RAND 1.76 Balancing and Suggestions

[Afforess]

I may have drawn too hard a line when I said I was unwilling to change things in respect to balancing. Now that all 4k of you have downloaded RAND 1.75, I'm curious about your current play strategies and what you have noticed as either too easy a way to win, or too hard, what the AI is poor at, and what you think is worthless. So if there are certain civics or buildings or units that you avoid, post them here, and why. I'm willing to release a balanced 1.76 mod, with minimal to no new features, but AI and balancing changes.

Post away!

 

[os79]

Great!

#1 I play with Conquest on only.
If AIs conquer enough and have right stuff for them, they tend to tech well and be militarily strong. But I was wondering if they understand my tactic of using suicidal units in my stacks? If they do, then that would be a terror. But don't be too fast to take my thoughts on this please. Too complex so just something to think about.

#2 There are few buildings that give commerce, and have maintenance costs (Paved Roads, Telephone Networks, and few others I forgot). Weird to give you gold but have maintenace too. Not serious enough to warrant urgent tweaks but something to think about. Reduce M-costs to 5%, maybe? Otherwise the gold partition of commerce would be in negative as it is now.

#3 Welfare Office's costs is too strong! 2 and 1 with 10% maintenance costs AND negative 10% gold?

Playing a very good game now. I'm now in middle of Modern Era and there are two strong AI and three middle AIs and few weak ones. My prediction is that I will finish them all off in late Transhuman era. That make for a very good game. The next game I will push up Flexible Difficulty to include Prince level .

PS: #4 And don't forget that Shale Plant (Japanese Coal Plant unique building) need to have one emplyed citizen too.

 

[os79]

One more thing:
Agent should not upgrade to Special Agent and Top Agent.

Reason:
I place a spy, and later on an agent, in every city for espionage self-defense. It is awkward to have Special Agents and then the Top Agent be used for this job.

 

[Planepimp]

Bring back the disabled units such as Bikes and Humvees. Also some of the old Fun options such as Sea monsters and stuff. As lonf as the latter are optional

 

[valrond]

Decrease the rate at which ships are lost in the sea. I've been losing a ship every 3-4 turns and it's not fun at all.

 

[Kiwan]

Hello!

Firstly, I would like to say I'm really impressed with the mod, and I've been enjoying playing it. So thank you for all the time you have put into it.

Secondly, could you reimplement whipping to complete structures/units etc? I admit that I have only just started playing AND so maybe this mechanic isn't necessary, but as an inexperienced AND player I thought it would be neat to be put in before you completely move to civ5. (this is probably more than a minimal feature, but it's worth a shot ) And, if you can't be bothered, at least remove the 'Whip Assistant' civilopedia entry under RoM concepts, and change the mouse pop-up in the city screen (where you are to whip citizens) to 'not available in AND', or something like that.

Cheers

 

[Madd_Mugsy]

I think it's weird how mech inf upgrade to tesla infantry, which aren't very good against vehicles (iirc). Maybe have them upgrade to Power armor infantry instead? This might also make more sense thematically as it portrays man's increasing reliance on machines.

The idea of tesla infantry seems too red alerty to me as well. I wouldn't oppose dropping them entirely

Also, could you perhaps add a way to disable Realistic Corporations? Forgive me if there's already a way to do this, I may have missed it.

 

[Afforess]

Also, could you perhaps add a way to disable Realistic Corporations? Forgive me if there's already a way to do this, I may have missed it.

It's a gameoption when setting up the map.

 

[os79]

Realistic Corporations is a Custom Game option.
Also in addition if you like it but dislike it establishing HQ automatically, you can disable that one thing in BUG options' tab called A New Dawn too.

 

[os79]

It's a gameoption when setting up the map.

Ninja'd by Afforess!

 

[Talin2009]

Ahh, glad to see Afforess turned his eye away from worthless Civ V back to us

On topic: In my current game i had stability problems and finally had to give power up to Mongkut due to change in leadership demand (it was like 20th time i killed rebels, but unstability in all cities was around 3000, and despite fact i was killing rebels fast cities kept staying in disorder for 4-7 turns, slowing me alot).

