Policies

[Thalassicus]

To add another caveat... I'd like to avoid combat bonuses. Combat is so easy I've been trying to shift away from bonuses in combat, and instead emphasize post-victory rewards or non-combat effects that benefit warmongers.

 

[Seek]

One thing I've noticed post-patch is that barbs no longer refortify themselves in camps like previously, so they're slightly tougher to route.

However, a couple deas for Honor:
Double gold for clearing an encampment
+1 Healing for cities with a Barracks

-—-

Maybe it's the "newness" factor, but I quite like the new Tradition and Liberty trees. I'd suggest we leave them as is and discuss it later after we've gained some more experience with them.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'm relatively happy with liberty/tradition now but not the bizzare +2 in the Tradition tree. It's really out of place to have such an ICS-friendly effect in a small empire tree. I moved it to Republic as +1 (in the tree it originally was in these mods) and replaced it with a minor science bonus on Landed Elite.

Other than that, I'll be keeping the two trees as-is and focus work on the Honor tree.

 

[juckie]

To add another caveat... I'd like to avoid combat bonuses. Combat is so easy I've been trying to shift away from bonuses in combat to other sorts of rewards or effects.

However, a couple deas for Honor:
Double gold for clearing an encampment
+1 Healing for cities with a Barracks

Double gold takes some uniqueness out of Askia's triple gold.
Healing in a city is already 3, I think that more healing would not be that more usefull.


Maybe a production bonus to the nearest city? A pillage bonus, so to say, similar to that of clearing forests.

Enslave the camps denizens for:
-a worker (with a 33% slower workrate)
- in the nearest city with a coliseum or the capital
- 50% food bucket fill in the nearest city

+2/5/10/20/35/55/80 beakers (based on era) for clearing a camp.

 

[Thalassicus]

Maybe a production bonus to the nearest city? A pillage bonus, so to say, similar to that of clearing forests.

I really like this looting/scavenging concept! It's also similar to the Aztec sacrificial captives trait. There had been a lot of discussion about ideas like this in the warmongers thread but somehow it never dawned on me to do a non-culture effect.

I think this is perfect and I'll put it at the top of my todo list for the 5.x testing phase. I don't believe it's possible to detect when a camp is cleared, but I can do it for all combat. The effect could be something along the lines of . . .

• Loot from battlefield victories gives a small Production boost to your cities.

So like, if you kill an X unit and have 4 cities, you scavenge X/4 to each of the 4 cities.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

...When the AI marches a trebuchet out into the front lines...

It's even worse when they not only go past there lines, but behind yours. I had a city was wasn't defended by melee units because they were at another city, and instead of the cannon they brought to it parking in range of the city and firing it moved closer and then around it, and spend three turns moving behind the city.

 

[Sneaks]

A few thoughts:

The idea of per kill seems disjointed but potentially enjoyable. Not entirely sure if it is the best approach yet.

As for the +2 for Landed Elite: after getting a few games in, I have to say that I really enjoy this policy for tall empires. The extra 2 makes the 15% boost even better, and helps Tradition users outpace their Liberty counterparts in population per city. I would keep it in.

 

[Thalassicus]

The reason I'm excited is looting is the same concept I mentioned in the leaders thread. I think most people feel combat is already rather easy. I've seen several opinions stating combat bonuses like the Honor barbarian boost can reduce fun in the game since it makes combat even easier. By shifting away from in-combat benefits and emphasizing victory rewards:

• Increases the challenge of fighting barbarians
• Balances it with a better reward

The looting idea is the best one I've seen in months for the honor opener, so it's at least worth a try.

• Realism: It represents scavenged swords, arrows, cannon, armored vehicles, and so on. There's been looting on most of history's battlefields.
• Gameplay: Helps steamroll early opponents by speeding up production from successful victories.

