Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
@Joseph_II just for interest do you play with the "Advance Economics" on? I just wonder because I have not tried it because of what it did to RoM-AND.
Game balance and AI
- Thread starter Zaga
- Start date
The effect on corporations should be precisely nothing.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
I wouldn't misread Hydro there. All feedback is appreciated and taken into consideration. But there IS a certain degree of honoring those that have been longstanding and reliable playtesters of the mod. Joe's been around since before the mod was even C2C and has been with us faithfully from day one. So of course we're going to grant his opinions a lot of weight. Nevertheless, it doesn't mean we don't recognize the same things you've pointed out.
One thing we must realize too is that the degree of necessary gold is vastly different on revolutions on and revolutions off. That's going to mean a lot where balance is concerned.
I think you've done a great thing at least to start, Koshling. But I'll reiterate, the main reason, I believe, for any excess gold right now is the 1gp/specialist benefit on Patrician, especially when combined with citizens earned from battle under the slavery civic. I strongly believe that limiting the patrician gold bonus to non-citizen, non-slave specialists would bring in a lot of balance in one fell swoop.
I think this issue could be approached much like you've approached the memory drain issues, by identifying the most drastic gold producing decisions and functions (and perhaps even costs) and bringing them more towards balance. For example, if we could simply make the gold per city benefit from religious shrines a decimalized number rather than being limited to integers, we could tone down the religious gold benefits that also contribute a lot to imbalances (particularly between the have and have-not nations).
This sounds a lot easier than the mod-mod isolation and scientific implementation concept you've proposed.
One thing we must realize too is that the degree of necessary gold is vastly different on revolutions on and revolutions off. That's going to mean a lot where balance is concerned.
I think you've done a great thing at least to start, Koshling. But I'll reiterate, the main reason, I believe, for any excess gold right now is the 1gp/specialist benefit on Patrician, especially when combined with citizens earned from battle under the slavery civic. I strongly believe that limiting the patrician gold bonus to non-citizen, non-slave specialists would bring in a lot of balance in one fell swoop.
I think this issue could be approached much like you've approached the memory drain issues, by identifying the most drastic gold producing decisions and functions (and perhaps even costs) and bringing them more towards balance. For example, if we could simply make the gold per city benefit from religious shrines a decimalized number rather than being limited to integers, we could tone down the religious gold benefits that also contribute a lot to imbalances (particularly between the have and have-not nations).
This sounds a lot easier than the mod-mod isolation and scientific implementation concept you've proposed.
Tested out your new maintenance koshling and it increased my costs by about -300 per turn (deity), not that much really, its about 5% on the tech slider on deity at this point in my game (around renaissance). I think you could beef it up even more. My only concern is that it could just lead to people simply avoiding certain buildings altogether, why not just increase general maintenance too.
In terms of increasing unit costs, I would be wary of doing this too much as the AI love to spam lots of crap units, although they do get a huge discount at higher levels.. so guess its not a big deal.
In terms of increasing unit costs, I would be wary of doing this too much as the AI love to spam lots of crap units, although they do get a huge discount at higher levels.. so guess its not a big deal.
To begin with I never used this option coz i thought it was still broken from AND, but apparently its not. It allows for free trade agreements between civs, thats the only difference i've noticed.
Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
Not possible on the civic, but maybe it is on the specialist. I don't know if you can give civic bonuses to specialists or not. If it is then we may have a possible work around.
Not all religions give gold from their shrines. Many give culture and some give science. In my games I have not seen the number go above 40-50 per turn in one city. Which I am finding very useful when gold starts to become scarce in the late Middle Ages.
Change your corporation maintenance percentage in the dierty difficulty and see how it plays - you can tune it all through that (that's the beauty of this system - it can be highly difficulty-level specifically tuned)
AI plays at Noble, and gets a significantly lower maintenance modifier as a result. It's costs actually go DOWN with this system
I have a massive over-abundance of gold in my current game. Diety, REV on. Never been near Patrician. Patrician might be broken and give massiv gold more or less whatever (I'm not sure), but you don't need Patrician to have this issue. If I wasn't playing on diety a reasonable response would be 'play at a higher level'. However I am, so it's not. New system fixes it in principal because I can just tune the maintenance steps up in the difficulty XML. However, it may well be that Patrician needs tuning in it's own right, but that's a separate issue.
Sorry, I phrased that badly, my point was that Corps increase maintainence by a percentage, and so now building Corporations could sink your economy and civ in the Modern Era. That was a problem a good while ago, especially with Realistic Corps, where the founding was random.