Luckily AI was handling my empire very well, traded few techs for declaring war on lesser civs on other side of continent, improving relations and even founded new city in not so bad location. All this while not having deity penalty for maintenance/happiness etc.

Anyhow, few things i noticed and think should be fixed:

AIs persuade other AIs into declaring war by trading them techs (and human player does same when persuading AI).

1) Why we don't have option when AI offers us to declare war on its enemies and give something meaningful instead with possibility of bargaining (imho that option should only be available when AI starts conversation) for techs, gold, units etc.
2) Workers trade exploit - AI offers to buy worker from you for 700 gold, in same dialogue you buy it back from him for 340, repeating it till AI is out of money. Take a look at this please.
3) Patrol units and managing stacks - India south of me is being crushed by mongols, having like 4 cities left with defence in capital 2 spearmen, 2 archers 1 axeman, While last 100 turns that war goes on, like 15 indian units wander aimlessly around my territory exploring and whatever else they doing. While they could make a good addition in time of war. So, the proposal is - when there is war AI should draw back their exploring units to make stronger stacks.
4) Trading cities - while there is an option for that and sometimes cities are highlighted white, computer NEVER trades cities, even if its 20000 miles away from their home. I think some thought should be made on this making it more useable than it is now.

 

[Asterix Rage]

My current game is set with "Raging Barbarians" and "Aggressive AI". Well, I get what I expected, a large among of barbarians and a discontinued harassment everywhere.

In this case, the expansion of the empire being so hard, the one owning the great wall (I do ) is the winner of the game for sure.
I suggest the option "Raging Barbarian" should come with something like "Barbarians lost half of the health when entering your territory" instead of to be prevented like usual.
I hope it makes sense...

---------------

By the way, I do believe AND worst to be properly finalised and even more...
Civ 0.5 being so ridiculous.

I suggest also that Afforess appears in the game as a great artist, a great scientist, or anyway a great something

 

[Afforess]

Great!

#1 I play with Conquest on only.
If AIs conquer enough and have right stuff for them, they tend to tech well and be militarily strong. But I was wondering if they understand my tactic of using suicidal units in my stacks? If they do, then that would be a terror. But don't be too fast to take my thoughts on this please. Too complex so just something to think about.

#2 There are few buildings that give commerce, and have maintenance costs (Paved Roads, Telephone Networks, and few others I forgot). Weird to give you gold but have maintenace too. Not serious enough to warrant urgent tweaks but something to think about. Reduce M-costs to 5%, maybe? Otherwise the gold partition of commerce would be in negative as it is now.

#3 Welfare Office's costs is too strong! 2 and 1 with 10% maintenance costs AND negative 10% gold?

Playing a very good game now. I'm now in middle of Modern Era and there are two strong AI and three middle AIs and few weak ones. My prediction is that I will finish them all off in late Transhuman era. That make for a very good game. The next game I will push up Flexible Difficulty to include Prince level .

PS: #4 And don't forget that Shale Plant (Japanese Coal Plant unique building) need to have one emplyed citizen too.

1.) They do. I watched my mother get streamrolled by a stack of 9 spearmen in the first 100 turns of one her games. The spearmen suicided the first 4 into the city defenses, then won every battle after that. The AI just doesn't like suiciding if the odds are really really low, and their stacks aren't big enough. You can fiddle with the BBAI settings in the global defines, and see what happens. I know there are settings that adjust this.

2.) Will definitely revisit those.

3.) I may use some of the new building maintenance tags instead of it's current malus. Thanks for bringing it up.

4.) Will fix that too.

One more thing:
Agent should not upgrade to Special Agent and Top Agent.

Reason:
I place a spy, and later on an agent, in every city for espionage self-defense. It is awkward to have Special Agents and then the Top Agent be used for this job.

What about placing a national limit on Special and Top Agents? Once you've maxed it out, the upgrade won't be possible.

