Japan

[albie_123]

Is it possible to give AI's a negative modifier on unhappiness from annexed cities, possibly with a dummy building / policy?

This would make the annexation of a city that's not quite right for it less damning for an AI.

And Txurce, I assume this would be in conjunction with dampening the science boost given to AI's. (Which may not be present anymore anyway, correct me if I'm wrong here!)

 

[Txurce]

And Txurce, I assume this would be in conjunction with dampening the science boost given to AI's. (Which may not be present anymore anyway, correct me if I'm wrong here!)

Yeah, my basic point is why boost a runaway civ's science at all, given that it's a runaway civ. All of these changes would be good ideas if VEM didn't have such an unusual amount of issues: CS gold, runaway science, over-promoted units, slow early growth. I would rather not boost the AI in any way until the game is re-balanced.

 

[albie_123]

In my last game with the latest version, runaway science wasn't an issue. But that's a point for another thread anyway.

Regardless, in my experience, conqueror Civs are very rarely the runaways. This may be untrue for some but in my experience the runaway Civs are almost always peaceful.

For this reason I think making Annexed cities more viable to AI's does not accentuate the runaway issue.

 

[Seek]

Yeah, my basic point is why boost a runaway civ's science at all, given that it's a runaway civ. All of these changes would be good ideas if VEM didn't have such an unusual amount of issues: CS gold, runaway science, over-promoted units, slow early growth. I would rather not boost the AI in any way until the game is re-balanced.

Oh Txurce, you're so darned reasonable! But seriously, that's probably a good idea.

@albie - It does seem like the runaway issue has been mitigated. Or at least, I haven't seen anyone report it occurring recently.

 

[rfxmills]

Or I could make AIs annex puppets.

I doubt you'll be able to get the AI making reasoned decisions regarding whether to annex a city or not. Instead make them annex after a set time for each game speed? 2x a normal trade deal?

 

[gdwitt]

Great idea here from TXURCE.
In 1392 and 1412 I found Rome to be a runaway civ. They were advanced in science and had an incredible ability to recruit a massive advanced army with their large empire of tiny cities. At check, all of their conquered cities were puppets.

This would be a great area to nerf.

On the other hand, the other civs seems to be quite week.
I think they need much more bonuses on Emperor.

The penalties should start when they get too many vassals.

 

[Seek]

I doubt you'll be able to get the AI making reasoned decisions regarding whether to annex a city or not. Instead make them annex after a set time for each game speed? 2x a normal trade deal?

Basing it on population seems like the best criterion, I think. If nothing else, the city's science will dramatically rise. Forcing the AI to annex after a certain number of turns strikes me as potentially shooting them in the foot (annexing the 3-pop ice cities, etc.). If the city has >15: annex, <15: maintain puppet - probably simple for Thal to code as well.

 

[MortalD]

Basing it on population seems like the best criterion, I think. If nothing else, the city's science will dramatically rise. Forcing the AI to annex after a certain number of turns strikes me as potentially shooting them in the foot (annexing the 3-pop ice cities, etc.). If the city has >15: annex, <15: maintain puppet - probably simple for Thal to code as well.

Assuming AI will build courthouses correctly that would be a good thing to try.

 

[orangecape]

Convincing the AI to build courthouses is easy - just set the flavors of them to massive amounts and they will build them first every time. I don't know if causing the AI to annex cities would create other issues but certainly if there is a real challenge there it isn't going to be convincing the AI to build courthouses.

 

[rfxmills]

Basing it on population seems like the best criterion, I think. If nothing else, the city's science will dramatically rise. Forcing the AI to annex after a certain number of turns strikes me as potentially shooting them in the foot (annexing the 3-pop ice cities, etc.). If the city has >15: annex, <15: maintain puppet - probably simple for Thal to code as well.

It's a good idea, but they should wait for it to get out of unrest at least and I'd probably drop the threshold lower, to the 6 - 8 region.

I have seen AIs raze cities it doesn't want before, so I presume it would do that for a 3-pop ice city. I've also seen them persevere with some absolute rubbish, so who knows?!

 

[Txurce]

I have seen AIs raze cities it doesn't want before, so I presume it would do that for a 3-pop ice city. I've also seen them persevere with some absolute rubbish, so who knows?!

I'm pretty sure it razes when unhappiness dips below zero. That would explain razing and keeping the wrong cities.

 

[Seek]

In one recent game I sold a city I was razing for a king's ransom - and the AI continued razing it! It was a 30+ sized city as well - took a long time.

 

[rfxmills]

I'm pretty sure it razes when unhappiness dips below zero. That would explain razing and keeping the wrong cities.

Good point, the conqueror AI would probably have settled in the same place anyway. They see resources before we do, so it might actually be an ok city in the long run. Also the AI does seem to place cities better in VEM.

In one recent game I sold a city I was razing for a king's ransom - and the AI continued razing it! It was a 30+ sized city as well - took a long time.

The AI got its money's worth out of it at least

 

[Thalassicus]

The human can annex, so if letting AIs annex makes them overpowered, annexation itself is the problem. Deciding a city to annex can be simple. We generally want to annex our largest puppet, and more happiness makes us more likely to do so. This can be represented with:

biggestCity = find biggest non-resistance puppet
happyDiff = (happiness - angerFromAnnex)
chance = Constrain(0, 5 * happyDiff, 100)

if chance then
create courthouse in biggestCity

However, I don't want to experiment with this until after I get the kinks worked out in the current version.

 

[Txurce]

The human can annex, so if letting AIs annex makes them overpowered, annexation itself is the problem. Deciding a city to annex can be simple.

However, I don't want to experiment with this until after I get the kinks worked out in the current version.

When I said having the AI annex would be OP, I meant within the current "kinky" circumstances. If you could scale it along the lines you just laid out, I think it would be terrific: improving the AI and making the game more realistic.

 

[rfxmills]

The human can annex, so if letting AIs annex makes them overpowered, annexation itself is the problem. Deciding a city to annex can be simple. We generally want to annex our largest puppet, and more happiness makes us more likely to do so.

However, I don't want to experiment with this until after I get the kinks worked out in the current version.

That's a good method, humans probably wouldn't annex smaller cities, so we should give the AI a minimum city size that they only annex over. I look forward to seeing how this changes things, potentially means that a unit spamming AI, has more cities to spam from Only one way to find out.

 

[rfxmills]

I'm in the final straight of a v136 game, and I've noticed that a couple of civs, Greece and Germany, have actually annexed some cities, Japan haven't and everyone else has gone the way of the dodos.

I've never seen an annexed city before in many, many hours of vanilla, not sure if anyone else has come across one?

 

[wobuffet]

Re: the latest change,

v.8 Oda: Dojo gives +1 XP per turn for all units in its city (was +20 xp for new land units).

this is fine for land units and ships, but won't this lead to incredibly promoted air units?

 

[Prodigyx732]

If I may make a suggestion, nerf the Dojo to .5 exp every turn and increase the policy to .5 exp every turn.

 

[Thalassicus]

Air units start around 100xp so it would take 50 turns to earn 1 promotion if we station them in a city with a dojo. Since air units appear so late, by the time they actually earn that promotion the game is probably over. Also, when conquering I typically place my aircraft in cities near the front lines, which are usually cities in resistance or puppets, unlikely to have a dojo.

@Prodigy
It requires 20 turns of doing nothing to earn the bonus the Dojo used to provide, so a reduction of strength is probably unnecessary. Japan's never fared well on the favorite leader polls so I doubt this makes Oda overpowered.