Getting Started

[Txurce]

I don't think there is such a big nerf here, actually. While the total percentage multiplier is now lower (100% with workshop, factory, power plant and railroad compared to 140-165% now), there are more hammers to be gained from terrain now and infrastructure provides additional hammers as well.

Well the granary gives 1 food on deer and deer on tundra could probably use the hammer boost more than another food.

Well legalism got a new effect, so it makes sense to combine these two previously weak effects in one policy.

Well, with cities giving one less gold, +2 gold on markets isn't that big a buff. The reduction in trading post gold until economics should also make it much harder to simply rushbuy buildings in a lot of small cities.

Good points in general, with the last one being an example of what I meant in saying that the changes may be less reactive, and more integrated, than they may seem at first blush. While I enjoy speculating about them, there aren't many that we have considered before and decided against. (The 2- vs -3-tile city spread is an example of one where we did, although with little debate.)

 

[Thalassicus]

@bobbyboy29
The reason tradition and liberty have recieved so much attention is I'd say they were really weak when the game came out. I know I personally always went honor -> patronage. That said, I've started thinking of ways to make the tree more interesting. I'd like to find methods so that someone with honor fights differently, instead of percentage combat boosts, so our bonuses vs the AI don't end up stacking to the point it trivializes combat.

The strategic resource bonus in the Autocracy tree is a good example of this. It lets us build our army differently.

@Joneill
My concern with the changes isn't the fact they lowered the percentages, that's okay with me. What I worry about is the move to so many flat per-city yields in food, production and gold. These sort of flat bonuses significantly favor small cities because they don't scale with population, and so lessen in value as cities grow. (Percentage bonuses scale with pop because more pop can work more tiles, getting more yield out of the percentage.) Civ 5 already favors small cities enough and I've been doing everything possible to balance out wide vs tall empires.

You have an excellent point about the workshop -> factory -> power plant chain all providing global production boosts. That makes a lot of sense! It's something I was thinking about a month ago or so, but didn't want to alter things significantly for a balance mod.

The odd thing about production from a camp on deer is deer appear on forests about half the time or so. I suspect the reason they changed the bonus to production has something to do with resource placement code. It's very complex so I've never had time to fully understand it, but I do know bonus resources are placed for the sole purpose of compensating for deficiencies in yield of the base terrain. Grassland has lots of so it gets cows, a bonus resource providing . Similarly, deserts and plains tend to get lots of wheat, and hills get sheep, to balance their food output.

Thanks for pointing out Legalism, I somehow overlooked the fact the happiness bonus was simply moved to Monarchy.

Can you mod the instant heal promotion?
If so, you could just lower it to ~4 hits. This makes a unit healthy enough to either retreat and heal, or continue after some minor damage.

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Is there a way to give the first x cities 2 hammers, and all latter cities just 1?

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I got a question.
On higher difficulty levels, the AI gets all sorts of bonuses.
Could you elaborate which ones they get?

I only know of a production bonus... Isn't it an option to let all AI combat units start with promotions rather than a give them production bonus? This doesn't carpet the map that way, and does give them a combat bonus.
Or, just like the barbarian bonus, give your units a -xx% penalty vs AI units.

1. The instant healing promotion has a stat "InstaHeal = true", there's no number specifying how much to heal.
2. I could do that easily enough... perhaps add it to an early policy in the Honor tree?
3. Here's an example of the settings:

HANDICAP_EMPEROR
002 = CityProductionNumOptionsConsidered
002 = TechNumOptionsConsidered
002 = PolicyNumOptionsConsidered
---1 = AttitudeChange
060 = AIBarbarianBonus
002 = AIStartingDefenseUnits
001 = AIStartingExploreUnits
100 = AIDeclareWarProb
050 = AIWorkRateModifier
085 = AIUnhappinessPercent
085 = AIGrowthPercent
080 = AITrainPercent
100 = AIWorldTrainPercent
080 = AIConstructPercent
100 = AIWorldConstructPercent
080 = AICreatePercent
100 = AIWorldCreatePercent
080 = AIBuildingCostPercent
075 = AIUnitCostPercent
030 = AIUnitSupplyPercent
050 = AIUnitUpgradePercent
---3 = AIPerEraModifier
135 = AIAdvancedStartPercent

 

[Ahriman]

Is there a way to give the first x cities 2 hammers, and all latter cities just 1?

