AU: A MOD for the curiculum

[Theseus]

Kon, we set it up that way on purpose, so that a late-game warfighter would be able to have Armies without having had a GL.

I can't wait for the Medieval Infantry either.

[lockstep]

BTW, with the Military Academy not requiring a victorious army, the AI's also seem to build more armies.

[Harovan]

I'm just testing the AU mod v1.03 in a big epic game. Settings are India (rel/com), huge map, medium continents, normal, temperate, 3 bill years, 16 civs, raging barbs, emperor. The map generator blessed me with the most interesting auto-created map I ever saw. I big (6 civs), 2 small (4 and 3 civs) and 3 tiny continents (1 civ each), plus a few little islands. Awesome. To test the AI behavior, I remained peaceful (except that I slowly grew into Japan in 4 wars). My start position was mediocre, a small patch of grassland, a huge mountain range to the east and plains and desert to the south. Only one own luxury (spices).

The AIs do very well. It's 1550AD, we are in the 2nd half of the industrial age, I have a lead of at most 1 tech. 4 civs (America, Japan, England and Persia) are already gone. France is the biggest fish. They consumed England and most of Persia and due to their industriousness and the newly improved commercial trait they have a killer economy. They are the biggest power with about 3200 score points. Very aggressive (France... huh?). After them, the Iroquois (killed America) and India (me, finished Japan) are the second, both with about 2500 points. The other civs are mediocre, the best of them have 1200 or 1300 points. Greece is astoundingly rich for a 10-city civ. They are even on tech with the leading trio, since they can pay for tech. I guess, commercial is a pretty powerful trait now.

Egypt and Zululand are puny civs on 1-civ islands. When Zululand was discovered after Magnetism, they didn't even have Mathematics and Literature yet. But they are rich of Silks and already succeeded to trade up to the early Industrial age. Egypt is poor and has no luxury (damn, that's hard) and has not even Theology yet.

I guess the end game will be fought out between France, Iroquois and India. Although I intend to remain peaceful as long as I can, I am already building an intervention army, which I will use if things turn bad for me. There's a lot of game ahead, because I'll try to go for the Spaceship, which is delayed in the mod.

[Theseus]

Welcome back... can you post a SAV? This sounds like the self-reinforcing evolution I've been positing.

My guess is that France and the Iroquois have good land and luxuries... not sure about Greece.

[Harovan]

Sure I can, here it is. Now in return, please post a link about the self-reinforcing evolution, I must have missed this one.

[Theseus]

What a cool map!! Any chance you have the 4000BC SAV?

This baby's all about starting environment... I can see how France, Iroquois, Persia, and Greece played out pretty clearly.

Damn, I just watched the replay... Joanie is insane!! Nice take-down of Japan, btw... Bach's must have been like showing a red cape to the Indian bull.

"Self-reinforcing evolution" is just my latest name for the whole killer AI civ thing... the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, as this map and game amply point out.

[Harovan]

Toku beat me about 3 turns with Bachs. I lost 300 shields, because I had no wonder to switch. Yea, it was a red cape for me .

Here's 4000BC:

[Harovan]

I forgot to mention: When I made the big contact (all except Zulu) around the mid of the first millennium AD, my suicide galley went 18 tiles till it met Russia (Babylon would have been shorter, if I knew that ). That means 5 times in a row it survived ocean without even having the Lighthouse. That's also some kind of record, at least for me. 5 times praying, finger crossing and uncounted m&m's . Btw, unlike Mars, the Indian war deities seemed not much to appreciate them as bribe.

[Killerdaffy]

NICE game! One mini bug in the mod I noticed in the replay: The German city of Heidelberg is still spelled 'Heidelburg'. How did that escape Sevorak? Anyway, just something to fix in the next version.

Why did the English suddenly stop to expand in about 400BC? They still had some room left and France with the Pyramids of course didn't need to be asked twice...

[Slax]

I have completed one game using the AU 1.03 rules. I'd like to report that the game was overall more difficult, but, unfortunately, I can't compare it to other games because for the first time ever, I had no access to iron.

It did seem like the AI defended their cities better. I really liked how the archers got a defensive shot when attacked.

I'd like to hear more players report on this mod!

[Harovan]

I finished my Indian game with a diplomatic victory. This was the quickest way, because I needed the weekend for AU 106. It was fun, even more because with France I had a worthy opponent. In the end France ate Babylon and a part of Russia, thus conquering and vassalizing the big continent entirely. I succeeded to get the last Babylonian city, even with a luxury. This made Joan gracious.

France was very strong. I think, after 1.29f commercial has become an extreme powerful trait. Especially for those of us, who prefer a builder approach, or warmongering with a good economical base, I can strongly recommend it. France outresearched me even under communism, and in the end I could keep even only by active trading.

