Apolyton University Mod (PTW version)

[Ozymandias]

Originally posted by =DrJambo=
ehhe yeah, i thought of that as soon as i posted!

Indeed, maybe making the pop-rush more productive would be the better option? Difficult to say.

By the way, can someone please explain and elaborate on this debug mode that i keep hearing about?

Ta

In the Editor, under the "Scenario" Tab of "Scenario Properties" is a flag marked "Debug Mode". When checked, it basically allows you a complete world-view of the game you are playing -- great for seeing how otherwise unviewable sectors of your mod are doing.

Plus:

Pressing:

"Shift + F1" - Selects a unit to place on the map

"$" - Adds 100 Gold

At the City Screen: "a" - Adds 1 Population

At the City Screen: "b" - Adds an improvement

At the City Screen: "s" - Adds 100 Shields

At the Science Advisor Screen: "Shift + Right-Click" researches the selected (clicked) tech

At the Science Advisor Screen: "+" (or "=") researches all of the techs for the current era


Happy Modding!

-Oz

[Theseus]

This continues to be a dizzying thread!!

(once again, kudos to Soren for dealing with all these issues and more!)

Re balancing "improved AI" versus "gameplay experience" I come down on the side of gameplay, and not straying too far from stock Civ.

AU PTW 1.14 is pretty damn good as it is... we need to play more and share a lot more anecdotes to actually see how well AI civs develop, and how well they flip into "killer mode" when appropriate.

[ducki]

Originally posted by Theseus
This continues to be a dizzying thread!!
...
AU PTW 1.14 is pretty damn good as it is... we need to play more and share a lot more anecdotes to actually see how well AI civs develop, and how well they flip into "killer mode" when appropriate.

This sounds like a call for a new AU game.
Maybe something that can help us see the value or lack thereof of Communism?

Or maybe another "trait-themed" game, like the Expansionist one?

[Theseus]

Lemme finish 202 first... coupla days.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by ducki
This sounds like a call for a new AU game.
Maybe something that can help us see the value or lack thereof of Communism?

Or maybe another "trait-themed" game, like the Expansionist one?

When everyone finishes 202, I suggest the following for AU-203:

1. Communism; make the most of the "worst" government.

2. Modern warfare; never attack offensively until the Modern age.

I believe both of these offer original challenges, and therefore new learning opportunities. Personally I prefer the second option, but with all the recent talk about Communism, I'm happy to do the first as well.


Dominae

[ducki]

How about combining those?

Everyone seems to think Communism is only for wartime, so let's require that all wars be fought, at least in part in Communism.

Granted, it changes Modern warfare to Industrial, IIRC, but I think waiting for Communism to launch an attack will be tough for many here - surprisingly enough, myself included. Ahh, the lure of the Dark Side. Must resist. Cannot resist.

Damn you warmongers!



Or maybe require that Communism be used exclusively once it is available?
I can't say I'd look forward to it, but I can't think of a better "testbed" for the mods.

[Dominae]

I was thinking of the same thing, something along the lines of "no offensive wars until Communism, and then only under Communism". The problem is that its easier to beeline to Communism and fight with not yet obselete Cavalry, while the whole point of the 'Modern war' scenario is to avoid fighting until after planes have arrived. On the other hand, 'Communism only' is a little thin as a scenario.

Thoughts? Anyone interested?


Dominae

[ducki]

I had some thoughts on tweaks for Communism, but don't know if any of them are actually doable in the editor.

First, my set-up.
Communism didn't come about until the working class was big enough and strong enough to overthrow the ruling class.
Communism has - effectively - an extremely high income tax and extremely low "costs".


So the prospective tweaks - do a sanity check for me here.
1. Units - under communism - cost 50% as much to train(build), while performing at 75% effectiveness. This gives an advantage of numbers. Combine this with Dominae's added unit support.

2. Taxmen and Scientists perform at 150% or 200% effectiveness. This would mean a Communist taxman would produce either 3 or 4 gold as opposed to AU's current 2.

