans have against AIs, and the number of free units the AIs get. (Among other things.) By altering when you join a game - by letting the AIs take several turns before you do - you can make the game a lot more difficult on a human without having to resort to giving the AI all sorts of ridiculous advantages. Things like production and research bonuses might still be in, but they wouldn't be as necessary, and free units might be completely unnecessary; the AI is getting extra turns in which to build extra units.
But, as anyone who's started in tundra or on a 1-tile island in the middle of the ocean can tell you, where you start and what resources are at your disposal make a lot of difference. So I also propose a changing difficulty setting that evaluates the start-city location, with weighting toward the civ's advantages and strengths. If Monty and Shaka don't have someone nearby to rush, they're not as powerful, are they? If Rome can't find Iron within 10 spaces of their start location, they're not as strong are they? (That could be said about most civs.) Starting in tundra isn't as easy as starting on a vast grassland plain with a river running through it, right? Having 3 Gold, 2 Fish, Corn, and Iron in your starting square, plus Stone, Marble, and Furs nearby makes it a lot easier than a map with only 1 Iron on the other side of the world, right? Sometimes even who you start next to affects the difficulty.
So when generating the start position, there should be a routine that evaluates the potential value of the starting locations and then assigns human civs based on their difficulty settings. Humans wishing for an easy game will get a favorable starting location. Those wishing for a hard game will get a bad starting location.
Enabling this would seem like a tough thing to implement, and would likely increase map generation time. Luckily, there are a couple things in its favor. First, the game already does something similar, but much simpler, in that it evaluates your starting position, and if it's too crappy, it throws in an extra river or resource or something to help you out (though this may depend on difficulty too). Second, the process of evaluating each tile is something that can be done in parallel, and so you could have 1000 CPUs in your computer and make use of all of them, minimizing the additional time needed to evaluate the tiles' start value.
And then there's the tried and true bonus award. This is already in th game, except I want to modify it so that the player can alter it to suit his taste, and maybe add a few options.
Frex, for each individual human player, allow me to adjust the rates of science, production, and city growth. (AIs will be assumed to operate at 100% at all times.) Also allow me to change the combat bonus/penalty awarded vs other players. (This could also potentially affect my success rate for things like establishing religions and spy missions.)
And lastly, keep in he options to adjust Barbarian strength, goody huts, etc, as these generally affect all players equally (unless, of course, you're starting a few turns late!)
Ok, so in summary, here are the ways difficulty should be alterable instead of the way they are now (which feels like a big jumble, and has huge steps in some places):
1. Delay start (a la Barbarians scenario)
2. Location evaluation (good, bad, ugly)
3. Individual adjustments for science, production, city growth, and combat effectiveness.
These 3-6 options would provide all the difficulty adjustments needed, in as fine a gradation as the individual player could want (5% increments), to make the game super easy to super hard, AND, if Sid's really got a woody for 9 difficulty levels, there's nothing stopping him from selecting particular values and assigning a name to them. Perhaps an equal all-around start might be Noble, a 50% bonus all-around might be Settler, and a 50% penalty all-around might be Deity, with other values chosen in between, and the players able to customize the difficulty as they desire.
A score bonus percentage would be displayed, so that a player who wanted to play at Monarch but without the hassle of a lousy start location would be able to choose to make his production and combat values truly appalling and give the AIs an EXTRA 5 turns on top of the 10 they get just from Monarch, and it would all balance out to having the same difficulty score bonus percentage.
Super-Deity players and Chuck Norris could bump the difficulty up even higher if they wanted!
Thank you for your thoughts.
A short while ago, I proposed the idea of alternate ways to start the game. I mentioned that the developers of Civ4 had included the late-start mechanic as a means of jumping into the game at a point other than the prehistoric age. And there's also the Advanced start, which allows you to start with your civilization already founded and somewhat thriving. I like both of them. But there's more options we could consider.
