Experiences With "Flavors"?

[Ozymandias]

Hi Folks,

I'm about to begin work on a major mod and I'd really like to use Flavors - however, my limited exposure to them in game play re: building things etc. has made me wonder if they're simply like the "Build Often" etc. rules that the AI might or might not heed.

Does anyone have any solid experience / advice along these lines? I'm curious about the effect on both tech selection and Improvement building.

Thanks Much,

Oz

 

[aaglo]

I'm not sure about the buildings how they work. But I've noticed this about the techs.

If you give flavors to techs, then:
- a civ with the flavor relations 100% used for a certain tech researches as normal
- a civ with the flavor relations anything else than 100% for a certain tech researches only in maximum time.

Silly, I know...

 

[Ozymandias]

a civ with the flavor relations anything else than 100% for a certain tech researches only in maximum time.

I'm not sure I follow. Do you mean that if < 100% then maximum time is taken no matter how much effort is dedicated to Science? Any clue then if 99% is any different than 1%? And is the implication that every Civ will ultimately research every tech regardless of Flavor?:suicide:

Thanks,

Oz

 

[El Justo]

hi oz

my experiences w/ flavors has been very poor. by that i mean that i've noticed zero differences in the paths the AI has taken for science as well as what buildings it constructs. as a matter of fact, the inefficiency of this whole thing led me 'back door' it by restricting certain techs and buildings either by govt or some 'dummy techs' so that i could absolutely, 100% guarantee that the AI would either build or not build or research or not research certain buildings and techs.

 

[Ozymandias]

hi oz

my experiences w/ flavors has been very poor. by that i mean that i've noticed zero differences in the paths the AI has taken for science as well as what buildings it constructs. as a matter of fact, the inefficiency of this whole thing led me 'back door' it by restricting certain techs and buildings either by govt or some 'dummy techs' so that i could absolutely, 100% guarantee that the AI would either build or not build or research or not research certain buildings and techs.

Greetings Amigo

"Zero differences", huh? So it's even worse than I feared - although I confess I hardly feel surprised. It does however throw an incredibly annoying monkey wrench into how I had planned to make the mod work.

Oh well - as I've come to say about such matters far too often, C'est la guerre.

All The Best,

Oz

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

The only thing that I've seen Flavors have ANY effect on is intial AI attitudes towards the player and each other.

EXAMPLE: In the Final Fantasy mod, I have a Good flavor for the particularly good civs and an Evil flavor for the particularly dastardly civs... I have found that If I'm playing as a good civ and I meet an evil one, their immediate stance is annoyed, rather than cautious, but if I meet a good civ, their stance will either be just barely cautious (edging towards polite) or polite, and If I came accross one of the neutral civs (ones without any flavor), they's be cautious as usual.

 

[Ozymandias]

Hi Hikaro,

Now I'm even more confused Surely it's impossible to use Flavors to make different Civs either antagonistic, neutral, or friendly to one another - Put simply (and drawing upon your example without in any way doubting your experience) how can the AI possibly "know" Good from Evil?

Furthermore (and I think by now we all know how fond I am of it ) the on-line Helpless states:

"The 'Flavors' feature allows you to establish 'relationships' between the various technology advancements. Setting these relationships is a way to modify how non-human (or AI) civilizations choose which paths to develop along the technology tree."

So now I'm thoroughly befuddled. Just once I'd like to see those *expletive deleted* Civ developers get one game right before moving on to the next in the series.

So, once yet again, c'est la guerre.

Thanks,

Oz

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Oz: The default names for "Good" and "Evil" are Flavor 1 and Flavor 2... I could have named them "Pink Fuzzy Bunnies" and "Dirty Old Men" and still got the same results that I posed above....

You see, in the editor, there is a Flavor eiditing tab. It has one column of flavors, a box saying Has a 0-100% relation with and a second column of flavors.

Immediately under the first column is a button that says rename this flavor. Just select any flavor you want and rename it (I renamed Flavor 1 to Good and Flavor 2 to Evil for ease of keeping track of stuff purposes). Then just select one of the flavors your re-named in the first column and select the same one in the second column and set the percentage to 100%. Now all factions with that flavor will have the best possible starting stance towards each other.

