C2C Balance Thread

[Shrugger]

Gentlemen, I'm finding myself slowly resenting the game because no matter how I set it up, someone - either me or a lucky AI - always steamrolls. I tried higher difficulties, but those just took the fun out because that means identifying OP meta-strategies. I tried dynamic difficulty, but that just didn't seem to do anything at all. I tried putting myself on a pangaea so I couldn't monopolize an entire continent, but then I just steamrolled the entire world by the time the ancient age came about. I tried archipelagoes, and then the entire world was steamrolled by the civ that got the biggest island. I tried playing with more civs, and that somewhat slowed the steamroll...but not substantially. It just turned the smooth steamroll into a slightly delayed ride hitting a few speedbumps, but changed nothing about the outcome. On the other hand, with more civs, turn times were a lot slower but tech progress was faster. I tried WFL and TD, but the effect was negligible. I tried manually balancing the game through the worldbuilder as it ran, but that just felt stupid. I tried playing with self-imposed challenges like not exterminating civs, not monopolizing resources, not playing certain strategies...but once again, the effect was marginal and only slightly delayed the inevitable.

In short, no matter what I do, every game ends in a swift military victory or complete technological domination by one civilization, usually long before even the classical age is reached. It's either me winning by exterminating (or completely neutering) everyone else, or the whole game just becoming one depressive slog as one lucky civ rushes ahead through the tech tree and grabs all the wonders, cultures, heroes, and a substantial piece of the world. The AI usually doesn't consummate its military victory, even when it easily could, but by that point the game is already somewhat one-sided.

Is there some smart combination of settings that keeps the game challenging? Perhaps something that makes the AI more likely to band together against strong civs? Something that greatly boosts revolutions, or slows tech progress for large empires?

 

[Thunderbrd]

On WFL and TD and No tech handicaps for humans, things seem to be doing well to prevent steamrolls too badly. The group wonders also help so the more wonders we can group the better. Otherwise, we've had some struggles getting the AI to manage itself well and we're working on it.

 

[Noriad2]

Shrugger: did you try deity+nightmare mode?

 

[Shrugger]

I did, but that just ruined the immersion factor and turned the game into an unenjoyable series of optimization problems.

I don't want to play meta, focus on OP strategies and exploit AI shortcomings. I just want to roleplay and still reach the later eras of the game without steamrolls

 

[pi4t]

With Assigned Specialist XP on, can you get a significant amount of XP for your units by maxing the relevant specialists on the turn the unit's construction is finished? If so, does the computer know to do that by itself?

Otherwise, it seems like the option gives players a big benefit over the AI, but only if they micromanage all their unit construction in a rather dull way. Might it be better to just give XP per specialist you could potentially get?

 

[Thunderbrd]

With Assigned Specialist XP on, can you get a significant amount of XP for your units by maxing the relevant specialists on the turn the unit's construction is finished? If so, does the computer know to do that by itself?

I haven't been able to get it to without crashing so I've let the project for that go on hold until I circle back around to it.

Might it be better to just give XP per specialist you could potentially get?

No... no flavor in your specialist choices in that - and you're not taking sub-optimal national level selections for the benefit of the current needs, which is sorta the point of the whole thing. However, it might reduce the fiddling a bit if specialist choices were somehow locked in for a certain number of rounds after they were set, or until the next population change or something, but that would require opening a population allocation session and then officially closing it and I think that might be a little more annoying, despite being a bit more rational - particularly with slave specialists which shouldn't be something you can swap so 'at will' with ease.

 

[pi4t]

I haven't been able to get it to without crashing so I've let the project for that go on hold until I circle back around to it.

No... no flavor in your specialist choices in that - and you're not taking sub-optimal national level selections for the benefit of the current needs, which is sorta the point of the whole thing. However, it might reduce the fiddling a bit if specialist choices were somehow locked in for a certain number of rounds after they were set, or until the next population change or something, but that would require opening a population allocation session and then officially closing it and I think that might be a little more annoying, despite being a bit more rational - particularly with slave specialists which shouldn't be something you can swap so 'at will' with ease.

