playtest feedback

[westamastaflash]

Spreading out the animals is hard, because "animal density" is time-consuming to compute. I can put it on the list.

The only way I can see to prevent the "early small arms" effect where you can't build survivors anymore, is to remove the upgrade path from survivor to guardian. I don't think upgrading is widely used because it is so expensive, so it should not change play balance too much to make that change.

It'd be neat if your upgrades became much cheaper once you get access to munitions. I.E. Survivors upgrade to Guardians for 20% of original cost, Jeeps to Jeep Rifles, etc...

 

[Refar]

I too notice that often you'd get a spider spawn out of radiation at the same time you'd also get a Deathclaw or orther barb often in the FoW square right next to it. Then they'd both attack. I had jeeps and anti-tank units getting taken out by this 1-2 punch.

Spreading out the animals is hard, because "animal density" is time-consuming to compute. I can put it on the list.

I allways assumed it is working as intended, and i actually like it that way. For once we have barbs, that are actually dagerous and not just XP fuel.
The world is dangerous, the animals are dangerous. Nothing wrong with loosing a jeep to a dogpile. I wouldnt really want to see it changed.

I realize its a question of taste... Maybe you could use the raging barbs option - raging barbs would be the default and behave like it does now.
With raged barbs de-activated you could reduce the number of barbs spawned.

The only way I can see to prevent the "early small arms" effect where you can't build survivors anymore, is to remove the upgrade path from survivor to guardian. I don't think upgrading is widely used because it is so expensive, so it should not change play balance too much to make that change.

This sounds good.

 

[davidlallen]

Maybe you could use the raging barbs option - raging barbs would be the default and behave like it does now.
With raged barbs de-activated you could reduce the number of barbs spawned.

The spawn rate I have now is 3x the vanilla rate, and the raging option is 2x. I have not gotten up the courage to turn *on* raging barbs and get 6x the rate, but it should be possible. Perhaps the right approach is to add an option, maybe in an ini file, about "barb multiplier" which defaults to 3.
I will put it on the list.

 

[Refar]

What i was sying is you could se tit soe that raging barbs give you the "normal barb activity" - So Spawn Rate X1.5 X2 from Raging would give you X3 again. It would be default. Why people who want less could turn raging barbs off, to have a somewhat less barbaric game.

But a ini option is fine too.

 

[Conroe]

I assume you were playing the latest version 0.7. What difficulty level?

Not sure what version ... I downloaded it yesterday, so whatever version that you had available then. I tried it out on Prince, using normal speed if that matters.

In my unreleased development version, I have prevented animals from spawning at all, for the first 5 turns. Maybe I should make it longer.

That is a good start. The number of turns, though, is really dependent upon how long it takes to get out that first unit. So maybe something in the 10 to 20 range? Don't remember exactly. I suspect that losing the initial Survivor is actually more difficult on the AI than the human player. Although, short of reducing the strength of the animals (anti-thematic), I'm really not sure what needs to be done about that. Under no circumstances, though, should an animal be able to capture a city. Well, maybe a Death Claw, but the others should only be able to kill the units in the city without actually razing the city. I would think there would be an XML flag for this, as the Gunship in the base game doesn't have city capture abilities.

I would like to dig into this one a little further. In many games I have seen the AI with larger cities.

You have to keep in mind my perspective. All of my games ended prematurely. My 3rd game, where I actually saw this behavior, ended after about a 100 turns. I observed a distinct parity in our cities, after putting the game in debug mode. My cities were, on average, about 2 or 3 times the size of my AI opponents.

That is the main reason the AI was able to win a vision victory. With me having over 50% of the world's population, he had only to convert my cities to win the game.

Offhand I do not see anything different about the decisions to make about food in this mod; it is rarer, but it seems the standard AI should be able to deal with it. If you examine the AI cities compared to your own, what are they doing wrong?

It is a matter of priorities. The AI does not understand the new world order. Food takes on an added importance in this game, a fact that the AI does not understand. When I am looking at new city sites, I am taking into consideration any food bonus and the availability of fresh water. Ruins and other resources are just nice extras. I'm not certain, but the AI just seems to consider any resource as being a good spot.

