normal speed mp game?

[gdambrauskas]

if anyone is interested, ping me. Most of the mp games I play last several days, mostly playing few hours after work and putting in several hours on weekends.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I'd be interested but unfortunately I don't have much time lately so I suppose I could only play a couple of hours per week; moreover, I'm living in Europe and that makes 6 hours difference if I'm not mistaken, which would make it difficult

On a side note anyway, I'd like to know more about your experience in MP games on normal speed. Which version of AND and which settings are you using? I'm asking because I usually play MP games with my wife on normal speed, large maps, noble difficulty and 14 civs but AND wasn't meant to be played on normal speed and I've seen that it's far too easy to win. Usually I was reaching modern era by 1600 I think and AI was never going beyond modern era by the end of the game. So I've made some xml changes to help AI so that it has some chance to win the game using the settings described above. Right now I'm engaged in a game with my wife and although we're playing as allies, there are 4 civs more advanced than us (around turn 250 of 630, just before renaissance).
Since I'm still trying to tweak some parameters, any opinion on normal speed MP games would be helpful. I've also made some changes to civics because AI wasn't using them all properly and corporations were spreading/closing down too fast every turn (using "realistic corporations"). Thanks in advance.

 

[gdambrauskas]

Now my wife wants to team up with me to go against your family As far as normal speed goes, I always start the game on diety. That makes ai start with 2 settlers and have huge bonuses to everything. If such ai is not killed early, it gets very difficult to take it down, which is fine with me, since i think u should spill a lot of blood before getting new land in later time. Since you are teaming up, that makes it easier, but should still give some challenge. Basically all human players must start on diety, otherwise ai is downgraded to the lowest level of a human player (my wife used to play on prince etc and AIs would be downgraded to that level).

I fixed all corporations/guilds not to be crazily overpowered (now u get ~1 hammer or food from a resource) and playing new games without auto founding of the corps (my wife hated auto finding; we only had it on to fix guild/corp hoarding, basically randomize). I will see if this is good enough rebalancing when i play more of our current game. There were games before where owning 60 cities, i would get 120 food from corps, which makes corps absolute must and is just crazy.

I also reworked traits to emphasize uniqueness ie seafaring have super powerful ships. We found that there are traits that are just the best (organized kicks ass more and more as the game progresses, at some point it's saving u 500 gold and more in the future).

let me know how i can contact u and we can schedule something, i guess the only time that would work is weekend with 6 hour difference ie if it's 12pm here, 6pm for would possibly work.

and if you want to try my modifications

http://www.gamefront.com/files/21983502/gand.rar

just unzip under /mods and play.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Now my wife wants to team up with me to go against your family

Now that would be fun but my wife always get scared when she's at war with someone

i think u should spill a lot of blood before getting new land in later time.

I completely agree.

I fixed all corporations/guilds not to be crazily overpowered (now u get ~1 hammer or food from a resource) and playing new games without auto founding of the corps (my wife hated auto finding; we only had it on to fix guild/corp hoarding, basically randomize). I will see if this is good enough rebalancing when i play more of our current game. There were games before where owning 60 cities, i would get 120 food from corps, which makes corps absolute must and is just crazy.

I've also done some tweaking myself on corps because they were spreading and closing too fast for my comfort; in my games now it looks like corporations are more balanced, but I also have to finish my current game to see it's a good enough rebalancing.

let me know how i can contact u and we can schedule something, i guess the only time that would work is weekend with 6 hour difference ie if it's 12pm here, 6pm for would possibly work.

We could try but the problem is that I'll be away from home on weekends until August 19th (I'm going away for the next couple of weekends and then I'll be on holiday in UK in the first half of August); so if you're willing to wait, we could arrange something when I get back I'm sending you my e-mail via PM

and if you want to try my modifications
http://www.gamefront.com/files/21983502/gand.rar
just unzip under /mods and play.

Downloaded and will try a quick test, as I said somewhere else, I'm also uploading my version of AND if you want to try it

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Basically all human players must start on diety, otherwise ai is downgraded to the lowest level of a human player (my wife used to play on prince etc and AIs would be downgraded to that level).

By the way, which level do you select for AI player when you start the game?

 

[gdambrauskas]

I think AI level is irrelevant, it's your level that matters ie you play on diety -> ai gets to play on settler.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I think AI level is irrelevant, it's your level that matters ie you play on diety -> ai gets to play on settler.

