Difference between favored and value fields in AiFavoredItems table?

[Imnimo]

I'm trying to set up the lists of preferred actions for my leader, but I'm confused about the meaning of the "Favored" and "Value" fields.

I imagine that favored=true means that they want to build the item, and favored=false means they don't, and similarly positive Value and negative Value. But what is the purpose of having both? Should I set both? What is the significance of making Value=1 vs. Value=10?

 

[Imnimo]

A follow-up question - is there a way to access the base game values for all the AIFavoredItems entries? From looking at some other mods and built-in agendas, I see that there's a pretty wide range of values for different items (like PSEUDOYIELD_UNIT_NAVAL_COMBAT has a "default value" of 1.0 in Yields.xml, but the LastVikingKingNavalPreference entry in Agendas.xml sets it to 100. On the other hand, CounterReformerInquisitorPreference sets the value of UNIT_INQUISITOR to 1 - a pretty big difference from the 100 for naval combat. How do I tell what reasonable ranges are for these values?

 

[LeeS]

You would need to get a database viewer program (there are multiple ones available for free on the internet, I use SQLiteBrowser I think it is called) and then you would open file C:\Users\YourUserNameHere\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Cache/DebugGameplay.sqlite after you have loaded up the game plus any mods and are actually in-game. Or once you are in-game with everything loaded you can exit directly to desktop and the contents of file DebugGameplay.sqlite will remain as it was.

I am not sure if you can use something like Notepad++ to view SQL databases.

As far as the values for AIPreferredItems goes, the higher the number the more the AI will "favor" the item. But I am not sure I can answer the question as to how much is too much for a particular AIFavoredItem you want to set up.

 

[Imnimo]

One thing I find particularly confusing about the "value" field in AIFavoredItems is the values assigned to victory types. Consider these two lines from the core Leaders.xml:

        <Row ListType="FavorReligiousVictory" Item="VICTORY_STRATEGY_RELIGIOUS_VICTORY" Value="-1"/>
        <Row ListType="ForbidReligiousVictory" Item="VICTORY_STRATEGY_RELIGIOUS_VICTORY" Value="5"/>

FavorReligiousVictory gives negative weight, and ForbidReligiousVictory gives positive weight. Similarly, in the Macedonia DLC, we have this line:

        <Row ListType="AlexanderPreferWar" Item="VICTORY_STRATEGY_MILITARY_VICTORY" Value="-2"/>

Again, a modifier that seems to increase favor of a particular strategy does so by assigning a negative weight. Maybe this is a quirk particular to strategies, because other entries do seem to follow the natural plan of higher numbers for more favored...