Bring back the disabled units such as Bikes and Humvees. Also some of the old Fun options such as Sea monsters and stuff. As lonf as the latter are optional

Probably won't happen. Those units served no tactical purpose. If you can come up with a thought-provoking reason to include them again, I will consider it.

Decrease the rate at which ships are lost in the sea. I've been losing a ship every 3-4 turns and it's not fun at all.

I will take a look at those random events. Thanks for bringing it up.

Hello!

Firstly, I would like to say I'm really impressed with the mod, and I've been enjoying playing it. So thank you for all the time you have put into it.

Secondly, could you reimplement whipping to complete structures/units etc? I admit that I have only just started playing AND so maybe this mechanic isn't necessary, but as an inexperienced AND player I thought it would be neat to be put in before you completely move to civ5. (this is probably more than a minimal feature, but it's worth a shot ) And, if you can't be bothered, at least remove the 'Whip Assistant' civilopedia entry under RoM concepts, and change the mouse pop-up in the city screen (where you are to whip citizens) to 'not available in AND', or something like that.

Cheers

The AI handles whipping fairly poorly with citizens costing 3 food each, but I guess I can add it back. I'll probably discourage AI whipping a lot though.

I think it's weird how mech inf upgrade to tesla infantry, which aren't very good against vehicles (iirc). Maybe have them upgrade to Power armor infantry instead? This might also make more sense thematically as it portrays man's increasing reliance on machines.

The idea of tesla infantry seems too red alerty to me as well. I wouldn't oppose dropping them entirely

Yeah - I'm not a huge fan of a bunch of the late game stuff that came from RoM/Next-War, but I know a lot of people are. I'll take a second look at the late game upgrades, and make some decisions there.

Personally I use the No Future Era option.

Ahh, glad to see Afforess turned his eye away from worthless Civ V back to us

On topic: In my current game i had stability problems and finally had to give power up to Mongkut due to change in leadership demand (it was like 20th time i killed rebels, but unstability in all cities was around 3000, and despite fact i was killing rebels fast cities kept staying in disorder for 4-7 turns, slowing me alot).

Luckily AI was handling my empire very well, traded few techs for declaring war on lesser civs on other side of continent, improving relations and even founded new city in not so bad location. All this while not having deity penalty for maintenance/happiness etc.

Anyhow, few things i noticed and think should be fixed:

AIs persuade other AIs into declaring war by trading them techs (and human player does same when persuading AI).

1) Why we don't have option when AI offers us to declare war on its enemies and give something meaningful instead with possibility of bargaining (imho that option should only be available when AI starts conversation) for techs, gold, units etc.
2) Workers trade exploit - AI offers to buy worker from you for 700 gold, in same dialogue you buy it back from him for 340, repeating it till AI is out of money. Take a look at this please.
3) Patrol units and managing stacks - India south of me is being crushed by mongols, having like 4 cities left with defence in capital 2 spearmen, 2 archers 1 axeman, While last 100 turns that war goes on, like 15 indian units wander aimlessly around my territory exploring and whatever else they doing. While they could make a good addition in time of war. So, the proposal is - when there is war AI should draw back their exploring units to make stronger stacks.
4) Trading cities - while there is an option for that and sometimes cities are highlighted white, computer NEVER trades cities, even if its 20000 miles away from their home. I think some thought should be made on this making it more useable than it is now.

1.) I know I'd love this as well. I'll see how hard it is to add.

2.) You shouldn't be able to buy a unit back that you've sold, the AI should always say "You Must Be Joking". I believe I fixed this way back in 1.73

3.) Yes, I agree. I'll try to do that.

4.) It's hard to value a city in terms of techs and gold. It's almost never a good idea. If you came up with a good outline of when an AI should sell/buy a city, and how to properly value it, I would add it.

My current game is set with "Raging Barbarians" and "Aggressive AI". Well, I get what I expected, a large among of barbarians and a discontinued harassment everywhere.