Corporations add corporation maintenance, which is a separate pot of maintenance. These changes shouldn't touch it at all.
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
I believe I've been using it for sometime now. But occasionally I turn it off. Current game iirc it's On.
@zaga,
What you've said is true. But unfortunately the Gold issue is a reoccurring problem with every version it seems. The AI balance is an ongoing project, but with that said it's better than it used to be and if you continue to give input will get even better. This mod has so much in it that it takes game time to sort some of this out. And unfortunately most newer players jump on the "Too much Gold bandwagon" with out really delving into why. (Not saying that is what you've done).
I will say this, getting Gold Is easier in this pre 24 phase than it has been for sometime. And part of it is coming from the revamped Housing line. I build Every housing building available now. Where in the past I only built specific ones and left others out of the picture. Plus I've greatly restricted the # of research bldgs and sanitation bldgs I will put in my cities as they can drain you if you build them all. Plus I don't build the harbor/river lines like I would before. I'm much more selective on when and where I will build them now vs building them all. This is a result of the Crime factor added to them.
@Koshling,
I havn't updated my SVN for a week or better so until I do I can't give feedback on this new system of yours. But I do trust your abilities. It's just that sometimes we (you and I) just play this mod so differently. Anything you can do to make the process easier to understand I'm all for it!
JosEPh
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
@Koshling,
Activated your Treat Negative Gold as Maint. in the xml file today. Will give some feedback probably Sunday afternoon.
JosEPh
Activated your Treat Negative Gold as Maint. in the xml file today. Will give some feedback probably Sunday afternoon.
JosEPh
MaXimillionZero
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2010
- Messages
- 205
Aside from the gold issues, one balance factor that could probably use improvement is AI unit composition. The AI seems to build excessive amounts of Wardogs for example, which are quite a specialized unit that it should only even have one of in a stack, rather than stacks of 20+.
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
I think the Wardog situation is a hang over from the invisible units. Since the wardog can spot them and before Crime was introduced they were a necessity and iirc the AI may have been weighted to build them a bit more than normal to meet this new threat, back when Rogues and such were 1st introduced.
But now with the introduction of Crime the AI has cut back on building the Rogues, etc. because the buildings that produce these units also produce massive amounts of crime. So now the Wardogs/dog units are overproduced (or so it seems) because the unit they are designed to counter isn't being produced by the AI like It used to be. The scale has now tipped in the other direction.
I do disagree about there should only be 1 wardog per stack. Dogs since they were introduced to BtS have been used to wear down stacks so that when you counter attack the enemies stack it has had it's str. reduced. Dogs have only become more specialized since C2C. But overall have been used like seige weapons to inflict collateral damage.
JosEPh
But now with the introduction of Crime the AI has cut back on building the Rogues, etc. because the buildings that produce these units also produce massive amounts of crime. So now the Wardogs/dog units are overproduced (or so it seems) because the unit they are designed to counter isn't being produced by the AI like It used to be. The scale has now tipped in the other direction.
I do disagree about there should only be 1 wardog per stack. Dogs since they were introduced to BtS have been used to wear down stacks so that when you counter attack the enemies stack it has had it's str. reduced. Dogs have only become more specialized since C2C. But overall have been used like seige weapons to inflict collateral damage.
JosEPh
Hydromancerx
C2C Modder
@JosEPh_II
I don't think there were dogs in BTS, just RoM/AND (not counting wolves).
I don't think there were dogs in BTS, just RoM/AND (not counting wolves).
MaXimillionZero
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2010
- Messages
- 205
There were no dog units in BtS. Also, what they've done in other mods or previous versions of C2C is not really relevant to their current implementation in C2C, where they're an inferior version of javelineers (although faster and slightly cheaper if no iron or copper are available), while available several technologies later.
The AI should not be spamming them as much as it currently does, more than 1 per stack to spot stealthers is suboptimal, and even that one unit is questionable since stealth units are currently so rarely used.
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
Well Max C2C is based off Rise of Mankind thru AND. And you're right that dogs are not in BtS. Zappara introduced the dog unit in RoM. My memory error. They were initially used as a means to give collateral damage to Horse units. Why against horse? Because everyone was clamoring that horses were OP back then.
Is there a balance issue with the dog units? With the introduction of Crime yes Now there is. There was not an issue with them till mid version 22 when Crime was implemented. And Max, all previous versions Are relevant.
Since you think they are suboptimal units and the AI is spamming them this question comes to mind, Are these stacks of wardogs hard for you to overcome? If the dogs were gone what would the AI be spamming? More low end units as it has done in the past and has a programming penchant for.