I could do that easily enough... perhaps add it to an early policy in the Honor tree?

Were these supposed to go together?
I don't really see a reason why the x+1th city should be inherently less productive than the xth.
Using bonuses on the palace is fine, but otherwise I think all cities should be even, and their yields shouldn't depend on the order in which they were founded.
Also don't see why anything like this would apply to Honor.

 

[Txurce]

Were these supposed to go together?
I don't really see a reason why the x+1th city should be inherently less productive than the xth.
Using bonuses on the palace is fine, but otherwise I think all cities should be even, and their yields shouldn't depend on the order in which they were founded.
Also don't see why anything like this would apply to Honor.

I found the suggestion very arbitrary as well.

 

[Sneaks]

@bobbyboy29


HANDICAP_EMPEROR
002 = CityProductionNumOptionsConsidered
002 = TechNumOptionsConsidered
002 = PolicyNumOptionsConsidered
---1 = AttitudeChange
060 = AIBarbarianBonus
002 = AIStartingDefenseUnits
001 = AIStartingExploreUnits
100 = AIDeclareWarProb
050 = AIWorkRateModifier
085 = AIUnhappinessPercent
085 = AIGrowthPercent
080 = AITrainPercent
100 = AIWorldTrainPercent
080 = AIConstructPercent
100 = AIWorldConstructPercent
080 = AICreatePercent
100 = AIWorldCreatePercent
080 = AIBuildingCostPercent
075 = AIUnitCostPercent
030 = AIUnitSupplyPercent
050 = AIUnitUpgradePercent
---3 = AIPerEraModifier
135 = AIAdvancedStartPercent

On top of these bonuses, the AI gets the following Chieftain bonuses REGARDLESS of difficulty setting:
12 = HappinessDefault
1 = ExtraHappinessPerLuxury
60 = NumCitiesUnhappinessMod
60 = PopulationUnhappinessMod

This is one of the things WWGD fixes.

 

[Ahriman]

On top of these bonuses, the AI gets the following Chieftain bonuses REGARDLESS of difficulty setting:
12 = HappinessDefault
1 = ExtraHappinessPerLuxury
60 = NumCitiesUnhappinessMod
60 = PopulationUnhappinessMod

This is one of the things WWGD fixes

I find the happiness bonuses irritating, since it tends to mean that the AI is able to ignore happiness. But I'm not sure that it is strong enough without them, the game is already pretty easy on anything but Deity.

I think its fine to make these adjustments, but it feels a bit out of place to have these built into a Diplomacy-oriented mod. Diplomacy and happiness are pretty different sets of mechanics.
Have you considered splitting this kind of change off into a separate mod? I can imagine many people who might want to play with diplomacy tweaks but without a weakened AI player.

 

[Sneaks]

I give the AI several production bonuses to help it handle the changes. I am still in the process of fine tuning making the AI as if not stronger than before. As to whether it belongs in a diplomacy mod, I have always viewed WWGD as an AI rebalancing mod. This generally means if I see the AI behaving in a way that looks just wrong to me, and I have the capacity to fix it with the tools available, I will add it to the mod.

 

[Txurce]

I find the happiness bonuses irritating, since it tends to mean that the AI is able to ignore happiness. But I'm not sure that it is strong enough without them, the game is already pretty easy on anything but Deity.

