Chronicles of Mankind

[PPQ_Purple]

Because you brought it up, haha.

I will concede that this is a correct interpretation of the events.

 

[<Nexus>]

Someone needs to research "Rhetoric" tech in the Classical era to understand rhetoric questions

 

[Inthegrave]

Someone needs to research "Rhetoric" tech in the Classical era to understand rhetoric questions

Nah, I knew it was rhetorical question, I was joking around.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Nah, I knew it was rhetorical question, I was joking around.

Either way, would you people say that the Mamoth tank family from Command and Conquer adequately fits in the Dreadnaught category?

 

[Inthegrave]

Either way, would you people say that the Mamoth tank family from Command and Conquer adequately fits in the Dreadnaught category?

........ What? I have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

........ What? I have no idea what you are talking about.

I am not hearing a no.

 

[<Nexus>]

Either way, would you people say that the Mamoth tank family from Command and Conquer adequately fits in the Dreadnaught category?

Since those are the two biggest tanks in both universes I'd say yes. Graphics certainly fits but I don't think I want to change the name for Mammoth. Maybe as a flavor name for some civs but not all.

 

[<Nexus>]

BTW, @Inthegrave Do you know anything about the AI being so pacifist? Some players reported that the AI rarely starts any wars and my autoplay tests showed the same too.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Since those are the two biggest tanks in both universes I'd say yes. Graphics certainly fits but I don't think I want to change the name for Mammoth. Maybe as a flavor name for some civs but not all.

I was only talking about flavor graphics. The name "Dreadnought" sounds much cooler to be honest.

I am only really asking because a while back I decided to do the mamoth since it's, like cool or something. And I newer figured out just what I was going to do with it. And I figured that if I ever publish my personal art for this mod it'd be a good model for the role for a couple civs.

 

[Inthegrave]

I was only talking about flavor graphics. The name "Dreadnought" sounds much cooler to be honest.

Oh yeah sorry, I don't know much about command and conquer.

Do you know anything about the AI being so pacifist? Some players reported that the AI rarely starts any wars and my autoplay tests showed the same too.

Yeah actually this was an issue I fixed in my own personal AND version a few years ago. There are several factors that influence this but by far the strongest influence are these leader values:
<iMaxWarRand>200</iMaxWarRand>
<iLimitedWarRand>60</iLimitedWarRand>

These are the 1 in X per turn chance that a leader will declare war, vanilla BTS has these so high that even the most aggressive leaders like Genghis Khan are practically pacifist.

My suggestion is to go through every leader and make these a quarter or a third of what they are normally (You don't need to change the barbarian entry).
So 0.25 x 200 = 50, 0.25 x 60 = 15. Or do 0.33 x 200 = 66

Or if <iMaxWarRand>100</iMaxWarRand> then 0.25 x 100 = 25

Cut both iLimitedWarRand and iMaxWarRand down by a quarter or a third, now if these numbers seem really low keep in mind that there is many other factors that prevent the ai from declaring war
so these values are not the absolute odds, so I recommend very low values like I suggest if you want properly competitive ai.

The DLL are using now does make the ai more competitive in general but you still won't notice this because of the really bad base values that leaders use for declaring war.

 

[maksyutar]

Tell me, what exactly does RUTHLESS_AI affect? Is he becoming more aggressive in general, or only towards the player? Does the civic AI generally know which civilization is controlled by the player?

 

[<Nexus>]

Yeah actually this was an issue I fixed in my own personal AND version a few years ago. There are several factors that influence this but by far the strongest influence are these leader values:
<iMaxWarRand>200</iMaxWarRand>
<iLimitedWarRand>60</iLimitedWarRand>

These are the 1 in X per turn chance that a leader will declare war, vanilla BTS has these so high that even the most aggressive leaders like Genghis Khan are practically pacifist.

My suggestion is to go through every leader and make these a quarter or a third of what they are normally (You don't need to change the barbarian entry).
So 0.25 x 200 = 50, 0.25 x 60 = 15. Or do 0.33 x 200 = 66

Or if <iMaxWarRand>100</iMaxWarRand> then 0.25 x 100 = 25

Cut both iLimitedWarRand and iMaxWarRand down by a quarter or a third, now if these numbers seem really low keep in mind that there is many other factors that prevent the ai from declaring war
so these values are not the absolute odds, so I recommend very low values like I suggest if you want properly competitive ai.

The DLL are using now does make the ai more competitive in general but you still won't notice this because of the really bad base values that leaders use for declaring war.

Well, I tried decreasing by 90%. Cutting off a 0 was the easiest and fastest way of modding as f1rpo suggested.
I was rather curious if there were other things in the dll that could have affected the AI behavior.