The trouble is that as it is, if you're making an expensive unit (or making lots of them all on one turn) you can just stuff your city full of, say, civilians, for a single turn when the build is completed. That has a negligible impact on your resources (less than 1 round's worth of resource generation for a single city, especially given that a decent chunk of generation seems to come from buildings anyway?) and gives a very large amount of XP to the units produced.

Obviously, though, this is just my private (and rather uninformed) opinion, as someone who's just playing this mod for the first time. I'm not trying to say "you must do this my way!" or anything; just trying to suggest what I personally think would make the game better. You should, of course, feel free to ignore me if you want. And either way, I should thank you and the rest of the development team for such an entertaining mod!

 

[Thunderbrd]

The trouble is that as it is, if you're making an expensive unit (or making lots of them all on one turn) you can just stuff your city full of, say, civilians, for a single turn when the build is completed. That has a negligible impact on your resources (less than 1 round's worth of resource generation for a single city, especially given that a decent chunk of generation seems to come from buildings anyway?) and gives a very large amount of XP to the units produced.

I agree that it's a little gimmicky that way and I'd like to make it less possible to make that sudden full commit swing - I do have SOME ideas as to what can be done about that and it involves even limiting how many 'employed' citizens there can be assigned and giving an 'unemployed' citizen specialist that is really nothing more than a drain (kinda like angry citizens as a default). But it's a long project to get to that point.

Obviously, though, this is just my private (and rather uninformed) opinion, as someone who's just playing this mod for the first time. I'm not trying to say "you must do this my way!" or anything; just trying to suggest what I personally think would make the game better. You should, of course, feel free to ignore me if you want. And either way, I should thank you and the rest of the development team for such an entertaining mod!

Nothing wrong with bringing up the problems with balance as you see them. You've noted things I've been considering how to address in certain ways and in other spots things I've considered are really part of the design concept as a feature rather than a bug or problem. Sometimes its just a matter of the perspective. The discussion is never a bad thing though. I've been convinced of opposing outlooks before.

 

[Maltazard]

Hello, just started playing the mod again after a few years and I'm loving all the new stuff and changes! I'm also keeping up with the SVN and I'm impressed with the current active development sill ongoing, thank you.

I have noticed a couple of oddities that have persisted through the last few SVN updates: I'm playing a game without the size matters option, but it seems that the AI can promote some units at least to Might I getting an extra strenght point, while I can't. I suspect this might be an actual bug but I don't know well enough.

I've also turned on flexible difficulty because I was just running away with the game, but despite leading in score, tech and most other things, the difficulty is being lowered, not increased, not sure what's going on there.

Lastly, I have a couple of salt tiles where my automated workers are hell bent on replacing the quarries with stone gathering improvements, losing 12 or so hammers on each tile. Other than that the workers just keep replacing hamlets with farms all the time, not sure if that's ideal behaviour, but it's not as bad as the quarries thing.

 

[raxo2222]

Hello, just started playing the mod again after a few years and I'm loving all the new stuff and changes! I'm also keeping up with the SVN and I'm impressed with the current active development sill ongoing, thank you.

I have noticed a couple of oddities that have persisted through the last few SVN updates: I'm playing a game without the size matters option, but it seems that the AI can promote some units at least to Might I getting an extra strenght point, while I can't. I suspect this might be an actual bug but I don't know well enough.

I've also turned on flexible difficulty because I was just running away with the game, but despite leading in score, tech and most other things, the difficulty is being lowered, not increased, not sure what's going on there.

Lastly, I have a couple of salt tiles where my automated workers are hell bent on replacing the quarries with stone gathering improvements, losing 12 or so hammers on each tile. Other than that the workers just keep replacing hamlets with farms all the time, not sure if that's ideal behaviour, but it's not as bad as the quarries thing.

1. Might promotions are unrelated to SM. I think you confused with Quality Up promos or something like that.
You can take them after unit reaches certain level. Also each level of it is unlocked on lifestyle tech.

