C2C Balance Thread

[AIAndy]

@Sgtslick: You are mainly argueing for a limit to building speeds so you are not overwhelmed with having to give orders all the time but in the very slow speeds we have the opposite problem now, too few orders.
What is the point of slower speeds when it only means that everything except movement is slower?
You need to fill the turns with something to do and for that you need to be able to build more units at least. So iTrainPercent should increase the least of the percents. iResearchPercent needs to be balanced to the number of turns so this is kind of fixed. iConstructPercent and iGrowthPercent should be somewhere in between.
So somewhat like this: If research takes twice the time, then units take 40% longer to build, buildings and growth take 65% longer.

 

[Sgtslick]

So your saying the ratio should be 10 research : 6.5 buildings : 4 units ?
My whole argument hinged around the fact it has been more like 35 : 6.5 : 4
This means that you are able to build 90% of ALL buildings in every city. There is no strategy in this, you don't have to choose what to build because you can simply build it all.

To be honest I don't really care all that much since I will just edit each game for myself depending how I feel etc.

I just felt there was an inherent flaw in the game design which has somewhat been corrected.

 

[BlueGenie]

We are saying that the ratio should change by speed, not remain a constant ratio regardless of speed.

Cheers

 

[AIAndy]

We are saying that the ratio should change by speed, not remain a constant ratio regardless of speed.

Cheers

Indeed, lets assume there is a hypothetical gamespeed in which a tech takes 10 turns to research, a building 5 turns to build and a unit 4 turns to train. Then for the slower gamespeed that takes 20 turns to research a tech you'd get around 8 turns for the building and 5-6 turns for the unit instead of 10 and 8 if you kept the same relation.

 

[ls612]

Indeed, lets assume there is a hypothetical gamespeed in which a tech takes 10 turns to research, a building 5 turns to build and a unit 4 turns to train. Then for the slower gamespeed that takes 20 turns to research a tech you'd get around 8 turns for the building and 5-6 turns for the unit instead of 10 and 8 if you kept the same relation.

While that is all well and good in theory, it would be incredibly hard for the person keeping track of all of these ratios (me) to handle. It would mean that one would have to find four different sets of ratios that are more or less balanced with the current content levels in C2C, and adjust all four of those individually when major changes (*cough* future techs) come along. Coupled with the fact that there are about 20 or so iSomethingModifier tags for each gamespeed, that would be a nightmare. It requires enough thought as is to keep one set of ratios balanced, and lots of it is trial and error.

I'm willing to hear suggestions, but I think that the compromise numbers I added before I left will work for now. If there are large balance issues with them, please point them out, and if there aren't tell me that as well, that is the ONLY way that the balance can be improved, is through the gameplay input of multiple people with different settings and playstyles.

 

[AIAndy]

While that is all well and good in theory, it would be incredibly hard for the person keeping track of all of these ratios (me) to handle. It would mean that one would have to find four different sets of ratios that are more or less balanced with the current content levels in C2C, and adjust all four of those individually when major changes (*cough* future techs) come along. Coupled with the fact that there are about 20 or so iSomethingModifier tags for each gamespeed, that would be a nightmare. It requires enough thought as is to keep one set of ratios balanced, and lots of it is trial and error.

I'm willing to hear suggestions, but I think that the compromise numbers I added before I left will work for now. If there are large balance issues with them, please point them out, and if there aren't tell me that as well, that is the ONLY way that the balance can be improved, is through the gameplay input of multiple people with different settings and playstyles.

But you already have four different sets of ratios because there are a lot of invisible numbers that are caused by the turns. If you look in the BtS GameSpeedInfo you will see that for the slowest game speed they significantly reduced the unit training time compared to the linear increase they used with everything else. We are far further into that territory with our game speeds.
Improvements take far longer to build but they are still as fast to destroy. Units take far longer to build but movement speed, killing speed and healing speed (I think) does not scale the same.

 

[ls612]

But you already have four different sets of ratios because there are a lot of invisible numbers that are caused by the turns. If you look in the BtS GameSpeedInfo you will see that for the slowest game speed they significantly reduced the unit training time compared to the linear increase they used with everything else. We are far further into that territory with our game speeds.
Improvements take far longer to build but they are still as fast to destroy. Units take far longer to build but movement speed, killing speed and healing speed (I think) does not scale the same.

And you are of course right, that is an issue. I think that a very large part of the reason that not many AI are surviving into the Industrial or Modern era is that there are so many wars between the start and that point, even on Epic. Most games seem to be won by the Industrial Era, as war speed does not change with gamespeeds. That is mostly unavoidable, but I thought/think that increasing unit build times will decrease the number of wars and make games last into later eras.

 

[BlueGenie]

That's one thought. Mine is that faster building enables civilizations lacking in or losing a lot of military to train new units faster too, thus possibly surviving longer.

Cheers

 

[Thunderbrd]

If the game was run with only ai players, I doubt it would be over by the late Renaissance. The problem is that the AI is sucking after a certain point. Changing unit builds to take much longer won't improve on that fact but will take away from the enjoyability of each era. Far preferable to simply work on the ai to the point that its truly competitive, which is work that is constantly ongoing. Surely, too, mapsize matters here as well. Larger maps can't be conquered so quickly, which is what makes the viewports genius.

But nothing is more frustrating than trying to build up a decent military only to have it outdated by the time its ready to go to war.