In this case, the expansion of the empire being so hard, the one owning the great wall (I do ) is the winner of the game for sure.
I suggest the option "Raging Barbarian" should come with something like "Barbarians lost half of the health when entering your territory" instead of to be prevented like usual.
I hope it makes sense...

---------------

By the way, I do believe AND worst to be properly finalised and even more...
Civ 0.5 being so ridiculous.

I suggest also that Afforess appears in the game as a great artist, a great scientist, or anyway a great something

What if I made the Great Wall unconstructable with Raging Barbs?

 

[os79]

@Afforess
About Special Agent and Top Agent are already National Units. That's what I'm trying to say here. I can just click off auto-upgrade after spies upgrade to agents so no big deal .
Thanks for your thoughtful responses to first four comments . Yeah, sometimes it can be a bit hard to analyze how AI function, especially when I don't have that deep instinctive understanding like you do now .

 

[FoulFoot]

Some points that may or may not be directly part of AND:

1) I love Realistic Culture Spread, except it breaks down in two areas: when you capture a city / raze a city, the culture around it only reverts VERY slowly -- certainly, if a city's been razed, the victim's culture should disappear immediately; and secondly, Great Artist culture-bomb is currently ineffective against enemy culture, when it should shove their culture back as originally intended.

2) As mentioned in the bug thread, the AI has no idea what to do with Great Generals. In my opinion, it should use them in this order: 1) Military Instructors in ONE city that will specialize in military production, 2) once Heroic Epic is avail, use a GG to raise a unit to level 6 or higher so it can be built (ditto with West Point) in that specialist city (assuming a unit with level 6 is not already avail), 3) Only after a number of Instructors have been built (four? five?) should GG's be used as Warlords to lead an army.

3) Sort of a tangent on #2 above, there seems to be a problem with Dynamic XP. It's almost impossible to raise a unit naturally to level 6; once a unit hits 17 XP or so, the XP gain slows WAY down, and also has no bearing on what Advanced Combat Odds is telling you you'll get from a victory. I agree it should be progressively harder to gain levels (otherwise you end up with a FFH-type unit), but it shouldn't be as hard as it is to get to level 6.

4) I'm not sure the AI has any idea about Damaging Terrain. I enjoy having it on, as it increases the tactical advantage of deserts and mountains (which are otherwise worthless), but it's hindering the AI's assaults.

5) If you could think up an elegant solution to AI road-spam, you'd be a hero. I think the basics are already in there; only requiring a cart path (which is free) to link resources, and making other road types cost money; the AI should prioritize linking cities by the fastest road-type possible, and otherwise ignore roads (other than cart paths to resources). Maybe fast roads to critical resources like iron or coal. I'd remove the production bonus for placing a rail line on lumbermills; if you want, just give the production bonus automatically once Railroad is researched.

Foul

 

[Afforess]

Some points that may or may not be directly part of AND:

1) I love Realistic Culture Spread, except it breaks down in two areas: when you capture a city / raze a city, the culture around it only reverts VERY slowly -- certainly, if a city's been razed, the victim's culture should disappear immediately; and secondly, Great Artist culture-bomb is currently ineffective against enemy culture, when it should shove their culture back as originally intended.

2) As mentioned in the bug thread, the AI has no idea what to do with Great Generals. In my opinion, it should use them in this order: 1) Military Instructors in ONE city that will specialize in military production, 2) once Heroic Epic is avail, use a GG to raise a unit to level 6 or higher so it can be built (ditto with West Point) in that specialist city (assuming a unit with level 6 is not already avail), 3) Only after a number of Instructors have been built (four? five?) should GG's be used as Warlords to lead an army.

3) Sort of a tangent on #2 above, there seems to be a problem with Dynamic XP. It's almost impossible to raise a unit naturally to level 6; once a unit hits 17 XP or so, the XP gain slows WAY down, and also has no bearing on what Advanced Combat Odds is telling you you'll get from a victory. I agree it should be progressively harder to gain levels (otherwise you end up with a FFH-type unit), but it shouldn't be as hard as it is to get to level 6.

