Diplomacy

[MilkmanDan]

Currently, when city-states are dragged into a war because of their ally status with a civ, they don't really do that much, so are essentially useless as allies (in that sense).

Would it be possible to tweak their AI to be more on the offence when in state of war? Or has it more to do with their flavouring?

CS don't give UUs, do they?

AI doesn't like offensive during war unless they have at least 5-8 units it seems (probably because they are terrible at it). CS almost never have that many so are of minimal use offensively anyway.

They are better at being a distraction, I had allied with one CS on the other side of a major civ I was going to attack soon. During the attack, they moved about 15 units to attack the CS while I met minimal resistance on the other side. If they capture the CS, it's almost even better as when you liberate them, you get a free ally for a 100-150 turns.

They occasionally give UUs but mostly not. Odder than that is they will give you units that you have the tech for but that they don't have yet.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

AI doesn't like offensive during war unless they have at least 5-8 units it seems (probably because they are terrible at it). CS almost never have that many so are of minimal use offensively anyway.

They are better at being a distraction, I had allied with one CS on the other side of a major civ I was going to attack soon. During the attack, they moved about 15 units to attack the CS while I met minimal resistance on the other side. If they capture the CS, it's almost even better as when you liberate them, you get a free ally for a 100-150 turns.

They occasionally give UUs but mostly not. Odder than that is they will give you units that you have the tech for but that they don't have yet.

Even is an allied city state doesn't do any offensive fighting in a war, won't they help you get a better peace deal just by being in the war? Thanks in advance

 

[MilkmanDan]

Even is an allied city state doesn't do any offensive fighting in a war, won't they help you get a better peace deal just by being in the war? Thanks in advance

Probably, the AI doesn't like to be in multiple wars and if you've got a few CS allied it can tip the balance a bit more.

I wish they'd left vassal states in V. As is, by the time the AI is really begging for peace they're giving you all their cities besides their capitol. Then, their closest neighbor declares and captures that last city anyway. As a vassal, they'd be a bit more useful and hopefully would counter the positive feedback loop that leaves 1-2 ai civs per continent.

 

[Perkus]

@Thalassicus:
I was comparing your changes to what I have in GlobalAIDefines.xml in Assets. I noted the following weirdness:
<Where Name="FRIENDS_BASE_TURNS_UNIT_SPAWN"/>
<Set Value="14"/> <!-- 17 -->

Your comment indicates that this was originally 17. However, I have it as 19 in AIDefines! Does that mean they actually raised it by 2 in the .62 patches? In any event, your change is now more than a 25% boost over vanilla as your documentation claims, it's actually 35.7%.

and

Your readme's v.2 change history says:
"I discovered the latest official patch addressed the balance issue of AI direct payments, so I removed it from this mod." Yet above that you still have "90% influence from gold payments to city-states. " - which is it? Or are these not talking about the same thing? The code is still raising MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_MULTIPLIER and MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_DIVISOR.

 

[Thalassicus]

It looks like they did include an undocumented nerf to militaristic CSs. It was probably because of their (again undocumented) change whereby militaristic now provides experienced units. Thank you for pointing it out.

Regarding the second part, by 'direct payments' I was referring to 'direct gold payments by major-civ AIs', as described in the mod details of an earlier version. I just didn't include the full description in the version history. Basically, it was a nerf to the capability to get 900 or more as you first start hooking up luxury resources. Firaxis nerfed gold payments to about 150 (undocumented), but then raised them again, so I'm not really sure now what their plans are in that regard.

On a side note, I wish their documentation in patches was more comprehensive... nothing more frustrating than undocumented changes everywhere.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

I'd like to use two (the maritime and military city state changes) of the four changes this mod makes; and not the reduced gold from luxury trades or the reduced city state influence from gold.

Is it possible to use these two changes without using the other two? Thanks in advance

 

[Thalassicus]

Yep. Open the Balance - Diplomacy.xml contained in the mod folder with notepad. Delete these two Update statements (at the end), and save the file.

<Update>
	<Where Name="MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_MULTIPLIER"/>
	<Set Value="4"/> <!-- 2 -->
</Update>
<Update>
	<Where Name="MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_DIVISOR"/>
	<Set Value="5"/> <!-- 3 -->
</Update>

Those two change from gold.

Diplomacy v. 2 actually removed the change to luxury trades from v. 1, since it was included in patch 1.0.0.62.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

Yep. Open the Balance - Diplomacy.xml contained in the mod folder with notepad. Delete these two Update statements (at the end), and save the file.

