(Testing) Leader Personalities Idea

[jma22tb]

We're making a lot of progress in these tests. Particularly, the AI is expanding and building up military power faster in the first 100 turns. The flavors I just uploaded should be pretty challenging because the AI is handling expansion and economic management pretty well, so I'm ramping up the expansion tendency again. If it works, then the AI will gobble up land fast, keep gobbling land, and build great cities.

 

[vyyt]

We're making a lot of progress in these tests. Particularly, the AI is expanding and building up military power faster in the first 100 turns.

Wow, this sounds great! I will try to play over the weekend and post some feedback. Is this part of the 6-2 version, or is it downloadable separately?

Thanks!

 

[Finarvi]

I've had some hard times on deity.

 

[jma22tb]

Wow, this sounds great! I will try to play over the weekend and post some feedback. Is this part of the 6-2 version, or is it downloadable separately?

Thanks!

The RAR in the OP is the current version and the RAR in the post on the previous page has a Test RAR for putting Expansion at 10

I've had some hard times on deity.

Yeah I was getting rekt on King lol

 

[Gazebo]

So my latest game is as the Netherlands, Deity Standard Pangaea, using the most recent flavors from 6-3. Overall I thought this was the best performance since 5-15.

However, I am well ahead in the score charts, with 7 cities and 36 population. My closest competitor is Shoshone with 4 cities and 25 pop.

Keep in mind that, as the game carries on, AI bonuses on difficulties above king will creep up on you. Every era they get a bump to national yields (a lot like path of transcendence) and the costs of buildings/units/growth go down slightly. In short, the AI bonuses on Deity in BNW were front-loaded, whereas in CBP they are spread throughout the game.

G

 

[Opera]

Keep in mind that, as the game carries on, AI bonuses on difficulties above king will creep up on you. Every era they get a bump to national yields (a lot like path of transcendence) and the costs of buildings/units/growth go down slightly. In short, the AI bonuses on Deity in BNW were front-loaded, whereas in CBP they are spread throughout the game.

G

I didn't know that. I don't play above Prince because I don't like the idea of the "catch up to the AI" game; that's actually different in CBP? I might try that then.

 

[sc369]

Update from my Netherlands game on turn 200.

I rushed Gunpowder and attacked Shoshone on turn 162. I had conquered them by turn 179.
They had 7 pathfinders, 5 composite bowmen, and a knight. Why so many pathfinders? Is it because it's their UU? I also took 2 city states, one from barbarians. I have settled two new cities with pioneers, and am building more.

The AI continued to be highly competitive in building Wonders. I could only build a wonder if I had a tech lead or a Great Engineer. They kept close to me in tech, but didn't expand or build any more cities. No AI seemed to declare war on another.

Nearly all AIs seem to be building too few workers. When I conquered Shoshone. I found a lot of undeveloped resources, including silver and marble. Exploring German lands I found the same thing.

AIs are also not sending out units and dealing with barbarians. I even found a ruin on turn 196 about 8 tiles from Madrid, next to a barbarian camp. This may be holding AIs back from settling cities. I found a Shoshone settler just sticking in a city, with a nice city spot just down the road next to a barbarian camp.

I wonder if AIs are too picky about settlement spots. Spain is still on two cities. There are two spots near Madrid that I would consider acceptable, but they are marginal: jungle, desert and a bit of plains. The thing is, there is so much free food available, and enough specialist buildings, that you can build a useful city just about anywhere. Granary + well is already 5 food. Any coastal city can get 3 food from ocean with lighthouse. And you can always send a food caravan to build up a city. Is there any way to tell the AI to settle even in bad locations if it doesn't have enough cities?

This is the current situation:
Me: score 2068, 15 cities, 227 pop, 11 wonders (4 conquered), 12 policies, 352 gpt, 38 techs
Morocco: score 900, 4 cities, 67 pop, 6 wonders, 13 policies, 131 gpt, 36 techs
Polynesia: score 764, 4 cities, 66 pop, 4 wonders, 11 policies, 54 gpt, 36 techs

The rest of the civs are even further behind.

 

[Opera]

Yeah, I still believe that's the main issue: they don't found enough cities. Sometimes they do though, I remember a game where Ethiopia founded 10 cities or so, conquered some more.

I don't think CBP has the same standards as Vanilla where one city isn't always better; it pretty much is always better in CBP as long as you can offset unhappiness. You might slow down policies and techs but the sheer strength of a huge population means you can recoup easily and outproduce your neighbors.

I also agree that even seemingly bad city spots can be incredibly strong due to specialists and food from buildings.

 

[jma22tb]

I have a RAR in the previous page that puts expansion at the highest tier. I think that will stop the AI from sitting on too few cities

 

[Gazebo]

I have a RAR in the previous page that puts expansion at the highest tier. I think that will stop the AI from sitting on too few cities

Ramping up flavors like that won't fix it - it'll just make the AI produce more settlers than it knows what to do with. The problem is restrictive settling logic designed to keep the AI from being dumb. I just need to loosen it a bit.

AIs are also not sending out units and dealing with barbarians. I even found a ruin on turn 196 about 8 tiles from Madrid, next to a barbarian camp. This may be holding AIs back from settling cities. I found a Shoshone settler just sticking in a city, with a nice city spot just down the road next to a barbarian camp.

I've noticed this, and I've tried to address it in upcoming version.

G

 

[jma22tb]

Oh ok that makes sense. Yeah that's why I have been wary about doing that because I didn't know if it would just turn into Settler Spam 2015 lol. It isn't the version in the OP so it's just something to try.

