What Would Gandhi Do? - AI Rebalancing Mod

[Sneaks]

I appreciate the comments supremely. That Patience! bit was for Soma, who I know is itching for the latest version.

 

[Gamewizard]

This mod definetly has potential, some thoughts:

Played a cultural game with this and Thal's Balance (emperor diff) where I only had one city. Played much of the game with only a spearman and a horseman, upgrading when available. Semi-isolated, Egypt eventually stretched out to my border. Never had any wars, I chose to decline all DoFs and war requests. I even stole some City-States, but the AI never got angry about it. Rome did DoW one of my City-State's late in the game (industrial/modern) so I sent Infantry every turn to help them. Won on turn 250ish.

Anyways, I think the AI should better recognize a player going Cultural, after say 3 or 4 complete policy trees (6 needed for Thal's Balance) and then get a bit aggressive to stop you, especially if I have a 2 unit army. Otherwise it seems like a guaranteed win.

 

[Thalassicus]

One thing that particularly bothers me in Civ V is leaders' lack of personality. In Civ 4 Tokugawa was such a protectionist, you always knew Monte was going to stab you in the back the first chance he got, and Mansa loved the builder playstyle. I don't get that feeling at all from Civ V leaders, other than some are slightly meaner (like Napoleon). Perhaps other factors like proximity, DoFs and denouncements are overshadowing their personalities? (to be clear, I see this in vanilla or with WWGD so it's not a problem with your mod)

It'd be nice to see some really distinctive, focused personalities utilizing their traits and UUs/UBs. I suspect these leaders already have flavor values similar to what I list below, but they're just not strong enough. Alternatively, from looking at the files I think the devs might have tried setting up too many variables for leader traits. When leaders have several dozen things (seriously!) determining their personality, and most of those variables are middling-average, it's just not clear enough for a player to discern.

I'd suggest experimenting with just two distinct variables:

Compassion (Ruthless or Merciful)
Ruthless: Starts off wary, friendliness increases towards others with warlike behavior
Merciful: Starts off friendly and decreases with warlike behavior

Openness (Isolationist or Diplomatic)
Isolationist: expansion through ICS -or- conquest
Diplomatic: alliances with citystates to aid in building -or- war

How leaders act on the openness trait depends on compassion, creating 4 easily-identifiable personality types. So for example:

• Alex - ruthless diplomat (coalition builder)
• Ramkham - merciful diplomat (trader)
• Genghis - ruthless loner (conqueror)
• Nebu - merciful loner (builder)

This is something that really interests me so I've been looking through the leader personality files a bit. You'd probably have more experience with this though, and might have some ideas on how to balance personalities -vs- modifiers from events & proximity.

Would it be possible for you to make a standalone mod with only the DoF cancel button?
Or maybe Thalassicus can do this as part of his unofficial patch?

Absolutely. It is a very simple tweak

It'll probably be perfectly alright as an independent mod component, I don't mess with most of the diplo stuff, leaving that up to Sneaks.

Along those lines, I hope it's alright that I integrated a few one-line tweaks to InfoTooltipInclude.lua (from alpaca and Sneaks) into the unofficial patch's version... I've been spending days on end rewriting that whole file for the autotips system, and it's difficult to get lua files compatible without merging the changes. Alpaca indicated he might be including similar code so compatibility issues should be lessened all around.

 

[alpaca]

A problem might be that AI leaders have a significant random contribution to their flavor values. This means they always have a slightly different personality. In Civ4, you could not exactly tell the personality of a leader except for some extreme cases like Toku or Mansa. But since it was always the same, you could get a feeling about how aggressive which leader is, what they care about, and so on.

I do see some similar stuff in Civ5, though. Alex and Nappy are almost always very aggressive, often even starting at hostile with you. Gandhi is usually peaceful and often stays small, etc.

 

[Txurce]

From what I recall the devs saying about AI personalities, you're both right. In a nutshell, they wanted you to see a difference between Napoleon and Ghandi, but not to count on it. It's quite possible that in this area, they achieved their goal. The game's other failings probably tar the leaders with the same brush, and their unpredictability is written off as poor design. But I think they are simply too complex (affected by multiple variables) to be "characters."

Whether they should be tilted toward that direction or left alone to be significantly unpredictable (despite visible tendencies) is a matter of personal preference. The unpredictability makes for a better opponent - for example, Gandhi may unpleasantly surprise you. On the other hand, it's fun and reassuring to "know" a leader.

Tweaking the leaders, perhaps along the lines Thal outlined, to make them slightly more distinct, could heighten the fun factor without damaging the unpredictability. But shading other variables (like the effects of start placements) would not only help balance civs, but also give them some of the individuality that we all enjoy.

 

[Txurce]

I'm going to bring up my periodic question about whether the AI happiness bonus can be eliminated, or jerry-rigged in some way that largely reduces it, as I think Sneaks has done to some degree in this mod. If this could be accomplished, the game would have the potential for trading to make some sense, and the various difficulty levels could be adjusted in a much more measurable way that could, among other things, make Immortal and especially Deity less predictable in their human starts.