4) I'm not sure the AI has any idea about Damaging Terrain. I enjoy having it on, as it increases the tactical advantage of deserts and mountains (which are otherwise worthless), but it's hindering the AI's assaults.

5) If you could think up an elegant solution to AI road-spam, you'd be a hero. I think the basics are already in there; only requiring a cart path (which is free) to link resources, and making other road types cost money; the AI should prioritize linking cities by the fastest road-type possible, and otherwise ignore roads (other than cart paths to resources). Maybe fast roads to critical resources like iron or coal. I'd remove the production bonus for placing a rail line on lumbermills; if you want, just give the production bonus automatically once Railroad is researched.

Foul

1.) It's the way it works in BTS too. The victim's culture is saturated into the tiles, so even without the city, their hold on the land remains. I don't plan on changing the mechanic. If it really bothers you, use the Fixed Borders option, and claim the territory by force.

2.) The AI has no concept of a military production city. I have some ideas in this area, so we will see how things go.

3.) Dynamic XP should always give a minimum of 0.25 XP. Yes, it will slow way down for highly ranked units. It's not an ideal system, since it is too micro-scale, and doesn't see the battle as a whole. The real problem is that the game itself doesn't see battle as a whole either. A battle of two stacks is a human abstraction, not a real battle. The individual combat between your unit and the defender's best unit is all the game knows about. Anyway, I don't have any bright ideas on how to make it see the macro scale more easily.

At the very least though, it's not broken by any means. It works fine.

4.) It does, but the AI doesn't seem to care a lot.

5.) It'd be easy to code, but a pain for the AI. Again, with the whole AI can't see the big picture thing.

 

[Danwood]

i can't believe you are really doing that for us Affo !!

Well, i noticed global warming is totally disabled, i would like to see it back (the one from the GW mod ofc), maybe as a optional module

And flexible difficulty should be checked cause it may be not working as it should.

Other than these, the patch should be more on ablancing (as u said) and on STABILITY and details-refining


Go ahead with 1.76!

 

[Asterix Rage]

1.)

What if I made the Great Wall unconstructable with Raging Barbs?

That's a ridical idea but it sounds fair and probably easy to code.

 

[Littlemog]

I think in BTS the point of the great wall was that it would be effective for stopping small groups (barbs) but ineffective against a large army (other civs)

In history The Great Wall supposedly wasn't particularly effective even against invading nomads because of the men who guarded there often did actually let people through. Against an army it would probably only slow them down.

If there is opposition to getting rid of the Great Wall with Raging Barbs, perhaps there should be a roll when a barbarian tries to enter (like trying to enter Xenofungus in Alpha Centauri?). It won't look pretty but it might be an idea as an inbetween rather than getting rid of the Wall altogether. After all, raging barbs is when it's most useful!

I'd like the idea of the Wall hindering other nations (with a roll again perhaps, or damage as previously suggested) but also if the wall could be damaged, and you'd have to send a worker to repair it? I don't know how well this would work, as it's on the edge of a tile. This would also require a recalculation as to the behavior of the wall - it should hinder barbs getting past the wall, not just into your culture, making the choice of when to build it more strategic (build new cities outside at your risk! )

 

[Talin2009]

4.) It's hard to value a city in terms of techs and gold. It's almost never a good idea. If you came up with a good outline of when an AI should sell/buy a city, and how to properly value it, I would add it.

I'll think about it, in the meanwhile i have following ideas for city trading:

there should be value formula of particular city which would include:

distance from palace (overseas colonies)
maintenance cost vs reseach-gold it gives (probably only in case of high maintenance for far away cities)
nearby resource it provides and uniqueness of it
stability
nationality
amount of buildings and overall infrastructure around it

I agree with you that almost always it's bad option to trade cities but sometimes it is wiser to not keep it being unable to defend (when warring opponent on other side of continent, AI often just raze that city instead of capturing it and trading/giving to friendly AI, who lost it couple turns ago (this is just an example))