Suggestions and Requests

[Leon Michiel]

More contested plots in Europe might make 'culture wars' more worthwhile, particularly for the British, French and HRE though perhaps only in certain eras. These contested areas would be at the frontiers of core areas.

These would be:
> Between HRE or Prussia and the French over the Lorraine, Colgone towards the Swiss area. Basically both sides of the Rhine including the plots around Amsterdam.
> Coastal plots of France (Britanny, etc.) for the British to represent the Hundred Years war and the period leading up to it.

There might be more but that's what I can think of right now.

 

[merijn_v1]

Contested basically means historical but in a foreign core. You can't add contested plots without changing the core of someone.

 

[1SDANi]

According to wikipedia and a few other sites I viewed, the Phonecians were a monarchy until 480 BC, when most of the power held by the king or 308 BC, when the monarch Bomilcar attempted a coup to regain his power, leading to the nation becoming a republic in name, to reflect it's form.

I suggest we make the Phonecians start with monarchy as their government instead of republic. Their cities will not be able to take advantage of the bonus from specialists for quite some time, and both Sur and Qart Hadasht have a farm that they will lose 1 food from. I believe the lower maintenance of monarchy, removed penalties to food, and flexibility afforded by the happy police far outweighs the food from specialists and military rushing.

They usually won't have specialists until much later, due to Sur needing to build settlers to found the first 4 cities to move the palace to Carthage, and after that the workers to get their 3 other cities up to speed at a proper rate. Meanwhile, they will not have the opportunity to attack Rome, their only historical territory that requires conquest, until much later in the game, making military rushing a unused bonus.

 

[Leoreth]

Nah, that's fine considering the inertia rule.

 

[1SDANi]

Nah, that's fine considering the inertia rule.

Inertia rule?

 

[Steb]

Related to the bug on the American oil UHV: I think the goal is too easy. You need 10 oil resources, 6 of which are within easy reach in North America (2 in Western US, 2 in Western Canada, 1 in Alaska and 1 in the Gulf of Mexico). Since there is so much oil in the Middle East, you can easily get the rest by conquering a bunch of cities there, or, easier still, by vassalizing the Arabs.

By the late game, it's easy to become an uncontested world power and project power anywhere. The goal should be more demanding, maybe simply be increasing the required oil resources to e.g. 15.

 

[Leoreth]

Inertia rule?

The phenomenon that changes to the game happen too slowly to reflect actual history. In this case, you cannot count on Phoenicia becoming a Republic in time so it is preferable to have them start as one.

 

[1SDANi]

The phenomenon that changes to the game happen too slowly to reflect actual history. In this case, you cannot count on Phoenicia becoming a Republic in time so it is preferable to have them start as one.

Really? Is this an AI thing? Because I can't imagine players not changing to Republic around that time. If so, couldn't there be something scripted for AI Carthage that makes them value Republic more when more cities have a pop greater than the number of resources?

 

[Leoreth]

Of course it's an AI thing. Most civs in the game are AIs after all.

 

[1SDANi]

Of course it's an AI thing. Most civs in the game are AIs after all.

So would there be any easy way to encourage the AI to switch civics at a historical time? Or will players have to switch to monarchy turn 1?

 

[Leoreth]

Anything that has the intention of civs running historical civics would be way too deterministic in my opinion, besides designing civics in such a way that their advantages are most suitable for historically accurate time periods and regions. Given the inertia rule I see no reason to change anything here.

 

[1SDANi]

Anything that has the intention of civs running historical civics would be way too deterministic in my opinion, besides designing civics in such a way that their advantages are most suitable for historically accurate time periods and regions. Given the inertia rule I see no reason to change anything here.

I wouldn't say it's forcing Phonecia to run Republic at 480, Republic just isn't helping them until around that period. So if they still think it's good to run Republic before then the AI is playing in a abysmally suboptimal manner.

If this was just about historicity then I wouldn't be suggesting this. But I was playing Phonecia and found Monarchy is better for them in the early game than Republic, even with the 1 turn switch time. So I looked up whether they were historically a monarchy and I was surprised to find they were. The design of the civics make their advantages most suitable for Phonecia's historical use of said civics, but the AI is not currently capable of realizing that.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Start Portugese cities off with harbours please. Building harbours in Funchal and Ponta Delgada is downright painful.

