The Ancient Mediterranean MOD

[onedreamer]

good feedback Publius. We definitely need to work on that. TAM's map should be a bloody place, not the Heavens

 

[EugenB]

I fully agree with Pvblivs, there are far too few wars in the game .
I guess this is because of religion, which spreads from neighbour to neighbour, and the AI would not consider attacking a fellow worshiper. On the other hand, the other religions are far way from him, so funny things happen, as Dido would declare war on Aeetes .
I guess a combination of more aggresive leaders and religion having a slightly reduced impact would atenuate this issue.
But the stupidity of attacking the distant players would not go away unless you mess with AI/SDK... I've seen this more than once, and the AI just razes the city in conquered on the other side of the world, because otherwise would just be culturally overwhelmed pretty soon and would loose the city anyway, and the maintenance cost is too high...

Eugen

 

[thamis]

Let me first state that we haven't changed the AI behaviour for TAM, so all the problems that we see here are the results of the default CIV4 AI.

This doesn't mean that we can change it, though. I think it is possible to change the effect that different religions have on how much the AI likes each other. My idea is to make all religions dislike each other more and reduce the positive effect that having the same religion produces.

Only Christianity then will create a high bonus on diplomacy with other christian nations, but will produce a much more negative effect on other religions. The idea is to make a diplomatic victory easier with Christianity.

Also, we can modify the leader AI so that some of them are more peaceful and some of them are less peaceful. That's in the XML, but it's a lot of work as that file is huuuge...

Oh, and in my recent 1.8 game, there were lots of wars, and Scythia actually got wiped out. I was at war with at least one civilization for most of the time, and Gaul actually landed troops on my coast (Phoenicia) and gave me a hard time... (Just to show that even with normal AI there can be lots of war).

 

[Pvblivs]

Thanks for stating this, thamis. I know that you didn't tweak the AI around, I just wanted to provide some observations.

That Gaul landed on your Phoenician coast just shows the big flaws in the AI behaviour not in general but concerning a landmass map with a large inland sea. Gauls should have invaded Rome, Germania, Iberia or even Illyria but not you A question of efficiency.

Maybe I'll have a look at this file myself and make some suggestions or test around a little bit myself. Could just someone tell me the name of that xml file?

At which difficulty do you usually play TAM, thamis?

Seems I just don't like games where the only reason something important for the world is happening am actually I. And when something is happening it is mostly stupid. Except on high difficulties: Because the AI doesn't have a problem to invade then ... that is the player, because he is weaker than the other AIs because of the difficulty

 

[Ick of the East]

Only Christianity then will create a high bonus on diplomacy with other christian nations,

Because Christian nations never fought each other?

It seems to me that Christian Europe was pretty much at war with itself from the fall of Rome up until 1945.

I second or third the motion that common religions making nice neighbors should be cut way down.

 

[Pvblivs]

Yepp! Take only some dozen years of the Byzantine or even late Roman era and think how much problems the new monotheistic religion brought once it was established even within the same empire. Once they were christs the Romans hadn't even space to think about "brothers or sisters of the faith" or "heathens". The internal problems were high enough.

And then analyze the long established polytheistic predecessors.

 

[thamis]

@Pvblius:

I am playing on Prince right now. I've played Monarch before, and there the AI was eaven meaner (but only towards me, not towards each other). I also agree that the AI shouldn't declare war on people on the other side of the world... I always hated that in CIV.

@Ick:

Well, first Christian nations fought the non-Christians around, and then they turned on each other...

 

[Ick of the East]

Well, first Christian nations fought the non-Christians around, and then they turned on each other...

Hmm?
On the way to the First Crusade, the Western Christians sacked Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Christians.
And before that, the Christian Normans invaded and conquered Christian Saxon England. And after that, Christian France and Christian England were at war almost constantly up until 1815.

Ooops. Gotta walk the dogs. Probably many more examples.

 

[Pvblivs]

I think it can be stated that inter-religious wars were not fought more often than intra-religous wars. With intra-religious wars I mean wars based on problems between different groups of the same religion.
It is only that inter-relgious wars appear very important in history because they were called "holy affairs". Additionally all the little confilicts within the same religion either eliminate seperatist religious streams and thus the many details for historic books or in the end there is some concilliation and the threat is not there anymore, it is not that important.

The crusades for example were important religiously driven military campains. But was the previous islamic expansion secularly or religiously driven (mainly)? The ottomanic expansion prior to the fall of Konstantiople apparently had no religious background. They conquered arab territory as well. For the defenders of course religion was important. Thus the crusades came to life. But thus even other intra-religious conflicts emerged resulting in the sack of Constantiople as an example like said above.

Indeed the non-ancient conflicts between different cultures always were some kind of "great danger". But what wars have been fought during the crusades periods that is often ignored speaking of religous conflicts.

