Social Policy Mod Request
- Thread starter Rathgor
- Start date
Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
The policies ARE all unlocked at Agriculture. It's their branches that are era-limited, so if you want to change that, just modify all of the policy branches' Era prerequisites to be ERA_ANCIENT. (Don't edit the original files, obviously; just make a mod. It's a one-line change.)
Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
If you're new at this, then go read Kael's modding guide, stickied at the top of the References section. It'll explain the basics of XML modding, starting with why you don't edit the original files. EVER.
All you'd need to do is create an XML mod with something along these lines:
This probably isn't correct, but I'm not at home at the moment so I can't double-check the tags. This sort of thing will make all policy branches unlock in the Ancient Era (i.e., at game start).
Be warned, though; this is probably a really bad idea. The AI would likely end up gimping itself horribly, since it won't have a Tradition/Liberty baseline to start from. Many of the policy branches that unlock in later eras have policies that are really only useful once your empire has grown a bit, so if you make all of those unlock at the start of the game then the AI's likely to spend its first policy picks on things like Autocracy or Freedom policies that give it no benefits at all. There's a reason that these policy branches unlock when they do.
Ask yourself: if you COULD take, say, the Freedom branch at the start of the game, would you? With policies that add Culture per Wonder (and you have no Wonders), or food and happiness per Specialist (and you have no buildings with specialist slots yet)? If the answer is No, then you should make sure it's not possible for the AI to take those policies then either, because it's simply not capable of making those sorts of complex decisions.
All you'd need to do is create an XML mod with something along these lines:
Code:
<GameData>
<PolicyBranchTypes>
<Update>
<Set EraPrereq = "ERA_ANCIENT"/>
<Where />
</Update>
</PolicyBranchTypes>
</GameData>This probably isn't correct, but I'm not at home at the moment so I can't double-check the tags. This sort of thing will make all policy branches unlock in the Ancient Era (i.e., at game start).
Be warned, though; this is probably a really bad idea. The AI would likely end up gimping itself horribly, since it won't have a Tradition/Liberty baseline to start from. Many of the policy branches that unlock in later eras have policies that are really only useful once your empire has grown a bit, so if you make all of those unlock at the start of the game then the AI's likely to spend its first policy picks on things like Autocracy or Freedom policies that give it no benefits at all. There's a reason that these policy branches unlock when they do.
Ask yourself: if you COULD take, say, the Freedom branch at the start of the game, would you? With policies that add Culture per Wonder (and you have no Wonders), or food and happiness per Specialist (and you have no buildings with specialist slots yet)? If the answer is No, then you should make sure it's not possible for the AI to take those policies then either, because it's simply not capable of making those sorts of complex decisions.
Thanks for that, maybe I'll change my mind on where (technologically) I'll implement this mod. I wasn't sure if the AI had predictated policies or if it was more free form like you said.
On this, the reason I wanted this mod was to have technology cap at the end of the classical era (that's right where i like it.) so if the world expands along these lines then there would end up being a few specialists and some wonders. maybe I'll set it for after a set amount of turns or at the end of the classical era.
On this, the reason I wanted this mod was to have technology cap at the end of the classical era (that's right where i like it.) so if the world expands along these lines then there would end up being a few specialists and some wonders. maybe I'll set it for after a set amount of turns or at the end of the classical era.
Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
It's a little of both. The way the AI works for policies is like this:
1> It will only ever have two unfinished policy branches at a time. So if it's unlocked the Tradition branch and the Piety branch, then it can't take any Honor, Order, etc. policies until it completes one of the two. (This number can be tweaked by mods.)
2> Even if it finishes one branch, it's highly motivated to finish the other instead of starting a new branch. (This can't easily be tweaked, but if designed right a mod can use this to its advantage.)
3> Other than the above, it selects policies purely on the basis of their Flavor values. Every policy in the game has a total Flavor of 20, so it doesn't see any policies as being more inherently desirable; it'll have preferences based on the personality of the leader or the needs of the moment (especially Happiness), but nothing beyond that.
This leads to some ridiculous situations, where the AI thinks the Communism policy is exactly as desirable as the Republic policy, despite the fact that the Communism policy's effect is exactly twice what Republic gives. (It used to be worse, when Republic was +1 and Communism was +5.) Both have FLAVOR_PRODUCTION=20, so the AI can't distinguish the two.
