How to get to REAL Normal difficulty?

[Smokeybear]

The bonuses what AI gets on its CHIEFTAIN level annoy me. I really hate to see growing AI empires, with unimproved lands and without happiness problem while I have to deal with negatives a lot. Particularly if choose a level wich allegedly is balanced.

Are they beating you on that difficulty? Or just annoying you?

 

[headcase]

Are they beating you on that difficulty? Or just annoying you?

What's meant is not that we're playing on Chieftain, but that the AI is. Whether the human is playing on Chieftain, Prince, Diety, or whatever, the AI always plays on Chieftain (and gets further bonuses if you play on a difficulty past Prince). At least that is my understanding.

 

[dexters]

What's meant is not that we're playing on Chieftain, but that the AI is. Whether the human is playing on Chieftain, Prince, Diety, or whatever, the AI always plays on Chieftain (and gets further bonuses if you play on a difficulty past Prince). At least that is my understanding.

That's not quite right. but you have the right idea

AI gets chieftain level happiness, that's what the often referred to handicap xml file is actually describing chieftain settings -which also applies when humans play chieftain difficulty (like happiness bonus, unit support etc)

On Chieftian difficulty, the AI gets chieftain level happiness but are hit with negative handicaps like slower build speed. And are less agressive.

On Prince, the AI still have chieftain happiness, but their handicaps are now even.

Above that, they get a bonus.

So no, they don't play on chieftain difficulty all the time, they play on the difficulty you set the game to.
And Prince is still the even level.

 

[Glassmage]

Okie playing with yourself & AI as Prince is boring lol. I reverted everything back to normal except gave myself more happiness on harder levels.

 

[Lay_Lay]

I modded the game to give me 80,000 gold at the start.
I mean, why screw around.

 

[conception]

I'd like to play either warlord with much higher AI aggressiveness or Prince with much easier human happiness and unit supply (I find this really turns me off from enjoying Prince like I should). So to do the first, I could simply open this handicap.xml and change the setting for AI aggresiveness (or war, cant remember the rating) to much higher? Do I need any special tools to modify this handicap.xml, and afterwards will all my games be played like this, or will I have to load it as a Mod?

 

[trigorin]

That's not quite right. but you have the right idea

AI gets chieftain level happiness, that's what the often referred to handicap xml file is actually describing chieftain settings -which also applies when humans play chieftain difficulty (like happiness bonus, unit support etc)

On Chieftian difficulty, the AI gets chieftain level happiness but are hit with negative handicaps like slower build speed. And are less agressive.

On Prince, the AI still have chieftain happiness, but their handicaps are now even.

Above that, they get a bonus.

So no, they don't play on chieftain difficulty all the time, they play on the difficulty you set the game to.
And Prince is still the even level.

As I see, using InfoAddict, letting AI play on PRINCE forces it to deal with happiness and gold negatives like human player usually does.
So, I guess that the default values for AI are based on PRINCE settings (CHIEFTAIN by default) and the AI modifiers defined in difficulty levels are applied to these values.

AI seems to be able to handle its economy well, but it can't plan its future in the game. I think AI needs these bonuses to compensate missing strategic abilities.

I don't enjoy to play against AI which have bonuses, especially when I wan't to play on a balanced level.

 

[cryptc]

There is the Duke-difficulty mod which I think is a bonusless AI level but still agressive like the higher levels. I've used it quite a bit and like it.

 

[headcase]

There is the Duke-difficulty mod which I think is a bonusless AI level but still agressive like the higher levels. I've used it quite a bit and like it.

Nice, I will be checking that out.

 

[Glassmage]

I am okay with AI's getting bonus prod and happy and even 4 earliest techs at Diety but I want reasonable amount of happiness so I can survive for a while and expand a little because those AI's expand so fast into my place.

 

[qemist]

One example very obvious to me is that the game always recommends a mint over a market when you only have one gold\silver tile. Unless the descriptions are wrong, a market in this case costs [edit: the same] and gives a 25% gold bonus on top of the +2 gold both buildings have. They can't make the AI count the silver\gold?!

This is one of many instances where the game gets decisions wrong when a better one can be found easily using techniques known to any applied math grad student. Another example of poor building recommendations is that it often suggests I build a worker when the workers I have already have little or nothing to do.

The citizen allocation is similarly broken. It is not uncommon that I can pareto improve a city's output by reassigning a citizen (ie get more of at least one output without getting less of anything). Sometimes asking it to maximize a particular output results in less of that output than one of the other pre-sets. And surely there should be at least the option to avoid starvation.

 

[qemist]

I just want to know what files that I can change so that Prince is actually the fair level for both players and AI's.

A fair game is one where all players are treated equally. Same resources, abilities, etc. i.e what would be regarded as fair if the players were all human. If you could set this up you would find out just how weak the AI is, so it is not an option.

 

[ShahJahanII]

I always thought the AI plays on Prince.
This explains why they can get 5 easy cities really fast, when I can't.
They should be playing on Prince, as that is the norm, but they aren't good enough for that.
Basically, if you can win on Chieftain, you are smarter than the civV AI.

 

[ShahJahanII]

This is one of many instances where the game gets decisions wrong when a better one can be found easily using techniques known to any applied math grad student. Another example of poor building recommendations is that it often suggests I build a worker when the workers I have already have little or nothing to do.

The citizen allocation is similarly broken. It is not uncommon that I can pareto improve a city's output by reassigning a citizen (ie get more of at least one output without getting less of anything). Sometimes asking it to maximize a particular output results in less of that output than one of the other pre-sets. And surely there should be at least the option to avoid starvation.

Math grad student?
I did this in elementary school.
Most people probably could.
It is not hard to compare markets and mints.
The AI is pathetic.