2. Flexible difficulty option stuff can be changed in BUG settings, maybe you started with higher handicap than flexible handicap bounds?

3. Looks like bug in automated worker AI, upload save.

 

[Maltazard]

1. Ah I see, my bad for assuming that then. I checked the pedia and it says that Might I requires a level 3 unit, and to have a combat quality class. However, all the various combat quality tooltips say that it is not available without the size matters option enabled, and I've had plenty of level 3+ units but I could never promote them with Might I. What am I missing?

2. I started playing on noble, when I enabled flexible difficulty I manually set myself on emperor and I set the difficulty range between noble and emperor, did I mess it up doing it like that? I also checked the box for AI uses flexible difficulty, is that bad? I'm still trying to figure out all the best options to use although I did find the recommended settings thread and that was very useful to clear some things, great idea.

3. I checked again, the improvement in question is "gather salt" on salt resource which they prefer to the quarry, I'm attaching the save file. You can see it happening near Sutrium, at the center of my main island.

Thank you for keeping up so close with this little gem of a mod by the way, I love it!

 

[raxo2222]

1. Ah I see, my bad for assuming that then. I checked the pedia and it says that Might I requires a level 3 unit, and to have a combat quality class. However, all the various combat quality tooltips say that it is not available without the size matters option enabled, and I've had plenty of level 3+ units but I could never promote them with Might I. What am I missing?

2. I started playing on noble, when I enabled flexible difficulty I manually set myself on emperor and I set the difficulty range between noble and emperor, did I mess it up doing it like that? I also checked the box for AI uses flexible difficulty, is that bad? I'm still trying to figure out all the best options to use although I did find the recommended settings thread and that was very useful to clear some things, great idea.

3. I checked again, the improvement in question is "gather salt" on salt resource which they prefer to the quarry, I'm attaching the save file. You can see it happening near Sutrium, at the center of my main island.

Thank you for keeping up so close with this little gem of a mod by the way, I love it!

1. Looks like Might promotion needs Size Matters option after all.
Maybe you confused usual Combat or Policing promotion with Might promotion?
If not, then there is interesting bug.

2. Now you are at Emperor.
Also AI can be set to change handicap too, I'm not sure how it affects AI, as I never played with it.

 

[Yudishtira]

2. I started playing on noble, when I enabled flexible difficulty I manually set myself on emperor and I set the difficulty range between noble and emperor, did I mess it up doing it like that? I also checked the box for AI uses flexible difficulty, is that bad? I'm still trying to figure out all the best options to use although I did find the recommended settings thread and that was very useful to clear some things, great idea.

It can't increase the difficulty above Emperor because you've told it not to.

If it's reducing the difficulty, it may be that it ignores the manual setting to Emperor, so 'increases' the difficulty to Prince, as if you were still on Noble where you started. Just go in and put yourself back to Emperor. (If I'm right - and admittedly that would be a first lol) it will only do it one more time (ie. 'up' to Monarch), and there's (I think) default 50 turns between changes, so it won't be for a while.

 

[Maltazard]

1. Looks like Might promotion needs Size Matters option after all.
Maybe you confused usual Combat or Policing promotion with Might promotion?
If not, then there is interesting bug.

At first I noticed that their town watchmen had a strenght of 6 while mines had a strenght of 5, so from there I started looking into possible reasons and noticed the star icon in their promotions, it looks very similar to combat I to be fair so I can't really tell for sure from just looking at the icon, but the +1 strenght increase does check up. Unfortunately I don't have a direct border with any of these guys so I'm relying on what I can see from espionage city view and such.

It can't increase the difficulty above Emperor because you've told it not to.

If it's reducing the difficulty, it may be that it ignores the manual setting to Emperor, so 'increases' the difficulty to Prince, as if you were still on Noble where you started. Just go in and put yourself back to Emperor. (If I'm right - and admittedly that would be a first lol) it will only do it one more time (ie. 'up' to Monarch), and there's (I think) default 50 turns between changes, so it won't be for a while.

