Major exploit in the game

[Sartre311]

So let me preface by saying that I really enjoy the game and all the various units, buildings, resources and technology that have been added into play. Unfortunately, when adding a bunch of new stuff (as civilization 6 has taught us) balancing and AI become far more of a difficulty to incorporating these things in a uniform and challenging manner.

Now I'm only 180 turns in and it's 1155 BC but I just realized that the power of the Trader, along with what I believe to be a glitch as it relates to the Trader, have made the game disproportionately unbalanced to the point where it's no longer challenging or interesting to play.

I did a basic search and it looks like someone mentioned that traders seemed too overpowered in a post about a month ago, talking about how 60 gold every couple turns allows you to keep your research at 100% and fund as big of an army as you want so you can just rinse and repeat until you have a domination victory. It really takes the strategy and challenge out of the game I think, as it pretty much just stopped me right in my tracks of wanting to push forward.

To make matters worse I think there's a glitch in the way the trade yield from missions is provided. The yield per trade mission is supposed to be based upon distance and city size, I went all the way across my continent to the largest city of babylon which yielded 59 gold, then just to see what the difference was I sent a Trader to Ragnar with a city size of 1 (who was literally right next door to my city see picture below) and it yielded the same 59 gold. Now that just makes this already exploitable tactic a complete game stopper, especially when you couple that with the fact that you can produce units (in this case chariots and horseman) at pretty much two per turn (with despotism and Warrior cast giving you an additional 88% military production), this combination is just way too much and completely makes the game unplayable. I'm playing on emperor by the way, and increasing the difficulty isn't the solution, as I like to feel that certain sort of satisfaction when completing a unit/project rather than popping out units at such a furious pace regardless of the difficulty level, especially this early on in the game.

Again, I love the content in the mod but the playability factor is most important when it comes to balancing and AI. I had to take the screenshot on my phone as there was an issue with the one from the computer, I apologize.

 

[Rezca]

Yeah I've noticed the gold thing... It never made sense how size/distance and whether its a capitol or some backwater city or not made little to no difference, despite it saying otherwise. The trader cost might be changed later which should help a little with reigning their power in a little, but at times I find them necessary to just not be overrun by the AI neighbors who are beginning to plant their fifth and sixth cities on the borders of my revolution-locked third city xD So mileage varies I guess, but they are a touch strong for when they show up and how much they cost.

 

[Sartre311]

Honestly I would just scrap them altogether and replace them with some building or something like that because they have great merchant power except it's unlimited, that's just unfair. Having played through the game numerous times I always felt like I'm trying to research technologies and get Civics and improvements to help improve my production and gold but now with the Trader I'm finding the whole key of the game as much less urgent thus losing that just one more turn sort of feel.

It makes literally every other new building added to the game far less important, relevant and urgent to get to because you think to yourself, oh I could just spam a bunch of traders to get my money and run all of my affairs while keeping the research at 100%, that's not right guys please eliminate this unit to let this wonderful mod shine.

 

[Vokarya]

I don't want to get rid of Traders. I get a lot of use out of them for using them to funnel production from old established cities to brand new ones.

I have been meaning to increase the production cost of Traders from 60 to 80. That would make them a little harder to build, but that's just a start.

Is the problem just in the gold production? That can be tinkered with as well. There are two variables that control the gold production, <iBaseTrade> and <iTradeMultiplier>. I'm not sure how much <iTradeMultiplier> does. Looking at the source code says that it factors into the gold calculation based on the city's trade profit with your capital city, but judging by what has been said about it being the same regardless of city size or distance, I suspect that particular calculation was made irrelevant when we switched from BTS's trade route system to our current connectedness system. I'm willing to lower the <iBaseTrade> if <iTradeMultiplier> doesn't do anything. I think the right ratio of cost:trade would be what we are looking for.

For reference, the values for <iBaseTrade> and <iTradeMultiplier> are:
* Trader: 30/2
* Caravan: 100/2
* Freight: 200/2
* Great Merchant: 500/200

Are the later trade units unbalancing as well, or is the Trader the only one?

 

[Rezca]

I don't want to get rid of Traders. I get a lot of use out of them for using them to funnel production from old established cities to brand new ones.

I have been meaning to increase the production cost of Traders from 60 to 80. That would make them a little harder to build, but that's just a start.