<Update>
	<Where Name="MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_MULTIPLIER"/>
	<Set Value="4"/> <!-- 2 -->
</Update>
<Update>
	<Where Name="MINOR_CIV_GOLD_GIFT_GAME_DIVISOR"/>
	<Set Value="5"/> <!-- 3 -->
</Update>

Those two change from gold.

Diplomacy v. 2 actually removed the change to luxury trades from v. 1, since it was included in patch 1.0.0.62.

Thanks!

 

[Slowpoke]

Notice that decreasing the first value increases the effectiveness of gold, increasing the value has no effect if the second value is not reduced. Man, and I sort of like these things but still no clue.

You just aren't increasing the first value enough. Changing the first to 200 and keeping the second at 3 makes for an influence bribe set as low as 5,15,30

Edit: HOLY... I waited half a dozen turns, and with 200 the values changed to deep into negative influence. There goes the myth that city state influence is not dependent on time.

Also, increasing both to 200 and 300 makes no change, so it's clear it's a simple ratio.

 

[Slowpoke]

EDIT: GOT THE FORMULA! (roughly)

GOLD/GOLD_GIFT_FRIENDSHIP_DIVISOR - Turns*(constant)*(mult and divisor ratio. E.g. 2/3 being the default)

rounded to the nearest multiple of visible divisor. Ugh. That was boring to find out.

So if you want to nerf gold gifts, increase the GOLD_GIFT_FRIENDSHIP_DIVISOR. The above formula actually isn't perfect, as it would imply eventually higher bribes get much more efficient and they do not (they are in fact exactly the same ratio, they just get rounded better).

 

[Thalassicus]

Thanks for working that out Slowpoke! I tried to get an estimate of what the formula was but didn't realize there was a time component, that was eluding me. Knowing this will help with adjustments.

 

[Slowpoke]

Thanks for working that out Slowpoke! I tried to get an estimate of what the formula was but didn't realize there was a time component, that was eluding me. Knowing this will help with adjustments.

Well I mainly worked it out for my own mod, but may as well help out

 

[Lazy Knight]

In my current game, my allied City states won't give me their coal. I don't know if this is related with your mod, but I know that it worked in the past. The horses work fine though. May be caused by slow tech advance? I dunno.

Attaching a save

 

[Seek]

The city-states have a tech tree also. If they haven't researched the tech that allows them to see the coal, they can't pass it along to their ally. Just because you can see it doesn't mean they can.

 

[Lazy Knight]

yeh, but it's 1930 and stuff and they're fielding infantry.

 

[Seek]

Okay, I see what you mean, Lazy Knight. Though I haven't had a CS ally with coal, I can confirm that I haven't seen it available on any trade screens well into the modern era. (Which sucked b/c I only had 3) Seems we have a bug here..

 

[Lazy Knight]

true, I wanted coal pretty badly and checked all my friends trade screens for it, and noone had coal. That is propably wrong, meaning something broke it. Not necessarily in this mod though.

 

[Thalassicus]

I noticed this too, it happens because the Ironclad resource was changed to Iron.

I'm trying to find a way to solve this. In the meantime, you can temporarily fix it by opening the Combat mod's BC - General.xml file, and replace this:

			<Where UnitType="UNIT_IRONCLAD" />
			<Set ResourceType="RESOURCE_IRON" />

with this:

			<Where UnitType="UNIT_IRONCLAD" />
			<Set ResourceType="RESOURCE_COAL" />

This edit should be savegame compatible.

 

[Perkus]

Hmm. The original "coal bug" was caused by the problem that coal is no longer being marked with a usage type of STRATEGIC such that this sort of test succeeds:
if (Game.GetResourceUsageType(iResourceLoop) == ResourceUsageTypes.RESOURCEUSAGE_STRATEGIC) then

From what I could figure out, this UsageType table is created internally on the fly based on what units actually use or don't use and can't be modded. The code that sets the flag isn't exposed. And neither is the code that handles what gets offered for trade, unless I'm missing something.

Maybe we need a different change to the Ironclad instead to avoid all this trouble. Unless you want to try that dummy coal-using unit solution.

 

[Thalassicus]

Yeah, that's how it works. When I implemented the Ironclad change in October my idea to get around the problem was a "dummy" unit you can't see anywhere ingame or build, but uses Coal. It's just frustrating to set all this up for what's likely a simple ten-second internal bug fix (check both units AND buildings). To be honest I was hoping they would release the full sdk before I had to do a dummy unit!

Just watch me get it all working and then we get c++ access...