 

[<Nexus>]

Tell me, what exactly does RUTHLESS_AI affect? Is he becoming more aggressive in general, or only towards the player? Does the civic AI generally know which civilization is controlled by the player?

Ingame description:

...but according to my experiences that is a huge overstatement. IIRC it just makes diplomacy hard/impossible/useless with the AI. At least as I remember I couldn't make reasonable trades with the AI.

Let me know if others have different experiences.

 

[Inthegrave]

Well, I tried decreasing by 90%. Cutting off a 0 was the easiest and fastest way of modding as f1rpo suggested.

Okay that is good. Did you test in game after doing that to each leader? And did you autoplay through a few eras? Remember you need to do it for both iLimitedWarRand and iMaxWarRand. Also keep in mind it might take 50 or so turns
for the ai to get comfortable enough to declare war. They tend to need a few cities before war starts being common in my experience.
In my experience changing those WarRand values made a huge difference, it's not a perfect fix but it certainly helps.

I would aiautoplay on normal or quick game speed.

I was rather curious if there were other things in the dll that could have affected the AI behavior.

There is many factors that influence it, if you want to know more there is documentation on my github that says what effects the chance to start a war plan.

but according to my experiences that is a huge overstatement. IIRC it just makes diplomacy hard/impossible/useless with the AI. At least as I remember I couldn't make reasonable trades with the AI.

Yeah I would say with ruthless ai you generally just get worse ai, we did improve it a bit but it's still not great. I would say aggressive ai is smarter than ruthless ai but normal ai is the smartest overall.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

So what you are saying is that for maximum difficulty we should make sure that the two options that advertise as making the AI more difficult are off.
I feel this is something that might just need to be documented somewhere...

 

[Inthegrave]

So what you are saying is that for maximum difficulty we should make sure that the two options that advertise as making the AI more difficult are off.

Yes basically, however it's possible the changes they make might balance the ai out a bit, worse ai but more aggressive ai might lead to a tradeoff that makes the ai at best not much harder or around the same as normal difficulty.

In general self preservation gets sacrificed some with the options for more war, but if that translates to harder difficulty is hard to say, but I would wager it doesn't make the game too much harder
With those options off the ai will try to self preserve more.

I feel this is something that might just need to be documented somewhere...

No it just needs to be fixed properly, but who knows when that will happen. But keep in mind I didn't have the ruthless ai option made, it's from AND. There is so many problems AND has left over from the original devs back in 2009.
We have a lot to do.

 

[<Nexus>]

Okay that is good. Did you test in game after doing that to each leader? And did you autoplay through a few eras? Remember you need to do it for both iLimitedWarRand and iMaxWarRand. Also keep in mind it might take 50 or so turns
for the ai to get comfortable enough to declare war. They tend to need a few cities before war starts being common in my experience.
In my experience changing those WarRand values made a huge difference, it's not a perfect fix but it certainly helps.

I would aiautoplay on normal or quick game speed.

Yes, I did run some autoplay tests on normal speed. Wars were still not very frequent but seemed to be better.

There is many factors that influence it, if you want to know more there is documentation on my github that says what effects the chance to start a war plan.

I'll take a look...

So what you are saying is that for maximum difficulty we should make sure that the two options that advertise as making the AI more difficult are off.
I feel this is something that might just need to be documented somewhere...

Well, I can simply turn off and hide those two options for the time they are fixed...

 

[Inthegrave]

Yes, I did run some autoplay tests on normal speed. Wars were still not very frequent but seemed to be better.

Another thing I can suggest is to alter the AttitudeChange values, make them hate certain things more, like make hate opposing religions more with iDifferentReligionAttitudeChange
or make most leaders have a stronger penalty with adjacent borders with iCloseBordersAttitudeChange.

If you want a bunch of leaders to use the same value remove the line from the leader and set the default in my leader defaults system.

Oh also I forgot to mention but, did you alter iDogpileWarRand? I would also lower that considerably, it functions like the other war rand types except it encourages the ai to declare war on a enemy that is already at war with others, to dogpile them and overwhelm them.

Well, I can simply turn off and hide those two options for the time they are fixed...

Sure you could that. Although I wouldn't hide the aggressive ai option, I can't say for sure it's much worse. At the very least leave it for players who want a different style of play.
Plus it is a vanilla game option.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

No it just needs to be fixed properly, but who knows when that will happen.

Exactly. Ergo documentation. We'll get to it when we get to it, just write it up in a FAQ somewhere is a tried and true design pattern for development.

Don't ask me why I know this and if it is out of personal experience...

 

[jackal1234]

great mod! thank you