Because AU 106 was only a one day entertainment, I started a new game yesterday. I must try out those French, now after commercial has been repaired. And the Musketeer ought to be a good and perfect timed UU, some kind of double-powered Impi. I will not post a spoiler, if somebody wants to replay it.

Settings:

• AU mod 1.03
• Huge map, medium continents, normal, temperate, 3 billion years (very rough map!)
• France (ind/com), raging barbs, 16 civs, culture linking and all victory conditions on
• Emperor. Sorry, no .bic file to play with the difficulty.
• No special goal. Just have fun!

Advertisement:

• Very, very interesting map. Again, auto-created. Soren/Mike/whoever, have you by chance tweaked the map generator in 1.29?
• Good mix of warmongering and buildup possible in the early game.
• Luxuries are scarce, use your commercial trait to keep your people happy!
• Be power #1. Let Machiavelli be your consultant.

I know, huge maps are not for everyone, especially with limited computing power. That's why I don't make it an AU game. But this game is too much fun, so I want to share it. Is anyone out there who wants to take this challenge? If so, I will post the 4000BC file. If not, I will post a spoiler in a few days. Let me know.

[Dominae]

Hi all,

I'm just voicing my opinion on some of the changes made to the core rules through the AU MOD. I was informed this was still a work in progress...I hope I don't step on any toes!

Generally the changes are excellent. However, there are a few that I have issues with that go beyond personal preference. Here goes:

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Action: Increased attack strength of infantry from 6 to 8
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IMO, Infantry is already a powerhouse unit. Increasing it's attack rating to higher than that of Cavalry means that all fighting during the Industrial age will be done with Infantry due to their obvious superiority. I guess you could wait until Tanks, but I do a lot of my fightning between Cavalry and Tanks, and making Infantry the only viable unit during this period doesn't add a lot of variety to the game.


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Action: Doubled value of Wealth
---

I haven't tested this out, but I hope that setting cities on Wealth is still never a better option that building other improvements. What I'm saying is that the Wealth option (in my mind) shouldn't become part of a strategy (especially an overly powerful one) but retain the status of being the last thing in the build queue. Again, I don't know if doubling Wealth affects gameplay as drastically as I've portrayed it, so this is a minor concern.


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Action: Doubled effect of specialists
---

I hope the advantage of having good specialists is not too easily exploitable by the human player, because the AI is not coded to use them. This would give the human player an unfair advantage (for example, consider the satellites in SMAC, which the AI didn't know how to use).


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Action: Reduced cost of Propaganda by 50% and cost of stealing technology by 30%
---

Propaganda is fine as I'm pretty sure it will still suck (no offense!). Stealing tech I'm more worried about. The reason why stealing tech costs so much is that the money you spend to steal the tech (if successful) doesn't go into enemy coffers. So it makes sense to have the techs cost just as much as if you were to trade for them, but with the added risk of being discovered. Again, I hope this doesn't affect gameplay too much, because I thought that tech-stealing was a big problem in both Civ2 and SMAC. Is 30% "just right"?


As a general question/comment: do the above three changes (increased Wealth, increased Specialists and decrease tech stealing) work too effectively in concert? I hope the new endgame doesn't become a game of "earn more money and win".


Dominae

[alexman]

Dominae, let me try to justify the three changes that you mentioned:

IMO, Infantry is already a powerhouse unit. Increasing it's attack rating to higher than that of Cavalry means that all fighting during the Industrial age will be done with Infantry due to their obvious superiority. I guess you could wait until Tanks, but I do a lot of my fightning between Cavalry and Tanks, and making Infantry the only viable unit during this period doesn't add a lot of variety to the game.

This version of infantry does not make cavalry obsolete because of the retreat ability. It's like swordsmen and horsemen in the ancient age. I think it actually encourages a combined arms approach in the lndustrial age: Artilery, followed by cavalry to soften up the defenders, before finishing up with infantry. You will never get infantry as a good offensive unit because it still is terrible against defending infantry. But the major reason to increase the strength of infantry was to help the AI. The AI builds loads of infantry to attack when it doesn't have the resources to build tanks.

I haven't tested this out, but I hope that setting cities on Wealth is still never a better option that building other improvements. What I'm saying is that the Wealth option (in my mind) shouldn't become part of a strategy (especially an overly powerful one) but retain the status of being the last thing in the build queue. Again, I don't know if doubling Wealth affects gameplay as drastically as I've portrayed it, so this is a minor concern.

No, don't worry, wealth is still never worth building.

I hope the advantage of having good specialists is not too easily exploitable by the human player, because the AI is not coded to use them. This would give the human player an unfair advantage (for example, consider the satellites in SMAC, which the AI didn't know how to use).