3. Communist units gain an attack and defense bonus while within their cultural borders and penalties when in enemy territory.
Or perhaps Communist units gain a general Defense bonus and a general Attack penalty.


Number 2 is a gameplay workaround. I'd prefer that everything simply Cost less for a communist government but be slightly less effective. Since that's probably not moddable, simply granting Commies a Tech and Tax bonus would, effectively for gameplay, accomplish something similar.

Nos. 1 and 3 would be nice tweaks to the AI wartime government of choice, but may not be moddable, which is what led me to 2. If 1 and/or 3 are doable, I think it would be a pretty good tweak making war via communism a bit stronger for the AI.

Edit: Damn, I forgot to tie in the larger/stronger working class thing. Basically, I was wondering if we can give Communism any bonuses for city sizes above and beyond what we see for defense mods.

Maybe there's already some unknown "breakpoint" between Town, City, and Metro that improves or weakens Communism?

[alexman]

I have a new suggestion to help Communism. I like it better than adding a Communism-specific improvement because it's more transparent to the player.

There is a way to reduce the flat 30% distance corruption of Communism by 1/3, without changing anything about Monarchy, Republic, or Democracy.

This 33% reduction is not as big a change as you might think. For a city unconnected to the capital without city improvements, a 33% reduction means that the city has 10% more of its income not lost (20% distance corruption instead of 30%). But by the time the city gets a courthouse and connection to the capital, that number becomes 4% (8% instead of 12%), or an almost negligible 1.6% with a police station (3.3% instead of 5%).

A side-effect would be that we would also be reducing the distance corruption of Despotism, but the distance corruption in despotism is not very high, because cities are generally close together in the start of the game anyway. I doubt anyone would notice this reduction, but even if they did, I could argue that reducing the distance corruption in Despotism (but not the corruption due to number of cities) helps the AI and makes the game more balanced. It helps the AI because the AI generally spaces its cities further apart than the human. It balances the game because the classic 3-tile spacing might no longer be the obvious choice (although it probably still will be).

[BRC]

i like it.

[Theseus]

Excellent. Unless there's some unknown side-effect, this is the most compelling change I've seen for the next version.... in terms of AI civ health, that is.

Still looking for the "killer trigger" though.

[ducki]

I agree, that's a great idea.
Let's test it.

[Fosse]

Is this in addition to what's already been done to Communism... or are you thinking of returning to stock except for this little detail (which sounds like a great idea)?

[player1]

Originally posted by alexman
There is a way to reduce the flat 30% distance corruption of Communism by 1/3, without changing anything about Monarchy, Republic, or Democracy.

And HOW?

[alexman]

Set the corruption slider to 67% for all levels.
Then multiply the percentage of optimal cities by 0.67
That reduces distance corruption by 33%, while leaving curruption due to number of cities the same.

Set Despotism, Monarchy, Republic levels to "Rampant". With the reduction in distance corruption, all three governments have corruption equal to the old "Problematic" level. Similarly, set Democracy to "Nuisance" (same as old "minimal").

The net effect is to
1) Reduce distance corruption for Communism and Despotism by 33%
2) Reduce OCN for Republic by 10% (already done in previous version of this mod to balance Republic versus Democracy)

[alexman]

The 33% reduction of distance corruption for Communism is still not as big a change as an additional courthouse (which would reduce distance corruption by 50% and modify the OCN by +25%).

So we need a few more bonuses to make Communism more competitive compared to Monarchy. Let's keep the increased worker speed. I propose that we eliminate the additional free military support, which usually did not make a difference. Instead, let's give Communism an additional small wartime bonus: Double the assimilation percentage (the chance that a foreign citizen will be converted each turn), and reduce the resistance modifiers vs Communism (so that resistors get quelled faster). This way you can wage war as a Communist, with less fear of culture flips.

Perhaps this will also help the AI on offense, which is what we want for killer-AIs.