Not considering what is happening today, greetings to all modern crusaders: To conclude I would say that religion seemed always be a means when there was a war near anyway. A means in the sense that religious differences could be used or abused to achieve secular goals.

To conclude: If you are of the same or different religion should mean nothing but that your means in diplomacy are extended.

That is:
a) It is irrelevant what your religion is for the oppinion of someone about you. This means that there should be no religious oppinion modifier anymore.
b) Religion is a means to achieve secular goals. Maybe if you have the same state religion you can easier draw someone into war because of this. So this should be considered.
c) If the AI is now up to decide wether to go to war against a religion-comrade it should not consider religions. Because if it in your personal interest, then you ignore such religion stuff how it pleases you. Then there's just "those nasty french" for Frederick. It doesn't matter if they're catholic. It can't.

 

[Drogear]

Played Rome on monarch difficulty

Some siege craft are missing appropriate graphics

Religion, as Rome I never try to found any religion and waiting for other religions to influence me, got the “Greek” religion in one town but I could seem to build missionaries to spread it, and the religion didn’t seem to spread very fast to my other towns.


Suggestions:

What about making forest chopable in several stages

I find it strange to completely erase a forest tilt. Example the original forest are “old/ancient” and when chopped they produce a high hammer gain but the “ancient” forest turns into less dense/quality forest that give less hammers when chopped and then finally disappears (or turns to lesser dense forest)

I like to again stress the importance of pre-set barbarians cities that serves as “stoppers” for unhistorical early expansion and to ad historical flavored to the ancient Mediterranean world.

 

[Maniac]

yes we are aware of this problem and currently studying a solution.

(re AI units not upgrading to the latest metal technology)
How about my suggestion of simply making the smith a free building in each city right from the start? Surely AI units are bound to eventually walk in some city and 'accidentally' upgrade to the latest available weapons?

This doesn't mean that we can change it, though. I think it is possible to change the effect that different religions have on how much the AI likes each other. My idea is to make all religions dislike each other more and reduce the positive effect that having the same religion produces.

As Pvblivs says, religion (at least the pre-universalist ones ) should realistically have little effect on diplomacy!

 

[onedreamer]

That Gaul landed on your Phoenician coast just shows the big flaws in the AI behaviour not in general but concerning a landmass map with a large inland sea. Gauls should have invaded Rome, Germania, Iberia or even Illyria but not you A question of efficiency.

I don't really agree with this last statement. My idea is that resources in TAM should be more concentrated in a geographical area. With such premises, conquering a far land would be a very good reward in resources.

 

[Maniac]

That Gaul landed on your Phoenician coast just shows the big flaws in the AI behaviour not in general but concerning a landmass map with a large inland sea. Gauls should have invaded Rome, Germania, Iberia or even Illyria but not you A question of efficiency.

I don't see the problem with naval invasions. They happened a lot. The only unrealistic thing is Gaul doing the invasion.

 

[onedreamer]

Because Christian nations never fought each other?

It seems to me that Christian Europe was pretty much at war with itself from the fall of Rome up until 1945.

I second or third the motion that common religions making nice neighbors should be cut way down.

again, you don't see it under the right point of view. Christian nations almost never fought each other for religious matter, or with the religious "excuse". And actually they put aside their long disputes several times to unite under the flag of Christianity to fight Islam.

 

[onedreamer]

Yepp! Take only some dozen years of the Byzantine or even late Roman era and think how much problems the new monotheistic religion brought once it was established even within the same empire. Once they were christs the Romans hadn't even space to think about "brothers or sisters of the faith" or "heathens". The internal problems were high enough.

And then analyze the long established polytheistic predecessors.

Sorry, not true either.
Christianity was brought into the roman empire by Constantine exactly in a hope to solve the internal division of the empire. It wasn't the other way around.

 

[onedreamer]

Hmm?
On the way to the First Crusade, the Western Christians sacked Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Christians.
And before that, the Christian Normans invaded and conquered Christian Saxon England. And after that, Christian France and Christian England were at war almost constantly up until 1815.

Ooops. Gotta walk the dogs. Probably many more examples.

OMG... that was the FOURTH crusade (the last) and the sack of Constantinople had not much to do with religion IMO.

 

[onedreamer]

I think it can be stated that inter-religious wars were not fought more often than intra-religous wars. With intra-religious wars I mean wars based on problems between different groups of the same religion.

Again, intra-religious wars is a meaningless term... these wars had nothing to do with religion matters 99% of the times. So I don't see why they should be compared. Also, these wars provoked much more "war weariness" than religious wars. The first kind of wars were most of the times fought for the pockets of nobles or for the interests or manias of a single or few men at the lead of a country. The second kind of wars were fought for a common ideal in which even the last of peasants believed and felt represented.