These Flavor values CAN be tweaked easily, but doing so can cause other problems, not the least of which is the exact problem I've described in this thread; if you raise the Flavors of the later policies, and the AI starts at a point where all are unlocked, then it'll never take the earlier, more general policies and will instead stock up on the later and often more powerful ones, which might not be worthwhile to an empire just starting out.
(You see this a lot if you start a game in a later era.)
------------------
This is why it's important that only the first couple branches be available during the Ancient era; the Tradition and Liberty branches are designed to be all-around useful abilities, not specialized like many of the later ones. Once the AI has at least one of those, then sure, things like Honor, Piety, Patronage, Commerce, and Rationalism are okay. But the last three, Freedom, Autocracy, and Order, are ONLY worthwhile once your empire is large or your cities get huge. Making those be available early on will never work out well.
Now, if you're trying to have the game stop progressing at a certain point, or even just drastically slowing tech rates down, then sure, these can be moved up a bit to compensate. But the last three should never unlock before at least the Medieval Era; it's just too crippling to the AI otherwise.
chrome-rome
King
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2009
- Messages
- 620
Where exactly can this number be adjusted?
markusbeutel
NiGHTS
I'm not completely sure if this is accurate as I haven't altered this file in any of my mods, but it might be this line in GlobalDefines.xml
<Row Name="NUM_POLICY_BRANCHES_ALLOWED">
<Value>2</Value>
Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
Correct. Or at least, that line seemed to fix the problem the AI was having in my own mod.
You see, I'd added an 11th branch, and given one policy in it to every player at the start of the game; this starting policy was used to give certain buildings a negative Happiness value (since putting a negative value into the Buildings table wouldn't work). Unfortunately, the AI saw this as being one in-progress branch, and would get stuck because it was trying to continue within that branch (even though it couldn't because all other policies there had tech prerequisites), and wouldn't open up a second normal branch. But increasing that value to 3 seemed to fix the problem.
You wouldn't want to take this too far in a normal game; you really don't want the AI to spread itself too thin, or it'll never get any Finishers or be any kind of threat to win a Cultural victory.
You see, I'd added an 11th branch, and given one policy in it to every player at the start of the game; this starting policy was used to give certain buildings a negative Happiness value (since putting a negative value into the Buildings table wouldn't work). Unfortunately, the AI saw this as being one in-progress branch, and would get stuck because it was trying to continue within that branch (even though it couldn't because all other policies there had tech prerequisites), and wouldn't open up a second normal branch. But increasing that value to 3 seemed to fix the problem.
You wouldn't want to take this too far in a normal game; you really don't want the AI to spread itself too thin, or it'll never get any Finishers or be any kind of threat to win a Cultural victory.
Then why did you type it?
Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
You're bumping a thread from almost a year ago, to say that you can add nothing to the discussion, and then criticize the earlier posters? Very useful.
Because most of the people who actively post on this board know what they're doing. If you post a basic explanation for how to do something, then even if it's not exactly correct the reader is usually competent enough to be able to fix whatever isn't quite right. If you post something that's way, WAY off then it doesn't do any good, since the reader would have to spend more time fixing the errors than it'd take to figure out for himself, but as long as it's reasonably close then the reader can adjust. For instance, if I write "PolicyBranchType" as the name of a table and it's actually supposed to be plural, the reader can very quickly find the correct name of the table that he should be modifying.
In the case of the post in question, I was at work when I typed it. I don't know about you, but at my job I'm not allowed to play Civ5, so without the actual game database in front of me it's impossible to verify an answer. And yet, my answer WAS correct.
Because most of the people who actively post on this board know what they're doing. If you post a basic explanation for how to do something, then even if it's not exactly correct the reader is usually competent enough to be able to fix whatever isn't quite right. If you post something that's way, WAY off then it doesn't do any good, since the reader would have to spend more time fixing the errors than it'd take to figure out for himself, but as long as it's reasonably close then the reader can adjust. For instance, if I write "PolicyBranchType" as the name of a table and it's actually supposed to be plural, the reader can very quickly find the correct name of the table that he should be modifying.
In the case of the post in question, I was at work when I typed it. I don't know about you, but at my job I'm not allowed to play Civ5, so without the actual game database in front of me it's impossible to verify an answer. And yet, my answer WAS correct.
whoward69
DLL Minion
Don't feed the troll
