Difficulty settings

[Rwn]

To check the balance, simply play a noble level and then play a deity level and watch how different the education plays out and then extrapolate out the ramp up from noble to deity and you've got a fair judgement of the influence it has on play at each general level. The more education pop soaks up, the less the buildings are sufficient and the more units are necessary or population becomes best to keep under manageable levels. The population management of keeping control of education is actually one of the first times I've seen Civ suggest the truth... that there really can be too many people in one place for it to be beneficial.

Hm... This makes me think, maybe there could be a (very cheap) building which would eat all your excess food and convert it into or (less than 1:1 obviously), effectively stopping the city growth. I don't know whether it'd be easily doable with xml though. Currently, how can you limit city growth except by manually removing working tiles with food (both annoying and with side effects)?

You could do this but its already pretty simple at 1. I fear anything less than noble is just too easy already.

I was certainly not intending to put 1 (even 2 education or crime feels easy in my experience), but something already currently challenging without being outright unavoidable - keeping in mind that buildings can be tweaked from there if necessary. 4 for each would be ideal actually, since the decay is 4% it would be very easy to figure out where your property is headed: baseline is 100 (or -100) per pop, each +4 properties adds or removes 100. Or even slightly increasing decay to 5%, putting base property/pop at 5 so that there would be buildings with multiple of 5 properties (like currently for crime) that would each change the limit by 100 for each +/- 5 properties: much easier to figure out than the current system.

From there it'd also be easy to figure out how many buildings (and at what cost) are necessary to maintain a given city (or more accurately, control how large the cities can be at a given point in the game), as well as what the threshold would mean (100 is what you'll get in a city size 1 if you don't add any property from buildings/units or a city size 2 with -4 properties from buildings/units, 200 is what you'll get in a city size 2 with no property from buildings/units, etc.; 1000 is normally unreachable by a city under size 10 and very unlikely for even a city at 10 pop or slightly above, etc.).

Actually, properties (disease comes to mind) could even be use to control city growth through a feedback loop - if your city is unusually large, it'll be crippled by diseases that act as -X% and/or (much more drastic than currently) so that its growth effectively stops until you discover new techs or construct buildings decreasing disease (OK, that's not really the place to discuss that, but once things are clear with properties/difficulty, it'd be interesting to look at properties balancing).

I can see there being a point to this. But then, I also see a point to figuring out how to eventually harmonize our core with nightmare and eliminate the option since ppl seem to feel there are too many options.

To rephrase what I think you're saying in that last segment, you're suggesting "Let nighmare mode begin to mean 'a game where the difficulty levels include increasing the difficulty from properties where the normal game would generally not.'

Properties, but maybe also other things that specifically affect the player, like maintenance cost, goody huts results, free base happiness or health... Nightmare mode would then mean, "it's not just the AI that is more competitive, but the player would also have to adapt to harsher game mechanics".

Though that's not my favourite option among the two, because we'd have an additional game option, and because either "nightmare mode" would be too harsh or it'd be a good enough challenge so that its absence would feel like removing a feature (exactly what you said about Noble with properties not really needing maintenance).

 

[Toffer90]

Currently, how can you limit city growth except by manually removing working tiles with food (both annoying and with side effects)?

There is a button close to "hurry production" that restricts the city from growing. It then stops at full food bar until you tick the button again.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Hm... This makes me think, maybe there could be a (very cheap) building which would eat all your excess food and convert it into or (less than 1:1 obviously), effectively stopping the city growth. I don't know whether it'd be easily doable with xml though. Currently, how can you limit city growth except by manually removing working tiles with food (both annoying and with side effects)?

This is where we should think back to what worked to manage cities growing into unmanageable unhappiness in Vanilla... Slaving. That's one potential answer to manage the situation. Also, perhaps farming less and towning more or lumberjacking more can help. Maybe you DON'T need to build all those extra food buildings so as to optimize the use of your production time as well if its only going to cause more problems to grow. Lots of way a player can make lemonade out of lemons here.

I was certainly not intending to put 1 (even 2 education or crime feels easy in my experience), but something already currently challenging without being outright unavoidable - keeping in mind that buildings can be tweaked from there if necessary. 4 for each would be ideal actually, since the decay is 4% it would be very easy to figure out where your property is headed: baseline is 100 (or -100) per pop, each +4 properties adds or removes 100. Or even slightly increasing decay to 5%, putting base property/pop at 5 so that there would be buildings with multiple of 5 properties (like currently for crime) that would each change the limit by 100 for each +/- 5 properties: much easier to figure out than the current system.

