Wrath of the AI

Quintillus · Mar 8, 2009

Hello from 2022! Would you prefer this story without Photobucket watermarks? If so, you can download it from the Civ3 archive I've made here!

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It's been nearly two years now since I started my first story here, Conquest of the World. Since then I've completed one story, The Space Race. I found that game, and consequently story, to be rather disappointing myself. It simply wasn't as much a challenge as I thought it would be - there was only one small war where the advantage I gave the AI was a factor at all. So I decided that if I were to do another story, I'd make sure the difficulty was kicked up a notch. The next question was, how?

Well, there's lots of ways that's been tried here, and a lot of them work pretty well. But what's so unique about doing a One City Conquest, or applying the Green Thumb Rule, or something of that sort? They've all been done. I considered limiting myself to the Ancient Age, but enough players traditionally finish (or at least have the game wrapped up) by the early Middle Ages anyway that that wouldn't be that unique either in practice, even if the stipulation were unusual. I probably could come up with some variant that incorporated many of the rules, but that's been done, too. And while it's resulted in some pretty amazing tales, it didn't really seem like my cup of tea. Put too many restrictions on yourself, and the game isn't as fun. I didn't want to do that.

But around last August or September, an idea occured to me of a fun, different (at least as far as I know) mod that would not put any undue restrictions on me. The name I came up with for that mod is Wrath of the AI.

Now what's that supposed to mean? AI gets a 90% discount and it's SuperSid difficulty? Nope - that would be guaranteed failure and wouldn't be fun for me, especially as Emperor is the highest level I've ever won on. Rather, in this scenario, each AI will have a very powerful bonus trait. But every AI will have a different bonus trait. They'll all be valuable, so the AI's should more or less balance each other out. But they'll also make it pretty difficult on the human, who has no bonuses. But enough of this! It's time for the details (see below, beneath the Table of Contents)!

Table of Contents

I have changed the format from Conquest of the World, and each link will now open the individual post in a new tab rather than loading the entire page that the post is located on. So far there are no two-post updates - CFC has been rising the picture per post limit, and I don't seem to be hitting it any more. :thumbsup:

to that!

Information about the mod is mostly in this first post, and in Part One.

Spoiler :

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Online Map View

You can view the terrain map of the world, as of 1745 AD, online here, with a modern web browser. Thanks to Puppeteer for creating Civ3 Show and Tell!

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Vital statistics:

Difficulty: Monarch, with an asterisk - the AI bonuses. Monarch is my standard difficulty, and one above what my other stories have been on. The various AI bonuses (outlined below) should add considerably to the difficulty. I'd guess somewhere around Emperor, but I won't find out until I actually play it.
World Size: Huge. Which is redefined to be 200x200.
Climate/Temperature: Wet and Warm
Land Type: Probably Continents
Ocean Coverage: 70%
AI Rivals: 18
My Civilization: More on that below. You didn't expect the regular 31 civilizations, did you?

Civilizations

Spoiler :

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That's the crux of the changes - there's a few others here and there, but they're minor. Most will play out as the story goes.

But you'll have to wait a few days for the story itself. At this point I'm still setting up and testing the scenario. It looks like I'll be able to get all the conditions working fine in the scenario, but it takes awhile to set it all up and get rid of crashes to to missing entries in PediaIcons.txt, as well as testing it to make sure honesty isn't always the best policy (i.e., one civilization always wins). My best guess is I'll have the scenario finished sometime in the first part of this week.

The scenario is also now available from this post. This is the same version used in this story; an updated version with some tweaks was started, but has been in stasis for a number of years.

There's your sneak preview! More will be coming, once the scenario's all set up!

Northen Wolf · Mar 8, 2009

I subscribed to previous stories, I will subscribe to this too.
(In my humble opinion, emperor is not tough).
Also, what version will you play this on?

Good luck!

TheOverseer714 · Mar 8, 2009

Sounds cool, another Quintillus epic. Signing up for a front row seat.

Quintillus · Mar 8, 2009

Northen Wolf said:
I subscribed to previous stories, I will subscribe to this too.
(In my humble opinion, emperor is not tough).
Also, what version will you play this on?

Good luck!

Well, I've only ever won once on Emperor, versus several losses of various degrees of crushedness, so Emperor is a good challenge for me. I don't tend to play entirely follow-the-cookbook-to-get-the-best-score, so that is a factor in as well. Specifically I can't bring myself to build cities really close together (CxC). It just seems unnatural to have them so close together. :cringe:

I'll be playing this on Conquests 1.22.

Still working on setting up the scenario at this point...

