The mechanics to have long cooldown powers are in place. Use a property that slowly adds up (with a limited source) and then an outcome mission that costs that property and the effect can now also be applied via the event system.
C2C Balance Thread
- Thread starter ls612
- Start date
Nope, but that's beside the point. The AI plays with what traits it has and doesn't really consider any OP or UP. Human Players do.
AI does what it does usually without regard for what traits it has. Thus there's no OP or UP for the AI and the result will be AI Nations with different strengths and weaknesses for the Human Player to overcome and beat. Meaning that it's more the Human Players traits that matter in the game.
Cheers
Its simple, spiritual AI's are op and non spiritual AI's aren't. It doesn't matter if the AI takes there trait into consideration or not. If one is seafaring and one is spiritual, both have identical land/situation guess which civ will do better? *hint* Its the one who gets really nice bonuses from his/her trait 
That's what I just said. *laugh* You get AIs at different levels of advancement. If all nations were at the same level of development you'd lose a big chunk of strategy. AIs at different developments, and humans too, make for trying other things, working out new strategies (defensive pacts), having to use peripheral methods (espionage), making use of more parts of the game (vassals), and so on. (Things in brackets just examples.)
I certainly don't want every opponent to be at the same point of development, or have the same types of military, or have the same strengths and weaknesses (seafaring can get a navy up and running faster regardless of if it's a "weaker" trait). That would just be boring and enable a single strategy to dominate the humans game and almost always work. Boooring.
Also I am a firm believer in that location, neighbours, expansion, map build, i.e. the environment, play a bigger role in a nations development than what traits the leader has. Traits are a bonus which sometimes can be fully utilized and sometimes can not.
Spiritual can be almost all of the time as you as player don't have to get a GA started to switch Civics, and helps the AI. But so do most traits.
Imperial makes the nation expand faster if it wants.
Organized can house a bigger army.
Aggressive doesn't need as big an army as you get free promotions.
And all traits have faster build speed on a bunch of buildings that give it an area of strength that other traits don't have. That is really each traits main focus as reduced building times increase the amount of turns able to put to use on other things. There's more total turns to save from that than there is from reducing Anarchy turns.
This is doubly true for Industrial Trait, which I see as a lot stronger than Spiritual. +50% Wonder building... (and there's a lot of those) vs. 10% to 25% for Spiritual's main bonus production buildings, Monasteries and Cathedrals.
In my opinion, and those I play MP games with, Scientific is really the most OP Trait. So much in fact that we ban humans from having it in our games.
Cheers
I certainly don't want every opponent to be at the same point of development, or have the same types of military, or have the same strengths and weaknesses (seafaring can get a navy up and running faster regardless of if it's a "weaker" trait). That would just be boring and enable a single strategy to dominate the humans game and almost always work. Boooring.
Also I am a firm believer in that location, neighbours, expansion, map build, i.e. the environment, play a bigger role in a nations development than what traits the leader has. Traits are a bonus which sometimes can be fully utilized and sometimes can not.
Spiritual can be almost all of the time as you as player don't have to get a GA started to switch Civics, and helps the AI. But so do most traits.
Imperial makes the nation expand faster if it wants.
Organized can house a bigger army.
Aggressive doesn't need as big an army as you get free promotions.
And all traits have faster build speed on a bunch of buildings that give it an area of strength that other traits don't have. That is really each traits main focus as reduced building times increase the amount of turns able to put to use on other things. There's more total turns to save from that than there is from reducing Anarchy turns.
This is doubly true for Industrial Trait, which I see as a lot stronger than Spiritual. +50% Wonder building... (and there's a lot of those) vs. 10% to 25% for Spiritual's main bonus production buildings, Monasteries and Cathedrals.
In my opinion, and those I play MP games with, Scientific is really the most OP Trait. So much in fact that we ban humans from having it in our games.
Cheers
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
Didn't put any "words in your mouth", I only asked questions. When a sentence ends with this ? it means it's a question.
The questions were in response to you and zienul's post though. Nothing "personal" was said or implied. Please do not go personal here. Only the question of self examination on one's own playstyle was asked.
As for Spiritual's "strong point" being stronger than other traits strong points, why do Trait strong points Need to be the same?
Personal opinion here: Balance is for a homogeneous game. Which in the long run becomes a 'boring' sameness game. Challenges come from overcoming a supposed OP strong point. Not from making them all the same. Back to a question: Do you (general plural term here) want to be challenged when you play?
JosEPh
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
In vanilla play I always chose spiritual due to the elimination of anarchy times. But with this mod, I don't find it as important. It's only a reduction in anarchy, not an elimination. You can eliminate anarchy from switching religion while being on the State Religion Civic and if you time your revolutions during golden ages, you've eliminated the edge that Spiritual leaders have completely. Furthermore, far more powerful than any other is Charismatic. When I combine it with Aggressive, I can develop an unstoppable force at any stage of the game, even if I'm being slightly out-teched. But that said, I still think there's a lot of other fun traits and it would be beneficial for us to widen the variety of the leaders by adding at least one more dimension to each of them with an additional trait. Even adding just one we could make sure no two leaders have an identical trait set.
In my game all AI civs change their civics every 10-20 turns. With the spiritual trait they save 4-5 turns every 20, meaning they have more turns for research to be completed.
I think AI on deity, snail should have only 2-3 turns of anarchy. And not less then 2 turns if spiritual.
I myself play with Spiritual/Charming (?) (Celtic). I like having small but very experienced army, that crush anyone before middle ages comes. Then it's much more easier to catch up with AI's production power + paved roads makes easier to move armies from one border to another.