From there it'd also be easy to figure out how many buildings (and at what cost) are necessary to maintain a given city (or more accurately, control how large the cities can be at a given point in the game), as well as what the threshold would mean (100 is what you'll get in a city size 1 if you don't add any property from buildings/units or a city size 2 with -4 properties from buildings/units, 200 is what you'll get in a city size 2 with no property from buildings/units, etc.; 1000 is normally unreachable by a city under size 10 and very unlikely for even a city at 10 pop or slightly above, etc.).

Actually, properties (disease comes to mind) could even be use to control city growth through a feedback loop - if your city is unusually large, it'll be crippled by diseases that act as -X% and/or (much more drastic than currently) so that its growth effectively stops until you discover new techs or construct buildings decreasing disease (OK, that's not really the place to discuss that, but once things are clear with properties/difficulty, it'd be interesting to look at properties balancing).

But see... the spectrum from avoidable to unavoidable is the spectrum from unrealistic ease to realistic real world problems. We usually consider one setting the 'standard test' setting on just about every selection. Example: Snail is our standard for testing speed balance factors. Everything else is assumed to fall into place from there. So what's the problem with defining a particular 'standard' difficulty for optimum testing on properties? It's certainly not a good reason to end one major cause for actual difficulty variation on the difficulty settings.

Properties, but maybe also other things that specifically affect the player, like maintenance cost, goody huts results, free base happiness or health... Nightmare mode would then mean, "it's not just the AI that is more competitive, but the player would also have to adapt to harsher game mechanics".

Though that's not my favourite option among the two, because we'd have an additional game option, and because either "nightmare mode" would be too harsh or it'd be a good enough challenge so that its absence would feel like removing a feature (exactly what you said about Noble with properties not really needing maintenance).

Yeah. I suppose. Then again, a modmod to establish the sort of experience you're driving for seems more appropriate in this case.

 

[Faustmouse]

There is a button close to "hurry production" that restricts the city from growing. It then stops at full food bar until you tick the button again.

Does it actually work? I vaguagly remember it was just ignored and the city kept growing anyways when I checked it 2 or 3 years ago.

Hm... This makes me think, maybe there could be a (very cheap) building which would eat all your excess food and convert it into or (less than 1:1 obviously), effectively stopping the city growth. I don't know whether it'd be easily doable with xml though. Currently, how can you limit city growth except by manually removing working tiles with food (both annoying and with side effects)?

The cheap building sounds a little artificial to me. I'd rather go with a negative feedback loop here. Disease sounds like a really good one to me here. Maybe all (or most?) diseases need a pop requirement as well; then they can have a more drastic effect. Pest IMO can also have a way higher pop requirement. I live in a ~20.000 people village and the only pidgeons you see actually act as "normal birds"; they don't run around places and streets, but sit in trees and hunt their own food in nature. I wouldn't consider them as a pest at all.

I was certainly not intending to put 1 (even 2 education or crime feels easy in my experience), but something already currently challenging without being outright unavoidable - keeping in mind that buildings can be tweaked from there if necessary. 4 for each would be ideal actually, since the decay is 4% it would be very easy to figure out where your property is headed: baseline is 100 (or -100) per pop, each +4 properties adds or removes 100. Or even slightly increasing decay to 5%, putting base property/pop at 5 so that there would be buildings with multiple of 5 properties (like currently for crime) that would each change the limit by 100 for each +/- 5 properties: much easier to figure out than the current system.

Now THAT sounds like an extremely good idea to me It will definetly ease up crime management while not make it as flat and easy as flammability.
But then I'm on the fence here; I think both you and TB made valid points and while I do think that harder games should focus more on internal threats than easy games, I don't like stacking Policeman in all my cities. I mean, I built the Police Station and now it's up to my people to recruit Policeman. I don't build Smith units after I build a Forge aswell...
You have two ways on setting up a base crime level:
a) It's high, but you can do something about: This one will lead to more policeman being built, so as rwn said it's basically - and -.
b) It's too high to counter it: This will only make it frustrating since you can't do anythin about it. Might be realistic at some point, but certainly not fun to play with.

Properties, but maybe also other things that specifically affect the player, like maintenance cost, goody huts results, free base happiness or health... Nightmare mode would then mean, "it's not just the AI that is more competitive, but the player would also have to adapt to harsher game mechanics".

I'd go the same way: A flat property increase for all difficulty levels (a treshould of 100 per pop seems reasonable to me) and than an option (Nightmare) that increases that to 200 or so per pop as treshold.

 

[Noriad2]

Does it actually work? I vaguagly remember it was just ignored and the city kept growing anyways when I checked it 2 or 3 years ago.

yes the button to stop city growth works.

 

[Rwn]

This is where we should think back to what worked to manage cities growing into unmanageable unhappiness in Vanilla... Slaving. That's one potential answer to manage the situation. Also, perhaps farming less and towning more or lumberjacking more can help. Maybe you DON'T need to build all those extra food buildings so as to optimize the use of your production time as well if its only going to cause more problems to grow. Lots of way a player can make lemonade out of lemons here.