While still having the first flavor selected in the first column, select the second flavor in the second column and set the percentage in the "Has 0-100% relations with" box to 0. Now Flavor 1 civs will have the worst possible starting stance towards Flavor 2 civs.

Now, to make sure that the feelings are mutual, Select Flavor 2 in the first column, and make it 100% towards Flavor 2 in the second column and 0% towards Flavor 1 in the second column. This way, as soon as any flavor 1 civ comes into contact with a flavor 2 civ, or vice versa, they will immediately hate each other's guts.

The only thing is that this is still not the same as a locked alliance.... For example, I was playing a Good civ (Flavor 1 in our tutorial here), who ended up allying with an Evil civ against another Good civ because the other Good civ was going around razing cities, demanding stuff and generally being a royal pain in the arse.... All that flavors do is set thi INITIAL diplomacy... Once contact has been made, all the standard diplomacy affecting actions by civs start weighing in, and can change an unfavorable opinion to a favorable one, just like in a normal game.

 

[Keroro]

Now I'm even more confused Surely it's impossible to use Flavors to make different Civs either antagonistic, neutral, or friendly to one another - Put simply (and drawing upon your example without in any way doubting your experience) how can the AI possibly "know" Good from Evil?

On the contrary, this seems to be about the only thing that the flavours seem to be much good at. On the 'Flavours' tab in the editor you can set a percentage favourability between one flavour and another. So if you name the first three flavours 'Good', 'Evil' and 'Neutral', then assign a negative relationship between Good and Evil then those civs will be at a worse state of relations when they first meet.

"The 'Flavors' feature allows you to establish 'relationships' between the various technology advancements. Setting these relationships is a way to modify how non-human (or AI) civilizations choose which paths to develop along the technology tree."

To see this in action take a look at the Middle Ages firaxis conquest - the different flavours (Byzantine, Viking, European and Muslim) will normally proceed along the appropriate tech tree. Personally I think the old trick of using an 'era none' tech as the beginning of a line is a better way to go.

So now I'm thoroughly befuddled. Just once I'd like to see those *expletive deleted* Civ developers get one game right before moving on to the next in the series.

So, once yet again, c'est la guerre.

Thanks,

Oz

Little chance of that with the financial presures that game companies are under.

EDIT - bit of a cross post with Hikaro.

 

[Ozymandias]

@Keroro & Hikaro - You fine gents do realize that the three respective column headings in the editor are: "This Civ Advance/Building Flavor" - "Has A 0-100% Relationship" - "With This Civilization Flavor"

That plus the on-line Helpless' entry not only suggests but (as I quoted) states the supposed nature of the relationship quite clearly. Nowhere is there any suggestion that Flavors influence the behavior of AI Civs towards one another! - Indeed, given that they're grouped on the "Civilization" tab along with all the other Bonuses would make me suspect that they had about as much to do with attitude as that of an Industrious Civ to an Agricultural one. Furthermore -

@All You Fine Folks - also, now we have Keroro & Hikaro reporting precisely the (presumably) opposite results as El Justo and Aaglo!

I guess it's become my rallying cry on all things to do with the editor:

C'est la guerre,

Oz

 

[embryodead]

@Hikaro Takayama
Are you absolutely sure it's not the governments? That's how they work - the initial diplomacy is determined by the shunned/favored govt. settings (and in WH-Mod the govts. are fixed in a kinda good vs evil fashion so the diplomacy relations are pre-determined in the same way you described). Because I've tested it before and checked again just now, without govt relations involved - flavors have no effects on diplomacy, whether the relation is 0%, 50% or 100%.

The relation is not between the civs but between flavors themselves. So having Flavor2, would be like having 50% of Flavor1, which according to the manual would be a 50% chance of building/researching something marked with Flavor1. But in practice it just doesn't work... I checked this thread because I was just trying to use flavors again and the effects were the same as 2 years ago... none. Middle Ages Conquests kinda works only because of the initial empty techs given. The benefits of researching is what really steers the AI research (with a dose of randomness though). Someone posted the values that the AI assigns to different things, e.g. it values defensive units the most, then governments I think. An empty tech is the last thing the AI will research.

Anyway, such things work best with ERA_NONE techs as prerequisites or as obsolete-makings techs.