And then there is the AI Worker priority. The first thing the AI does is connect resources. That's great if there is a food resource. But if there isn't, then it is the wrong priority. As an example, one AI city that I saw had 3 desert tiles with junkyard improvements built, making them 1h tiles. Yet none of the city's grass or plains tiles were improved. The Workers around the city were putting down roads rather than farms.

The AI seemed to be pretty good about putting down farms around its capital. But its other cities ...

In version 0.7 the vision threshold is 67%. I have tried a few games at 75% and one at 90%.

The AI was able to win a vision victory quite easily in my game because of two factors. The first I've already noted was because my population was disproportionately large. Only 8 cites were needed to cross the threshold.

The other factor was only a single AI (Iron Head) prioritized founding a vision. The others didn't, and I certainly didn't since founding one provided little benefit. With only 1 world vision and me having all the population ... game over.

Would only upping the threshold solve the problem? I suspect that upping it to 90% would only serve to swing the pendulum in the other direction. I would probably move the founding of vision back to early game techs. That way they are available to all. Yet still require that the Shrine/Capital (from a late game tech) be built before the game can be won. If you combine this with my earlier suggestions of making the spread more difficult (no automatic spread and more difficult foreign spread), this might become more of a feasible victory option.

And while we're on the subject of victories, I'm not 100% sure that a safety victory is even attainable. There doesn't seem to be enough ways to accumulate safety points in a reasonable amount of time. You've also removed the civics and wonders that allow someone to increase the rate at which Great Protector points are generated.

(Have you gotten one of the cargo trucks or named units from ruins yet?)

I got a cargo truck for the Museum wonder. Meh ... I would have rather had one of the others, but oh well. Or one of the Refugees. I really liked the Refugee units! I would save them and send them out with my Settlers. A nice touch to the game, really adds to the flavor. Hopefully the AI knows how to use them.

Some playtesters feel that organized may be too strong, since there are few good ways to reduce your distance maintenance cost.

Research admin and civics ... then boom, you're running State Property and have no distance cost.

I think the real problem with Organized is the reduced cost buildings were removed from the mod. It needs something besides the civic bonus in order for the trait to compare with the other traits. And maybe it was because I never got to the end game, but I don't recall my civic upkeep ever getting into double digits.

And with removing the commerce bonus from rivers, I'm not certain that Financial is as strong as it used to be. You might need to either put back the river bonus or maybe give the trait cheap Markets or something.

Regarding the ute, yes, it is relatively easy to get up to +100%, but that only makes it equal to the late game units. This is one main "flavor area" for the game.

Don't get me wrong, I like the Ute. I really do! Its a nice unit. The problem with the unit is the same as all the other units. It is way too easy to accumulate 10xp for the promotions. It was too easy to put together a stack of CRIII Guardians and double-strength Ute's. Who needs Jeeps when you've got barbs?

The AI does not understand the tactic of getting a unit promoted to 10xp and then saving it for a later invasion. This isn't a problem in the base game because it is much more difficult to accumulate a whole stack of such units. Not so in this game.

The problem isn't the Utes, its the barbs. There are just way, way too many of them. The number of barbs hurts the AI while giving the player a distinct advantage.

I agree the biker is relatively useless for the player, but I hope you have felt the "pain" of getting some workers on the border picked off by them. Their main role is as barbarians.

I felt the "pain" only once. After that I stationed a Guardian to escort my Workers when they were near a border or blind spot. And its not just the Choppers, but any unit that can travel down a highway from under the fog of war.

The Chopper is a nice flavor unit, and I can now understand why you put it into the mod. But I need to have some reason to want to build it. The best thing, though, is to probably make it a barb only unit and remove it from the player's unit list.

The only way I can see to prevent the "early small arms" effect where you can't build survivors anymore, is to remove the upgrade path from survivor to guardian.