Is the problem just in the gold production? That can be tinkered with as well. There are two variables that control the gold production, <iBaseTrade> and <iTradeMultiplier>. I'm not sure how much <iTradeMultiplier> does. Looking at the source code says that it factors into the gold calculation based on the city's trade profit with your capital city, but judging by what has been said about it being the same regardless of city size or distance, I suspect that particular calculation was made irrelevant when we switched from BTS's trade route system to our current connectedness system. I'm willing to lower the <iBaseTrade> if <iTradeMultiplier> doesn't do anything. I think the right ratio of cost:trade would be what we are looking for.

For reference, the values for <iBaseTrade> and <iTradeMultiplier> are:
* Trader: 30/2
* Caravan: 100/2
* Freight: 200/2
* Great Merchant: 500/200

Are the later trade units unbalancing as well, or is the Trader the only one?

I personally feel the later ones are better balanced they barely put a dent in most expensive buildings/wonders, but they are - like you said - quite useful for kickstarting new cities that may otherwise take years to get their first build off. When I found an overseas colony for example I'll usually have a Caravan/Freight go along with it so they can get Foundaries, Canneries, etc built in a shorter period of time rather than wait the 40, 50, or even 60+ turns to do it otherwise and I might not be able to afford or even be in the required civic for gold-rushing it.

But early on Traders are pretty strong. Having a city or two dedicated to building them can keep your economy afloat when it'd otherwise crash.

 

[Sartre311]

Unfortunately I wouldn't be able to comment on the later units as the game is a landslide for me right now at 625 BC and my army dwarfing the next largest army by 3 to 1 right now with just horse archers ballista's etc. I just can't go on and I think even going to diety I would still anhilate everybody fairly easily because of the existence of the trader as well as the civics that allow for enormous boasts to military unit production.

Now the trader is definitely an issue and I don't think that tweaking of any sort of yields or production is going to mitigate this to a point where it makes strategy relevant again. See the Trader fits into an overall inbalancing issue with the game that is far more pervasive than just this one unit, it has to do with production inbalances specifically towards military units. I'm not talking about building up infrastructure in a city, that's fine. There's been plenty of commentary about how when a city is first founded it takes forever to get any infrastructure up, that is well-balanced and well and good. I think the largest inbalancing in the game lies in the trader as I've mentioned, where enormous unrealistic armies can be spammed while running research at 100% taking all the strategy out of it and no amount of tweaking will mitigate this affect to a point where it won't still bear on the game, albeit at a slightly less impact but still not to the point where strategy is relevant again. Iif you really want to keep him around in some form I would definitely either limit the amount that you could create for the entire game, give maybe a free great merchant with a larger one time yield for a trade mission that is truly based on distance and size of city or make the yields so small that it won't be a feasible strategy and I'm talking it would have to be under 10 gold to avoid the spam.

However the Trader fits into a larger inbalancing dynamic when it comes to military unit production. I believe that this is tied in with another inbalance exploit in the civics domain, namely civics that give military production boosts (despotism, warrior cast, and especially conscription). Because you added many new buildings that allow for appreciable increases in production yields, I believe that the military production bonuses are way too high and again takes out the strategy of just one more turn investment and excitement of the game. Even with all the downsides of adding extra unhappiness to the civics in an attempt to balance the military boost, this can easily be combated with monarchy and will be exploited. This also makes original BTS buildings (waiting for great prophets to add as specialist because you no longer need the extra gold) and strategies completely avoidable such as going for the national epic to get those production boasts and even then it's only for one city not the entire empire. If you are set on keeping some military production bonuses, given all of these other buildings that help increase production to huge amounts, the military boosts from civics should be quite modest in the 10 to 15% range and maybe only for select cities like the capital or cities that have a special building of some sort. This should bring back the resurgence of strategy again as well as the challenge and satisfaction of getting to a particular technology to unlock a civic that adds something without overpowering to the point of eliminating that feeling we all know and love so much with the civilization series.

So in summary what ends up happening as a result, when you combine all the money from the trader and all of these increases to military production is you end up having an army so large that no one can even compete, keep in mind this is still 625 BC and I'm already 3 to 1 on the next largest Civ and if I figured out this exploit earlier I would've probably been at 6 to 1 so by the later game you can imagine what the ratios would be all while researching at 100%.