I think its fine to make these adjustments, but it feels a bit out of place to have these built into a Diplomacy-oriented mod. Diplomacy and happiness are pretty different sets of mechanics.
Have you considered splitting this kind of change off into a separate mod? I can imagine many people who might want to play with diplomacy tweaks but without a weakened AI player.

I've had the same thought about possibly splitting the two functions, if only because they are both different and very significant. But that's just my subjective organizing principle talking. I have no problem keeping them together.

However, I don't see any reason to view an obvious bug as part of the baseline for the AI - especially one that grossly distorts happiness, one of the key pillars of the game. It makes much more sense to me to start with the game the way it's supposed to be - sans bug - and then balance the game as needed on each difficulty level.

To put it differently, giving the AI Chieftain-level bonuses in addition to whatever the chosen level gives them would be one of the last ways I would ever consider in boosting AI competitiveness.

 

[Ahriman]

However, I don't see any reason to view an obvious bug as part of the baseline for the AI

Are you certain that it is an obvious bug, and not a design intention to encourage the AI to grow?
They may have found in testing that their AI was unable to deal with happiness otherwise, because happiness requires a lot of planning ahead, which AIs are really bad at.
I could easily imagine that AIs would constantly conquer themselves into Very Unhappy status because they didn't plan ahead in constructing happiness buildings before starting a war.

I wouldn't think of it as "chieftan level bonuses", I would think of it as "is happiness one of the constraints on the AI"?

I'm not saying that its necessarily a bad thing to remove these bonuses, I'm just saying that doing so should be a careful process requiring a lot of playtest.

 

[Sneaks]

The problem I find is that the Chieftain bonuses added to base bonuses create a situation where the AI operates under a different rulebook. Happiness more or less becomes unimportant. Generally speaking, things like this are fine, and don't bother me. Where the problem becomes one I cannot continue playing with is when that same gameplay element is the one developers use as the key constraint against massive lateral expansion.

If the expansion constraint was turned into something like city maintenance costs, there would be far less complaint on my part. In such a scenario, the AI would still need to balance pros and cons of expansion and conquest(and could handle it much more easily, given that it could be reactive to gold constraints, whereas it needs to be proactive to happiness).

 

[Txurce]

Are you certain that it is an obvious bug, and not a design intention to encourage the AI to grow?

I'm not saying that its necessarily a bad thing to remove these bonuses, I'm just saying that doing so should be a careful process requiring a lot of playtest.

I would be stunned if giving the AI Chieftain-level buffs in addition to those that come with the chosen difficulty level was a design decision. Apart from contradicting the claimed balance of Prince level or indirectly nerfing the training-wheels bonuses of Chieftain level, it would seem to be a needlessly complicated way to achieve improved AI performance.

I completely agree that it should be tested. That's what Sneaks is doing with his beta. Of course, deciding what's balanced in this regard will be very subjective. Is the goal to make Immortal, for example, just as hard as it is now? Would people prefer that it be easier, or harder, or... different? Again, as you say, playing with the mod and offering commentary is the best way to make it as good as possible.

But I absolutely love the idea of starting from a zero point, and modifying the AI from there.

 

[Ahriman]

I would be stunned if giving the AI Chieftain-level buffs in addition to those that come with the chosen difficulty level was a design decision.

It seems like exactly the kind of blunt-force adjustment that the designers use to address perceived flaws (a la removing specialist slots from libraries, forcing 3-tile city distance).

I can easily imagine a situation late in the development process where in their test games, the AI was constantly getting messed up by the happiness mechanics, and was constantly driving itself into unhappiness and could provide no real challenge at all, and so the designers used a "quick and dirty" fix to effectively remove happiness as a strategic constraint from the AI.

All the evidence suggests that this is exactly the kind of decision that designers would make, if for eg they found it too hard to program the AI to successfully forecast into the future for how much happiness they would need, and then pre-plan its investment. Planning is one of the hardest things to make any AI do.

