Is Progress over-valued? Is Authority going extinct?

[saamohod]

My current game serves as an obvious case of it. Among 11 players (myself included) only 3 AI chose Tradition, the rest went for Progress. No one goes for Authority.

The same trend seemed to be the case in my previous couple of games.

 

[balparmak]

It works fine in my experience, I certainly never had a shortage of authority civs. Really depends on which civs were rolled, having more progress isn't really an issue because it's arguably the safest tree for the AI.
If you see some clearly tall civs (Venice, Babylon), or warmongers (Songhai, Zulu, Mongols) consistently taking progress, that warrants a bug report. Mind that in difficulties lower than Immortal, AI decisions have some randomness, which may cause such behavior.

 

[CppMaster]

Actually, Authority may not be good even for warmongers AI, because it requires killing units to be good. Players are expected to be much better at warfare than AI, so Authority could be good for players while not good for AI at the same time. It's very easy to have benefits from Progress.

 

[stii]

I think you are never balancing it for the AI and the human so it is better to focus on the human. Trying to balance across difficulties is hard enough.

 

[Stalker0]

I won’t comment on balance but just noting some stats. If you just assumed pure random chance that the AI picks it’s policy (aka 33.33% chance to pick authority, 66.66% chance to not pick authority), than the chance of 7 civs not picking authority is about 1 in 17…which is not crazy low.

If you then factor in the notion that some sets of Civs will not choose authority normally, there are several cases where low or no authority picks are statistically normal.


Now if you had 10 recorded games in a row and like no authority picks, then I think you could start making the case that the AI is just not picking it

 

[Gazebo]

you can see the scores for the AI in the AI policy selection logs. If the scores are skewed wildly for some reason, that can lead us to a potential solution if there is a problem.

G

 

[Zanteogo]

Actually, Authority may not be good even for warmongers AI, because it requires killing units to be good. Players are expected to be much better at warfare than AI, so Authority could be good for players while not good for AI at the same time. It's very easy to have benefits from Progress.

Plus, on higher levels anyways, the AI can just spam the player in mass.

Authority is in a good state right now as a tree. (though I find the settler/city capture bonus policy weak)

Tradition is the weakest of the three starting policies. It's made for tall civs, if you end up going wide anyways, without the happiness and tech bonus from progress you just start to fall behind. Authority has the same issue, but if all your neighbors are beat down early game, the effects don't hurt you as much. I often take a mix of both progress and authority, as both push the player to "go wide" and help you do so. Just in different ways.