One of the options I mentioned was inspired by the Barbarians scenario in Warlords. It involved having differing difficulties by letting the other players take a number of turns first. Each player picks the turn number they're going to start at, and then when that turn number comes up, they get to start. (Players needing easy difficulty would set all the AIs to start on something like turn 20.) It works very well for multiplayer games, allowing each player to have a truly unique difficulty setting. As things are now, setting difficulty only gives some sort of weird averaged value for the AI players.
As the game is now, changing difficulties alters the rates at which players conduct research, the bonus humans have against AIs, and the number of free units the AIs get. (Among other things.) By altering when you join a game - by letting the AIs take several turns before you do - you can make the game a lot more difficult on a human without having to resort to giving the AI all sorts of ridiculous advantages. Things like production and research bonuses might still be in, but they wouldn't be as necessary, and free units might be completely unnecessary; the AI is getting extra turns in which to build extra units.
But, as anyone who's started in tundra or on a 1-tile island in the middle of the ocean can tell you, where you start and what resources are at your disposal make a lot of difference. So I also propose a changing difficulty setting that evaluates the start-city location, with weighting toward the civ's advantages and strengths. If Monty and Shaka don't have someone nearby to rush, they're not as powerful, are they? If Rome can't find Iron within 10 spaces of their start location, they're not as strong are they? (That could be said about most civs.) Starting in tundra isn't as easy as starting on a vast grassland plain with a river running through it, right? Having 3 Gold, 2 Fish, Corn, and Iron in your starting square, plus Stone, Marble, and Furs nearby makes it a lot easier than a map with only 1 Iron on the other side of the world, right? Sometimes even who you start next to affects the difficulty.
So when generating the start position, there should be a routine that evaluates the potential value of the starting locations and then assigns human civs based on their difficulty settings. Humans wishing for an easy game will get a favorable starting location. Those wishing for a hard game will get a bad starting location.
Enabling this would seem like a tough thing to implement, and would likely increase map generation time. Luckily, there are a couple things in its favor. First, the game already does something similar, but much simpler, in that it evaluates your starting position, and if it's too crappy, it throws in an extra river or resource or something to help you out (though this may depend on difficulty too). Second, the process of evaluating each tile is something that can be done in parallel, and so you could have 1000 CPUs in your computer and make use of all of them, minimizing the additional time needed to evaluate the tiles' start value.
And then there's the tried and true bonus award. This is already in th game, except I want to modify it so that the player can alter it to suit his taste, and maybe add a few options.
Frex, for each individual human player, allow me to adjust the rates of science, production, and city growth. (AIs will be assumed to operate at 100% at all times.) Also allow me to change the combat bonus/penalty awarded vs other players. (This could also potentially affect my success rate for things like establishing religions and spy missions.)
And lastly, keep in he options to adjust Barbarian strength, goody huts, etc, as these generally affect all players equally (unless, of course, you're starting a few turns late!)
Ok, so in summary, here are the ways difficulty should be alterable instead of the way they are now (which feels like a big jumble, and has huge steps in some places):
1. Delay start (a la Barbarians scenario)
2. Location evaluation (good, bad, ugly)
3. Individual adjustments for science, production, city growth, and combat effectiveness.
These 3-6 options would provide all the difficulty adjustments needed, in as fine a gradation as the individual player could want (5% increments), to make the game super easy to super hard, AND, if Sid's really got a woody for 9 difficulty levels, there's nothing stopping him from selecting particular values and assigning a name to them. Perhaps an equal all-around start might be Noble, a 50% bonus all-around might be Settler, and a 50% penalty all-around might be Deity, with other values chosen in between, and the players able to customize the difficulty as they desire.
A score bonus percentage would be displayed, so that a player who wanted to play at Monarch but without the hassle of a lousy start location would be able to choose to make his production and combat values truly appalling and give the AIs an EXTRA 5 turns on top of the 10 they get just from Monarch, and it would all balance out to having the same difficulty score bonus percentage.
Super-Deity players and Chuck Norris could bump the difficulty up even higher if they wanted!
Thank you for your thoughts.