In fact I usually don't (and rarely build farms), except in Prehistory because otherwise your city won't grow, but cities still grow out of control. Well, another thing to look at at some point


Anyway, regarding properties increasing with difficulty, I'm still not convinced personnally, but giving it's so appreciated, well, I'll keep it that way. Though I will change the base difficulty to 5 per pop (with 5% decay) for each in the baseline difficulty mode (Noble), meaning I'll also adjust the building & unit files to have them in line with that (pending future balance changes).

 

[Rwn]

@Rwn
Good job.

btw. i didn't increase/decrease education/disease/crime per population, I just gave it an offset that is the same no matter the population.

This might have been a mistake if this is the only XML that makes population matter for properties....

Re-reading the topic I found out I missed that post. You're right, I read your .xml the wrong way, it works as you describe.
It might actually be a good way to implement difficulty-differentiated properties without relying on the per pop modifier, thanks for the idea.

 

[Toffer90]

It will mostly only affect the small cities which should not really be the most troubled by the properties. I reverted to per pop in the civic modmod after some testing.

EDIT: the values I chose range from 1-3 per pop (settler-deity) as a 0.25 increase has a large impact already. Example: size 100 city gets 25 more crime per turn per difficulty-up up to the extreme 200 more crime.

 

[Rwn]

It will mostly only affect the small cities which should not really be the most troubled by the properties. I reverted to per pop in the civic modmod after some testing.

Well, that's not entirely true: it'll affect small cities in the same way as it does large city, except that large cities have had time to build various buildings to counter the effect.

But thanks for the feedback, now I think about, it'll indeed make cities more annoying to manage when they are created and barely nothing later on.

 

[Rwn]

The modmod is out! And the OP has been modified to provide a description of what the modmod does.

Currently the difficulty has been set up so that Noble is the base difficulty (almost no bonus to the AI or the player), Deity is "twice as difficult" as Noble - meaning that AI produces twice as fast as the player, barbarians and animals are twice as strong, properties increase twice as fast, etc. - and the difficulty ramp up geometrically inbetween (each difficulty level is about 15% "more difficult" than the previous one). If playtests show that this difficulty is too low, it'll be easy to scale things to higher than x2 (or maybe to add difficulty levels).

As always, feedback from people playing with this modmod is more than welcome!

 

[majaczek]

and what about Settler and other "easier" difficulties?

 

[Rwn]

and what about Settler and other "easier" difficulties?

It's described in the OP that was just updated

Lower levels than Noble make both AI and the game mechanics more forgiving
They're intended for players new to C2C that might have trouble managing all the new stuff in there. AI gets many penalites, the player gets many bonuses, from free barbarian wins to better goody huts, more free units, cheaper buildings and construction, easier to manage properties, less declarations of war from the AI, etc.
I won't detail every change, but roughly:
- Settler gives really huge advantages to the player, with bonuses in the range of 60% vs. Noble
- Chieftain makes the game significantly easier, with bonuses in the range of 30%
- Warlord makes the game slightly easier, with bonuses in the range of 10%

 

[JosEPh_II]

If I use this to test will your SpecialBuildings_CIV4BuildingsInfos file overwrite the Pest Modmod SpecialBuildings?. Probably will. So to use both I'll need to merge Pest modmod into this one. Right?

JosEPh

 

[Rwn]

If I use this to test will your SpecialBuildings_CIV4BuildingsInfos file overwrite the Pest Modmod SpecialBuildings?. Probably will. So to use both I'll need to merge Pest modmod into this one. Right?

JosEPh

Not necessarily. The BuildingInfos files from this modmod are all set with bForceOverwrite (I'll change that at some point) so they'll overwrite anything that was loaded before.

A dirty trick is to name the folder in My_Mods from RebalancedDifficulty to 00RebalancedDifficulty, so it'll be loaded first among the My_Mods modmods. Thus, if your pest modmod is for example in a NewPest folder inside My_Mods, it'll be loaded after and its effects will correctly apply.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Thanks for the info! That should save some from eye strain! Or falling asleep at the computer!

JosEPh

 

[Faustmouse]

Currently trying this modmod and for me it looks nice It doesn't have the super slow start from normal deity for the players. One thing that bothers me a little bit is the property system. I have 1000 Education by now (Tribalism) but only got 3 or 4 myths Crime, Diseases and Pollutions are all negative without any effort, the former two even down to -250. I haven't met any other AI yet but none got Tengriism yet. Also I THINK I could've get Shamanism if I had gone for it. When I found them I'll tell you more.

