Better economic AI (V. 0.5)

[Turinturambar]

If i remember rightly, the Crusader and Paramander are both only 10 more than a Champion, which is minimal when considering you would need to build 12 or so Champions to have enough left over for a "Free Champion".

They start with Medic, which is useful and leads to an earlier option to upgrade to March when they reach 2XP. They can use weapons of all kinds and above all afaik they are Disciple Units, meaning that against units with a bonus vs Melee (Shock,
Champions, etc) they have quite an advantage compared to the standard Champion. Not to mention the use of Disciple Unit killing promotions, a far less widespread.

Some of the limits I agree with, such as the Monk as they arent particularly great units to build a large number of.

Crusaders and Paramanders cost the same as Champions, but they require metals, they cannot use them, so they always get a base strength of 7. They get a damage bonus vs Demons, which is very marginal and medic, which you only need one of in a given stack. I agree that it's better to be disciple than melee, but that's not worth that much.
At least one more base strength is worth far more than all these features, so champions are always the better choice if you have iron, which puts their strenght at 8. You are right that I should limit building them on actually having iron and not only on aquiring the iron working tech.

 

[Secret_Squirrel]

Sorry I must be remembering FFPlus, as i was sure they could use weapons. I guess then, the only question is, is 3 enough for late game?

 

[Senethro]

Do Crusaders actually require Iron? Would there be a place for them for a CPU has Smelting but knows he does'nt have Iron, who has Spiritual trait, has a comparatively low Tech income and has Ashen Veil enemies? It may be better for this CPU to research Fanaticism than Iron Working as an Iron source won't necessarily be available in the future.

Suggestion: # of crusaders = 5 + map size where Duel = -3 and Standard = 0?


I obviously haven't looked at the training code and stuff, but what are Stygian guards at right now? I find them excellent Tier 3 melee replacements that are available earlier and you even get Cultists on the way! Also, Ingenious trait civs upgrade Warriors to Drowns for 30 gold, then Drowns to Stygs for 22.

I don't think I make any other big use of religious units.

 

[Turinturambar]

Crusaders require any metal, paramanders need copper. I don't see the need to build them at all if you have iron, for healing (and to a certain degree fighting with the free xp) the respective priests are clearly a better choice and a bonus vs demons is very situational.

There is no block on stygs, since they are really awesome units and I think the AI actually beelines their tech when appropriate, see the screenshot in the first post .

I don't want to implement strategies that take advantage of upgrading, since the AI gets an extremely massive discount there and this would feel too much like cheating.

 

[Demiansky]

Is this mod compatable with the Wildmana Mod?

 

[Turinturambar]

No, Wild Mana has a heavily modified CvGameutils.py and this mod would overwrite that, resulting most likely in errors and the AI would definitely lose their terraforming capabilities.

 

[Senethro]

Somehow as Khazad I was able to build Shrine of the Champion at some really early stage and research Seafaring tech. Is that likely to be AI mod? (because it may just be I haven't uninstalled something else properly)

 

[Turinturambar]

Yeah that stuff gets handled in cvgameutils.py. Seems like you found a serious bug. Can you post a savegame? Do you have python exceptions enabled?

 

[Senethro]

Its probably worth mentioning that I was an idiot who hadn't installed your mod properly.

HOwever, after a reinstallation and a Play Now! game (to reset all the hidden game options) the bug was reproduced. I'm still not ruling out that I didn't uninstall Wild Mana properly.

 

[Turinturambar]

I can't reproduce it. Why would you need to uninstall wildmana? It copies the entire FFH2 folder and is independent of base FFH2.

If you have FFH2 patch g installed, just unzip it into the mods folder from Beyond the sword, it should then ask you if you want to overwrite the 4 files I changed. Overwrite them and everything should work.

 

[Secret_Squirrel]

Not sure if this is intentional, but Runes of Kilmorph isnt listed among your religion spreading mechanics in AI_chooseProduction.

 

[Turinturambar]

It's intentional.
Since Runes is founded so early it is not necessary to have a religion spreading mechanic for it and less code is better code.