I think AI on deity, snail should have only 2-3 turns of anarchy. And not less then 2 turns if spiritual.
I myself play with Spiritual/Charming (?) (Celtic). I like having small but very experienced army, that crush anyone before middle ages comes. Then it's much more easier to catch up with AI's production power + paved roads makes easier to move armies from one border to another.
The AI switches too often, that's already been determined. Koshling has an active project where he checks that now and then when people give him saves that show a problem.
It's already better than it was so it depends on what version you are playing zeinul.
Cheers
It's already better than it was so it depends on what version you are playing zeinul.
Cheers
I have some more AI civic decision tweaks under test currently, that I expect to push to SVN later today also.
Back to a question: Do you (general plural term here) want to be challenged when you play?
JosEPh
Yes.
Cheers
EDIT@Koshling: You rock. Being able to keep so much in the mod while still providing a fair challenge from the AI is just perfect.
EditCheers
Three questions on the capabilities of the current system.
1. Is there the ability to set the power you spend the property on based on what civ you are?
2. Can the property be stored as a civwide value, as opposed to on tiles or units?
3. Can the current UI handle an Outcome that isn't tied to a specific unit?
Best would be to use a Civ specific unit (or a line of units) as that also allows a kind of targeting. But it would be easy to add the possibility to restrict an outcome to a specific Civ.
Yes, that is possible. GAMEOBJECT_PLAYER is available for that.
Currently all outcome missions are unit abilities.
OK, so to do civilization powers, the following changes would need to be made.
1. Outcomes would need to be able to be tied to buildings (preferably the Palace)
2. Outcomes would need to be able to have a <prereqcivilization> tag or something similar.
3. Property Growth would need to have the option to be scalable by gamespeed.
4. Outcomes would need the ability to affect things on a global scale, not just in one unit/building/city. Example; One of the powers I'm considering would give +1 River Commerce per tile for x number of turns, which brings me to my last point,
5. The effects of Outcomes need to be able to have long durations, currently IIRC it is only a one-off thing. I may be wrong on this one though.
How hard/how much work would it take to implement these, if they aren't implemented already?
Sorry for the double post, but this is kinda important.
With BlueGenie's help I figured how to use the BBAI techcost tag, and so have made MAJOR changes to the tech progression by era. It is as follows:
Prehistoric: 100% time to research things (same as before).
Ancient: 150% time to research things.
Classical: 200% time to research things.
Medieval: 200% time to research things.
Rennaisance: 250% time to research things.
Industrial: 300% time to research things.
Modern: 400% time to research things.
Transhuman: 400% time to research things.
Galactic: 500% time to research things.
I would appreciate feedback on this change, as it is pretty huge, and it is still subject to change.
With BlueGenie's help I figured how to use the BBAI techcost tag, and so have made MAJOR changes to the tech progression by era. It is as follows:
Prehistoric: 100% time to research things (same as before).
Ancient: 150% time to research things.
Classical: 200% time to research things.
Medieval: 200% time to research things.
Rennaisance: 250% time to research things.
Industrial: 300% time to research things.
Modern: 400% time to research things.
Transhuman: 400% time to research things.
Galactic: 500% time to research things.
I would appreciate feedback on this change, as it is pretty huge, and it is still subject to change.
I am pleased to see the increase in cost for ancient times, as I tend to fly through that era. I will let you about the rest once I reach those eras 
One thing I wanted to say about balance was the healer unit, why is it so strong? When healers become available, they have the same strength as the strongest units (hunters, stone ax, stone spears) and as a result the AI tends to build a lot of them. You see AI stacks with between 20-30% as healers. To me this seems excessive, healers are a useful unit, but how many would an army need? Also they are being used in a military role rather than a healing one which seems wrong to me, I feel they should be weaker, maybe reduced in strength to 2 and with a penalty against archery and melee units.
One thing I wanted to say about balance was the healer unit, why is it so strong? When healers become available, they have the same strength as the strongest units (hunters, stone ax, stone spears) and as a result the AI tends to build a lot of them. You see AI stacks with between 20-30% as healers. To me this seems excessive, healers are a useful unit, but how many would an army need? Also they are being used in a military role rather than a healing one which seems wrong to me, I feel they should be weaker, maybe reduced in strength to 2 and with a penalty against archery and melee units.
Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
I am pleased to see the increase in cost for ancient times, as I tend to fly through that era. I will let you about the rest once I reach those eras
One thing I wanted to say about balance was the healer unit, why is it so strong? When healers become available, they have the same strength as the strongest units (hunters, stone ax, stone spears) and as a result the AI tends to build a lot of them. You see AI stacks with between 20-30% as healers. To me this seems excessive, healers are a useful unit, but how many would an army need? Also they are being used in a military role rather than a healing one which seems wrong to me, I feel they should be weaker, maybe reduced in strength to 2 and with a penalty against archery and melee units.
We are still tweaking them
. The previous tweak made it so no one was building them. I will look at their stats, one problem is that there are units out there designed specifically to kill healer units. We need an "Articles of War" mod which limits who you can attack if you sign up to the various treaties.
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
Yes, it is.
Absolutely no way I would play like this
guess ill be changing the techcost each time i update svn.Oh and in regards to healers, don't they cost $1 a turn? Reminds me how AI keep a heap of missionaries just sitting around in there cities despite the fact they cost $1 a turn too.
Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
Sounds like a step in the correct direction, I a fed up with getting techs every other turn from the late Ren on.