 

[Seek]

Can the leader flavor variations be made one point instead of two? Don't know if that would make them too predictable, but seems like it'd be worth a shot.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'm going to bring up my periodic question about whether the AI happiness bonus can be eliminated

To my understanding, the answer is this resides in a part of the game that isn't loaded in a way mods can deal with (PostDefines).

 

[Txurce]

To my understanding, the answer is this resides in a part of the game that isn't loaded in a way mods can deal with (PostDefines).

Sneaks' mod notes say that despite his attempt to eliminate the bonus, the "AI still appears to gain some Happiness bonuses. This is a Firaxis programming bug where the AI is given human player bonuses, and currently there are no known fixes." Do you know if his original attempt reduced it to any measurable degree? I do see some AI civs occasionally well below the usual 100% happiness levels, but didn't know if it was due to this mod, or if occasionally happens in vanilla as well.

 

[doktorstick]

Have you seen this for happiness?

 

[Txurce]

Have you seen this for happiness?

I brought it up once before, but am glad you brought it up again. If this works as advertised, then it would seemingly allow a modder to rebuild AI bonuses for each difficulty level in a manner that would have more consequences for the AI, and thus perhaps lead to a better game experience.

 

[Sneaks]

I brought it up once before, but am glad you brought it up again. If this works as advertised, then it would seemingly allow a modder to rebuild AI bonuses for each difficulty level in a manner that would have more consequences for the AI, and thus perhaps lead to a better game experience.

It would be incorrect to look at that mod as an actual solution, as it pretty much causes at least as many problems as it solves, as the creator addresses in the first post. It eliminates the AI happiness issues by eliminating all player benefits, and thus imbalancing the difficulty levels on the player bonus side instead. As Thal mentioned, the issue is imbedded in code we need the full SDK to access. The game incorrectly gives the AI human bonuses, and until there is a clean way to solve that ridiculous oversight by Firaxis, I want to hold off on any hacky fixes that will make Deity and Immortal feel better at the cost of making Settler through Chieftan much harder.

As it stands, WWGD eliminates SOME of the AI happiness, but not all. I may attempt to create a solution where the player receives even larger production bonuses on lower levels at the cost of happiness, but this honestly feels less forgiving for those who are still in a newer play level.

 

[Txurce]

It would be incorrect to look at that mod as an actual solution, as it pretty much causes at least as many problems as it solves, as the creator addresses in the first post. It eliminates the AI happiness issues by eliminating all player benefits, and thus imbalancing the difficulty levels on the player bonus side instead...

I want to hold off on any hacky fixes that will make Deity and Immortal feel better at the cost of making Settler through Chieftan much harder.

Would it make sense to start with the AI Equalizer as a base, then balance it by creating bonuses/handicaps on either end?

 

[Sneaks]

Would it make sense to start with the AI Equalizer as a base, then balance it by creating bonuses/handicaps on either end?

It would ideally, but unfortunately because the AI receives some human bonuses on some levels, it is quite the confusing issue as to what bonuses will help equalize and what bonuses will simply tweak the AI in the wrong direction.

 

[doktorstick]

I want to hold off on any hacky fixes that will make Deity and Immortal feel better at the cost of making Settler through Chieftan much harder.

Really, though, how many people are playing on Settler and Chieftain with mods? I'm guessing by time they have hit the mods, they have graduated to at least Prince/King level. Don't let the tail wag the dog! Now, if it is a technology issue because of the grossness of it, I buy that.

Personally, I play at Emperor and if it got harder, then I would step back a level. This isn't much different than any improvements to the AI to make it smarter--people might have to adjust their comfort levels.

 

[BuddhaBubba]

Just wanted to say that I'm excited about trying this mod out. Besides leaders like Alex or Nappy, the only predictability is that if you declare war on more than one city-state or other civilization, you're going to get all of the leaders angry with you. I can understand that the other leaders could get hostile for a dozen or so turns but it seems like leaders decide to hate you for the rest of the game. Even more incredulous is when a leader asks me to do DoW with them and then comes back a few turns later denouncing me for warmongering!

On a side-note, the laying off of all those poor firaxian code-monkeys just before the release must have something to do with the somewhat ridiculous problems of the game.

Thanks for the mod(s).

 

[rhammer640]

Any idea when version 4 will be out? I'm interesting in using the mod as it fixes a bunch of issues i have with diplomacy but the AI is too passive now and its almost not fun without ever worrying about being attacked

 

[civcivv]

Hi Sneaks,

Managed to test your DoF Ender button mod in a newly started game, but it does not seem to work (other than the very turn you make the declaration and during the associated cooldown period).

So having been friends with Egypt some 60 turns I cannot end the DoF other than redeclaring friendship and ending it. I thought the mod was supposed to prevent the redeclaring option and replace it with the "I'm done working with you" button?

 

[Sneaks]

Unfortunately I have become quite delayed thanks to several work projects. The ETA on everything has been pushed back til whenever I have some breathing room again.

 

[Txurce]

Unfortunately I have become quite delayed thanks to several work projects. The ETA on everything has been pushed back til whenever I have some breathing room again.

Work sucks. Good luck powering through.