My concern about a flat per-city bonus in the Tradition tree is the risk of making Tradition good for wide empires too. Human players can pick and choose from both trees while AI's are blocked from doing so (and probably couldn't choose intelligently even if we unblocked it).

 

[rhammer640]

Thal, if ppl are complaining in general about combat being too easy because of boosts maybe it would make sense to implement an idea i saw floating around here (not sure who mentioned it) to increase AI combat bonus vs Human at higher dificulties (emperor, immortal, deity). This would make it so those on lower difficulties would still be able to get combat bonuses to help them out in combat where those on higher difficulties could get them to help offset an AI bonus. This also would help make up for the AI being bad at tactics on higher levels.

 

[SlightlyMad]

I really like the looting idea! The tough part will be making it large enough to be noticeable, but small enough that it doesn't fuel a steamroll for complete military conquest where you're just pumping out new units like mad. Then again, if it goes to the nearest city, these are likely to be border or newly-conquered cities, which are rarely going to be production powerhouses.

 

[Ahriman]

increase AI combat bonus vs Human at higher dificulties (emperor, immortal, deity).

As a player at these difficulties I would find this incredibly frustrating.

I would be very annoyed if a no-promotion AI rifleman was better than my no-promotion rifleman. It would just feel like blatant cheating.

I think its far better to give the AI free promotions/free experience than to give them straight outright bonuses.

Looting idea seems ok, no objections. But again, other than the unlock (and parameter tweaking) I'd keep the Honor policies as they are, I don't think they're broken.

I also think its wrong to say "combat is easy, so don't give combat bonuses, give economy bonuses instead".
Economy bonuses let you build a bigger/more advanced military, so they also make combat easier.
There is definitely a place for direct combat bonuses, such as through the Discipline effect.

 

[SlightlyMad]

Yeah, there's actually some pretty good balance going on between units, like pikemen/nights and so on, and giving straight combat bonuses could really disrupt that sort of thing. I wouldn't be entirely opposed to giving all AI units a free promotion when they're built for +strength on open terrain though, since that would limit the damage caused by their tendency to march units right into a killing field.

 

[Sneaks]

The reason I'm excited is looting is the same concept I mentioned in the leaders thread. I think most people feel combat is already rather easy. I've seen several opinions stating combat bonuses like the Honor barbarian boost can reduce fun in the game since it makes combat even easier. By shifting away from in-combat benefits and emphasizing victory rewards:

• Increases the challenge of fighting barbarians
• Balances it with a better reward

The looting idea is the best one I've seen in months for the honor opener, so it's at least worth a try.

• Realism: It represents scavenged swords, arrows, cannon, armored vehicles, and so on. There's been looting on most of history's battlefields.
• Gameplay: Helps steamroll early opponents by speeding up production from successful victories.

My concern about a flat per-city bonus in the Tradition tree is the risk of making Tradition good for wide empires too. Human players can pick and choose from both trees while AI's are blocked from doing so (and probably couldn't choose intelligently even if we unblocked it).

If there is a lot of concern about Tradition vs Liberty, I think it would not be totally unreasonable to make the 2 mutually exclusive or remove the AI's limitation. As i mentioned elsewhere, I would also like to see the Liberty/Autocracy exclusion removed, as it makes no sense in terms of gameplay, even if branch names are opposites.

 

[SlightlyMad]

If there is a lot of concern about Tradition vs Liberty, I think it would not be totally unreasonable to make the 2 mutually exclusive or remove the AI's limitation. As i mentioned elsewhere, I would also like to see the Liberty/Autocracy exclusion removed, as it makes no sense in terms of gameplay, even if branch names are opposites.

That's an extremely interesting idea, but could be crippling since you often don't know what you'll be doing at the time of the first policy choice (often in the first few turns when you've hardly explored anything if you pop a goody hut next to your capital). I'd hate to choose Liberty and suddenly find out that I'm penned-in on some tiny peninsula.

