Solver's unofficial BtS 3.17 patch

[Solver]

Seems one can still spread non-state religions using missionaries under Theocracy.... This was fixed in Bhruic's, will it be re-done for 3.17?

I was playing earlier today and couldn't spread religions to civs with Theocracy.


Another question to you guys. Currently, the AI will never undertake any aerial missions if the plane is damaged. So it only attacks with full-health planes. It's an okay general rule, but I am thinking of allowing it to attack with damaged planes if there are no enemy interceptors in the area and the mission would still be guaranteed to succeed. Thoughts?

 

[Wodan]

Another question to you guys. Currently, the AI will never undertake any aerial missions if the plane is damaged. So it only attacks with full-health planes. It's an okay general rule, but I am thinking of allowing it to attack with damaged planes if there are no enemy interceptors in the area and the mission would still be guaranteed to succeed. Thoughts?

You can't always tell if "there are no enemy interceptors" within range to intercept. At least, not without AI cheating. Or is that a necessary ramification of what you're suggesting?

Wodan

 

[Woody1]

Another question to you guys. Currently, the AI will never undertake any aerial missions if the plane is damaged. So it only attacks with full-health planes. It's an okay general rule, but I am thinking of allowing it to attack with damaged planes if there are no enemy interceptors in the area and the mission would still be guaranteed to succeed. Thoughts?

Again, careful with "fixing" too much AI behaviour. It might result in the AI planes never getting a chance to heal, and thus make them easy pickings if you jump in a bunch of interceptors or start doing bombing missions of your own (and they can't intercept because they're too weak).

The current behaviour sounds okay. It's not broken, it's just conservative.

 

[Solver]

The AI can be made to check if there are interceptors or not. I believe it does that in some cases. Actually, the AI airstrike code always checks if somebody can intercept and it factors that in when deciding whether to commence the airstrike or not. It's one of those things the AI needs to check to be remotely effective.

On the upside, usually it is something you would know, anyway. You'd always know if the stack you try to strafe has an interceptor, and if you are bombing a city you have a visual on it anyway and know if there are fighters defending. But yes, not always.

 

[r_rolo1]

I was playing earlier today and couldn't spread religions to civs with Theocracy.

Not you spreading, but simply gifting the missionary and let the theo AI spread it. Bh considered it a exploit and in last version of his patch he made theo AI to not be willing to acept gifted missionaries. Like I said, I don't agree....

 

[Solver]

Again, careful with "fixing" too much AI behaviour. It might result in the AI planes never getting a chance to heal, and thus make them easy pickings if you jump in a bunch of interceptors or start doing bombing missions of your own (and they can't intercept because they're too weak).

The current behaviour sounds okay. It's not broken, it's just conservative.

I would certainly still have them heal. I wouldn't call the current behaviour conservative, I would call it not aggressive. Which is one of the AI's faults, it doesn't push its advantage when winning often enough. My logic here is, if the AI takes takes damage to its planes but you have no interceptors, it should push the advantage by bombing you more. Not doing so puts you under less stress while consolidating your position.

I'm not proposing a very aggressive approach, either. A very aggressive approach would be to bomb plots where there are no AA defenders. Such as if you only have ground-based interceptors, bombard around them. Such aggression might fit a human but it's too dangerous for the AI, generally speaking. I'm proposing a more moderate approach where the AI would only run missions with damaged planes if there are no enemy interceptors within range. Tactically speaking, I'd say that almost always means that it makes sense to push the advantage.

 

[Solver]

Not you spreading, but simply gifting the missionary and let the theo AI spread it. Bh considered it a exploit and in last version of his patch he made theo AI to not be willing to acept gifted missionaries. Like I said, I don't agree....

Can you elaborate on why you disagree? I don't have strong feelings about this, but gifting under Theocracy does sound like an exploit. It's very useful sometimes to spread your religion, and this basically means you can spread no matter what civic the AIs are running.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, I'll resume:

First, what Theo code makes in Civ is to prevent unwanted non state religion spread . It was not changed so far since vanilla, so I strongly suspect that Firaxis want it this way, and not making what the Civic screen says.

Second, I can clearly see 3 situations where a AI ( or a human ) may want to spread a non state religion even in theo:

-Cultural win ( long shot, but it is possible )

- To prevent a AP war on heatens vs him/it

- Pure AP hammer greed.

Like I wrote in Bh thread, IMHO this more a question of the AI deciding if the access to the religion will do her harm or good.....

 

[Solver]

Theocracy should certainly not prevent religion spread by Missionaries... I just don't like how the AI is guaranteed to spread the religion itself if you gift it a missionary.

