Several questions and issues

[necxelos]

Hello everyone.

I just came back for more C2C testing (I played something like 2.4 last time) and as allways I found out few strange things, few glitches (I love glitches ) and few problems (things I don't understand which could use some help). So here's the list.

Graphical glitches:
I. Flying animals have low fixed "height", which means they are barely seen through the trees (I believe this one is an old problem).
II. Storms over land (one of the BUG options I use) have bad habit of covering up units under them, I mean completely. Looks like for the terrain the rain texture is transparent OK, but for units, resource and other models it's not. This brings many problems when fighting (I don't see what is going on in the storm).
III. Some of units (mostly animals but some player-owned units like prehistoric scouts) there are no fight animation. Again the problem is not seeing how much the unit is actually doing except for the final result of the encounter.

Difficulty level questions:
a) Are the C2C difficulty levels the same as in clean Civ IV or are AI/cheating drastically improved?
b) Is the AI cheating and if Yes my question is how exactly (more gold, faster teching, etc.)?
I'm playing on Prince difficulty level (as I allways did in Civ IV) and from the very beginning I'm completely overwhelmed by enemies (pointswise) to the point where me and worst AI are at around 350-400 points (right now - end of Ancient Era) and another 5 AI enemies are at 600-650 points. Also I did manage to build only 2 wonders, all other were build first by AI, same for religion (I luckily found 1 religion after trying like 5 before with zero result).
c) I believe that not all traits are "balanced" (and I don't even know if they were intended to be). I believe leaders with traits that give negative "relations" bonus like "megalomaniac" changes the difficulty drastically (because after few turns of knowing other civilization the just hate you so mich that they start war). I understant that Hitler and Napoleon should be the ones that force aggressive play-style but early engagements give nothing anyway.

Diplomacy/War/AI issues and strange things:
1) The AI seems to treat religion techs value as 0 (which is good) and don't want to trade them (also gives them for free with no problem via "spare for the good friend" option) BUT sometimes the want the religion tech from me as a part of exchange. Why is that? Do the AI want them just for points sometimes? Is giving this techs for free helping relations at all (if they are completely useless AI should ignore "gift" as well instead of thanking me)?
2) Why does AI start war "just for the heck of it"? My enemy (example) started war without attacking me at all (he have not enough army to even make me laugh - they just stay under my city, that's all). Which brings me to another question - strongly connected - what was the idea behind early engagements balance in C2C? At this point I believe the cities are undefeatable (damage per turn to attackers via tower + insane defensive bonuses + only the wall bonus can be destroyed by rams + zero units with strong bonuses against cities [the maceman doesn't count - their 50% is a joke compared to the defensive bonuses of other units]).
3) Question connected to the one before - how does one actually play military style in early game? Maybe I do something wrong (I try countering specific units, I allways do my best to have 2 types of cavalry which is what I love about subduing animals btw. - You can have bizon/elephant resource without working tile with it) but I can't find a way to successfully attack defending enemy units and cities. This game allways needed christmas-tree-style-of army ergo quantity > quality but right now it seems to me that to attack another player the only way to go is having AT LEAST triple his army. All the defensive bonuses in game completely overwhelm the offensive ones. One archer unit on the hill with forest can kill 3-4-5-maybe more melee units coming their way while healing at the same time. This is insane.

That's all for now (I seem to start work soon) but I'll be glad to post new things as I progress through the game. Thanks in advance for all the great answers - I look forward to reading them when I come back

 

[Hydromancerx]

Graphical glitches:
I. Flying animals have low fixed "height", which means they are barely seen through the trees (I believe this one is an old problem).
II. Storms over land (one of the BUG options I use) have bad habit of covering up units under them, I mean completely. Looks like for the terrain the rain texture is transparent OK, but for units, resource and other models it's not. This brings many problems when fighting (I don't see what is going on in the storm).
III. Some of units (mostly animals but some player-owned units like prehistoric scouts) there are no fight animation. Again the problem is not seeing how much the unit is actually doing except for the final result of the encounter.

