Fixing victory conditions timings

[tu_79]

Hi,

since the very beginning, Firaxis designed Civ V difficulties changing AI bonuses, instead of player bonuses. I strongly think this was the wrong approach. As we can easily check, AI victory condition timings change across difficulty levels, so it's almost imposible to achieve a fine balance that works in every difficulty. What we have now is a fine tuned balance VC for Emperor, and whatnot for the other difficulties, hooked by some tech requirements to avoid strong differences.
Problem with this method is that once the proactive conditions are met, the rest of the game is reactive. In other words, just hitting Next button while defending against the despairing AI.

Swapping handicaps now so they scale in difficulty for the human player, but not for the AI is potentially risky. I'd rather see Emperor handicaps untouched, and just tweak costs for other difficulties.
This could be done by running a few AI games, checking how long it takes for the mean AI to get 18 policies, and modifying policy costs (if such thing is posible to code) for every difficulty level so the mean AI gets the same policies around the same turn than AI in Emperor. Then, doing the same for 60 techs. Modify tech costs for every difficulty level so the mean AI gets the same number of techs around the same turn than AI in Emperor.

So, what changes if AI behaves the same across different difficulties? Human player progress. By altering culture and science costs, we're allowing human player to research and get policies faster than normal in lower difficulties. So playing at lower difficulties would be like fighting against the same AI, but on steroids. The variable strength of the human player is still going to change the timing of the victory conditions, but this will come more from the different player skills (a human player good at military tactics but not at economy management makes domination victory more likely).

The real benefit of such change is that imbalances for victory conditions can be spotted by players at any difficulty level. If a Deity player thinks that domination is too weak, and a Prince player thinks the same, then it's probably true. That's something we cannot say with current system.

 

[Moi Magnus]

I like the idea.
If I've understood correctly, you suggest to give the Warlord Player and AI all the bonuses of the current Emperor AI (since the difficulty were AI and Player are equal is Warlord) ?
I'm not sure about the quadratic instant yields handicap bonuses, since they will feel counter-intuitive for the player, but we can certainly give a try to the others handicap bonuses.

@Gazebo, Is it easy to add to the code the symmetric for the player of all the AI handicap bonuses, so that we can play with them in modmods ?

 

[ElliotS]

I disagree completely. I think the difficulty works well right now, and changing it is both unnecessary and potentially harmful to the state of the mod. This would be a huge effort for no real gain.

 

[Noob Fanboy]

Right now, we just want to do small fixs, the idea is fine, but it's best to wait until the final version of Vox Populi and then, implement some ideas in modmods

 

[tu_79]

I like the idea.
If I've understood correctly, you suggest to give the Warlord Player and AI all the bonuses of the current Emperor AI (since the difficulty were AI and Player are equal is Warlord) ?
I'm not sure about the quadratic instant yields handicap bonuses, since they will feel counter-intuitive for the player, but we can certainly give a try to the others handicap bonuses.

@Gazebo, Is it easy to add to the code the symmetric for the player of all the AI handicap bonuses, so that we can play with them in modmods ?

No. I mean changing costs for both AI and human. Handicaps and bonuses unchanged.

More clearly : if a tech costs 340 science, maybe it could cost 200 in warlord, 340 in Emperor and 420 in deity. Not those values, but you get the idea.

 

[tu_79]

I disagree completely. I think the difficulty works well right now, and changing it is both unnecessary and potentially harmful to the state of the mod. This would be a huge effort for no real gain.

And I disagree too. Maybe what I propose is not doable codewise, but victory conditions are not balanced through difficulties. Culture victory is much much easier in lower difficulties than the other victory conditions, relatively speaking. Maybe that's not important to you, that only play at the hardest level, but it's a valid concern.

 

[Gazebo]

The problem with this model is that it punishes the player for wanting a challenge. Offloading difficulty onto the AI handicaps is far less punitive. It’s why, since the dawn of vidya games, higher difficulties have almost exclusively been based around increasing enemy lethality, not penalizing the player.

G

 

[tu_79]

The problem with this model is that it punishes the player for wanting a challenge. Offloading difficulty onto the AI handicaps is far less punitive. It’s why, since the dawn of vidya games, higher difficulties have almost exclusively been based around increasing enemy lethality, not penalizing the player.

G

This I might understand. Even though the difficulty is the same, from a psychologic point of view, in current model when rising difficulty it's the AI who gets better (player is fighting against a more skilled opponent) and my model implies that the player is fighting with fewer bonuses in his behalf (AI is the same, human player plays with a hand at his back).
Unless, of course, the feature is hidden to the player. If not touching anything but tech and social costs, we still have the following:
+ AI with more/better starting units in higher difficulties
+ AI making better decisions
+ Stronger runaways with bigger armies
So it's very posible that players still think that they are fighting against stronger AI.

Currently we can't time victory conditions to behave similiarly across difficulties without the trick (overall disliked) of hooking the victory condition to a tech. The change won't be as drastic as ElliotS is imaging. Maybe it's enough with a scaling with difficulty bonus to costs for all players, a small one, maybe 2 or 3 %. Then, a tech in Settler costs 100%, a tech in Chieftain cost 106%, up to 124% in Deity, for all players. Because it's a change for all players, the difficulty is not really changed, it's still as hard as now, only the timings are changed.

 

[Deadstarre]

if something like this would have been done (and im not sure it should have) it'd have been years ago, way too big of a change for an infinite number of variable reasons now. i have no thoughts on the idea itself but i object to this kind of change

 

[Blue Ghost]

What exactly is the issue that you’re trying to address here? Only science victory is tied directly to research speed. This change would make science victory come faster on lower difficulties, but how would that balance the other victory conditions?

 

[Moi Magnus]

What exactly is the issue that you’re trying to address here? Only science victory is tied directly to research speed. This change would make science victory come faster on lower difficulties, but how would that balance the other victory conditions?

The problem is the following, for the player:
+ Science is quicker to achieve at high difficulty because reseach speed is increased.
+ Culture victory is quicker to achieve at low difficulty because the AI has less culture.

Since the two at contravariant, it is litteraly impossible to balance Science vs Culture for every difficulty level.