Civ2player · Mar 9, 2009

You're previous story was the one that inspired me to write a couple of stories on here, I'll definitely be reading...

Northen Wolf · Mar 9, 2009

Quintillus said:
Well, I've only ever won once on Emperor, versus several losses of various degrees of crushedness, so Emperor is a good challenge for me. I don't tend to play entirely follow-the-cookbook-to-get-the-best-score, so that is a factor in as well. Specifically I can't bring myself to build cities really close together (CxC). It just seems unnatural to have them so close together.

I'll be playing this on Conquests 1.22.

Still working on setting up the scenario at this point...

Well, I don't use CxC either, I use CxxC, I also do not micromanage more than in the begging and once towns are max size( I let cities grow to size 12 or 6, depending if I have river/time to build aqua), then irrigate/mine to maximize shield production to get "nice" numbers of shields per turn in towns. If AI manages to survive until RR, then I am forced to do 3rd managing round, usually, I win by the time or with the RR's...

Quintillus · Mar 9, 2009

Huh. Maybe it's a difference in how aggressive we play. I very rarely win by railroads, and don't like to always be at war, so that could well be the difference. But that's why they do have all the various difficulty levels - you aren't going to ensnare very many people with a game that seems impossible to win at first, or a cakewalk after two weeks. Although I see on your profile Emperor is listed as your Civ3 difficulty, so it seems we aren't too far off here. What matters most, of course, is that it's fun, and for me, Monarch/Emperor is the most fun level. After all, we (unfortunately) don't get paid to play Civ!

Got most of the custom units and almost all (if not all) the technologies set up, and the Civilopedia is accurate once more. About 2/3 of the customizations are now implemented.

Northen Wolf · Mar 9, 2009

I don't play very "aggressively" either, I prefer war-recover-war-recover periods. Usually war period increases my empire size 30-50%. I declare, take strategical town, then wait few turns until SoD reaches me, destroy it, take as much land as possible and make peace, demanding as much as I can, rebuild and/or settle newly conquered lands, then continue...

I use MapStat as trade helper, if that matters anything, that keeps me in tech lead, or semi-lead. By the time I get RR's 30% or more land is mine, then operation "Railroad to the front lines" begins, that usually nets 5-10% land area each turn.

I play tight pangea maps usually and have domination turned off - kill or be killed.

Still your stories are/were awsome and inspired many to join this forum (me included).

CivAgamemnon · Mar 9, 2009

This sounds intriguing, and I'm sure I'll learn more than a few things from this story.

Spoonwood · Mar 9, 2009

Sounds like it totally different game. And it sounds cool too!

Quintillus · Mar 10, 2009

An update - it looks like everything is working at this point. By that I mean all the bonuses outlined above - all are in working order. Helps a lot to test now that I know how to use Debug mode! I learned a lot about scenario making in general with this - but I'm quite glad I already knew some of the tricks of the trade.

At this point the most important task is making sure no AI will run away every time. I'd already noticed in pre-alpha testing that the Governors were consistently dominating whichever other AI they chose to fight, so I toned down their government bonus a bit. It was a bit too perfect. It'll take a little while to test this since it requires a large map.

I also will likely tweak tech costs a bit - the AI is absolutely flying through the tech tree even at Regent level. We're talking SETI/UN/Manhattan Project pre-1600. At this rate a 30-40% increase in tech costs seems reasonable to get tech discovery back in line, especially considering Monarch will only exacerbate the problem. Another approach I'll try is disabling Ancient Era tech-trading - that may slow the AI down enough to make the tech pace reasonable.

I'm also experimenting with ways to slow down colonization of barren lands. More on this once I've settled on a method.

Otherwise, I'd like to improve the Civilopedia a bit and diversify the building/wonder/tech icons. It's playable right now and would work fine for me in this story since I know what's going on, but it's not release-quality for a scenario yet. All new buildings have the Knights Templar icon and Smith's wonder splash, and all new techs have the Fascism icon (although this is irrelevant in practice since none are on the tech tree). And the Civilopedia is just a bit lacking, although most new buildings/wonders do have accurate descriptions. It's the type of documentation and polish that a scenario really deserves. You can get by without it, but it's definitely preferable to have it.

A few things I've noticed so far:

*I wanted to have unique buildings for some civilizations. For example, I wanted the Commercial to have the Forum, a building that gave +50% tax income and was available with Coinage. This is essentially what you have in Civ4 Warlords. It would be easy enough to make it available only to the Commerical - make it require a tech I gave only to them (and was in No Era and not tradable). Similarly, it was easy enough to make it available with Coinage. The tough thing was the combination of these two. What I did was make a Wonder available only to the Commercial (Trade Network) that spawned a placeholder building called Commercial in every city, and then required Coingage and at least one Commercial to be present to build a Forum. Since the Commercial is an improvement, this meant that at least one Commercial had to be in that city to build a Forum. In this way the Forum was available only to the Commercial, and starting with Coinage.