I. Hmm, they should be on the ground. Some are just short/small.

II. That has been around since RoM/AND. I suspect the rain is just not transparent and thus hides the unit on it. I have no idea how to fix that.

III. This is the nature of adding new units. Since none of us know how to animate units the best we can do is add the mesh of a unit. Personally for me I have attack animations off so I don't see any unit attack anyways.

 

[necxelos]

I. Hmm, they should be on the ground. Some are just short/small.

Yes, they are on the ground. The problems is that flying birds are "one the ground" as well.

III. This is the nature of adding new units. Since none of us know how to animate units the best we can do is add the mesh of a unit. Personally for me I have attack animations off so I don't see any unit attack anyways.

I tested transhuman era too and units I've seen have proper animations (all the robo-techno--stuff making a massacre through the machine gun and so on). Actually I believe only 1/10 of all the units in game now are the ones from clean Civ IV and only few have no animations (animals mostly)...

Anyway this was just issues I found - most important part are further in my post

 

[Yudishtira]

Difficulty level questions:
a) Are the C2C difficulty levels the same as in clean Civ IV or are AI/cheating drastically improved?
b) Is the AI cheating and if Yes my question is how exactly (more gold, faster teching, etc.)?
I'm playing on Prince difficulty level (as I allways did in Civ IV) and from the very beginning I'm completely overwhelmed by enemies (pointswise) to the point where me and worst AI are at around 350-400 points (right now - end of Ancient Era) and another 5 AI enemies are at 600-650 points. Also I did manage to build only 2 wonders, all other were build first by AI, same for religion (I luckily found 1 religion after trying like 5 before with zero result).
c) I believe that not all traits are "balanced" (and I don't even know if they were intended to be). I believe leaders with traits that give negative "relations" bonus like "megalomaniac" changes the difficulty drastically (because after few turns of knowing other civilization the just hate you so mich that they start war). I understant that Hitler and Napoleon should be the ones that force aggressive play-style but early engagements give nothing anyway.

I can't be sure, but I would confidently state that C2C difficulty levels are easier than BtS. The proviso, of course, is that C2C has its whole own learning curve, so an eg. Monarch BtS player may have to start C2C on Noble or something to learn the new ropes.

It doesn't worry me whether traits are balanced or not. And when I need to take or raze cities in the early Classical (I may never have done it before that), I am generally able to 'muddle through'.

Diplomacy/War/AI issues and strange things:
2) Why does AI start war "just for the heck of it"? My enemy (example) started war without attacking me at all (he have not enough army to even make me laugh - they just stay under my city, that's all). Which brings me to another question - strongly connected - what was the idea behind early engagements balance in C2C? At this point I believe the cities are undefeatable (damage per turn to attackers via tower + insane defensive bonuses + only the wall bonus can be destroyed by rams + zero units with strong bonuses against cities [the maceman doesn't count - their 50% is a joke compared to the defensive bonuses of other units]).

There are still faults in the AI, but that's true for any version of Civ4 - and probably ever other game as well. It's getting better, and the more obvious faults will be the first to disappear - if they haven't already!

Anyway, you know about the defensive advantages. If the AI could goad you into being the one attacking, it would get itself all those advantages. It's not a bad strategy if it works, and forms part of a good strategy for the human player too.

 

[Koshling]

Difficulty level questions:
a) Are the C2C difficulty levels the same as in clean Civ IV or are AI/cheating drastically improved?

We generally recommend playing 2 difficulty levels higher than you would play vanilla BtS. This is mostly because the factors the AI gets advantages on (see below) are slightly less important in C2C than in vanilla, and partly due to the extra complexity (which humans will adapt to better than the AI)

b) Is the AI cheating and if Yes my question is how exactly (more gold, faster teching, etc.)?