By the way the content in this mod is excellent and there's so many wonderful things that have been done to help create immersion but I believe as we are now seeing with games like civilization 6 balance and competency of the AI are of paramount importance to allow the extra content to fully shine and keep the player engaged.

 

[Rezca]

What difficulty, mapsize, and speed are you playing on? Every game I get I need those traders just to keep myself from being overwhelemed by the second weakest AI on my continent while the leader is nearing a full era gap ahead of me.

If you're playing on a relatively easier setup like Noble/Standard/Normal then yeah Traders are going to really help against the AI since they don't know how to use that line of units - just like they're utterly clueless on how to use Great Commanders or handle Revolutions and Aggressive/Ruthless AI. Just enabling Great Commanders is practically an I.W.I.N. Button against them.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Try turning on Flexible Difficulty. Although, I'd limit it; a line from Warlord to Monarch's a good starting point to prevent the game getting too easy, or too hard.

 

[Sartre311]

I happened to be playing on emperor, standard map size, normal speed with revolutions, ruthless AI, and great commanders turned off. As I said I had a 3 to 1 ratio and would've had a 6 to 1 ratio army size compared to the next biggest civilization if I figured it out earlier. Even if I played on diety, doesn't matter the map size, with research at 100%, production through the roof and military units being popped out at 2 a turn it's not about the difficulty or map settings but the balancing in the game and the AI's programming seems to take its focus off of building up anywhere near the enormous army to be able to even remotely combat the strategy. When you include all the military production boosting civics like despotism, warrior cast and conscription coupled with monarchy and the Trader it's a landslide victory every single time regardless of the scenarios.

 

[Rezca]

Sounds like playstyle differences more so than a 'major' exploit then, since my experiences have been vastly different more often than not. On the other hand since the AI can't take advantage of these units at all... Not that they need them, with those bonuses they get. Especially if you enable Flexibile Difficulty for AI and they drop to Settler and can build wonders in a few turns.

I always play on Epic or Marathon, since Normal speed and faster everything gets built way too fast for my tastes. It's not even hard for a production-starved city to be rapidly pushing things out.

 

[Sartre311]

The things I've mentioned go way beyond play style differences, being able to research at 100% the entire game is not a play style difference nor are the boosts you get from those civics that result in units being popped out that quickly.

As I said the difficulty level still won't change the fact that all strategy will have been taken out of the equation which minimizes the enthrallment and willingness to play the game.

 

[Vokarya]

You haven't convinced me that Trader needs to be removed completely. If Trader cost 5 times as much and produced 1/10th as much gold, then no one would use it for that mission as it would probably be more cost-effective to just build units and disband them for gold. So there is an equilibrium point and we just have to find it. It may take more than one iteration.

Regarding unit production costs: I did reduce the military production bonus of Republic and Conscription in v1047. I did not remove Despotism's military production bonus, but I was strongly considering it. Despotism is supposed to pressure you into building military units, by causing additional unhappiness from overcrowding but giving you an out by providing happiness from military units. However, I don't think it is appropriate for Despotism to relieve the pressure to build units by making them cheaper at the same time. (Cutting down the number of bullet points on any given civic is another goal of mine as well.) Warrior Caste could stand to be reduced a little as well. The military production bonus is meant to offset the general production penalty, but I think I was basing the calculations on the adjustments being sequential, not simultaneous. So Warrior Caste could be only +15%, enough to cancel the penalty.

 

[Sartre311]

Sure I think if you nerfed the Trader to that degree then yes there is some point at which the exploit becomes reigned in, which is fine I think the concept of the Trader is a fine one based in the reality of history that just needs to be properly balanced.

As far as the main military boosting civics of conscription, despotism and warrior cast those values definitely need to be reigned in. Since there are so many buildings that add to production, why not reign in the values and keep them exclusive to just the capital or a city with a particular building or what not? This way it will still make the national epic and going for various strategic routes to get certain technologies in play and still interesting. Any military production boosts much over 15% just get too unfair and the stack effect and effect on strategy is way too crippling.