*This lead to two subsequent problems. The first was convincing the AI to build Trade Networks. The problem is that they saw Commercials as useless, because they were. To solve this, I made Commercials (and all other placeholder buildings) give resistance to propaganda. This is de facto useless (has anyone ever seen propaganda succeed in Civ3?), but was enough to get the AI to build the gateway wonders (Trade Network, etc.). The second problem was trying to keep the other AI from taking over the benefits that were supposed to be accrued to another. Basically the problem was that if the Hippophiliacs captured a Commercial city, they had a Forum. The first solution was giving 1 culture to each Commercial and Forum - so they would be destroyed on capture. The second problem was the Wonders themselves. This is where it gets odd.

I'd noticed early in testing that for some reason whenever I built these 0-shield wonders (intentional so they'd be build in minimal time; the actual cost in-game is 1 shield), two of them showed up in the city screen (although only one did on the Wonder Screen, F7). So I'd get, say, two Trade Networks and one Commercial if I was playing the Commercial and built the Trade Network. The same thing happens when the AI builds it. Also, if one of these Wonders gives culture, the culture is only counted once per turn, even though it shows up twice in the city screen. See below.

This only seems to happen with Wonders that require a No Era prerequisite, and cost zero shields. Wonders that cost zero shields but had a regular era prerequisite (such as the Militarists' Royal Archery School) do not appear twice.

The other problem was that if a civilization captured the city in which the gateway wonder (say Trade Network) was built, they'd automatically get Commercials in all their cities and be able to build really cheap Forums right away. This problem solved itself. It turns out that whenever a city was captured that contains a No Era 0-shield wonder, that Wonder was destroyed. So it became impossible for a civilization to capture the benefits of another civilization. The regular buildings were destroyed on capture from having culture, and the Wonders were destroyed by this weird quirk. This happened regardless of whether the AI or human captured the city - oddly, the capture message for the human says the wonder was captured, when in fact the wonder is automatically destroyed. The city itself was not automatically destroyed.

But what really makes this inexplicable is that Rocoteh's World War II Global also has 0-shield, No Era wonders (such as the Lille Wonder), and they are not destroyed on capture. Maybe it's because mine spawn buildings? At any rate it's a very odd phenomenom, considering there is not supposed to be any way to destroy Wonders at all. But it's a very convenient quirk to be able to take advantage of for this scenario, so I certainly plan to.

Theryman · Mar 10, 2009

Looks interesting! I had a feeling as I read the first post that the governors would be a runaway civ, and it seems I was right!

Brucha · Mar 10, 2009

Whoo, whoo! Another story by Quintillus

Will be watching this one as much as your Greek game!

Quintillus · Mar 11, 2009

Okay, it's all setup! Got everything I wanted to do done except getting seperate icons for each new buildings/wonder - but so long as you don't object to a lot of Knight Templar, Smith's Trading Company, and Fascism icons, that's not a problem. Most of it won't affect this story at all, as all that is for the AI players. More importantly is that the Civilopedia is accurate and feature-complete.

I think I've even got the Governors pretty balanced with the rest of the AI!

The story will be beginning soon. I'm off to get some dessert right now!

Civ2player · Mar 11, 2009

I'm getting excited!

Quintillus · Mar 11, 2009

As much as any enlightened despot may like to claim otherwise, there are situations where, whether he admits it or not, he, unlike God, must play with dice. And for all of us Civilization III despots, that time comes at the beginning of every game. We fire up Civilization III, choose our settings, and start our game, and while the loading bar quickly goes by, we hope for a favorable starting location. This game will be no different.

The settings, as they were not set in stone previously, will be as follows:

Difficulty: Monarch
Map size: 200x200
Landmass: 70% Continents
Barbarians: Restless
Climate: Wet
Temperature: Warm
Age: 4 billion years
Respawn AI players, Preserve Random Seed, Allow Cultural Conversions ON
All other settings (including Scientific Leaders) OFF
All victories enabled (except Wonder)
AI Aggression: Normal

That means there should be lots of jungles, and a couple of mountain chains in the way as well. Probably not any vast expanses of deserts, but you never know. And these jungles should prove quite the barrier, being impassable to Settlers, Cavalry, Tanks, and most artillery. Woe to the civilizations that start mired in them.