Mmm... I think you're at least partially right; usually you can't select AI level which is normally locked to "Noble", but I remember some game where it was possible to set a difficulty level for AI too. Anyway, I've tested your game on Noble level and there's not a single chance that AI can win a game. This is simply because AND wasn't meant for normal speed and if you play on that speed, AI will never go beyond modern era (I've made a quick test by letting AI autplay for 1 day until the last turn and the most advanced AI civ was halfway across modern era). This is why I reworked completely xml files for normal speed in my version. In my version, even playing at normal speed and with noble level, AI civs are able to build a spaceship before the last turn. In my version, at least 1 or 2 AI civs have the same tech level that you have if not a more advanced one. This makes the game more balanced and more challenging, IMHO. Now, if only I'm able to upload my version somewhere, I'll let you try [trying 4shared right now]

 

[thatonethere]

The way this is going the right step is first deiced on a version of the game to play and then what tweaks should be made to the game before discussing what options level etc.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

The way this is going the right step is first deiced on a version of the game to play and then what tweaks should be made to the game before discussing what options level etc.

Of course, I'm just saying that I'm tweaking AND for my own games (with my wife). Then once I'm sure everything works perfectly (right now I've rebalanced only normal speed and noble level), I'll share my files with everyone interested. This doesn't mean that we can't agree on another version to play with

 

[thatonethere]

Well there are many balancing issues with gameplay in general, i would try to tweak the files but I not sure what the AI behavior would be so i don't tweak but if you have any good suggestions on fixing some of these issues then we should all gain more from a MP game.
Now i really want to play a MP game.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Well there are many balancing issues with gameplay in general, i would try to tweak the files but I not sure what the AI behavior would be so i don't tweak but if you have any good suggestions on fixing some of these issues then we should all gain more from a MP game.
Now i really want to play a MP game.

Well, I've started to tweak xml AI files because I've noticed that on normal speed at least (which is the only one suitable for MP game, I fear), AI was never going beyond the start of modern era. Moreover, I was tired of getting to modern era in 1500 AD or having AI researching Modern Sanitation in 2100 AD... In my own version, playing on Normal Speed with Noble level, AI researches techs more or less in the right years (according to our history). And believe me, it's a challange keeping up with it. Once I'm sure everything works with Normal speed and noble level, I'll tweak other speeds and levels as well (but it will take some time, I guess)

 

[thatonethere]

If you concerned about MP games then normal game speed is enough and the way you put it it might seem interesting. Us human players against AI which can be challenging adds yet another layer of strategy to the game rather than have the AI as a sort of City State that never grows or is a major threat and is used by the human player to distract or annoy another human player.
The idea is very interesting, it allows the AI to play a larger roll in our MP games though some may can disagree.
I'm now craving for an AI to challenge my human randomness/stupidity(mouse slipup)/intelligence.

 

[gdambrauskas]

Not sure how ai does not go beyond modern era, since on diety with autoplay it takes 1-2 hours for ai to reach modern era. Though i haven't tested beyond.
as i mentioned would be good to see the tweaks made in your version, since i also intended to fix civics and research techs for normal speed (ie build costs smae but research costs much higher to avoid people being able to get techs in 2-4 turns which is what happens near the age of musketmen)

 

[gdambrauskas]

"AI as a major threat used by the human player to distract or annoy another human player."

is one of the tools in the global war Current game me and my friend are at each other throats and my wife surpased us both in score... 3 dogs and a bone type of situation.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Not sure how ai does not go beyond modern era, since on diety with autoplay it takes 1-2 hours for ai to reach modern era. Though i haven't tested beyond.
as i mentioned would be good to see the tweaks made in your version, since i also intended to fix civics and research techs for normal speed (ie build costs smae but research costs much higher to avoid people being able to get techs in 2-4 turns which is what happens near the age of musketmen)

Yeah, I've tried your game but it seems I can't go past modern era. Sure, AI reaches modern era on Deity but that happens around turn 250 of 700, I think. Since AND has around 400-500 techs, this means more than 1 tech per turn researched by AI, which is crazy.
I've tried a couple of autoplay games with your version but the game always crashes on modern era and it seems that I can't reload it.
I'm still trying to upload my rebalanced version somewhere, hopefully it will be ready later this afternoon. My version has 630 turns on normal speed but as I said modern era starts around turn 400 / year 1900 for AI and for a human player with (I suppose) "normal" gamestyle (by "normal" I mean my and my wife's gamestyle since I didn't have other testers ).

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

"AI as a major threat used by the human player to distract or annoy another human player."

is one of the tools in the global war Current game me and my friend are at each other throats and my wife surpased us both in score... 3 dogs and a bone type of situation.

I also used this strategy in the only MP game I've completed with another forum user (E_Pluribus_Unum, are you still around? ). In my last game, me and my wife had both the chance to team up against a strong AI civ and to use another AI civ to distract or annoy each other.