Oh and the first Great Hunter / General pop up massages came before I even got Chasers (Large, 9 AI, deity, snail, FoF, SM)

 

[Rwn]

Currently trying this modmod and for me it looks nice It doesn't have the super slow start from normal deity for the players. One thing that bothers me a little bit is the property system. I have 1000 Education by now (Tribalism) but only got 3 or 4 myths Crime, Diseases and Pollutions are all negative without any effort, the former two even down to -250. I haven't met any other AI yet but none got Tengriism yet. Also I THINK I could've get Shamanism if I had gone for it. When I found them I'll tell you more.

Oh and the first Great Hunter / General pop up massages came before I even got Chasers (Large, 9 AI, deity, snail, FoF, SM)

Depending on what you used to play before, the property balance might have changed. But, yes, the property balance shouldn't be the same and difficulty levels less different on that regard compared to vanilla (where Deity has like 3 to 5 times as much property per pop).

I'm a bit surprised things are going so well though; I'll probably tone down the building properties then. Let me know if things are still so easy later on.

For the first Great Hunter/General, I'd guess it was a barbarian one?

 

[Faustmouse]

Depending on what you used to play before, the property balance might have changed. But, yes, the property balance shouldn't be the same and difficulty levels less different on that regard compared to vanilla (where Deity has like 3 to 5 times as much property per pop).

I'm a bit surprised things are going so well though; I'll probably tone down the building properties then. Let me know if things are still so easy later on.

For the first Great Hunter/General, I'd guess it was a barbarian one?

Weird thing is, I even could've gotten the Gatherer if I hadn't researched Language first I'm interested in finding the other AI's starting locations, from my experience it happens quite often that you are stuck on a 10 tile island near a gigantic pangea

 

[Rwn]

Weird thing is, I even could've gotten the Gatherer if I hadn't researched Language first

Hmm, that's interesting, I just saw that there's no tag to increase AI research cost, the only way to give it an advantage is to increase the research cost for the player.

 

[Faustmouse]

The lack of an AI research bonus might be a problem, but so far the AI is not too bad; it's not completely outteching me, but also not super-weak. Let's see how this progresses.

I also should mention that I play with no traits at all.

I found Tengriism, no problem here. Probably should've done a save here and see when the AI had researched it. My bad... was in turn 372.

Then I saw an AI city that was defended with 3 Stone Throwers around Sed. Lifestyle. My merged Spearman (the early one with base str 3) managed to take it easily.

I was beaten for Sed. Lifestyle by 19 turns. That was around as much as I spended to get Tengri first. So that's "ok" I'd say, but I also think deity should be a bit more challenging. Out of the two AI's I met so far, only one got Sed. Lifestyle already and now 50-100 turns passed.

First I met Persia when I researched Sed. Lifestyle. They were equal in points (93), had a slightly stronger military (0.9) but only 3 cities (I have 5). They were researching Harpoons then; later they started Sed. Lifestyle and it will take them 13 turns, while it was 16 for me.

Then I met the Neanderthals. They are probably the Leader; with 6 cities and 177 points. Their military is stronger than mine (0.7) but I think that number is quite inaccurate. Anyways, the "Largest Civs!" placed me on Numer 5 (out of 9) with my 5 cities. Neanderthals are 1st and Persia 7th (3 cities).

My 6th city caused me 21 less when I founded it. I'm still in + at 100% . I can't spam cities yet, but this will probably change as well in the future. But that's certainly not something that should be adressed by difficulty.
This city also had way too much and IMO. +11 and +7 is quite a lot on deity, considering that I have only so few ressources so far (I used default from Perfect Mongoose).

My size 6 capital city is also doing well: I have 1232 Education by now (not that it matters since the autobuildings now have tech prereqs) without doing that much! I built most of the buildings that I unlocked (except those with -), but have no healers, Storytellers or something in it. Air Pollution and Flamability is still around zero, which is ok. Water Pollution went to 86, most likely by the Tannin Maker and Poison Crafter. Crime is at only 31 and I haven't built the Patrol or Watchtower or Torches yet. That's relaxing TBH... I never liked to be forced to have 5 Watchman per city... I'm just a bit worried that crime can be negleted now Let's see how this progresses.
Disease on the other hand is at 405. I haven't built the Healer's Hut with it's stunning -25 Disease yet, thought. But why bother? Even with all these diseases I have +1 :health (28 -27 ) and is unlimited by some civics (+31 ).

Overall, I like it so far. I'll avoid war with the neanderthals so they get better hopefully. And I wonder what happens when I met all the AI and they get to know each other (Tech Diffusion is on). MAYBE you need to adjust the player research rate as well... And then building rates, work rates etc as well, so they are in the same relation on every difficulty. Or a flat penalty (80% maybe) research for the player so the AI is a bit more competeteive on all levels.