 

[Plotinus]

I was under the impression that they work as ozy and embryodead suggest. Flavours are (or at least are supposed to be) only a way of influencing what the AI builds or researches. But it is often claimed that they affect inter-civ attitudes too, so perhaps that's true.

 

[Virote_Considon]

@Hikaro:

Are you sure it's not the civs aggression setting? High aggression civs in a different culture group are always "Annoyed" on first contact, and same-culture, low-aggression are always "polite".

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

No.... I played as AVALANCHE and Shinra (same CG, but higher aggression than AVALANCHE) was immediately hostile, but ONLY after I assigned them the Evil flavor and gave the Good one to AVALANCHE.

 

[embryodead]

So what about the governments, not cultural group/aggression, since you didn't mention those? They do determine the diplomacy.

I'm doing tests, and I can see culture group, aggression and governments affecting diplomacy but not the flavors:

Play Civ A vs B & C. Medium aggression level, no favored/shunned govts, same culture group, no flavors: Everyone is Polite.

With B's different culture group: it becomes Cautious.

With B's aggression set to min. and C's to max.: B is still Polite but C is Annoyed.

With all at medium aggression but with your govt. as Despotism and B shunning despotism while C favoring it: both are Polite, BUT

With both B and C set to max. aggression, but B shunning Despotism and C favoring it: B becomes Annoyed but C is still Polite.

With flavors (e.g. you=Good, B=Good, C=Evil): everyone is Polite. With flavors added to any of these combinations: no changes. Tried with relations between Good and Evil being 0%, 50%, and 100%.

So either I'm doing something wrong or what you're experiencing is the effect of governments/CG/aggression. Do a test: remove all governments (shunned/fav settings) and see what happenens. See if adding/removing flavors does anything then. If I'm doing something wrong I wanna know what it is - because it just doesn't work here, no matter what flavors are set. Again, I know the Good vs Evil thing is doable and works since I used it also, but it's not coming from the flavors.

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

I have AVALANCHE's preferred gov as Democracy, and its shunned gov as Corporate Republic, and Shinra's pretty much the exact opposite BUT it's BEEN like that since when I first added the two civs to the game, and they weren't particularly antagonistic towards each other (even with Shinra's aggro being max and AVALANCHE's aggro being the middle slot) UNTIL I added the flavors.... Perhaps it's not that the flavors have NO effect on attitude, but that they have very LITTLE effect... I.e. just enough to push it over the edge when one or two of the other factors are also in play (governments and aggro), but those two factors are just barely not able to make a noticeable difference in attitude without the additional effect that the flavor applies (I.e. The governments and aggression level differences are enough to ALMOST make Shinra and AVALANCHE annoyed with each other, but not quite, and the Flavor's limited effect is JUST enough to push the attitude score over the edge).

 

[embryodead]

But the settings you described are just enough (and again, it works in WH-Mod that way - if you play good vs evil the civs hate each other, and there's no flavors).
1. If you play with Shinra and meet Avalanche, what is Avalanche's attitude?
2. Can you make a test biq with communications enabled and just compare the attitude with and without flavors? (playing with Avalanche, seeing if Shinra is suddenly not hostile).

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

As I said before, BEFORE I had added the flavors, all the shunned and fav gov settings were as they are now, but when I would meet Shinra with AVALANCHE, they would be cautious.... AFTER adding the flavors, they would be annoyed. The only thing I changed was adding the flavor, ergo the flavor thing DOES have some, albeit limited, effect on attitude.

 

[Ozymandias]

In this ancient & hoary thread, Firaxis' Dan Mahaga explains the structure of Diplomacy.txt. Granted, this certainly predates C3C but I'd be surprised - shocked, honestly - if either it or the logic behind it has changed much, if at all, since then [... checks C3C file ...] Yeah, it's late; I only took a cursory glance - but nowhere do I find a place where "Flavor" is even referenced. I would presume this reflects the AI's programming, and would tend to draw conclusions accordingly.

Best,

Oz

 

[Plotinus]

That explanation of the Diplomacy text file is indeed accurate even in our modern world. But I don't think that really settles the debate about Flavours. The Diplomacy text file sorts responses according to Mood (among other things), and the question is whether Mood itself is affected by Flavours. Whether it is or is not, it wouldn't make any difference to the Diplomacy text.