Thoughts/suggestions about game options

[JosEPh_II]

@JosEPh_II

I think at slower speeds it has much more of an effect. For instance during a game last version I expanded way too fast and went 3 cities over the limit which gave all my cities unhappiness. Along with revolutions I almost lost my newly conquered cities.

Without that mechanic I probably could have kept expanding without consequence (well except for the revolutions part).

Hey I only quoted what another deity player stated. City Limits limit the AI causing them to be weaker. You the player can ignore the Limits but can the AI? I don't think so.

Maybe you should try a game or 2 w/o City Limits On? For a perspective refresher course. And maybe leave REV off too?

JosEPh

 

[rightfuture]

I'll put my head in the noose again.

City Limits Should be Turned Off by Default. In fact it can be deleted. Not just deleted as an Option but totally removed from the mod. Of course there is going to be opposition, But.....

Other players are finally starting to see that the AI does Much better with this Option turned off.


JosEPh

I agree that City limits should be off by default.

Whenever a feature is wanted or unwanted by a smaller but significant subset of people instead of being removed or never being added., maybe should be left off/on by default instead, but selectable. Could end some arguments.

 

[rightfuture]

Hey I only quoted what another deity player stated. City Limits limit the AI causing them to be weaker. You the player can ignore the Limits but can the AI? I don't think so.

Maybe you should try a game or 2 w/o City Limits On? For a perspective refresher course. And maybe leave REV off too?

JosEPh

1. I like the idea of training wheels for expansion. In some way there should always be room for a little play in strategy, expand more or less in any given period of time. There should be consequences, but not outright nerfing expansion. Empires that grow too big should collapse or become a management problem. There should also be consequences of staying too small. Players should probably be given in-game options to adjust (break the limit because it isn't as fun). Every era there should be a default balancing act that goes on to get ahead of others and expand properly. I think the default balance of too much or too little for everybody's sake should be continued to be worked out and it should always be somewhat of a personal balancing act.


2. REV should always be an option, either way is the default, but it should be worked on since it is so popular, someone should float a thread or a modmod who cares a lot. Personally I like Revolutions and I think it could be made even better! Anything people dislike probably just needs to be worked on. The concept of revolutions is sound, not necessarily the implementation. I think it could be improved by tying to events and gameplay more for instability triggers.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I'll put my head in the noose again.

City Limits Should be Turned Off by Default. In fact it can be deleted. Not just deleted as an Option but totally removed from the mod. Of course there is going to be opposition, But.....

Other players are finally starting to see that the AI does Much better with this Option turned off.


JosEPh

@JosEPh_II

I think at slower speeds it has much more of an effect. For instance during a game last version I expanded way too fast and went 3 cities over the limit which gave all my cities unhappiness. Along with revolutions I almost lost my newly conquered cities.

Without that mechanic I probably could have kept expanding without consequence (well except for the revolutions part).

Maybe City Limits should be included as part of the Rev option. Without It I find that the AI expands too fast and break up due to revolutions.

 

[Koshling]

Maybe City Limits should be included as part of the Rev option. Without It I find that the AI expands too fast and break up due to revolutions.

This sounds like a decent idea. PRename it slightly moer generically ('realistic empire management' or something in the spirit of 'realistic' various other things [whether they are or not ]).

I'd also like to make the city limit numbers difficulty-level driven as mentioned elsewhere at some point.

 

[MarisellaB]

The flexible difficulty needs to have its turn adjusted..it only goes up to 500 i believe.

 

[Astax]

I'd like an option to spawn wild animals in culture boarders, perhaps outside city radius.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I'd like an option to spawn wild animals in culture boarders, perhaps outside city radius.

Big problem, this would mean that all wild animals could enter your cultural boarder and eat your workers.

 

[makotech222]

Would love for an option to get rid of a lot of the "fluff" buildings. The ones that do very little benefit like +2 culture or something. If not, then i would love for the city building AI to actually select those buildings to build, instead of just defaulting to "research." For example, i leave a lot of my cities on auto-build, but they end up leaving ~30 buildings and instead select 'research'. Anyway to fix that?

