Unaltered Gameplay Mantra

[DaveMcW]

I think the major problem with Trade Limit is it's a spoiler for Random Personalities. Maybe turning on Random Personalities can disable Trade Limit display?

I am also in favor of showing all hidden diplo modifiers, even the random ones. If we can see random event modifiers that happen before we meet two civs, why can't we random diplo modifiers that were rolled in 4000bc?

 

[EmperorFool]

I think the major problem with Trade Limit is it's a spoiler for Random Personalities. Maybe turning on Random Personalities can disable Trade Limit display?

Absolutely, we'll hide them then. This is how we handle Favorite Civic (hidden at the start). In fact, Dresden wrote some cool code that examines all the diplo modifiers to "figure out" the Favorite Civic of the leaders and shows you the possibilities remaining when they get down to at most five. This is visible on the F4:INFO page.

I am also in favor of showing all hidden diplo modifiers, even the random ones. If we can see random event modifiers that happen before we meet two civs, why can't we random diplo modifiers that were rolled in 4000bc?

Are there random modifiers? The ones I've been talking about are the rule-based situational (you are in top half, Monty is in bottom half, so he hates you more) and the leader-specific (Monty likes war mongers).

If there are truly random modifiers (you roll a -2 for Monty and a +1 for Isabella at game start or when you meet), I am definitely against displaying those--total spoiler.

 

[oyzar]

If you are going to display hidden diplo modifiers you might as well display exactly what each AI techs when(before alpha), since it is just as hidden(not) and easy to figure out...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

On hidden modifiers:

The spirit of BUG, or so I'm told, is that it's a mod that adds convenience without changing gameplay whatsoever.

Hidden modifiers, whether they were hidden intentionally or if it's just sloppy coding, would not change gameplay in the slightest if displayed. It is possible, via carefully looking at the diplo screen each turn, to determine the EXACT modifier between two AIs, which then never changes. When looking at their displayed diplo, just wait until it changes from cautious to pleased or whatever, and there you go, the disparity from what it would normally take is the hidden modifier.

However, doing that takes a TON of WORK, similar to looking at each city to know when whip is over.

If this IS a feature, it is one set to hamper new players or those who don't wish to look at the diplo screen constantly. It is not one that BUG should ignore though.

 

[ruff_hi]

It is possible, via carefully looking at the diplo screen each turn, to determine the EXACT modifier between two AIs, which then never changes. When looking at their displayed diplo, just wait until it changes from cautious to pleased or whatever, and there you go, the disparity from what it would normally take is the hidden modifier.

TMIT raises a good point but I am not sure if it is accurate. There are a bunch of hidden modifies for each AI and some change during the course of the game. I am pretty sure that there are some that are based on your relative strength, your relative war ability and your relative position on the scoreboard. All of these factors change during the game.

TMIT's method would give you the current total hidden modifiers - but only when AI-AI relationships change category.

Personally, I don't think we should display the underlying AI-AI total. Sure, some AIs are difficult to get to pleased (or whatever), but players know that. They also know that they need to improve relationships by pushing those numbers higher. What they don't know is how high (or low, Mr Gandhi) you need to go with some particular AIs.

 

[EmperorFool]

Ruff is correct: the situational non-leader-specific diplo modifiers can change throughout the game. You can use TMIT's technique to find the total hidden modifiers at a particular point in the game, but that total will change over time. That total, however, is based on game rules that the player could partially calculate themselves.

I say partially because Ruff mentioned one that I forgot about: relative power. First, you'd need the Espionage Points to see their demographics, but even then I don't know if it's strictly an above/below calculation or if it's something you couldn't figure out from the graph.

Then there's the top/bottom half of the scoreboard split (I think that's how it works). In this case, if you hadn't met some of the civs, you couldn't know exactly in which have the AIs lie.

If we expose these hidden modifiers, a) we'll have to be very, very careful and b) some may remain hidden sometimes, perhaps always.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I'm in favour of showing those diplomatic modifiers that are written down in strategy articles or reference documents created by certain members of this site or are visible in xml-files. In these cases, it's just the difference between having the information visible inside the game or looking it up in some external document outside the game. So it's just a matter of making the information more accessible.
If some known game rules also dictate diplomatic modifiers (like the position on the score board), then it depends on the ease with which these rules can be applied. Whether someone is above or below the halfway position on the scoreboard is for instance easy to check once you know everyone.