It 'cheats' exactly as much as it does in BtS vanilla, which is to say that AI players are always playing on 'Noble', so if you play at a higher difficulty than that, the AI will have production modifiers and so on that are better than yours. HOWEVER, it does not cheat in any other way - it only has access to the same information you do (visibility etc.), and has no bonuses in combat. Each difficulty level defines modifiers for tech rate, production rate, worker build rate, etc. and all of these go up (or down as appropriate) with each difficulty level step.

Diplomacy/War/AI issues and strange things:
1) The AI seems to treat religion techs value as 0 (which is good) and don't want to trade them (also gives them for free with no problem via "spare for the good friend" option) BUT sometimes the want the religion tech from me as a part of exchange. Why is that? Do the AI want them just for points sometimes? Is giving this techs for free helping relations at all (if they are completely useless AI should ignore "gift" as well instead of thanking me)?

That's (probably) been addressed for V29, but in V28 the AI sometimes gets the value of dead-end religious techs wrong, and it always values them as worth at least 1 point, so if it's trying to create a 'maximized' deal it may throw it in.

2) Why does AI start war "just for the heck of it"? My enemy (example) started war without attacking me at all (he have not enough army to even make me laugh - they just stay under my city, that's all). Which brings me to another question - strongly connected - what was the idea behind early engagements balance in C2C? At this point I believe the cities are undefeatable (damage per turn to attackers via tower + insane defensive bonuses + only the wall bonus can be destroyed by rams + zero units with strong bonuses against cities [the maceman doesn't count - their 50% is a joke compared to the defensive bonuses of other units]).

Usually that happens due to behind-scenes diplomacy between AIs, where one that is more immediately competing with you talks another into declaring war on you. However, it's an area of the AI I want to do some work on at some point, because these across-the-world declarations really don't make much sense in eras where power cannot meaningfully be projected.

3) Question connected to the one before - how does one actually play military style in early game? Maybe I do something wrong (I try countering specific units, I allways do my best to have 2 types of cavalry which is what I love about subduing animals btw. - You can have bizon/elephant resource without working tile with it) but I can't find a way to successfully attack defending enemy units and cities. This game allways needed christmas-tree-style-of army ergo quantity > quality but right now it seems to me that to attack another player the only way to go is having AT LEAST triple his army. All the defensive bonuses in game completely overwhelm the offensive ones. One archer unit on the hill with forest can kill 3-4-5-maybe more melee units coming their way while healing at the same time. This is insane.

The answer to this depends somewhat on what game options you have. In particular do you have great commanders and/or surround&destroy on? For me (I have both turned on) the answer is:

• Siege units (even early ones like battering rams)
• Range units to soften the enemy up (if you have archer bombard turned on [BUG option] that also applies early on, and is effective certainly with archers)
• A well trained great commander (this is the biggest way to amplify your attack at one particular point, such was when taking a city). Generally you can generate a great general fairly early via hunting activities (if you have the game option 'barbarian generals'), and turning him into a great commander and staking him with a small hunting stack to exp up on animals leads to an effective commander by the time you are seriously into wars.
• Use surround tactics to improve your chances. If you have mounted units those are fantastic for this (especially with a speed and/or commando promotion), because you can move them to a surrounding position (without using all movement points), make your attack (with other units), then move them back to defensive positions all within single turn.

 

[necxelos]

The answer to this depends somewhat on what game options you have. In particular do you have great commanders and/or surround&destroy on? For me (I have both turned on) the answer is:

• Siege units (even early ones like battering rams)
• Range units to soften the enemy up (if you have archer bombard turned on [BUG option] that also applies early on, and is effective certainly with archers)
• A well trained great commander (this is the biggest way to amplify your attack at one particular point, such was when taking a city). Generally you can generate a great general fairly early via hunting activities (if you have the game option 'barbarian generals'), and turning him into a great commander and staking him with a small hunting stack to exp up on animals leads to an effective commander by the time you are seriously into wars.
• Use surround tactics to improve your chances. If you have mounted units those are fantastic for this (especially with a speed and/or commando promotion), because you can move them to a surrounding position (without using all movement points), make your attack (with other units), then move them back to defensive positions all within single turn.