So all the civilizations are set. I take a deep breath, verify the settings, and start the game. Soon we will know the initial fate of the Intelligent.

But first of all, we have a friendly introduction to our scenario! As there are a few differences from a regular game, it's probably worth reading.

I'll explain the tribes as we meet them; the first post also covers the basic of each one. That leaves Destructible Wonders to explain. I'll let their Civilopedia entry do the talking.

Don't worry about all those specific Wonders. They'll be explained in time.

Taking a peek at the mini-map while the scenario desciptioon is displayed, I see that I am almost exactly at the equator, perhaps a shade south. Better than way far north, but I have my reservations about how good this is. We could well be swamped by jungle. A temperate zone definitely is a safer bet. But you get no second chance on your fate. This tropical location is ours to make the best of.

and... it could certainly be worse! A river and some gold, and apparently some land to expand to down south. I'll take these surroundings for now!

Settling down and founding our first city, Thunderfall, the land still looks friendly!

I begin work on 45-turn Ceremonial Burial (the tech rate is pretty slow here), and send my Worker out to build a road.

Three hundred years later, I send my Warrior out to converse with the local barbarians, and the kindly Vandals give me a map of the region.

Pretty nice. I think I'll send my first Settler over towards the wine.

A mere quarter-millenium later, my warrior takes a rather obtuse approach to diplomacy and disturbs some Angles in another barbarian village. This results in my first combat.

He nigh gets himself killed despite being on a Mountain. Fortunately only one Angle attacks.

My luck with the Vandals continues, however, and they teach me Pottery. I soon decide to put it to good use, and after I finish my Settler I begin a Granary in Thunderfall.

Some Khazaks also prove friendly, giving another Warrior of mine 25 gold.

3000 B.C. sees the publication of one of everyone's favorite books, The Most Advanced Nations of the World.

It's author, St. Augustine, also happens to be the ruler of the Utopian faction in this game. He obviously is being quite humble, not having ever mentioned his nation. I take note that scientists are hopeless and honour is forgotton. What a world we live in. At least innovation is still worth something.

In 2900 B.C., I found my second city, optimistically dubbed Bright Future. At its founding, my Worker is already working on connecting Wines to it. I re-examine my plans, and shift the Granary to Bright Future. Thunderfall, with no bonus food tiles, is working on a Barracks for now, though I may change that to a Temple soon.

Just 50 years later, I encounter my first rival - the Seafaring!

The Seafaring, it should be known, are just what they sound like. They get extremely strong naval units. Starting the game with Alphabet and Pottery, they will likely get Map Making early. From there they will dominate the seas, first with Dromons, then Carracks, then Men-O-War, etc. Good thing I wasn't planning to win through domination of the seas.

On the plus side, the Seafarers are not overpowering on land. Starting on the same continent as them is likely a blessing. At this point, they have one more city than I, and already have wines. Everything my advisor tells me indicates they are better than I, except that they fear my Warrior.

Good fortune strikes again in 2710, when my northerly Warrior encounters the Marcomanni, who teach us Warrior Code.

Should strife occur, this will be a great help. With no technology trading, I am clueless as to how advanced the Sailors are at this point, so having military technology myself is the only safe option.

A couple turns later I complete Ceremonial Burial. I decide The Wheel is a good next option.

It stays pretty calm for awhile. My Warriors are getting the lay of the land, and it's not all that pretty. The jungle to the north definitely keeps that direction off limits, and there's a big swath of hostile marsh and desert to the south. The bright spot is the west. There's lots of fertile grassland there, and some tobacco. The incense to the south is good, too - it may be difficult to reach, but it will certainly be worth the effort.

What's this, you ask? It's the first Destructible Wonder to be built! Cultural Prowess gives an Opera House in every Cultured city, giving them +8 culture per turn. Not only does this make them a primary threat for cultural victory, it also helps expand their borders very rapidly early in the game.

My northerly warrior, unfortunately, meets his end near the end of the 2000s B.C. The Goths, now, are my primary enemies.

By 1990 B.C., I've discovered the limits of the fertile west, as well as a nice flood plain to the south that I may race the sailors to.

The primary features of the area, though, are oases in the desert and bananas in the jungle. Already I count eight bananas. Once the jungle is settled, that'll be quite the bounty. And forunately, as a human player I can figure out how to tame the jungle before Medicine. So we may well be a banana republic before the Industrial ages!

The second Destructible Wonder. This one gives +3 content faces in all cities, and doubles the effect of Colosseums.

I found my third city, The Fens, in 1790 B.C. It is named in honour of the low-lying marshes nearby.