Idk if it's possible but maybe if the AI had a minimum goal of 8 cities they would be more viable?

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Free food is easiest to control if it's dispensed in the form of the Aqueduct effect. It never gives you more than 1/(1-x) times effectiveness in growth, and -only- growth, not food surplus which becomes citizen versatility or faster settlers.

Since CPP doesn't have slavery civic, or really anything too fancy with expending the food bucket, you don't even need to think about redesigning the food system to avoid some of the oddities from carryover. There's no exploit at all. Indeed, I had long thought the game should introduce an invisible building at all cities that does what Aqueduct does at 5% just to make starving not such a variable catastrophe.

 

[sc369]

This pic is from my latest Germany game. This was with the latest flavors with expansion set to 10.

Arabia is still on 4 cities on turn 220. This city spot is 5 tiles from Mecca (a good distance) and has access to double deer, cattle, fish, gems, stone and double sheep. Why on earth hasn't the AI settled it?

If it thinks 5 tiles is too close, it could settle on the cattle 6 tiles away and still get all the resources.

I found another 3 spots it could have settled too, but this was by far the best.

 

[Opera]

I wonder if it would be a good idea to give cities yields they'd have gotten with the appropriate improvement if settled on resources. It happens to me often as I settle fast, usually before having some of the techs that reveal resources (stone in particular). Might help the AI too in these cases.

 

[jma22tb]

This pic is from my latest Germany game. This was with the latest flavors with expansion set to 10.

Arabia is still on 4 cities on turn 220. This city spot is 5 tiles from Mecca (a good distance) and has access to double deer, cattle, fish, gems, stone and double sheep. Why on earth hasn't the AI settled it?

If it thinks 5 tiles is too close, it could settle on the cattle 6 tiles away and still get all the resources.

I found another 3 spots it could have settled too, but this was by far the best.

Seems like the AI isn't too far behind on score.

I was thinking that Expansion being that high would just make a new set of problems but it looks like their economies are still good. Is that the case?

Gazebo has mentioned that there are factors beyond the flavors that he's addressing to encourage more expansion by the AI.

 

[sc369]

Yes, the AI economies did pretty well. The Aztecs founded 5 cities and the Mongols have gobbled up at least 4 city states. They were ahead of me in tech when I made contact ( I was cut off at the beginning) and I had to use spies to catch up. If we could get the AIs to settle around 8 cities I think they would be very competitive. Alternatively, we need to get the strong civs to eat the weak ones early in the game.

 

[jma22tb]

I actually have cooked up a new version that changes the Personalities quite a bit. The expansion will continue throughout the game indefinitely, so I think we've hit that sweet spot. A preview:

* Keeping Expansion at 10 since that worked. A large # of cities really pays off in CBP so I'll keep that since it worked on Deity. Honestly I had no idea how much of a difference it makes to push for so many cities, which might be grounds for a balance discussion. I try to avoid bringing balance up but it does seem to be the case that a Tall civ is pretty screwed in CBP.

* Federalists will be more aggressive, but will still have Friendliness and DoF as their highest priority. Their approach to major civs will be 12 Friendliness, 9 Guarded, 8 War so they will take advantage of a weak rival and may expand regionally through war. They will still be focused on peaceful victory types, and they'll never try to take everyone's capitals like the others may attempt. Difference now is they might take one or two capitals if they get strong enough and hate the respective civs enough.

* I changed the policies and leader flavors so Nuke is the one tied to military policies, Order, and Autocracy. This fixes the problem of Federalists taking Might or Imperialism even though they have no intention of winning by Conquest. They're better off taking other policies. It also means the former Conquest flavor, Military Training, can be a higher priority for them so they have better units and Disorder unhappiness management.

* Nationalists are going to be 12 War, 9 Guarded, 8 Hostile instead of how they are right now. I want them to be meaner because when you look at their methods of victory all of them scale with conquest. They don't need friends, they don't want friends, they will be a "sophisticated conqueror." They will also prioritize Bullying more than Conquest for City-States, but it'll still be the only interactions they have - extorting before conquering makes sense and fits with Mongolia too.

* Imperialists are going to be 12 Deceptive, 9 War, 8 Friendly because they are a little too passive for my taste. I want them to be aggressive and it seems like they spam everyone for DoF and get a little too comfortable using Federalists as a diplomatic shield. I like that Imperialists are almost always "Friendly" in the diplomacy window during discussions, which now really makes you wonder what they're planning.

I think this release will be pretty good, but we'll see. I'm toning down my #hype, given how much this has had to change to challenge people >.>

 

[Opera]

I was looking at your assignment of civs and archetypes and I'm a bit concerned the reasoning behind your choices is misplaced. While historicity is nice, it's not really the main concern of gameplay in Civ.

For instance, the Maya would be very good at science, yet they are part of the group that foregoes science? Sweden has a bonus to diplomat units from their UA and they're part of the archetype that wants to bully and conquer them?

I only took a cursory glance but I'm not sure these mesh very well with the realities of the civs' gameplay.

 

[jma22tb]

Those apply to victory types and policies, but they don't abandon key elements that everyone needs. Anything related to the Unhappiness system in CBP are important to all of the archetypes so that there aren't riots on the streets.

This means that your example, the Maya, would not consider building a Spaceship in the late game, but they will build Libararies, Universities, Public Schools, etc. because their people demand them.

Also Sweden was changed to a war oriented UA recently.

 

[Opera]

Oh, sorry about that then. I didn't realize Sweden's UA changed, I'll have to check it out.

I'm eager to try your most recent changes though, if the AI builds a lot of cities, it's going to be great.