And the point that we're making is that this isn't necessarily true, if changes are made in a way that is sensitive to the limitations of the AI.
good thing the person I responded to actually read/quoted the next thing I said.
Actually it does. Try it. For example, in vanilla Civ Maritime city states are ridiculously powerful, but the AI doesn't always realize that. So the human can get a huge advantage by investing in them. In a mod where Maritime city states are less powerful, investing in MarCSs is not a no-brainer decision, the playing field is more level and gameplay is much improved. The human is "forced" to act more like the AI (who doesn't always grab the MarCSs) because now it isn't always a good strategy to devote your gold to them.
Actually, you just proved my point. You suggest that AIs don't know why Maritime CSs are strong, and advocate ruining them for the human player instead of fixing them. They aren't *that* powerful, but I see AIs making them allies a lot more than making militaristic civs allies. That's from experience, not from code, so take it for what it's worth. So that tells me that the AI might still utilize CSs somewhat. So, instead of forcing the human player to act like the pathetic AI, maybe we do some work on the AI instead? just a thought.
Many of the balance mods (VEM for example) remove the ridiculous AI happiness and food bonuses that exist on the higher difficulty levels.
The game remains hard on high difficulty levels because many of the tricks and semi-exploits that let the player win are weakened too.
Perhaps you should try some of these balance mods before declaring that they can't really make the game better?
Here's the problem: The AI is given the 'ridiculous' AI happiness and food bonuses for a reason. (really though, the mass gold ones are worse) It's to cover over issues with the 'AI' programming. SO making changes to that annoyance, without fixing the real issues, means you're just shifting the problem somewhere else, not balancing it. Just messing with the human players use of the real game does not a 'balance' mod make.
Maybe it's just my understanding of what 'balance' means vs some peoples opinion of just forcing the player to act badly to ensure the AI isn't at much of a disadvantage that's at issue. Random thought, that.
Oh, and you should check my blog for fresh ideas. I actually think there's stuff that needs balance and there's appropriate ways to do it. I also expect that the AI needs a major overhaul to actually provide competition to the player. Then again, MP is a a better choice for balance questions.
Basically. The current AI doesn't generally play TOWARDS any goal at all, but the practical effect of its semi-randomness is to move it towards a higher effectiveness. The closest it comes to long-term planning are the "Grand Strategy" AI flags, which basically translate as "which victory condition are you working towards?", and the Economic Strategy flags for the critical short-term stuff ("needs workers", "has enough units"). This sort of setup can be expanded with very little modification to develop more coherent long-term strategies for the AI.
This can be fixed fairly easily once the .dll is out. Yes, I expect someone with real experience to do it, but then again, I didn't expect much from Firaxis when Sid made comments about how stupid the 'AI' should be.
This is why I mentioned working [...] The devs, obviously, agreed since they implemented those XML fixes into a subsequent patch without any apparent change to the underlying code.
Amusingly, ICS for civ 5 came out of watching the AI settler spam all over the map. Including locations that the player couldn't possibly settle. The AI does it so much better than anyone else. Even with the changes, the AI is still better than the player at ICS, and yes, it still does it.
No one is taking anything away from stuff Thal and some others have done. Then again, some of it was obvious and from Civ 4 in the first place. But that's a totally different discussion.
Given that, no one can seriously claim that balance can't be improved without a DLL change, since this has already happened. So why is it so hard to believe that there might be more changes like this that can improve the balance even further?
Minor changes are minor. That's obvious. Real changes require more.
To make the existing AI really function better, yes. However, to "add" AI (for example, forcing the AI to do a particular beeline that Deity players have identified) is just as easy to code with Lua as C++. It's difficult programming, no doubt. But if no one is interested in doing this programming in Lua (where it is possible) then I have little confidence that someone is going to do it in C++ when the dll is out.
I'm less concerned with doing what Firaxis did and more likely to implement something better.
As per Lua vs. C++ -- I know more C++ Computational Intelligence programmers than Lua programmers. (and since the former group is small, the latter must be worse) C++ is more robust than Lua, and realistically, a real programming language. (hence the core is still C++, not Lua) But then again, I'm biased.
It would be nice if some of the Deity players (MadDjinn and others that post a lot in the strategy forums) tried out some of the more developed "balance" mods. These are the folks that would be the very best testers -- zeroing in on "metagaming" tricks (or "exploits" or whatever you want to call them) where the human can do it but the AI doesn't compete. There are many examples where the AI really just doesn't even play. In Civ4, you could be hugely behind and catch up by tech brokering.
Check my blog... There's stuff there that I absolutely consider issues. But here's some issues that you can't fix with Lua:
removing the minimal one damage from ranged or other attacks closes loopholes and balances combat a bit more. This is something that human players use a lot, but the AI doesn't quite consider.
That's something that needs balance, and I support it. Can you fix that with just Lua/XML? I don't think so. (not without a small change to the AI to stop trying to attack units/cities where it can't actually do damage).
By the way, that's something else the AI sucks at: adding 'extra' attacks on cities/etc when they do zero damage.
Here's one I discovered recently: the AI won't hook up his water-based Oil deposits. Ever. [...]
It's obviously a bug. [...]
I make fun of my CS ally (and therefore the AI) in my recent England LP on Youtube for exactly this issue. It's a bug, not a mod requirement.
In the same vein, the AI will not use land ranged units (or air units) against embarked units. You cannot possibly consider forcing the player to do the same. Those are bugs, yes, but it's just something the AI doesn't even try to do. That needs fixing, and loopholes will be closed.