 

[rightfuture]

Big problem, this would mean that all wild animals could enter your cultural boarder and eat your workers.

An event could let one through. Happens in Dallas and Atlanta all the time.

 

[rightfuture]

Would love for an option to get rid of a lot of the "fluff" buildings. The ones that do very little benefit like +2 culture or something. If not, then i would love for the city building AI to actually select those buildings to build, instead of just defaulting to "research." For example, i leave a lot of my cities on auto-build, but they end up leaving ~30 buildings and instead select 'research'. Anyway to fix that?

I voted for grouping buildings so they can be optional/managed recently in another thread. For test games they could be turned off/on in sets. Buildings could also be assigned a priority number for the AI. Different strategies, traits, and civics, could toggle different building strategies for the AI. It would give some variation to the game. It would take some time to build the AI, so it would switch between preference lists for building ques.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

An event could let one through. Happens in Dallas and Atlanta all the time.

A wild animal which appears/spawns inside cultural boarders would either
- be stuck and not move (fixed by koshling on SVN but not v23 iirc)
- be teleported out (by Great Wall or by koshling's fix"

To have what you suggest (wild animals spawning in cultural borders) happen would require a fair bit of coding.

 

[makotech222]

I voted for grouping buildings so they can be optional/managed recently in another thread. For test games they could be turned off/on in sets. Buildings could also be assigned a priority number for the AI. Different strategies, traits, and civics, could toggle different building strategies for the AI. It would give some variation to the game. It would take some time to build the AI, so it would switch between preference lists for building ques.

Yeah that would be great. Does anyone know how the autobuild AI chooses which buildings to build?

Edit: Looked through the buildinginfo.txt and noticed a entry for AiWeight, but it doesn't look like it's used. Most buildings are set to 0. Have no idea where else to check.

 

[AIAndy]

A wild animal which appears/spawns inside cultural boarders would either
- be stuck and not move (fixed by koshling on SVN but not v23 iirc)
- be teleported out (by Great Wall or by koshling's fix"

To have what you suggest (wild animals spawning in cultural borders) happen would require a fair bit of coding.

In the FFH2 mod family I have seen an enraged promotion that makes the animal ignore the cultural limits.

 

[Koshling]

Yeah that would be great. Does anyone know how the autobuild AI chooses which buildings to build?

Edit: Looked through the buildinginfo.txt and noticed a entry for AiWeight, but it doesn't look like it's used. Most buildings are set to 0. Have no idea where else to check.

If you have the Option set to use the AI governor instead of the default governor, it uses the same routines that the AI uses (unless you give it a category to focus on, in which case it filters others out) However that is not the default (by default it uses the BTS governor which is fairly brain dead).

As to how the AI governor makes it's choices, it's complex, and not readily describable in a short post here. If you can read C++ code then it's all in cvCityAI.cpp which is publically available via the SVN.

 

[makotech222]

AH i see. Well the problem i have with the AI governor, is that it more often than not, produces military units which i don't need. Anyway to disable that? then it would be perfect.

 

[Koshling]

AH i see. Well the problem i have with the AI governor, is that it more often than not, produces military units which i don't need. Anyway to disable that? then it would be perfect.

The ai governor (when used by a player as the city automation) shouldn't be producing units. If it is that's a bug. Do you have any focuses set? Does doing so change this behavior?

 

[Thunderbrd]

An option for allowing animals into borders, allowing them to spawn there and so on could be made fairly easily from the dll side but any python interactions would be tough. Workers would be at risk, yes, but I do intend to eventually be fixing up the problems with workers having strength values. Perhaps after such a fix it wouldn't be such a bad idea. I wouldn't mind such an option, especially if the spawn values were based on the health of the land, thus they still tend to spawn more in regions farther from cities.

 

[makotech222]

How do i set focuses?

 

[Koshling]

How do i set focuses?

In the city screen just under teh icon that turns on the governor are icons telling it whether to focus on gold/production etc. (they are buttons that highlight when depressed to indicate the current state). You can have any combination selected and the governor will restrict itself to things that match your selected set of focuses. None selected (the default) leaves it with free reign.