I noticed a few things that weren't quite working as intended, so I've fixed a few things and uploaded v1.07b. I'll update this post and changelog tomorrow. (no time at the moment-- and sorry about the version spam.)
-- edit --
Ok. as promised, I'm in the process of updating the changelog.
I think I've made a mistake though.. or at least, done something unwise. The reason I uploaded v1.07b was that I found a bug which I think would significantly weaken the AI. I wanted to fix that asap so that Charles555nc et al. would be able to have to bug fix before their game got to a point where the bug actually mattered. (By the way, it's fine to change K-Mod versions mid-game.)
Anyway... I wanted to upload that bug fix; so what I did was just upload all of my latest changes - which include the bug fix, but also include a bunch of new changes which are completely untested. I think that was unwise of me, and I kind of wish I'd only uploaded the bugfix. Anyway... no point trying to spill crying milk, or whatever. I'll just stick with the latest version and hope there are no serious problems.
The new version (v1.07b) contains one significant gameplay change: The victory vote for the Apostolic Palace now requires that there are at least 3 "full members". This change is meant to block the so-call "AP cheese" strategy. In the original rules, the condition was that there need to be at least 3
voting members, but only one full member. This led people to engineer somewhat silly situations where they are the only option for people to vote for in the victory vote. That will not be possible anymore. A
full member of the Apocalyptic palace is someone who either has the apostolic religion as their state religion, or owns the city with the apostolic palace.
(I can still think of a way to get around this new rule, but I'm not going to tell you what it is; because I don't want to tempt anyone to try it.
) (also.. "apocalyptic palace wasn't a typo. That's what I call it sometimes.)
So.. there's the AP change, and some more AI changes.
Let me know if you have any opinions about that AP change. It was meant to be a kind of work-in-progress; but as I said, I've already made the unwise decision to upload it... so now it's there.
.. that reminds me.
One thing that always bothered me about the Civ4 AI is their city placement: 4 times out of 5 they place new cities only 3 squares away from the previous city (at the beginning that's the capital) which leads to an inevitable overlapping city fat crosses when the city borders expand.
...
I'm wondering if you have any plans to improve the AI in this respect?
I revisited that part of the AI since we last talked about this; and I think you were right. The AI were settling too close together because of a flaw in the original BtS code. v1.07b fixes that flaw. I think it'll probably help a lot. Also, some AI personalities will space their cities further apart than the other AIs. In particular, any leader who has "flavor_growth". eg. Cyrus, De Gaulle, Lincoln, Zara, ... and many others. Maybe too many. We'll see.
Wow wrote another long post and then page needed refreshing and I copied my post and then it wouldnt paste. HATE THAT.
That's happened to me a stack of times. It's pretty frustrating
. Because of that, I've gotten into the habit of copying my entire post to the clipboard before pressing
send. I do that habitually on all forums, and on email.
Maybe ai shouldnt trust u within one square of their workers for like the first 100 turns.
Maybe... but on the other hand; I trust the AI when I play - because I don't really have a choice. I don't have any spare troops to defend my workers with. Maybe the AI is in a similar situation. At least the AI will hate you forever for declaring war on them. (Some mods change the "you declared war on us" penalty so that it can wear off, like the other attitude penalties - but I'm reluctant to do that, because I see the permanence as a way to discourage early wars like you're talking about.)
For 200 turns the Mongols (who i stole their worker) and Pacal declared war on me and didnt try taking that one square with the dug in units. Only way by land to get to my cities was through that single forested land plot.
So they just never got to your cities at all? Or did they try to send boats or something? I would expect them to try to send boats to get around your guys.
In fact the turn that Pacal declared war, his stack next to that forest square ran back wards away from that square, the turn he declared war.
I know why they would do that. It's a flaw in the AI that I've known about for some time, but I can't think of an easy way to fix it. What I think happened is that the AI was heading towards one of your cities, intending to attack it.. but it had chosen the best peace-time path to get there... so when it finally arrived at the border and declared war - it suddenly found that the path it intended to take is now impossible because of your guys... ... yeah. It sucks, but like I said, it is not easy to fix.
Re: The Great Lighthouse. Yes, it can be an extremely powerful wonder. That's why I increased its cost from 200 to 300 some versions ago. Now it's still one of the best, but at least you have to work harder to get it!
Also wanted to state that it seemed like every 4 turns or so some ai comes calling asking me to screw over another ai.
I haven't changed that stuff so far, but I agree that it can get a bit annoying sometimes - especially on big maps where there are lots of AIs. Each AI has some probability of making a demand like that each turn, so more AI players means more demands.
From a strategy point of view, I often deliberately choose not to have open borders with people who are the worse enemy of someone that I care about. If you cancel your deals before you are asked you, then you don't get any attitude penalties.
Anyway, Mongols kept sending a galley over, planting a city on the iron, while we were at war (brought a horse archer every time as a defender with each settler until he got longbows) and I kept killing that city...
Sounds like a pretty rough situation for the Mongols. They probably really really wanted that iron, and didn't properly understand that the area was under your control. Poor guys.