Here are some interesting articles (the first one is slightly aged as for instance the negative diplomatic modifier for the aggressive AI doesn't exist anymore, but it is an excellent summary):
AI Attitude Explained
AI Attitude Reference Visuals

 

[EmperorFool]

Thanks for the links, Roland. I remember reading that list of modifiers a ways back. Glad to see I remembered some of them still.

Here are the different pieces of information that feed each modifier:

• General Game Data (G)
• Specific Leader Data (L)
• Rank (K)
• Hidden Information (H)
• Random Die Roll (R)

Modifiers requiring (L) would remain hidden when the Random Personalities setting is enabled.

Note that to know the true Rank (K) of a player you must have met all players in the game that are still alive.

Question: If you haven't met a player, and they give independence to a colony--creating a new player--do you get a message? If not, you can never truly know whether or not you've met all players unless

• vassals are disabled in the game settings,
• you've explored the whole map, or
• you've met all the players available before anyone has learned Feudalism.

We could base our calculations on what the player believes with some extra work in this case.​

Here's a list of what knowledge each hidden modifier requires:

1. iBaseAttitude (L)
2. iAttitudeChange (G) - Difficulty Level and CIV4HandicapInfo.xml
3. AggressiveAI - unused in BTS
4. PeaceWeight (L R) - die roll once when player is created
5. iWarmongerRespect (L)
6. # Team Members
7. Worse Rank (L K)
8. Better Rank (L K)
9. Underdogs (K)
10. iLostWarAttitudeChange (L H)

#10 is the only one that depends on truly hidden information: the war success calculated for each player. You'd need to keep track of every unit that the AI had lost/killed (whatever the calculation is), and that is simply not feasible. This modifier will never be shown.

Edit: Unless the WarSuccess calculation is team-to-team, in which case you could theoretically keep track of your success against an AI, but you'd never know this value for inter-AI wars.

Now, one common thing I see repeated in the posts requesting that we show hidden modifiers is that people are upset that the numbers don't reliably give you the attitude value. Well, as long as any modifier remains hidden, this will often be the case.

In the end, showing the hidden modifiers that we can will only give you more insight into the game mechanics. It won't tell you exactly how many visible modifiers you need to add to alter an attitude level.

 

[Roland Johansen]

In the end, showing the hidden modifiers that we can will only give you more insight into the game mechanics. It won't tell you exactly how many visible modifiers you need to add to alter an attitude level.

Very true. I guess you could with careful administration and good deduction skills possibly get the random number value used in basepeaceweight, but simply giving that information in the bug mod would be crossing the UG line (IMHO). And making the mod deduct the value by ingame information might be pretty hard.

In the end, I must say that I've never liked the fact that the game gave you these diplomatic values while not having a strict relation between the values shown ingame and the actual diplomatic relations. A starting civIV-player will always assume some strict relation. I hope that the developers make a different choice for civ5.

Showing more diplomatic modifiers and mentioning a variable modifier ( +-3 or something) would give more insight in the relation between the diplomatic relation and the diplomatic modifiers. This increased insight has some value in my opinion.

Possible way for BUG mod to show additional info:
-Normal BTS modifiers
-Option to show extra modifiers that are deemed accessible to a player (UG)
-Option to show the possible values of the random basepeaceweight modifier in a different colour (-6 ... +4)
-Option to set the random modifier at a certain value by player for each civilisation (for the player who thinks he has deducted the correct value) (Set basepeaceweight modifier = 2)
-Option to show another undetermined warmodifier which would be set at 0 when at peace (+-undetermined war modifier)

(The value 3 is just an example here, I don't know the size of this random modifier. The value 2 is likewise just as an example.)


Guessing the basepeaceweight of your opponents is thus guessing the character of your opponents by deductive reasoning and ingame experience and will take some time in each game because you'll need to gather some information about each opponent.

 

[ruff_hi]

Hey - here is an idea. Why don't we create an expansion pack (!) of BUG that is BAG (Beyond the Sword, Altered Gameplay) that includes all of the hidden things, latest UP, game changing DLL, etc. We could do it in one code base (BUGs) but include an extra ini file (not shown in the BUG Option tabs) that turns on/off the BAG stuff.

Naturally, no new units, changes of XML values, etc - just revealing hidden stuff.

 

[obsolete]

By the way, and I keep forgetting this, though it's on the same lines. The F5 screen could do with RTT stats.