 

[onedreamer]

(re AI units not upgrading to the latest metal technology)
How about my suggestion of simply making the smith a free building in each city right from the start? Surely AI units are bound to eventually walk in some city and 'accidentally' upgrade to the latest available weapons?!

Personally, I don't like the idea of the free smithy or free buildings in general, but someone proposed a solution that is certainly a good one: smithy should allow the engeneer specialist. I reported this in v1.5 or 1.4 btw

 

[Pvblivs]

OMG... that was the FOURTH crusade (the last) and the sack of Constantinople had not much to do with religion IMO.

And that's the point of it. You have a war and it has nothing to do with religion. Was it less likely to emerge than those crusades? No!

Conclusion? Religion as a hint wether a war breaks out or not is relatively useless. It might give a clue about other aspects like the dimension, the war weariness or others...

Again, intra-religious wars is a meaningless term... these wars had nothing to do with religion matters 99% of the times. So I don't see why they should be compared. Also, these wars provoked much more "war weariness" than religious wars. The first kind of wars were most of the times fought for the pockets of nobles or for the interests or manias of a single or few men at the lead of a country. The second kind of wars were fought for a common ideal in which even the last of peasants believed and felt represented.

Sure? The crusades are 1 example for some wars I can count with my hands that broke out because of religion / religious leadership / a religious alliance in a specific period. How many wars have been fought because of religion?

And have those crusades been undertaken because of religion "we don't like them" or because they were a means to get allies in a war that was about to get lost for Constantinople? So religions where a uniting aspect in an existing war, but not the motivation to begin a war, rather to mobilize unmobilized forces. To find allies through this uniting aspect.

What I want to say is exactly this: It is one thing to find some allies in the face of war you're loosing on your own. Or even to gether allies for an own campaign. It's some kind of joker card. But it is not an all-present aspect of diplomacy as is in Civ4, is it? You cannot expect the Christ to like you more because you're a christ as well. The christ won't share his resources with either just because of this what you said:

for the interests or manias of a single or few men at the lead of a country

This is the common thing how diplomacy and warfare works. The difference in democracies is that you need the public opinion. But in the end all is about interests: To whom do I sell the oil / olives why and what for? With Louis XIV's "I am the state" it is even more simple, what is in the interest of your excellency we'll do with our neighbours. Is there anything about religions?

Hardly... Religions are just the "tin opener" if you need a tool to get the war-tin open. Religions are great to seperate a bunch of someonse into several bunches that you can distinguish from another when you need some group to be the bad.
This is what I mean. Religions are a means to persuade a "brother of the faith" to do something against a common "heathen". A tool for "us both against this alone". But not something for bilateral relations, that is Hammurabi dials me up being pissed off because I've a different religion without even having me asked to change mine.

And in consequence he takes his Bireme, journeyes through half of the mediterranean world to sink one of my transports and raze some fishing nets because he likes his Babylonian-god-neighbours more then me that I am a Greek polytheist

This is and never has been reality.

 

[Laurino]

Let me first state that we haven't changed the AI behaviour for TAM, so all the problems that we see here are the results of the default CIV4 AI.

This is true since, it was impossible to play with the code when TAM basic versions were released, thus impossible to change the way the AI does its job...

On the other side, the xml files are full of AI Weigths, wich I didn't know much about back then... What I basically did during the groundwork phase of TAM was to simply copy-paste entries and modifying the tags that we knew about... As for AI weigths, they mostly remained unchanged... Now these serve to establish the leaders personalities, the way the AIs build, use the civics, train units, etc, etc, and, obviously, carry diplomatic relations with others... As for ressources trading, it's the same...

As an example, consider the alchemist building...

<FlavorType>FLAVOR_GROWTH</FlavorType>
<iFlavor>3</iFlavor>

The main feature of this building is to boost science, while giving +2 unhealthyness to the city... Of course, reseaching more tends to make your civ grow and prosper... on the other side, a FLAVOR_SCIENCE entry should replace this one, or be added, with a higher weigth than GROWTH. I tend to prefer the 2d solution, as the more precise you are with the way you define a building for the AI, the more it will be build in the right time, by the right civs... Used alonside the LeaderheadInfo file (wich is basically a long list of more thant 50 weights per leader), these weigths and the ones of all other entries from civic choices to unit training, can do a basic job as to how the AI civs behave...

Now that we have the SDK, it could easily come to mind to insert a new kind of weight, let's say FLAVOR_CIVILIZED, wich could be used to reduce the importance of certain things (may it be ressource trading or religious converstion) for civs that were considered more "barbaric" at the time... With this, the Germanic tribes would then probably build Alchemist laboratories waaayyyy later than Egypt would , wich certainly makes sense, and would in fact slow down these civs...


In fact, TAM weigths all need to be re-examined and changed