No offense, but I don't really care for this idea. Once my capital is established, there is no way I'm going to build such a weak unit. It needs to disappear. Yet, Arkham raises a valid consideration. I would probably address the issue in one of two ways (or maybe both). Arkham's scenario would be solved if the Guardian tech could not be popped from a hut. There is an XML flag to prevent this, and thus easy to implement. The other solution would be to require Guardian's to have some sort of tech, like copper or iron. Rather anti-thematic, so maybe introduce another resource like gunpowder. I wouldn't use munitions, since that resource comes later in the game. You need Guardians sooner rather than later.

The world is dangerous, the animals are dangerous. Nothing wrong with loosing a jeep to a dogpile. I wouldnt really want to see it changed.

I agree with Refar here. Nothing wrong with a dogpile. It is the sheer volume of barbs that is the problem. And as I said earlier, a Horse should not be able to raze a city.

 

[Conroe]

Holy mackerel! That was a long post! My apologies for rambling on so much ...

And it also strikes me how negative the tone sounded. I really don't mean to sound so negative. It is an excellent mod! Despite all the words, I really think it only needs some tweaking to balance things out.

 

[Conroe]

The spawn rate I have now is 3x the vanilla rate, and the raging option is 2x.

What i was sying is you could se tit soe that raging barbs give you the "normal barb activity" - So Spawn Rate X1.5 X2 from Raging would give you X3 again. It would be default. Why people who want less could turn raging barbs off, to have a somewhat less barbaric game.

The problem with the barbs, as I noted in my dissertation above, is that they give the human player too much of an advantage. I can understand you wanting to up them for thematic reasons. That is totally reasonable. But it needs to be balanced such that it is not too advantageous towards the human player.

Maybe the AI needs a barb bonus like the human gets on the lower levels. Frankly, I'm not sure how it is scaled at the moment. And I'd also experiment with lowering the base rate from 3x to 2x. The raging option is probably fine at 2x.

Let me pose a question. I know that barb animals spawn within cultural borders. Do the other barb units spawn there, as well? Or do they only spawn under the fog of war?

If they spawn only under the fog, the problem could be solved by not allowing animals to capture cities. In my test game, I had a vast wasteland all to my self because 2 AI civs were eliminated by the barbs in the first few turns.

 

[Refar]

Hmmm... i did not had the feeling the Barbs gave the Human a advantage in my games. True sometimes a civ get itself destroyed early, but otherwise... I am not opposed to increasing the AI bonus on Barbs a little bit as well - as long as it does not go to the point where the AI is immune and "obviously cheating".
This will not solve those early anumal kills however.

The idea of preventing animals from taking cities sounds good. There is a XML tag for it - like on the Gunship - they will still be able to enter boarders, snag workers and attack and kill defenders in the cities, but they could not capture those cities.

------

I have to concur with the assessment, that the AI has slight problems to handle the food/economic pressure of the setting/map. It's not too bad however - overall the AI does tech at about the same rate as it would on the unmodded game.

I think at some point Leader AI preferences might need to be rewieved, selecting the AI's that seem the most fit for the setting (and maybe inrease weights on Farms for some of them maybe). but i think those finetuning tasks can wait a bit - right now the Leader/Civ/Traits seem to be subject to possible changes anyway.

 

[davidlallen]

Under no circumstances, though, should an animal be able to capture a city. Well, maybe a Death Claw, but the others should only be able to kill the units in the city without actually razing the city. I would think there would be an XML flag for this, as the Gunship in the base game doesn't have city capture abilities.

Why why why did I never think of this flag. Done. Animals no longer capture cities.

Food takes on an added importance in this game, a fact that the AI does not understand. When I am looking at new city sites, I am taking into consideration any food bonus and the availability of fresh water. Ruins and other resources are just nice extras. I'm not certain, but the AI just seems to consider any resource as being a good spot.

And then there is the AI Worker priority. The first thing the AI does is connect resources. That's great if there is a food resource. But if there isn't, then it is the wrong priority. As an example, one AI city that I saw had 3 desert tiles with junkyard improvements built, making them 1h tiles. Yet none of the city's grass or plains tiles were improved. The Workers around the city were putting down roads rather than farms.

Both of those are solid points. I will see if there are weights to tune the AI to prefer food improvements.