1700 B.C. brings two discoveries. The first is that I have no Horses. This misfortunate cannot, it appears, be remedied, as indeed I see no Horses anywhere, not only near me. The second discovery is the Commercial. They have one more city than I and more gold, but I know not where they reside - I merely encountered their scouts.

Another Destructible Wonder. This one allows the construction of Assembly Lines - once the Industrialists discover Industrialization. It's a bit pointless now, but it's good that they've built it.

Not much later, I find some horses way far south. I have no clue if I'll be able to beat my rivals to them.

1600 B.C. sees the founding of Western Shore, the third of my four cities to have Wheat nearby. 50 years later, I have a road stretching across the continent.

Several turns later the fates reveal that the Commercial are to be the first civilization whose cities I discover.

They're light years away from me right now, so there's no worry of war. More likely is that that volcano by my warrior will erupt and blow him to oblivion.

Nothern Frontier is my next city, founded in 1400 B.C. Founded in the last enclave before the jungle, I figure it's unlikely I'll go any father north for a millenia or two. A quarter-century later, I found Brucha's Commune on the other shore. It occurs to me at this point that I'll need a two-ocean navy at some point. Excellent.

Before too long, the Traders (Commercial) complete the Trade Network. This allows them to build Forums, which increase their tax revenue by 50%. One of my (relatively) nearby rivals is getting into full swing.

And in short order, I meet the Universalists. They have every civilization trait, and they're doing amazing! They already have fourteen cities! I check and it's turn 69 - they're averaging a city every five turns! Fortunately my encounter with them was well north of the Big Jungle. Their score puts everyone else to shame.

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Another Destructible Wonder. This one gives the Honourable a Police Station in every city. Although corruption doesn't seem to be a problem yet, it's still very early - this will definitely help them later.

In 1200 B.C. I get my first Veteran, and then Elite, Warrior when one of my scouts defeats several Huns and Angles. Now it looks like at least one of my scouts will survive - at least until the barbarians get swordsmen! That's right, no pitiful barbarian Horsemen here!

1150 B.C. sees the completion of the first regular wonder, The Colossus, in the Commercial city of Exchange. Their Trade Network also gives them +5% treasury return and double gold in all tiles that produce one in the city in which it is built (the benefit the Colossus gives). I check the Wonder page, and find that they are in different cities. Either way it's bad - the effects are cumulative if they are in the same city, which means a huge plunder per turn even if they're in Despotism.

Another Destructible Wonder. This one allows the construction of Academies, which increase scientific research by 50%.

I discover Iron Working in 1025 B.C. There is no Iron in the nearby mountains, but I do discover some south of the desert, which I shall henceforth call Oasis Desert due to the absurd number of oases therein. Seven to be exact. It's got so many Oases it's hardly a desert.

In 975 B.C. I discover exactly how much of a hassle these impassable tiles can be. The Fens has just trained a Settler, but he can go absolutely nowhere nearby.

I decide it's better to send him west than nothing, so I do. But I'm looking forward to that road through the marshes being completed.

Meanwhile I'm watching some Commercial Warriors get slaughtered in the Oasis Desert by some barbarians I can't see. Fortunately some Sailors are nearby in sufficient numbers that the barbarians should be defeated.

At this point, Lord McCauley, who is not a civlization leader, publishes The Largest Nations of the World.

Whew! I'm glad the Universalists are the largest civilization! I'm surprised the Frisky are not - perhaps they got a bum starting location. Aviation is hopeless now, I see - a pretty accurate statement in 950 B.C.

At this point I hit F10 for the first time, to see my Demographics.

Not great, but not horrible. Manufacturing is a nice bright spot. And I appear to have the most Granaries - indeed, even with my decent manufacturing I can't build enough Spearmen to defend my Settlers. The fine wines near Bright Future also are making for a jolly people - and with incense nearby as well, our future does look bright. But it is still early. The challenges have not really even started yet.

Brucha · Mar 11, 2009

I absolutely LOVE this story, Quintillus! Two comments, first, Cultured city of Fashion? Right on!

And, Brucha's Commune! I couldn't stop laughing when I saw that!

Can't wait for more - you should release this mod on the forum here - it looks like alot of fun!

CommandoBob · Mar 11, 2009

Looks like this will be a real, fun ride.

I've got my seatbelt fastened and the overhead bar has been pulled down and locked into place. Ready to roll!

WooHoo!

Civ2player · Mar 11, 2009

I'm looking forward to the rest of this.

Northen Wolf · Mar 12, 2009

*Jumps around from the joy of new story by Quintillus*

Wrath of the AI

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