 

[AIAndy]

If the game was run with only ai players, I doubt it would be over by the late Renaissance. The problem is that the AI is sucking after a certain point. Changing unit builds to take much longer won't improve on that fact but will take away from the enjoyability of each era. Far preferable to simply work on the ai to the point that its truly competitive, which is work that is constantly ongoing. Surely, too, mapsize matters here as well. Larger maps can't be conquered so quickly, which is what makes the viewports genius.

But nothing is more frustrating than trying to build up a decent military only to have it outdated by the time its ready to go to war.

Correct, the AI will fight wars regardless of unit build time but the higher the unit build time the more those wars will actually cost. That is entirely the wrong part to tackle to make games last longer.

Some things you can do to make games last longer:

• Improve the AI (hard and an ongoing effort by Koshling)
• Give the AI increasing handicap bonuses with time. There is even a tag for that with iAIPerEraModifier.
• Anti-steamroll measures, meaning mechanics that hinder you when you are at top and help you when you are at bottom (to counter the exponential behavior of some game mechanics that make steamroll victories certain once you have gotten an advantage)
• General balancing to remove the cheesy strategies that players tend to find but the AIs don't

 

[ls612]

Correct, the AI will fight wars regardless of unit build time but the higher the unit build time the more those wars will actually cost. That is entirely the wrong part to tackle to make games last longer.

Some things you can do to make games last longer:

• Improve the AI (hard and an ongoing effort by Koshling)
• Give the AI increasing handicap bonuses with time. There is even a tag for that with iAIPerEraModifier.
• Anti-steamroll measures, meaning mechanics that hinder you when you are at top and help you when you are at bottom (to counter the exponential behavior of some game mechanics that make steamroll victories certain once you have gotten an advantage)
• General balancing to remove the cheesy strategies that players tend to find but the AIs don't

I may not understand this right, but I thought now the AI would only attack if they had a certain number of units relative to what they know you have. If that is not the case, then my changes would not have any effect on AI survivability. Also, I really need to look at that iAIPerEraModifier when I get back, that may be useful.

 

[AIAndy]

I may not understand this right, but I thought now the AI would only attack if they had a certain number of units relative to what they know you have. If that is not the case, then my changes would not have any effect on AI survivability.

Koshling can say more about that as I don't know that part of the code in detail but yes, the relative unit strength plays a role but does not change when you change unit build costs.
In any case I think this is the wrong part to change for that effect. If we want the AI to fight less wars then we can make the AI start fewer wars directly in the AI code.

 

[T C]

I have to say that I, too, am not enjoying the new longer build times. If units were increased by 10% or something, no problem, but the changes as they are have made snail much less fun to play.

 

[ls612]

I have to say that I, too, am not enjoying the new longer build times. If units were increased by 10% or something, no problem, but the changes as they are have made snail much less fun to play.

I'm OK with Hydro changing them back, even though I feel that it was more balanced, it was making many people unhappy. I'll look and see if there are other things I can do without angering as many people.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I'm OK with Hydro changing them back, even though I feel that it was more balanced, it was making many people unhappy. I'll look and see if there are other things I can do without angering as many people.

I was thinking of applying the suggestion that buildings like Barracks or Dojos slow down unit production since the additional time needed to train the units. This should help balance things out since you can choose to make lots of un-trained units fast or have slower built uber units.

 

[ls612]

@All:

Normal is now a balanced and playable gamespeed, making it now the fastest 'balanced' gamespeed. It has 1500 turns and goes generally twice as fast as Epic. Feedback is as always appreciated.

 

[Cralecan]

hello,
i just had the first weekend with this really enjoyable mod.
something that was confusing me and was an exploit:

i had a hunterunit with level 20. it has survived a long way and subdued so many animals.
in the end it was so powerful i had a 99,xx% winning chance versus atl-atl fortified in towns. so i took my cance and took a barbarian city with 2-3 units without problems.
i then moved the unit towards an ai-city. it had like 10 units stationed, so i thought goodbye. but those ai-units never even tried to attack me. i think because my unit was so strong. nevertheless, in a combined effort they should have been able to take me down. so i went and took them out one by one. my unit, while having march maybe had to heal some damage, but no attack from the ai. so in the end, although it took some time, i could conquer this ai city killing like 12-15 ai-units one by one. i then went on and took out the other cities until only their capital was left. this had like 75% defending bonus so i could not take it, but this one ´hunterunit sure was devastating.

to make this story short, the ai doesn´t seem to sacrifice his units to take out stronger ones in a combined effort. do not know if this is wad, but it sure seems like a loophole to me.

 

[draz]

I've actually seen them try just that a few times, tho I think I've lost units only when they strayed to poor defensive tiles (hero unit standing on a forested hill, hah good luck with those atl-atl's! ). Maybe it's different for units defending a city however?

 

[Koshling]

I've actually seen them try just that a few times, tho I think I've lost units only when they strayed to poor defensive tiles (hero unit standing on a forested hill, hah good luck with those atl-atl's! ). Maybe it's different for units defending a city however?

It is. City defense units don't opportunity attack as aggressively as units with the attack AI. It does need tweaking however (they are TOO passive currently), and it's on my AI TODO list.

 

[strategyonly]

Well the AI (Barbs) are finally doing somewhat, what they are supposed to be doing, and you going to be concentrating on the newer AI improvements soon will be alot better, (just wishful thinking) but what if you made the AI even more AI thinkable (even if that is a word), meaning they can OUT think the human player as close as they can, again just thinking out loud.

The attached in even in "Ancient Era"