[G&K] AI City Attack

[glider1]

Yeah it's wonderful thanks Thal. Totally agree that we don't need to flatten leaders out completely. Generally leaders are more competitive and keen in G&K than they were in the old days of Vanilla.

The controversy will always be with our old friend Monte. What will become of Monte? In my final game of G&K before leaving it and moving onto GEM once and for all, Monte did his typically stupid thing. He roamed a sizable army around the continent attacking remote cities or local enemies and just wasted away his opportunities before getting swallowed up by his neighbor. So if we can get Monte to settle down even just a bit, he might be able to last longer and surprise us all!

Note: the concept of "surprise" means that most if not all leaders should be capable of surprising us in their ability to survive and thrive. That is the irony of flattening out leader personalities. They can still do surprising things according to the opportunities that are available to them.

Cheers

 

[Thalassicus]

I like having at least one impulsive leader like that who attacks everyone at the slightest provocation. He's the only one with that irrational personality. I tried to give every leader their own unique personality quirk.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

hey there glider1, I have a couple questions about the interesting topics you've raised in this thread:

1) on "AI issues with complex coastlines" : do you think Thal's AI tweaks ( let's also consider the upcoming Armies tweaks ) help?

I know he can't change AI tactics, but it seems like his changes would help the AI with city conquering and decision making when it comes to starting a city attack and giving up said attack if/when it doesn't go as planned.



2) on "more AIs, less CSs" : I see you've moved from 14+14 on standard to 12+12 on large, I guess this is to try and keep the average city count per empire equal when using ICS-4?

I'd love to hear you suggestions for default GEM ics and various mapsizes, 14+14 on standard seems a bit overcrowded.

I was thinking 8+8 small, 10+10 standard, 12+12 large ( 6+6 tiny and 14+14 huge I guess, but those are less widely used anyway ).

otoh won't decreasing the number of CSs devalue mechanics that boost them? like some UAs ( Alex ) , wonders and policies ( patronage )

 

[glider1]

Without Thal, Civ5 would be all over finished and buried and I'd be back to playing Civ4. However we have Thal!

City attacking by navy on complex coastlines will be helped by Thal's city attack bonus and extra experience for the AI, but just don't know by how much. I suspect that what you could do on Perfect World, is to play on your normal level but increase the AI experience gathering to Immortal and see if that helps the AI to attack in the complexity that is Perfect World.

As for decision making, the hope that we rely on for now, is that it appears the AI does know when to withdraw from an attack. I get joy when the AI takes cities at least a reasonable amount of occasions!

Here are the wonderful things I'm seeing so far:

1. AI's that will capture a city state
2. Militaristic AI's that are reasonably successful
3. Leaders using their basic style successfully
4. AI units that are much more difficult to take down because of their promotions
5. Warfare ocurring in the field
6. AI's that DOW in more useful ways.

So the suggestion is that the "perfect compromise" to achieve these effects are:

1. Intercity 4
2. Continents, epic, large, low sea level for simpler coastlines yet with a chance of small island chains
3. 5 Billion age map because you get the best of all worlds. You get a lot of flat land but then you get "complexes" of hilly mountainous country as well. Fantastic. From what I could see, I think the code in Continents+ map is bugged because it doesn't seem to produce the same contrast.
4. 13civs+13cs which seems to be ideal. I'm in a 13+13 game now and everyone's getting roughly 4 cities on intercity 4. Backing it off to 12+12 produces more rounded games, but not quite as "heated".

If it's any use to you, here is my "test bed" of mods that is achieving these effects. I'm running GEM as an AI standalone. The handicaps only work on "King difficulty"and it's set up for ICS-4 . It's a working prototype.

Have fun that's the main thing!

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

nice, I'll have to try that

I also use Light Touch which I'd heartily recommend, and R.E.D. with Nutty's Ethnic Diversity for some welcome visual variety, no gameplay changes yet aside from GEM.

it's cool to see how easy it is to just use the AI portion of GEM, I think some people will really enjoy this conservative approach.

yeah I want to move to PW3 soon, I just love it and it'd be sad not to use it since Thal went through the hassle of tweaking it with VEM in mind I'll probably move to PW3 after the Armies section rolls out, that should give the combat AI another nudge in the right direction.

your idea to increase the AI XP boost to offset PW3 complexity is a good one. in the attached archive it seems like you're using Emperor XP values instead of Immortal though.

I've tried and enjoyed your suggested settings, however I have more fun at normal speed and normal/small size, it feels more "focused" and the turn times are lower. so ICS-4 won't work well for me unfortunately.

the number of civs/CSs though is still relevant though, which is why I was intersted in your opinion I've been testing 8+8 on small size for example, which works well but I'm worried it might make Patronage less desirable than intended, change diplomatic victory too much etc.