 

[r_rolo1]

Like I said, that is not a problem of the AI receiving the missionary or not, but of using it. IMHO BH in that simply covered with a prohibition a lack of AI finesse

 

[Solver]

True enough, though making the AI properly decide when NOT to spread a religion sounds tricky.

 

[Refar]

Perhaps some kind of check then to decide if they use the gifted missionary ?

Maybe cheking one of the AI's cities, if it would want to build a Missionary and if it wouldnt build it, just disband or mothball the gifted one... (I am not sure how doable that is - but the AI does decide what stuff it will build...)

Then again the reasoning behind spreading a religion or not is rather simple - only really need to reject if at risk of AP loss...

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, how about:

IF
- I want to win by cultural
- I am the only ( maybe insert a fraction here :1- AP members/Total alive players ) non AP member
- My MFG ( again a fraction would be good ) is inferior to the average
THEN
-I will spread the religion
ELSE
-I'll delete the missionary

Not sure of this ( 2nd if need a twitch to avoid that the last Theo civ to run for AP religion, making space for a quick AP win ).....

 

[Solver]

Leave it be for now. At this moment, I'm more interested in thoughts about the damaged plane thing

 

[r_rolo1]

I would insert a prob of survival instead of simply checking if there is no danger. Let AI to risk a little

 

[snoopy369]

I like the change. You're technically wrong about always knowing about interceptors as a human (range of 8 means based in a city 8 tiles away that I can't see, it will intercept... got burned badly in a PTBS with that); but I don't care, the AI needs some help in this anyway.

It absolutely should use planes when it can safely do so. I'd also say that it should use planes that are only lightly damaged (what's the 80% or 90% survival point?).

 

[Solver]

Hey, you get back to Apolyton now!

I didn't say you always know about interceptors as a human, I said you do most of the time. Using lightly damaged planes, though, probably isn't optimal for the AI. Those can be healed back to full health quickly, and being at full health is good for their effectiveness. In case of a 10% damaged plane, skipping a turn is okay. I have a problem with a 50% damaged plane which will sit there for many turns healing while it could be pressing advantage.

Since I want to code this behaviour only for the situation where the skies are clear in the entire range, it probably won't happen often. The most common situation would be where some AI planes run a few missions, taking damage but also managing to wipe out the last enemy interceptors while at it. And another situation would be with Destroyer-Transport dropoffs. The attacker lands some troops from Transports escorted by Destroyers, defending planes attack the ships and take some damage from Destroyers. Next turn, the fleet is gone and there are no more interceptors in the area, it becomes safe to attack.

 

[Wodan]

Hey, you get back to Apolyton now!
Since I want to code this behaviour only for the situation where the skies are clear in the entire range, it probably won't happen often.

Then why waste your time/effort?

Seriously, there are other things that are much more in need of improvement and will have a bigger impact on AI performance.

Wodan

 

[Solver]

Because I am not Blake The plane thing is actually simple to do, would only take a few minutes. The effect wouldn't be something you always see, also because it's a late-game thing, but it's still an improvement. I would gladly do some other things that would improve the AI more, but my skills actually suck

 

[jkp1187]

Ok, I'll resume:

First, what Theo code makes in Civ is to prevent unwanted non state religion spread . It was not changed so far since vanilla, so I strongly suspect that Firaxis want it this way, and not making what the Civic screen says.

Second, I can clearly see 3 situations where a AI ( or a human ) may want to spread a non state religion even in theo:

-Cultural win ( long shot, but it is possible )

- To prevent a AP war on heatens vs him/it

- Pure AP hammer greed.

Like I wrote in Bh thread, IMHO this more a question of the AI deciding if the access to the religion will do her harm or good.....

Just an observation -- in all of these cases, if the player desires these outcomes, he should quit theocracy. There ARE benefits to theocracy, but there are also opportunity costs, and permitting the player (human or AI) to spread non-state religions while under Theo seems like it goes against what Theocracy is SUPPOSED to be in the first place.

Permitting a player to gift a missionary to an AI (which will then immediately use it based on current AI) seems to me to be an exploit that should be corrected. We can correct this either by making the AI better able to grasp when it should/shouldn't spread non-state religions. Ideally, that would be the solution, but it may be difficult.

Or we can simply ban gifting of missionaries across-the-board. That solves both problems.

After some reflection, I actually prefer the latter, as it's a simpler solution to implement (freeing up coding/development time to issues that may be more pressing,) and it makes the rules simpler for the player. It also increases the costs of spreading religion for the player, which (I think) is a good thing, because the cost to spread a religion is pretty low to begin with. Anything that makes the player carefully choose between competing priorities is a good thing in an economic game like Civ.

**EDIT: Sorry, didn't see your "Leave it be" quote. Apologies! **