REFUSAL TO TALK.

DanF introduced me to this table & calculation recently, and it really helps in predicting now the RTT for everyone. Of course, when you know the table you don't NEED to have it listed as you can look up the stats on leaders if you forgot, but most players are not even aware of it.

Even if you don't want to keep track of all units killed & lost, you can at least give a min-max range for the RTT, which is rather a very simple calculation anyhow, depending which side did the DoW.

 

[EmperorFool]

DanF introduced me to this table & calculation recently, and it really helps in predicting now the RTT for everyone.

Okay, I've done a fair bit of searching of the forums for "this table" without any luck. I give up--care to post a link for us?

 

[obsolete]

RTT Table


Any questions let me know.. actually, maybe best to ask Dan. Haha.

 

[EmperorFool]

Excellent, thanks for the link. I do remember reading this post recently but wasn't paying much attention. One possibility would be to put all these stats into a table on each Leader's Sevopedia page. Any takers?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Question: If you haven't met a player, and they give independence to a colony--creating a new player--do you get a message? If not, you can never truly know whether or not you've met all players unless
​

I thought the remaining civs was always accurate under the victory condition screen? Was I mistaken ?

Also, for the spirit of BUG I'd advocate putting in any modifiers that can be calculated based on knowledge but aren't currently displayed. Others players will have to live with in terms of BUG. While, IMO, things like intentionally not displaying certain factors is a crappy move by fireaxis, changing it wouldn't fit the UNALTERED gameplay aspect.

Note that I do feel that you should be given the AIs actual disposition toward you when you have vassals. That the interface can flagrantly lie to the player is obscene, and it's usually quite simple to gauge. Usually.​

 

[EmperorFool]

I thought the remaining civs was always accurate under the victory condition screen? Was I mistaken ?

If that's the case, you can know when you meet the last player, and at that point we could display the rank-based modifiers.

Also, for the spirit of BUG I'd advocate putting in any modifiers that can be calculated based on knowledge but aren't currently displayed. . . changing it wouldn't fit the UNALTERED gameplay aspect.

Are you contradicting yourself here, or am I misunderstanding you?

Note that I do feel that you should be given the AIs actual disposition toward you when you have vassals.

If we include hidden modifiers based on known information (G and K above), then it makes sense to include this as well since it's based on (G) as well.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Hey - here is an idea. Why don't we create an expansion pack (!) of BUG that is BAG (Beyond the Sword, Altered Gameplay) that includes all of the hidden things, latest UP, game changing DLL, etc. We could do it in one code base (BUGs) but include an extra ini file (not shown in the BUG Option tabs) that turns on/off the BAG stuff.

Naturally, no new units, changes of XML values, etc - just revealing hidden stuff.

For a while I doubted this to be a good move since the limits of BAG might be even harder to define than those of BUG. But thinking about it for a while, I guess these limits aren't too hard to define (like you said, no new units, changes of XML values, etc - just revealing hidden stuff). However, I for instance wouldn't like total map awareness, knowledge about the technologies enemies have, knowledge about how many of each unit they have, etc. in some version of BAG, while maybe some might want that. So there might be similar discussions for BAG. There's no easy solution to this discussion.

 

[The Snug]

I'm in favor of showing the hidden modifiers. I've looked through all of the leaderhead xml files and made my own excel spreadsheets with the into. Took many hours. It woulda been nice if BUG simply had it.

The info is available, it just requires extra digging.

I suppose therefore I support the idea of both a BUGL Normal and a BUG: Naughty version. Where the second version reveals all of the naughty little secrets that our spies (not a reference to the in-game espionage system) would most certainly find out anyway.

 

[ruff_hi]

BUG: Naughty version. Where the second version reveals all of the naughty little secrets that our spies would most certainly find out anyway.

A naughty version - too funny.

 

[DaveMcW]

Very true. I guess you could with careful administration and good deduction skills possibly get the random number value used in basepeaceweight, but simply giving that information in the bug mod would be crossing the UG line (IMHO). And making the mod deduct the value by ingame information might be pretty hard.

Building a deduction function into BUG would certainly do it, and might not be as hard as you think.

Another solution is write a mathematical proof that it CAN be determined, then go ahead and display the information without performing any deduction. Assuming the proof is valid, it will be just as effective for auditing the "unaltered gameplay", as the source code of a deduction function.