I would probably move the founding of vision back to early game techs. That way they are available to all. Yet still require that the Shrine/Capital (from a late game tech) be built before the game can be won.

Vision can be founded with an early game tech today, since diplomacy is only on the second tier. Splitting the founding of the vision from the capitol building itself has one possible drawback. Without a big building requirement, it may be easy to race for it and still lose, because the barrier is too low and the world limit is 6. It could be 7, which is the number of religions in vanilla, but not much difference between 6 and 7. I had thought about making each civ its own vision, which fits with the "state capitol" idea. But changing the game engine to support 18 religions, or even 12 after I reduce it, requires SDK mods which are beyond me.

What do you think is the best way to improve the vision victory path?

And while we're on the subject of victories, I'm not 100% sure that a safety victory is even attainable.

I agree. In 0.7 I put in the basic mechanic, but a lot of the buildings are missing. In 0.8 I have added a few, and I will be interested in your feedback (after version 0.8 is released about whether there are enough.

I think the real problem with Organized is the reduced cost buildings were removed from the mod. It needs something besides the civic bonus in order for the trait to compare with the other traits.

Good point. I will think about what else to add to Organized, so it is stronger. Any suggestions? Maybe, 2x production of advocates?

And with removing the commerce bonus from rivers, I'm not certain that Financial is as strong as it used to be. You might need to either put back the river bonus or maybe give the trait cheap Markets or something.

At least in my autorun games, the Fin/* players seem to win pretty often. I think it is because you can get a little income, much earlier, and it builds up. I'll wait a little before buffing Fin.

It is way too easy to accumulate 10xp for the promotions. It was too easy to put together a stack of CRIII Guardians and double-strength Ute's. Who needs Jeeps when you've got barbs?

There have been some votes for raising the barb XP cap and some votes for lowering it. I guess your key point is that the AI players don't send units out into the wilderness to level up, so they get behind. Maybe there is a way to lower the XP per barb so it takes more kills, or something else? Or do you feel strongly that the best approach is to lower the number of barbs?

The Chopper is a nice flavor unit, and I can now understand why you put it into the mod. But I need to have some reason to want to build it. The best thing, though, is to probably make it a barb only unit and remove it from the player's unit list.

I had been thinking of removing it as a player unit, but I had delayed because new unit art for that was supposed to be coming. I have now removed it.

Once my capital is established, there is no way I'm going to build such a weak unit [as the survivor]. It needs to disappear.

Of course you are welcome to just not build it The required tech is a first tier tech, so I think it is valid for a goody hut to pop it. The button remains until you have the techs for all of the possible upgrades, sort of like an implicit "OR obsolete". So another possible solution is to add survivor upgrades to, for example, machine gun. That way it remains till after you have munitions hooked up. Would that help?

 

[davidlallen]

Gee, three more discussion posts came in while I was editing my reply post. Now I will reply on the replies.

 

[davidlallen]

Maybe the AI needs a barb bonus like the human gets on the lower levels. Frankly, I'm not sure how it is scaled at the moment. And I'd also experiment with lowering the base rate from 3x to 2x. The raging option is probably fine at 2x.

I had experimented with a few different barb levels before settling on 3x. Maybe I should make it adjustable by ini, but reading ini is a project by itself. Probably you know how, but you can easily tune the barb bonuses to try things out. You can edit file Fury Road/Assets/XML/GameInfo/CIV4HandicapInfo.xml with a plain text editor like notepad. Search for the name of your preferred difficulty level in all upper case, like "NOBLE", to get into the right section.

The related tags for bonus are: iAnimalBonus, iBarbarianBonus, iAIAnimalBonus, iAIBarbarianBonus. The primary tag for barb spawn rate is iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianUnit. You can use my debug key alt-c to get a few statistics on the numbers used for this.

I doubt there is any way to make the AI more interested in sending out units to level up. Do you think that is the underlying problem?

Let me pose a question. I know that barb animals spawn within cultural borders. Do the other barb units spawn there, as well? Or do they only spawn under the fog of war?

