Game Balancing (For A Better AI)

[Tiramisu]

Workshop-Link: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1257361373

Short description

The main purpose of this mod is the improvement of the AI by tweakening some gameplay mechanics. It also contains game balancings to nerf big empires, because ICS is often used by human players.
This mod does not change any AI behaviour and it does not add any cheats for the AI (except of increasing the combat strength of city state units). In general this modification grants more benefits to the AI than to human players.
This mod is most suitable for advanced players who play on higher game difficulties, but other players may find this mod useful as well.

Main Changes

• Nerfed ranged units: Their ranged and melee Combat Strength is now decreased by 10 (except of Slingers and Horse Archers) and they also gain less experience from ranged attacks, because ranged units are overpowered and they are less efficiently used by the AI than by human players. Ranged units still remain strong enough, even if they are used by the AI.
  
• Nerfed Siege units: -15 bombard and melee Combat Strength, makes sure that cities are not sieged down too quickly by human players. However, Siege Units now have +15 Strength when defending. In addition their maintanance and production cost is increased, because most AI Civs do not build many Siege Units.
  
• Warmonger mali are significantly reduced by about 50% in average, i.e. the AI has less fear to declare wars in later eras. It also reduces the war weariness, which helps the AI to not loose too much amenities during wars.
  
• The required experience points for new unit promotions is now doubled. As the AI looses units much more frequently than the HI, it does not benefit from the strong high level promotions as much as human players. In order to reduce this discrepancy, units now will not get their promotions too early. However, your melee combats are now rewarded with more combat experience, especially when you initiate a fight.
  
• Because of the high unit losses of the AI in wars, the war weariness for loosing units is now reduced by 66%. However, war weariness for combats in foreign land is increased by 50% in order to punish big warmongering empires a little bit more.
  
• Combat Units now heal about 50% less HP per turn. I.e. in cities they heal 10 HP, in friendly territory 8 HP, in neutral territory 5 HP and in enemy territory 3 HP per turn. The AI uses the heal command not as good as human players, so this change punishes the HI much more. It also makes it harder for the HI on high difficulties to resist big AI armies, because you will now have to worry much more about your wounded units. This makes wars more challenging.
  
• Cities heal 50% HPs less per turn to help the AI conquering Cities.
  
• Other healings like healings by support units are also reduced significantly. Your religious units can heal as much HPs per turn as the tripled amount of faith yield of the adjacent holy city district. The AI cannot handle healing religious units, so this mostly hurts the HI.
  
• Builders cannot be captured any more, they just die. So human players cannot become too powerful by simply stealing unprotected AI builders.
  
• Captured Settler retreat to a nearby friendly City just like Great Persons. Settlers are too valuable to loose, so I made this change, because the AI makes too many stupid moves with their Settlers.
  
• On the other hand Settlers have now only 1 tile visibility range, so it still makes sense to give them an escort and spot nearby enemies, if you want to make sure that they do not reach their destination too late.
  
• City State Units now gain +10 combat strength when being in a range of two tiles from any city center. If they are only 1 tile away they even gain +15 Combat Strength. So they can protect their own capital city better, but they also can attack enemy Cities much better, which makes them more valuable as allies. City States can still be captured even by the AI, because Major Civs get lots of Units on high difficulties, but now it will take much longer.
  Please note that on lower difficulties like Emperor some Major AI Civs can get problems to defend themselves against City States, but on higher Difficulties Major AI Civs should get enough Units for their defense.
  
• Astrology now costs as much science as Bronze Working and it prerequisites the Irrigation Tech. So if the AI has a high desire for founding a religion then it has to research two non-religious techs first that are useful for building up their empire. It also prevents that the AI builds Holy Sites or Stonehenge too early, which means that they can invest their early production in more useful things.
  This change also makes it easier for human players to found a religion themself without neglecting other important things too much.

Anti-ICS Changes:

• All luxury resources provide amenities for only 3 cities instead of 4 in order to hurt big empires.
  
• Capital Cities gain +5 Amenities in the Palace, i.e. if you have 4 Cities then the 3 Amenities of a luxury resource do not have to be distributed to your Capital City at first. If you start to have much more than 4 Cities then you might get Amenity Problems in your Empire.
  
• The first Population in every City already causes negative Amenity.
  
• In addition negative amenities have more severe effects for city yield modifiers.
  
• Limited amount of Science and Culture Buildings: Every Civ can have only 5 Universities (or Madrasas), Research Labs, Amphitheaters, Museums and Broad Cast Towers (or Film Studios) at max in their whole Empire. Additional buildings cannot be build or they will be destroyed when capturing a City.
  Only Monuments and Libraries can be build without any limits.

Other Changes

• The minimum turns for wars and peace treaties is 15 turns (instead of 10 turns) on standard speed. Due to my experience in many cases the winner of a war is decided after 15 turns. So if the AI is about to win, it will not make peace too early.
  
• Less plunder amounts from some improvements like farms, stepwells or fishing boats, because plundering benefits human players more often than the AI.
  
• Great Persons cannot be purchased with Gold any more. You can only use Faith for Great Persons, which makes religious strategies a little bit more valuable. Gold purchases for GPs are simply too overpowered and it mostly helped human players, because the AI usually does not have much Gold in their treasury.
  
• The cost increase for apostles is is now 10 times higher. The AI does not purchase many apostles anyway. So this makes it harder for the HI to spread their religion and win religious combats by using many apostles.
  
• Inquisitor now have only 1 instead of 3 spread charges, because I think that the AI does not use the extra spread charges as much as human players.
  
• Late Game Units now have the ability to defend themself against air attacks. Units that already had this ability now have a stronger anti air strength. As the AI does not use aircrafts for attacking or intercepting in the current game version, this change only hurts human players if they use air units.
  
• Gain only 33% Unit Upgrade discount from the professional army policy, because only human players know how to save their Gold for important Unit Upgrades, which can be a very powerful strategy.
  
• Levying City State Units costs 20% more.
• The Cost Increase for Settlers is now much higher and you need at least 3 Pop to build them. This change is supposed to avoid rapid human City Spamming before getting the Early Empire Civic, because in my test games it sometimes could be very powerful to spam military Units and Settlers in the early game before even building monuments.
  Of course the first Settler you build will not cost too much, but when building your second Settler you should get the Early Empire Civic.

Mod Support

Language Support:
The current version only updates the texts for the changes of this mod in English. Other languages can have outdated info texts.
I will add more texts for English and other language versions.

Combatibility:
Since this mod does not change any AI behaviour you can use this mod with any AI mod. Actually I have not seen any mod that is not compatible with this mod.

 

[Smity2k1]

This sounds really interesting, thanks for sharing!

 

[ezzlar]

Most of the changes seem reasonable. Nice work!