The real problem is not the Dog stacks, but rather the sudden shift in AI behaviour in that the AI is Not producing Stealth units like they have been in previous versions.. This has been recognized but so far with other matters more important (to the modding team) the revival of the stealth units has been going nowhere.
JosEPh
Really? Want to say that to the modders who built them?
Is there a balance issue with the dog units? With the introduction of Crime yes Now there is. There was not an issue with them till mid version 22 when Crime was implemented. And Max, all previous versions Are relevant.
Since you think they are suboptimal units and the AI is spamming them this question comes to mind, Are these stacks of wardogs hard for you to overcome? If the dogs were gone what would the AI be spamming? More low end units as it has done in the past and has a programming penchant for.
The real problem is not the Dog stacks, but rather the sudden shift in AI behaviour in that the AI is Not producing Stealth units like they have been in previous versions.. This has been recognized but so far with other matters more important (to the modding team) the revival of the stealth units has been going nowhere.
JosEPh
MaXimillionZero
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2010
- Messages
- 205
No, there's a balance issue with how the AI is using them. The units themselves are fine.
How could they be? They're weaker than the alternatives the AI has access to at that point.
Well javelineers would closest to the dogs in their combat stats, but superior in anything except for movespeed.
Even if the AI was producing stealth units, dog stacks would be a bad idea. Dogs gain no bonuses against stealth units, they simply detect them. They should be used to support stacks of proper combat units, not roaming in stacks of their own.
Could people start gathering AI logs from games where the AI is spamming dogs please. That would tell us what UNITAI it is building them for, and by implicastion what other units it is considering.
Turn BBAI logging on to level 3 in the BUG 'logging' screen and the file BBAI.log will be generated in your logs folder (it will be ovrwritten each new run of the exectutable, so make sure to preserve after a run if it has, or might have useful info). Its a text file so you can just serach for things lik the name of the unit (e.g. ' Trained dogs') in it to see what it has to say about them.
Turn BBAI logging on to level 3 in the BUG 'logging' screen and the file BBAI.log will be generated in your logs folder (it will be ovrwritten each new run of the exectutable, so make sure to preserve after a run if it has, or might have useful info). Its a text file so you can just serach for things lik the name of the unit (e.g. ' Trained dogs') in it to see what it has to say about them.
Xanthippus
Warlord
- Joined
- Jul 1, 2004
- Messages
- 101
I have only just discovered this mod, and I'm not far into it, but I was surprised at how much money I was getting and thought I would check the forums. I am playing on Monarch, because I am not that great of a Civ player, I normally get overwhelmed by the difficulty on Emperor. I have only just reached the 5th Century BC on Snail speed, and as you can see I am already swimming in money. Maybe this will change as I start to get more buildings? But it seems to me that with only three cities and still in the pre-historic era, I should not have 5k gold with +50/turn. There are just so many buildings that give + to gold, and not enough expenses.
Again, I understand this may change as I get into the later ages, but I assume that there are also more ways to increase gold too. I don't mean this to be rude to Joseph, but the idea that there's not enough gold just seems a little ridiculous. Fantastic mod though guys, thanks for your hard work!
Again, I understand this may change as I get into the later ages, but I assume that there are also more ways to increase gold too. I don't mean this to be rude to Joseph, but the idea that there's not enough gold just seems a little ridiculous. Fantastic mod though guys, thanks for your hard work!
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
@Xanthippus,
While your gold is in good shape you are not rolling in it. And don't adopt Slavery either it's still OP. It's the AI that needs the gold. Start making this mod like RI and others who've adopted the austerity is everything idea and the AI will (and has in the past) suffer. If you use every eXploit available to gather gold you the player can swim in it, take a bath with it, whatever.
And I have stated that this current version is a bit easier than the previous. In Part because of the revamped housing line. So gold is more abundant in this version. That has Not been the case in previous ones. It will get squeezed again as soon as Hydro sees this post.
So enjoy it but don't fret over it if you have a few K in the bank.
JosEPh
While your gold is in good shape you are not rolling in it. And don't adopt Slavery either it's still OP. It's the AI that needs the gold. Start making this mod like RI and others who've adopted the austerity is everything idea and the AI will (and has in the past) suffer. If you use every eXploit available to gather gold you the player can swim in it, take a bath with it, whatever.
And I have stated that this current version is a bit easier than the previous. In Part because of the revamped housing line. So gold is more abundant in this version. That has Not been the case in previous ones. It will get squeezed again as soon as Hydro sees this post.
So enjoy it but don't fret over it if you have a few K in the bank.
JosEPh