You're right on this one. We added this so that we humans get some sort of strategic choice, rather than to help the AI. The AI doesn't use scientists very much, but it does use entertainers because it irrigates everything so it grows too fast to keep everyone happy. I actually think the next version of this mod should increase the luxury benefit from entertainers to 2 as well. This would benefit the AI more than the human, who generally plays with the luxury slider to deal with unhappiness. What does everyone think about this?

Propaganda is fine as I'm pretty sure it will still suck (no offense!). Stealing tech I'm more worried about. The reason why stealing tech costs so much is that the money you spend to steal the tech (if successful) doesn't go into enemy coffers. So it makes sense to have the techs cost just as much as if you were to trade for them, but with the added risk of being discovered. Again, I hope this doesn't affect gameplay too much, because I thought that tech-stealing was a big problem in both Civ2 and SMAC. Is 30% "just right"?

Good point. This change was adopted from player 1's mod, who playtested before settling on this value. It is another change that was meant to add strategic decisions to the human player. I personally have never tried to steal a tech with this mod.

As a general question/comment: do the above three changes (increased Wealth, increased Specialists and decrease tech stealing) work too effectively in concert? I hope the new endgame doesn't become a game of "earn more money and win".

From my experience, the changes are not drastic enough to affect the endgame too much.

So for the next version of the AU mod I propose these changes:

1) Heidelburg to Heidelberg (for Killerdaffy!)
2) Give communist workers double speed.
3) Make Jaguar Warriors upgrade to horsemen and remove chariots from Atztec build queue.
4) Increase effect of entertainers to two luxuries.

Comments?

[player1]

Originally posted by alexman
4) Increase effect of entertainers to two luxuries.

Too much powerfull.

[alexman]

Why is it any more powerful than having a taxman give two gold? It's just adjusting the luxury slider, but for one city instead of for the whole empire. Science, gold, and luxuries have a 1-1-1 relation in the global sliders. Why not be the same at the city level too?

[player1]

Because 1 luxury point makes one person happy.

Making it to be 2 luxury point would just make managing happinesss to easy.


In Civ2 & Civ1, 2 lurury points were needed in oreder to make one person happy.

So, in Civ3 luxury point are much more powerfull.

In Civ2 & Civ1 it was all 2-2-2 ration, but you could also impove those effects by marketplaces or libraries.

So having 2-2-1 is closer to Civ2 & Civ1 2-2-2 ration, although still weaker (since you don't impove them by building buildings).


Anyway, as far as I have played 2-2-1 is not unbalanced in any way.

In fact it's only more usefull in anicent age, before you get Republic.

[alexman]

Just to make my point clear:

Our increase in taxmen and scientist values helps the human but not the AI. The AI uses entertainers to keep its cities happy, but the human uses the luxury slider. We should help the AI by making the luxury slider have the same effect as converting a taxman to an entertainer.

[Dominae]

alexman, thanks for your explanations/justifications; although I'm still anxious about Infantry, the rest of the MOD looks great.

Also, the new changes you proposed seem natural, other than making entertainers more powerful. I feel that dealing with unhappiness is quite balanced now, and making a big change just to improve the AI a bit seems out of flavor for this MOD.


Dominae


P.S: I just did a few quick calculations and the better Infantry aren't as unbalanced as I first thought. I look forward to testing it out for real.

[player1]

Originally posted by alexman
Just to make my point clear:

Our increase in taxmen and scientist values helps the human but not the AI.

Maybe, but not too much.
I can see use of taxmen is very early game, but not later.
It just doesn't pay off.

Still anything higher like 3 or 4 IS unbalnced in anicent era.

The AI uses entertainers to keep its cities happy, but the human uses the luxury slider. We should help the AI by making the luxury slider have the same effect as converting a taxman to an entertainer.

If one ententainer could make 2 people content, I would realy have no happiness probelms.

Way too muich powerfull.

In fact 1 luxury point is usualy more powerfull then 1gp or science point.

Othervise you would build Temples just for culture (since they make one citizen content and cost 1gp to mantain).


P.S.
I never use luxury slider (exept if I am realy out of luxury resources). I always think that's cheaper and less wastefull to use entertainers.

[player1]

Originally posted by Dominae
P.S: I just did a few quick calculations and the better Infantry aren't as unbalanced as I first thought. I look forward to testing it out for real.

You'll just need to use Cavalry more for field combat then for city attacks.

