How can I make the conquerors more 'conquering'?

[Watiggi]

I would like to make the conquerors more 'conquering' by messing with the XML values. Right now they seem to pick fights with the weakest leader which is quite often away from their empire and does nothing for empire expansion. What I would like to see is the conquerors more engaging close to home, ignoring the weakness of their rivals and working with an aggressive empire expansionistic attitude rather than the simple warmonger attitude that they currently display.

How can the XML values be changed so that:

1) They no longer go after or are interested in the weakest leader.
2) They are VERY touchy and prone to war when there is close borders ('your borders spark tension').
3) They will look to their closest rival and become more prone to war with them regardless of whether their borders touch or not.
4) They will ignore the power rating of all the leaders and focus only on the next closest leader (regardless of that leaders power rating).
5) They generally ignore anything that's further away than their neighbours.
6) Anything else that would encourage the empire expansionistic mentality the conquerors of the game had.
7) And remove anything that may detract from that empire expanionistic mentality.

I would love it if I could make those changes so that Julius, Genghis, Napoleon and Alex behave in this way. Is there an explanation of the values in the civ leaders XML file? Any help would be great. Thanks.

 

[zulu9812]

#2 can be done from the Civ4LeaderheadsInfo.xml file. You can increase the diplomatic penalty for close borders, tweaking it on a leader-by-leader basis. Although, I think that this would just make the leaders more annoyed with the leaders they had close borders with, without actually goading them to war. Do you have 'Aggressive AI' checked in your game options?

 

[Officer Reene]

...I would love it if I could make those changes so that Julius, Genghis, Napoleon and Alex behave in this way. Is there an explanation of the values in the civ leaders XML file? Any help would be great. Thanks.

here are two references that help:


http://civ4wiki.com/wiki/index.php/Xml_files



http://modiki.apolyton.net/index.php?title=Reference_xml


they explain alot of the XML tags in some of the files...

unfortunately that are both not complete (and may contain errors)

the links sometimes dont work... just try again later and they should be up and running in no time

but they also contain alot of good info... (you may have to cross reference them both to get the best info)


they helped me on a lot of XML stuff (or at least pointed me in the right direction )

I experimented with lots of info found there...and was able to mod some unique stuff...

hope this helps

 

[Watiggi]

#2 can be done from the Civ4LeaderheadsInfo.xml file. You can increase the diplomatic penalty for close borders, tweaking it on a leader-by-leader basis. Although, I think that this would just make the leaders more annoyed with the leaders they had close borders with, without actually goading them to war. Do you have 'Aggressive AI' checked in your game options?

Thanks I had a look and yeah, there is a close borders value there. There is also an interesting value with regards to the power ratio of civilizations near the leader and civilizations far away from the leader. Apparently a warmonger (Genghis and Monty in particular, as I have not looked at the others) will be more prone to go to war with a distant leader. For the conquerors, it should be the other way I think (more prone to go to war with nearer and less prone (interested) in going to war with distant civs).

Thanks for that info.

here are two references that help:
http://civ4wiki.com/wiki/index.php/Xml_files
http://modiki.apolyton.net/index.php...=Reference_xml
they explain alot of the XML tags in some of the files...
unfortunately that are both not complete (and may contain errors)
the links sometimes dont work... just try again later and they should be up and running in no time
but they also contain alot of good info... (you may have to cross reference them both to get the best info)
they helped me on a lot of XML stuff (or at least pointed me in the right direction )
I experimented with lots of info found there...and was able to mod some unique stuff...
hope this helps

Thanks for the links It is going to take a while to go through it though. There is a lot there

edit: the link to apolyton you gave me was broken. Here is a working one You must have copied and pasted it from another thread or something. Again, thanks for the links

 

[Watiggi]

Ok. I have set it up with:

<iMaxWarRand>25</iMaxWarRand>
<iMaxWarNearbyPowerRatio>40</iMaxWarNearbyPowerRatio>
<iMaxWarDistantPowerRatio>200</iMaxWarDistantPowerRatio>

The description of iMaxWarNearbyPowerRatio is: "The AI won't start an unprovoked war against a neighbor unless it's own Power Rating is at least this percentage of the neighbor's Power Rating."

I played a tiny pangaea with 6 civs (including me). The leader who had the above values conducted no war until his neighbours power rating was down to about 40% of his power rating (OR it could also be interepreted as being his own power rating being about 200% of his distant rival, but I couldn't tell). Now I don't know what "nearby" means and the nearby civs borders didn't touch at this time. I am wondering whether the iMaxWarNearbyPowerRatio actually means that the other civs power rating is this percentage of its own. Does anyone have more of an understanding/experience with these values?

What I am trying to do is to have it go to war (unprovoked) with the neighbour civ without regard to for their power rating and to ignore distant civs. My understanding of the above values is that a) it may attack 1 in 25 chance, b) it may only attack IF his power rating is more than 40% of his neighbours and c) may only attack IF his power rating is more than 200% above his distant rivals.

Anyone got more insight into this? Because I am getting some strange results. Thanks

 

[PeteT]

You might find this helpful:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4022606&postcount=6