If they spawn only under the fog, the problem could be solved by not allowing animals to capture cities. In my test game, I had a vast wasteland all to my self because 2 AI civs were eliminated by the barbs in the first few turns.

Thanks to your suggestion of using the gunship flag for animals, this problem should go away. I have modified animal spawn as you point out, but I have not modified barb spawn. So barbs only spawn outside the fog.

 

[The_Coyote]

After reading the comments, had one idea considering the vision victory, why not work without vision threshold and make it something similar to the AP (is a diplomatic victory possible?), a wonder is needed ("congress of hope" - have no better idea for a name ) after this you could be elected as new leader for the post apocalyptic civilization (would fit also to the current visions names, found a federation, monarchy, etc).

Now the more difficult part (which i think would need coding), only vision present in every nation are electable, the vision currently #1 can be elected (not like the standard AP the state vision while building the wonder), votes depends on the number of follower of the leading vision in the empire. Another additional idea, when you disagree with the new founding, you can reject the result of the election and are at war (no way to make peace again) with every other nation (which will build an alliance) and the only options for a victory will be a complete conqeust, accepting the result and not being the founder of the victorious vision means game lost

but like i said, only an idea (and more or less lend from Master of Orion II )

 

[Conroe]

Vision can be founded with an early game tech today, since diplomacy is only on the second tier. Splitting the founding of the vision from the capitol building itself has one possible drawback. Without a big building requirement, it may be easy to race for it and still lose, ...

What do you think is the best way to improve the vision victory path?

No, I like the Capitol building idea. It needs to be built in order to win via vision (maybe as a project instead?). But the founding of the visions themselves, need to be spread out amongst the various 1st and 2nd tier techs. One, it makes it hard to achieve the threshold with the extra competition (assuming that extra religions does indeed pollute the percent spread). But more importantly, it creates diplomatic considerations. In my test game, there were no worst enemies or other hindrances to trade and diplomacy. But in the end, you should not be able to win without building the Capitol from some late game tech. I'd also think about lowering the number of visions to something like 4 or 5 ...

Although, Coyote's Congress of Hope idea isn't bad either.

I will think about what else to add to Organized, so it is stronger. Any suggestions?

At least in my autorun games, the Fin/* players seem to win pretty often.

Keep in mind my limited experience. I have not actually played any Organized or Financial leader. My comments were based solely on reading the civilopedia and comparing the various traits.

There have been some votes for raising the barb XP cap and some votes for lowering it. I guess your key point is that the AI players don't send units out into the wilderness to level up, so they get behind. Maybe there is a way to lower the XP per barb so it takes more kills, or something else? Or do you feel strongly that the best approach is to lower the number of barbs?

Frankly, I don't like the idea of lowering the barb XP cap. My guess is you would get some flak from other players about that, as well. And it is possible that the change that you made to barb Animals will solve the problem. I understand why you upped the barb count for thematic reasons. And I totally agree with it.

But yes, I do feel strongly that there are too many barbs. Short of an SDK mod to teach the AI how to "level up", I'm not sure what can be done to fix the problem. Other than reducing the level from 3x to 2x. Although it would probably be better to play with the barb animal change first to verify that ...

So another possible solution is to add survivor upgrades to, for example, machine gun. That way it remains till after you have munitions hooked up. Would that help?

I like this option a lot better than just removing the Survivor to Guardian upgrade path. You solve Arkham's problem, yet the unit will eventually go away.

 

[davidlallen]

No, I like the Capitol building idea. It needs to be built in order to win via vision (maybe as a project instead?). But the founding of the visions themselves, need to be spread out amongst the various 1st and 2nd tier techs. One, it makes it hard to achieve the threshold with the extra competition (assuming that extra religions does indeed pollute the percent spread). But more importantly, it creates diplomatic considerations. In my test game, there were no worst enemies or other hindrances to trade and diplomacy. But in the end, you should not be able to win without building the Capitol from some late game tech. I'd also think about lowering the number of visions to something like 4 or 5 ...