Great suggestions (thanks ) but I'd like a little information about Your points:

- Surround&Destroy - I have this turned on but I don't understand how it works. Well, ok I understand the idea (some bonuses for attacking from few tiles not just christmas-tree-type-stacking) but what are the numbers behind? Could you please give an algorithm? What bonus exactly I will have from this AND will those be computed in "unit win chance" in-game?

- Archer Bombard - I don't have this and don't remember this option at all. How it works? Is it something like Civilization V archers (ergo attacking without being attacked back)? And does it work for all "ranged" units? If yes - that would be the answer to my problems, at least partially...

- Barbarian Generals - What this exactly does?

 

[sp00n]

Archer Bombard enables certain units to perform ranged attacks, similar to siege weapons. They won't reduce defenses, but can damage units within a city (although you should bring quote some of them, as the chance to hit can be pretty low sometimes).

Barbarian Generals will allow you to collect Great General points from attacking animals and barbarians (and will allow barbs to have generals as well) instead of only from battles with other civilizations.

The S&D bonus is clearly visible in the attack tooltip.

 

[MaXimillionZero]

HOWEVER, it does not cheat in any other way - it only has access to the same information you do (visibility etc.), and has no bonuses in combat.

Doesn't BtS AI see a tile or two further into the fog than the player?

 

[Hydromancerx]

I tested transhuman era too and units I've seen have proper animations (all the robo-techno--stuff making a massacre through the machine gun and so on). Actually I believe only 1/10 of all the units in game now are the ones from clean Civ IV and only few have no animations (animals mostly)...

Anyway this was just issues I found - most important part are further in my post

We are mostly limited to what units the CFC community makes. Since no one on our team can animate, the animals we pull from Zoo Tycoon 2 are left without animations. I also made some other custom units, which have no animations. Ex. Orthopter, Da Vinci Tank, Log Ram, etc.

However ones with only texture changes I was able to keep their animations such as; Police Car, Police Mech, Hi-Tech Marine, etc. So yeah a majority of the units are taken from the CFC download database and not made by the C2C Team. Which is why there are only a few (mostly animals) without animations.

Personally I think animations are overrated.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I can tell you a few things about S&D.

1. The strongest unit of yours or your team (and by this I mean team as setup at game start, not vassals) that are adjacent to the defender in different tiles to the attacking unit offers support to the attacking unit by adding a bonus combat % modifier to the battle.
   
   
2. Generally the further away that the supporting unit is from the attacker, the stronger the modifier, thus if you get a surround supporting unit on the opposite side of the defender, you'll have a stronger modifier from that support than you will if the supporting unit is right next to your attacker as well as the defender.
   
   
3. Each tile adjacent to the defender can offer additional surround support but only the strongest unit in a given adjacent plot will be evaluated as the supporting unit from that direction.
   
   
4. The stronger the support unit in comparison to the defending unit (evaluated as if the supporter were attacking the defender) the stronger the support it will offer. Thus, for example, a mounted surround support would not be as effective in providing support for the attacker against a spearmen unit as an axemen unit would be.
   
   
5. Generally the maximum amount of support you can accumulate is a 60% total combat modifier for the attacker.
   
   
6. There are new tags soon to go into play that will manipulate all these rules for your units. Watch for them

 

[zeinul]

You is getting better and better. I haven't played it for a month and it got some much better.
I think AI needs to be tweaked. For example lots of small AI's should somehow merge into bigger AI. For example, the small and midsize AIs should be more active in conquering neighbors. Right now they are in semi-permanent war, but rarely conquer any city.

 

[Koshling]

Doesn't BtS AI see a tile or two further into the fog than the player?

No it doesn't. Well, strictly there is ONE special case where it sees an extra tile, which is when it has a SoD on the way to attack a city it gets a clear view of the city from 2 tiles away regardless of other factors, but that's the only time.