I think it's because French held these territories for a very brief time. Every civilization in the game have some territories like that which makes them pretty unstable when captured although these places are controlled historically, because in history these places also made these civs "unstable" and thus caused territory losses.

The French controlled Pondicherry (east coast of India) for a very long time. Maybe make that one tile historical to encourage French expansion there?

 

[Ogi123]

I wouldn't say it's forcing Phonecia to run Republic at 480, Republic just isn't helping them until around that period. So if they still think it's good to run Republic before then the AI is playing in a abysmally suboptimal manner.

If this was just about historicity then I wouldn't be suggesting this. But I was playing Phonecia and found Monarchy is better for them in the early game than Republic, even with the 1 turn switch time. So I looked up whether they were historically a monarchy and I was surprised to find they were. The design of the civics make their advantages most suitable for Phonecia's historical use of said civics, but the AI is not currently capable of realizing that.

That's because republic is ironically good only in later parts of game when you have lot of / and access to many specialists slots. So what I'm trying to say that it isn't fault of AI per see, as player playing Rome, Greece or other classical Mediterranean civ I always immediately switch from republic to despotism or monarchy.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

1. Give the national theater a few artist slots. It's very one dimensional as of now.
2. Would it be possible to give Roman Roads +2 culture in the modern era onward, to represent tourism in Italy (or Roman sites in general). Would be kinda cool.
3. A nice idea for a semi-random event: If Italy is alive and Judaism spreads to either Florence or Venice (provided it is under their control of course) give them either a large boost towards Finance. To represent how modern banking arose in the towns of Northern Italy.

 

[Fresol]

On controlling AI city spam, I suggest having an update of SettlerMaps.py, or even modify the settlervalue mechanism a bit to allow better AI city placement:

This suggestion comes from the observation that modifying settlervalue can somewhat regulate AI city placement. Let unwanted core/historical city spots have a settlervalue of 3/90(3 for core tiles gives better control, but with reborn core shift this can sometimes cause problems), and make designated city spots have a settlervalue of 700 (or even higher with an WB update).

Here's the result of some of my experiments:

Spoiler Experiment on China :

I modified the settlervalues of China, and as you can see, Shanghai, Luoyang, Haojing are all designated cities that are otherwise uncommon. Zhongdu and Shenyang are also designated cities, and Shengyang being the Taoist holy city suggests that China founded it instead of conquered it from the barbarians. On the top left you can also see the ruins of Jiayuguan, another designated city. The only city the AI is missing is Fuzhou on the hill stone in southeast China.

Spoiler Experiment on Indonesia :

*Don't mind the "70" typo here.* Changing the settlervalues do not necessarily control the AI city placement, but it works much better than not doing anything.

Spoiler Moors unchanged with ugly city placement :

Unchanged Moors, for comparison.

Comments are welcome.

 

[Leoreth]

Have you turned off the automated Chinese city founding? In general though high settler value does not force city founding if other factors (like distance and shared tiles) preclude it. There are a bunch of factors that decide if a spot is even eligible for a city before the weights from AI preferences including settler value even factor into the decision. That is usually the more relevant problem especially for civs where close cities are desirable for historical immersion. I have tried your suggested approach many times before. Additionally, it is also important not to make things too deterministic.

 

[Fresol]

Many factors influence the AI decision for city founding, this I know. It's just that they choose so poorly(Ethiopia, China, Indonesia are some examples of random settlement, and Moors loves founding city on the wheat) that either I WB for them or stop them from the beginning.

 

[KeeperOT7Keys]

Maybe the AI knows we are not going to invade them if they discourage us like that, I'm always repelled by ugly city placement since razing has huge penalties too

 

[Fresol]

Adding a land bridge connecting Europe and Scandinavia significantly improves Vikings early game performance.

Spoiler NO LAND BRIDGE :

Spoiler WITH LAND BRIDGE :