This definitely bears further discussion. In version 0.6 I had the visions spread out among the techs, but it generated a lot of negative feedback. I tried and failed to make a link between these visions and government civics. You can see some discussion in this other thread. I want to model arguing over which capitol will become recognized, and having different techs generate these visions does not fit. What would you consider for different visions and their related techs?

Maybe I could lower the cost of *state* capitol a little, and add a second building to win, which can only be built with a late stage tech and a sufficient "lead" in vision percentage. When the second building starts construction, every player gets warned. Is that heading in the right direction?

 

[davidlallen]

But yes, I do feel strongly that there are too many barbs. Short of an SDK mod to teach the AI how to "level up", I'm not sure what can be done to fix the problem. Other than reducing the level from 3x to 2x. Although it would probably be better to play with the barb animal change first to verify that ...

You seem to be linking the barb spawn rate to "animals capturing cities". They aren't linked. Maybe I have missed your point?

The change to prevent animals from capturing cities is a trivial one, now that you suggested it, which you could also try out locally. Using a plain text editor, open Fury Road/Assets/XML/Units/CIV4UnitInfos.xml. Search for UNITCOMBAT_ANIMAL. Then underneath search for the line:

<bNoCapture>0</bNoCapture>

Change the zero to one. Repeat for each of the five animals. Now you will see in civilopedia that they cannot capture cities.

 

[Conroe]

You seem to be linking the barb spawn rate to "animals capturing cities". They aren't linked. Maybe I have missed your point?

No, I'm definitely not linking the two. The point that I was trying to make is that the animal fix should be tested before any change to the barb spawn rate. I'm speculating that the barb spawn rate is still going to be too high, even after the animal fix.

It goes back to this idea of why did I see so many barbs. Was it because 2 civs got knocked out in the first few turns leaving vast amounts of unsettled wasteland? Or is it just because there are way too many barbs in general? Its probably both, but I'm willing to keep an open mind about the whole issue. Lets play a game or two with the animal fix and see what conclusions surface ...

This definitely bears further discussion. ... ... I want to model arguing over which capitol will become recognized, and having different techs generate these visions does not fit.

Let's think about your "old west" analogy for a moment. The early settlers didn't build a capital and then decide to go petition congress for statehood. But rather this idea, or vision, of statehood spread amongst the people. And then a delegation was put together to petition congress. The state capital was most likely selected where the most vocal proponents happened to reside.

I think you've done a good job of modeling that in this mod. I just feel that it is backwards. The spread should happen before the capital is built. I think both requirements need to be met for a vision victory. The x% spread of the vision and the construction of the Capital. The visions should be founded early and the capital tech should be made available later.

It would also probably help to make foreign spread of a vision a bit more difficult. But I'm not sure if that is an XML thing or not.

I realize that the founding of the vision based upon tech can be rather anti-thematic. However it serves as convenient place holders to allow for the random spread amongst the various civs. It also serves to provide some antagonism amongst the civs that I think is missing in the mod.

 

[davidlallen]

Let's think about your "old west" analogy for a moment. The early settlers didn't build a capital and then decide to go petition congress for statehood. But rather this idea, or vision, of statehood spread amongst the people. And then a delegation was put together to petition congress. The state capital was most likely selected where the most vocal proponents happened to reside.

I am trying to model the "most likely selected" part, more than anything else. Basically, building the capitol is announcing that you want to compete. I am hoping that many civs will all build the capitol and fight it out for the right to be the real capitol. My goal for the "second" capitol building is to give more time for the other civs to realize the guy is about to win and take him down.

It would also probably help to make foreign spread of a vision a bit more difficult.

In 0.8 I have added a "decay" factor, which I believe gets at the same point. If you send an advocate to a foreign city and get your vision spread, it will decay if that isn't the state vision. After, probably 50 turns, it will be gone, faster if there is a city hall there. In addition, there are XML tags for the spread of religion; I can lower the numbers, so it will take more manual action by advocates to spread it.

I realize that the founding of the vision based upon tech can be rather anti-thematic. However it serves as convenient place holders to allow for the random spread amongst the various civs. It also serves to provide some antagonism amongst the civs that I think is missing in the mod.