And they still have 3 movment points.
(better then Tanks)

[nbarclay]

Am I imagining things, or did moving the "veteran" flag from harbors to coastal fortresses also change things so a coastal fortress instead of a harbor is required to upgrade ships? If I'm not imagining things, I think the change in the roles of harbors and coastal fortresses is a decidedly bad idea. I don't know about others, but I don't build enough ships to justify building coastal fortresses in anywhere near all my coastal cities (and that's a lot more true when there's an upkeep cost attached to them). And bringing ships back to the homeland for upgrade is a big enough hassle without the added pain of moving them to a city that happens to have a coastal fortress in it. (It's not such a big deal with harbors since they eventually get built in any home coastal city anyhow.)

Actually, I don't especially like the change in the first place. The only thing "broken" with the original design was that coastal fortresses weren't worth the bother, and that "problem" could be dealt with trivially by not building them. So far as I'm concerned, the change is a solution in search of a problem, and I think it adds more complexity than it's worth. (Unfortunately, I hadn't taken much interest in the mod at the time the change was originally discussed.)

Nathan

[alexman]

Nathan, you're not imagining anything, of course. Coastal Fortresses now work like barracks of the sea.

Perhaps you're right. This change might not be in the spirit of this mod:

Pros:
Adds the decision of whether to build a CF or not.

Cons:
Adds micromanagement
Changes gameplay compared to original

Although I personally like the change a lot, perhaps we should remove it from the mod, or at least remove the upkeep cost. What does everyone else think?

[Theseus]

Isn't it partially balanced by the changes to most naval vessels?

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Theseus
Isn't it partially balanced by the changes to most naval vessels?

The changes to naval hit points do mitigate the disadvantage of building ships without a coastal fortress a little bit (at least with respect to other players; barbarians are another matter). But for the most part, the ship hit point change and the coastal fortress change are independent of each other. The ship changes would work pretty much the same without the coastal fortress change; the hit point issue just wouldn't come into play as often because a city that builds ships will almost certainly get a harbor sooner or later anyhow.

In any case, my main problem with the coastal fortress change is that in my view, the extra hassle vastly outweighs the gameplay benefits. Changes to ship hit points don't affect that to any significant degree.

I do think if the change in roles is kept, the upkeep cost for coastal fortresses should be eliminated to keep the cost of harbor plus coastal fortress the same as in the original game. Ships don't tend to be built in as large a numbers as land units, so I don't think there's as much justification for charging for upkeep.

One last thing: the coastal fortress change is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a change made for the specific purpose of making the AIs more competitive. It thus represents a deviation from the goal of the AU mod.

Nathan

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay
One last thing: the coastal fortress change is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a change made for the specific purpose of making the AIs more competitive. It thus represents a deviation from the goal of the AU mod.

Nathan

Actually, there are four goals stated in the readme for this mod (see initial post). One of them is to "present the player with more strategic decisions".

As you said, the number of ships in the game is not that great, and the number of times you can upgrade each ship is not that great either. Is it really that much pain to move each of them to a coastal fortress city a couple of times per game?

Moving on, any feedback on what to do with specialists? I still think all specialists should have the same value in gold, just like the slider effect. The question is do we make their value equal to two gold each, or one?

One:
No change to original, hence no chance of unbalancing the game.

Two:
Adds strategic decision to player
Helps irrigation-happy AI.

[Dominae]

Hi all,

I'm going to cast my votes:

1. Entertainers: no changes
2. Coastal Fortresses: no changes (from last version)
3. Communism: increased effectivness

By "increased effectiveness" I'm not necessarily supporting any of the current suggestions (like making Workers more efficient), but I do think Communism needs a boost. Some playtesting may find the optimal change.


Dominae

[Theseus]

1. Entertainers: no change
2. Coastal fortresses: revertg back to stock
3. Communism: no change (unless we get a hint of a PTW change from Firaxis)

Is there ANY way we can get the AI civs to mine versus irrigate more effectively? Is there a setting equivalent to a city governor in the editor (i.e., Prioritize Production)? This would be in keeping with the goals of the AU Mod.

[Harovan]

What I really hate about the new coastal fortresses is, that I can't upgrade my Galleys to Caravels with Astronomy anymore, if I didn't choose the "southern", almost wonderless (except Leo's) research path first.

[Killerdaffy]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
What I really hate about the new coastal fortresses is, that I can't upgrade my Galleys to Caravels with Astronomy anymore, if I didn't choose the "southern", almost wonderless (except Leo's) research path first.

I agree and therefore vote for going back to the original version, even if it means that coastal fortresses never get built.

Entertainers: Also vote against any changes, entertainers are powerful enough as they are.

And communism: Make it stronger, if only to help the AI, who relies on it way more than the human player.

Just my $.02.

[Theseus]

Does anyone have access to the editor just now?

Isn't there a Governor section for the AI civs? Is there anything about food and shields? Which civs have what priorities?

If it's there, this could be HUGE... I don;t remember any discussion of these settings.