 

[Vokarya]

One of the things that I'm trying to focus on is an overall trimming of the number of points on civics/buildings/units. I think there is a limit to the number of things a player should be required to evaluate, regardless of some might consider "realism", and that it is a common failing of modders to include everything they can think of without considering the overall complexity level.

The civic building route is an option, but not one I am very fond of, unless the building does something that makes it not 100% necessary to build it in all cities. For example, a very unhappy city might not want to build a Slave Market, or a slow-growing city not want to build a Draft Office. If you put a tech gap between the civic and the building (such as Public Works and Workhouse, or Pacifism and Peace Movement) that makes it better, but it still feels like moving the military production bonuses to a building just pushes off the problem. Capital effects from a civic directly are limited to increased yields, increased commerces, and no capital unhappiness.

I guess I don't know how well to evaluate the ability to draft early on. Right now, Conscription has one big penalty (extra unhappiness from overcrowding), one moderate penalty (+100% war weariness), and an overall negative effect on revolution stability (positive local stability, but negative national stability and increased instability from distance). By itself, is the ability to draft units worth all of that? I'm reluctant to cut Conscription's unit production bonus completely because of that.

I'd like to remove Despotism's bonus completely and tinker with Trader's numbers a little before doing anything more with Conscription. I'm going to bring Warrior Caste down to +25% (offsetting the general -15%) so it produces a little more than Mercenaries but less than Conscription.

 

[<Nexus>]

Which part of the Trader is the AI a fool?

1. It doesn't build Traders?
2. It builds Traders just doesn't know what to do with them?

I hope/think it's the first, since Trade Mission was part of vanilla Civ4 for Great Merchant so it should know what to do with it. (Honestly I never investigated this issue.)

So... If the AI knows how to use Traders we could make them a non-buildable unit that is auto produced just like Crusaders. If you have a Market in a city it will generate a Trader every X turns.
Could that work?

 

[Vokarya]

Which part of the Trader is the AI a fool?

1. It doesn't build Traders?
2. It builds Traders just doesn't know what to do with them?

I hope/think it's the first, since Trade Mission was part of vanilla Civ4 for Great Merchant so it should know what to do with it. (Honestly I never investigated this issue.)

So... If the AI knows how to use Traders we could make them a non-buildable unit that is auto produced just like Crusaders. If you have a Market in a city it will generate a Trader every X turns.
Could that work?

We are not making them an auto-build. I don't want to do that except for extremely special units. We could increase the AI Weight to make the AI more likely to build them.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

@Sartre311, unbalance in your game is probably caused mostly by map size. Game really isn't designed for maps smaller than Large. Also as others have suggested, try Flexible Difficulty and Flexible AI.

 

[Sartre311]

I went on to currently playing K-mod. Balance and especially the AI are the most important factors for me. It's definitely a commendable effort what you guys have done with this mod and it's really interesting and fun but I think that even if I played on a larger map and flexible difficulty it comes down to the intelligence of the AI in making smart decisions. K-mod certainly presents a challenge and although there's not as much content (it is just original BTS) that satisfaction I get when getting to a certain technology that reveals a certain building or unit is much more valued as it is rare and means a lot more when you get it. In the end a smart AI that presents a tactical challenge is the most important factor for me in extracting enjoyment from the game, which is why I'm still playing civ 4 instead of civ 6.

Keep up the good work guys, I'm sure when you guys tackle some of the civics and especially trader issues the balance will be much improved. I wish you guys would incorporate K-mod somehow, I'm sure that would be quite difficult with the way the game is programmed right now but alas if that was possible this mod would be phenomenal.

 

[<Nexus>]

@Sartre311
AFAIK K-Mod is part of AND.

Also, if you don't want Traders in your games why don't you just disable them?
Just open CIV4UnitInfos.xml.
Find <Class>UNITCLASS_TRADE_CARAVAN</Class>.
Then find <iCost>60</iCost> and change it to <iCost>-1</iCost> so it cannot be built by anyone.
It's that simple

 

[Sartre311]

I didn't see it as a part of the feature list of the game it said Better AI was what was used, can you provide a link or any information that would indicate this? And playing on Emperor compared to emperor on K MOD was like night and day, the AI was extremely incompetent and completely neglected his army. As I said above the issues go beyond just the Trader they have to do with balancing issues with being able to produce way to easily especially when it comes to military units and that problem is most deeply rooted in the civics.