Just because its a bit whacky doesn't mean that its "obviously" a bug.
Suppose that you observed, shortly before release, that the AI couldn't handle the happiness mechanic, and was very weak to play against and didn't expand much at all. How would *you* fix the problem?

I completely agree that it should be tested. That's what Sneaks is doing with his beta.

Fair enough. I guess I'm just arguing that happiness changes are something that should be tested on their own, without other serious changes (like diplomacy) also occurring at the same time.
Does Civ5 have an autorun feature, like Civ4?
It would be cool to be able to do some simulation testing, where you could somehow track happiness of each AI player over time.

Is the goal to make Immortal, for example, just as hard as it is now? Would people prefer that it be easier, or harder, or... different?

I think that ideally every difficulty bar ~Settler should be harder than it is now.

 

[Gamewizard]

I agree as well that it was intentional, just because 2KGreg is clearly avoiding the subject when its brought up over on the 2KForums. He has prolly been told to not comment on the problem. IMO of course.

I have been using the AI Equalizer mod for many games now and find it effective. Then again I am not the best Civ player, so I still struggle on Emperor at times.

 

[Txurce]

It seems like exactly the kind of blunt-force adjustment that the designers use to address perceived flaws (a la removing specialist slots from libraries, forcing 3-tile city distance)... I can easily imagine a situation late in the development process where in their test games, the AI was constantly getting messed up by the happiness mechanics, and was constantly driving itself into unhappiness and could provide no real challenge at all, and so the designers used a "quick and dirty" fix to effectively remove happiness as a strategic constraint from the AI.

I think that ideally every difficulty bar ~Settler should be harder than it is now.

Having used the AI Equalizer, I can confirm what another user said about it - that the AI adjusts to the tougher happiness environment surprisingly well. (It's one of the reasons I really liked it.) So I doubt this particular example would have been the reason for the devs to come up with this "fix."

I would prefer that Prince be the "zero," so as to avoid confusion with general expectations, and then for the other difficulty levels to scale proportionately. I'd be happy if the scaling on the high end made for a tougher game on each level than it is now.

 

[Joneill]

@bobbyboy29
@Joneill
My concern with the changes isn't the fact they lowered the percentages, that's okay with me. What I worry about is the move to so many flat per-city yields in food, production and gold. These sort of flat bonuses significantly favor small cities because they don't scale with population, and so lessen in value as cities grow. (Percentage bonuses scale with pop because more pop can work more tiles, getting more yield out of the percentage.) Civ 5 already favors small cities enough and I've been doing everything possible to balance out wide vs tall empires.

I agree mostly, but it's not like any flat modifier automatically boosts ics. When these boni come at low/no cost in new cities and allow those to quickly generate a profit for your empire, then there's a problem. Like vanilla maritime foodboni, prepatch libraries, high default city tile yields, etc. The new Landed Elite effect seems like that, actually hoping that's some kind of typo.
Otherwise, there's only the hammerboosts from various buildings, which seem ok since not only do they require significant investment, but production is also mostly a local effect - rushbuying workshops and windmills in small cities won't help your empire's economy very much, quite the contrary.

 

[Thalassicus]

Were these supposed to go together?
I don't really see a reason why the x+1th city should be inherently less productive than the xth.
Using bonuses on the palace is fine, but otherwise I think all cities should be even, and their yields shouldn't depend on the order in which they were founded.
Also don't see why anything like this would apply to Honor.

I was thinking more along the lines of the Maritime thing, giving a production bonus to the top X cities with a policy. The reason I considered Honor is the Tradition and Liberty trees are in rather good shape by now, and my biggest concern with early-game warmongering has always been getting units out as fast as possible. An alternative might be a simple production bonus when constructing units.

As to whether it belongs in a diplomacy mod, I have always viewed WWGD as an AI rebalancing mod. This generally means if I see the AI behaving in a way that looks just wrong to me, and I have the capacity to fix it with the tools available, I will add it to the mod.