 

[Ahriman]

and giving straight combat bonuses could really disrupt that sort of thing

Especially when combat results are highly non-linear as you move away from equivalence.

I wouldn't be entirely opposed to giving all AI units a free promotion when they're built for +strength on open terrain though

I wouldn't want to make it a straight open terrain bonus.
I would want it to be a free promotion of the AI's choice (ie; just like when you level-up a unit). Some units would get open terrain, some rough terrain. Just giving +free xp to all AI units would have a similar effect.

If there is a lot of concern about Tradition vs Liberty, I think it would not be totally unreasonable to make the 2 mutually exclusive or remove the AI's limitation. As i mentioned elsewhere, I would also like to see the Liberty/Autocracy exclusion removed, as it makes no sense in terms of gameplay, even if branch names are opposites.

I'd have no objection to this. Wide-civ blocks Tall-civ, Science blocks Militarism.

 

[rhammer640]

Especially when combat results are highly non-linear as you move away from equivalence.


I wouldn't want to make it a straight open terrain bonus.
I would want it to be a free promotion of the AI's choice (ie; just like when you level-up a unit). Some units would get open terrain, some rough terrain. Just giving +free xp to all AI units would have a similar effect.


I'd have no objection to this. Wide-civ blocks Tall-civ, Science blocks Militarism.

The free promotion is fine by me and in all honesty is pretty much the same as giving them a % bonus already, but if ppl like the free promotion better thats cool. The fact is a good players pikeman is not the same as the AI's due to the human players better ability to use the terrain to their advantage. Giving them a free promotion would help to balance this to help make combat more of a challenge.

Also i would be in favor of making them mutually exclusive, especially because of all the buffs they have gotten, having things from both can get really good.

 

[Thalassicus]

I also think its wrong to say "combat is easy, so don't give combat bonuses, give economy bonuses instead".
Economy bonuses let you build a bigger/more advanced military, so they also make combat easier.
There is definitely a place for direct combat bonuses, such as through the Discipline effect.

This is what I do have in mind, with one added point: I'd say winning a war against the AI is easier than keeping up economically with an AI. By shifting bonuses from an easy area of the game to a hard one, it should in theory make the game more challenging... that's the goal at least. It also helps develop more synergy between the various parts of the game.

About tradition vs liberty, as a matter of preference I like A more than B:

• Undesirable to invest in both.
• Blocked from investing in both by a rule.

With option A the player can still do both if they really want to, it's just not a good idea in most situations. Method B limits our options.


Free experience for AI units would be easy to do, and easy to scale with difficulty, if that seems like an acceptable idea. Promotions are harder to create and apply to units, and lack the fine-tune control.

 

[SlightlyMad]

Yeah, I think free XP is the way to go. When you look at any human player's army, you'll rarely see a unit with fewer than two promotions, and by late-game their armies will be mostly made up of units with four or more. Look at an AI army, and they frequently have none or very few. The player is better at preserving his units, and much better at pro-actively leveling them up (by hunting barbarians, or choosing which unit to use in a fight). Giving the AI free XP would at least help out with that inequity.

 

[rhammer640]

Maybe at king it could be a flat rate per unit, at emperor it could scale slightly per era, and for immortal and emperor it could scale at a greater rate with a higher base rate or somethign to represent the human player ability to keep units alive longer with more promotions, etc.

 

[Thalassicus]

I could do something like:

00.0 xp/era - Prince
02.5 xp/era - King
05.0 xp/era - Emperor
07.5 xp/era - Immortal
10.0 xp/era - Deity


Levels are:

00 xp - Level 1
15 xp - Level 2
30 xp - Level 3
60 xp - Level 4


So the Medieval units of an Emperor AI would start with the equivalent of a free barracks' worth of experience. There's an "event" that happens whenever units are created, so it's easy to link whatever we want to this. It'd be a simple combination of:

• Event
• Check if AI
• Check difficulty
• Check era
• Give experience