I definitely agree about the antagonism, that was my original point. But I think the underlying point here is how many visions get founded. In vanilla, there is no question that 3-4 religions will be founded early on. It is literally a side effect of research, because the triggers are sprinkled among the early techs. I would also like 3-4 visions to get founded early on. I think my problem is that diplomacy is not valuable by itself and the capitol is expensive, so very few visions get founded. That is what I should try to address.

 

[KillerClowns]

After a few false starts, I've nearly finished my first "full" game. It's been great fun, I must say. I played as Hopeville, selected at random, and decided to focus on winning a Vision victory. The only war that occurred was when Aelwyn decided to wipe out the Aquarians. I was also planning to wipe out Fortress City (they weren't being a team players... wouldn't give me open border so I could send in my advocates), but something about the column of tanks on our mutual borders made him decide to become the New Republicans' vassal before I could "liberate" him. I'm not too far from getting the Vision victory.
One thing bugs me, though. From what I've seen, the AI isn't aggresive enough about spreading visions they found. Shortly after I converted most of the New Republicans to Democracy, Keith founded Technocracy, which has remained mostly the mumblings of a few political dissidents. Same story with the Amdahl and their Anarchism. Only Fortress City, a vassal state that I could easily devour were it not protected, has made any effort to slow me down in converting the world. Then again, I went down a difficulty level to get used to things; I intend to continue at my normal difficulty level for further games.
On the same note, there should be some way to be rid of rival visions. I haven't tried getting rid of them since, as I said, they aren't spreading quickly. Perhaps there already is, and I've simply missed it. If not, I propose that razing a capital permanently removes that vision from the game, leaving its followers neutral and convertable. This may not be possible, of course, in which case an inquisitor unit (the Secret Policeman or some such) might do.
The fuel mechanism works quite well, though. In one of my earlier games, I made a fool out of myself trying to rely only on rebuilt tanks. I've since learned my lesson. It's an interesting thing, having what is arguably the game's most powerful unit have such an achilles heel. Makes the tactic of razing enemy oil wells all the more realistic and purposeful.

 

[davidlallen]

After a few false starts, I've nearly finished my first "full" game. It's been great fun, I must say.

Glad you are finding it fun. Based on your comments it seems like the tuning we have done based on feedback from earlier versions is working. Some of the things earlier players got stuck on, like frequency of gas trucks, seem to be tuned right now.

From what I've seen, the AI isn't aggresive enough about spreading visions they found.

Definitely true. It is possible that some leaders are more interested in building advocates than others. I have yet to dig into which LH flags affect this, but once I find them I can bump up the importance of advocates.

On the same note, there should be some way to be rid of rival visions. I haven't tried getting rid of them since, as I said, they aren't spreading quickly. Perhaps there already is, and I've simply missed it. If not, I propose that razing a capital permanently removes that vision from the game, leaving its followers neutral and convertable. This may not be possible, of course, in which case an inquisitor unit (the Secret Policeman or some such) might do.

Similar discussion at various points of this thread and this thread. There is no complete solution yet, and it is definitely worth more discussion. In 0.8, visions will decay. You make a good point that razing a capitol should cause high decay (perhaps not "instant", but "high") of that vision. I was hoping spies could destroy a capitol, but apparently not. I may add an action for the advocate to do that, but then I need to figure out how to get the AI to do it also.

 

[Conroe]

It is possible that some leaders are more interested in building advocates than others. I have yet to dig into which LH flags affect this, but once I find them I can bump up the importance of advocates.

There are some "flavor" tags in the leader XML. Things like FLAVOR_MILITARY and FLAVOR_RELIGION. I'm not 100% certain, but I was under the impression these are what gave the AI its personality. In other words, those with a religious flavor were more likely to found a religion and send out Missionaries.


On a different note, I stumbled across this thread on thieves. It had some rather interesting ideas, most of which I'm sure you have already thought about. Some sort of thief, or scavenger, unit would really add to the flavor of this mod. That thread refers to gold, but I would think food would be in higher demand in post-apocalyptic world. Not sure if that is doable in XML, though.