It's sort of like this is mainly a balance mod, but I also fixe lots of bugs/issues with the game and its user interface in the unofficial patch. After all... if we see a problem and know how to solve it, why not do so?

@Sneaks
To help people identify the difference, you could try splitting it into 2 separate sub-component files or folders: one for all diplomacy/personality changes, another for all AI bonus edits.

@Ahriman
Civ 5 does have an autoplay mode. I've used it to run hundreds of test games over the months to ensure the AI can handle changes I make.

 

[Ahriman]

and my biggest concern with early-game warmongering has always been getting units out as fast as possible. An alternative might be a simple production bonus when constructing units.

A military production bonus might be a good alternative to a bonus vs barbarians. I think that is much better than something which arbitrarily affects X cities.
Alternatively, have it give you 2 free warriors, if you want an early rush booster.
But I don't think Honor should necessarily be about rushes.

Otherwise I think the effects of most of the Honor bonuses are decent, and if they need to be boosted their numbers could be tweaked. Bonus for unit adjacency, more experience, cheaper upgrades, these are good core effects.

I might consider stealing the no-upkeep for garrisoned units effect from the patch, if you decide to stick with Oligarchy as a within-your-borders bonus (though I think its probably still too high), as a way of making a large army easier to handle.

iv 5 does have an autoplay script. I've used it to run hundreds of test games over the months to ensure the AI can handle mod changes properly.

Awesome. It would be very nice to see how it handles the happiness change.
Take a given map, run the game with vanilla happiness levels, run the game with much reduced happiness bonuses, see how large the difference is after 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 turns. Repeat on several maps.

 

[Buckets]

I could easily imagine that AIs would constantly conquer themselves into Very Unhappy status because they didn't plan ahead in constructing happiness buildings before starting a war.

I can confirm that that is indeed a problem (sometimes at least) when you take away the bonus happiness. Alot of razing goes on. But, the AI can be pushed and prodded a little to minimize this as well as changing game rules that help it along. My personal approach is to let the AI play without it's bonuses and observe where it gets into trouble. Then adjust accordingly.

 

[Ahriman]

I can confirm that that is indeed a problem (sometimes at least) when you take away the bonus happiness

Thanks, good to know. Experience is better than theorycraft.

But, the AI can be pushed and prodded a little to minimize this

How so?

changing game rules that help it along

What do you have in mind here?

Then adjust accordingly.

What kind of adjustments?

It would be great to get some examples in play if you've had success in mitigating this problem.

Some changes in the Balance mod would make happiness even more of an issue for the AI; eg razing takes much longer because city population is not halved on capture.

 

[Buckets]

How so?

Flavors. If you find that AI isn't building enough of this or that, then you increase the flavor. Or add a new flavor to it. Or decrease the flavor of something it's building too much. The flipside are the city/economic/grand-strategy flavors, which are more like taste actually. There you can basically do the same thing but under certain conditions. What we have to work with is very limited, and my skills are also very limited, so when the core code comes out, I will probably quit and leave AI tweaking to more capable hands.

What do you have in mind here?

Well, I don't want to derail what you guys are doing, but I've decided to use a different happiness system in my mod. Basically, everytime you adopt a social policy you get 2 happiness. That means the AI (and everyone) gets a somewhat steadily increasing trickle of happiness. It means that the AI is going to get it whether it plans ahead or not. I've also adjusted flavors so the AI recognizes culture buildings as lesser happiness buildings. But of course that only applies to these specific rule changes.

What kind of adjustments?

It would be great to get some examples in play if you've had success in mitigating this problem.

Some changes in the Balance mod would make happiness even more of an issue for the AI; eg razing takes much longer because city population is not halved on capture.

Well one thing is i've added +2 to happiness flavor on conquest grand strategy. In theory the AI will seek a bit more happiness when it decides to pursue that strategy. Of course that also means the AI will be building less of other things, but I see that as a necessary imrovement in quality over quantity.