That makes sense, in a way. I should set the turns bewteen changes to 1 for a few turns and see what happens. This was my first playthrough with the mod after years so I'm taking it easy and learning the new stuff, I'm definitely looking forward to a second, more educated playthrough later on with higher difficulty from the start. This time I definitely ran away in the ancient era but starting on noble it was to be expected. Welp, it's still fun.

 

[Yudishtira]

Lastly, I have a couple of salt tiles where my automated workers are hell bent on replacing the quarries with stone gathering improvements, losing 12 or so hammers on each tile. Other than that the workers just keep replacing hamlets with farms all the time, not sure if that's ideal behaviour, but it's not as bad as the quarries thing.

I think there's a vanilla (ctrl-O) option: "Automated Workers Leave Existing Improvements". In the BUG options Automations tab there may be a way to specify what automated workers can and can't do.

 

[Maltazard]

I found there's a full interface to enable/disable each individual worker action for automated workers, either at a national level or by city. I tried to enable selection per city but that resulted in a CtD, so I just disabled "gather salt" at the national level in the BUG interface, but they were still replacing those quarries with gather salt. There is another tile near a different city which is also a plains/salt tile with a quarry, and they don't replace that one, the only difference is that the one they are replacing has fresh water but even so replacing the quarry is a net loss of food, hammers and commerce.

Now though I have anotehr problem, after enabling the automations selection per city in the BUG options the game crashes whenever I try to open the BUG menu. Is there any way to reset that panel without opening it?

 

[Yudishtira]

At first I noticed that their town watchmen had a strenght of 6 while mines had a strenght of 5, so from there I started looking into possible reasons and noticed the star icon in their promotions, it looks very similar to combat I to be fair so I can't really tell for sure from just looking at the icon, but the +1 strenght increase does check up. Unfortunately I don't have a direct border with any of these guys so I'm relying on what I can see from espionage city view and such.

There is a set of Ancient era great wonders (the ones beginning with AW) that each give +1 strength to one class of units. I can see that Denmark has one of these (it comes with a special promotion), I can't see which one, but it must be the one for law enforcement. It was Denmark you were referring to, wasn't it?

 

[Snofru1]

Automated workers are a total mess if you don´t check the BUG options in detail, e.g. every little peace of forest will be cut down if you don´t forbid it. I have never used the BUG options for just one city so I can´t comment on this. And I have given up on using the automation at all with the exception of improving infrastructure to automatically build roads or railways. But even then resources are always "improved" with forts and not with the appropriate improvement which I hate.
Rant off - sorry, but this topic increases my blood pressure...

 

[Toffer90]

Now though I have anotehr problem, after enabling the automations selection per city in the BUG options the game crashes whenever I try to open the BUG menu. Is there any way to reset that panel without opening it?

Delete "Mods\Caveman2Cosmos\UserSettings\AutomatedSettings.ini"
If you still can't open BUG options, try deleting your UserSettings folder.

 

[Maltazard]

There is a set of Ancient era great wonders (the ones beginning with AW) that each give +1 strength to one class of units. I can see that Denmark has one of these (it comes with a special promotion), I can't see which one, but it must be the one for law enforcement. It was Denmark you were referring to, wasn't it?

Oh you might be right. Looking at Denmark, they have 1 extra strenght on both enforcers and town guards, but also on some infrantry units, is it possible that they conquered another AW from someone else and now they're getting the bonuses for two unit classes? Or maybe they could promote enforcers to axemen/light swordsmen and retain the extra strenght? I'm attaching a couple screenshots, but yes I can see the AW light blue promotion on those units so that must be the source of the extra strenght. No bug after all, nice.

Delete "Mods\Caveman2Cosmos\UserSettings\AutomatedSettings.ini"
If you still can't open BUG options, try deleting your UserSettings folder.

Thankyou! I deleted the whole cache folder and that worked, but it's nice to know where to look for next time.