[Dominae]

Unless there are any side-effects of the "1/3 proposal", I'm all for this newest version of Communism (alexman is just full of great ideas!).

This is just in time for the next AU scenario. How about a focus on Communism? Here's what ducki and I were discussing in another thread:

1. Only victory types allowed are Domination and Conquest.

2. Offensive wars are not allowed outside of Communism (yep, this means no fighting until Communism!).

3. To make number 2 more fun, no Religious civs allowed.

The one downside that I see to this idea is that it will make for a long game. I'm fine with this personally because I'm tired of things being wrapped up before the Industrial age. Sound good/bad?


Dominae

[ducki]

This sounds like a really good change, alexman!
I like your proposed "few more bonuses" too.
Something to actually differentiate Communism.

[ducki]

Originally posted by Dominae
Unless there are any side-effects of the "1/3 proposal", I'm all for this newest version of Communism (alexman is just full of great ideas!).

This is just in time for the next AU scenario. How about a focus on Communism? Here's what I was thinking about (along with ducki):

1. Only victory types allowed are Domination and Conquest.

Yes.

2. Offensive wars are not allowed outside of Communism (yep, this means no fighting until Communism!).

This will be tough.
Can we declare war as long as we do not invade? Or will we essentially be playing Light until Commie-dom?
I'm just thinking that waiting until Communism to even hope for a Leader will be a long time, even for me.

3. To make number 2 more fun, no Religious civs allowed.

Not sure how 3 makes 2 more "fun". I'd probably go Monarchy->Communism, so that's "only" 2 changes.
The added benefit of Monarch->Chairman is that I'll get a good picture of how the two compare. The downside is trying to play a Monarchy builder for 2 Ages.

I'm all for requiring non-religious if I can understand why.

The one downside that I see to this idea is that it will make for a long game. I'm fine with this personally because I'm tired of things being wrapped up before the Industrial age. Sound good/bad?
Dominae

As long as it's not larger than Standard, I should be able to at least get to Communism. Larger than that and I just don't have enough time any more.

[alexman]

[Edited out some irrelevant comments about percentage of optimal cities. I thought that this parameter doesn't multiply the modified OCN, but the raw OCN before improvements, WLTKD, Commercial, et cetera are applied. This is not true. My first observations were wrong because of rounding errors.]

[joncnunn]

Isn't there also a bonus for connection to the trade network?

[Dominae]

Originally posted by ducki
This will be tough.
Can we declare war as long as we do not invade? Or will we essentially be playing Light until Commie-dom?

I would define 'offensive war' as entering or bombarding another civ's territory with military units. So, you could declare war all you want, but you could never capture any cities or do any "conquest-type" damage.

Originally posted by ducki
Not sure how 3 makes 2 more "fun". I'd probably go Monarchy->Communism, so that's "only" 2 changes.
The added benefit of Monarch->Chairman is that I'll get a good picture of how the two compare. The downside is trying to play a Monarchy builder for 2 Ages.

I imagine crafty players will use the 1-turn Anarchy to switch in and out of Communism, which goes against the purpose of the scenario. With tougher government transitions, players will probably stick with Communism for large parts of the Industrial and Modern ages.


Dominae

[ducki]

Originally posted by Dominae
I imagine crafty players will use the 1-turn Anarchy to switch in and out of Communism, which goes against the purpose of the scenario. With tougher government transitions, players will probably stick with Communism for large parts of the Industrial and Modern ages.
Dominae

Oh, I thought the plan was to switch to Communism and stay there, but that's a good point if that's not the "rule".

Good catch.

[alexman]

Happy New Year!

I updated the first posts with the 1.14 version readme. If anything seems wrong, now is the time to speak up (before we start the next AU game). Otherwise I will post the new bix file soon.

[alexman]

I just had an idea that might help make killer AIs.

What if we slightly reduced the appearance ratio for strategic resources? Some AI civs (or the human) would end up not having all resources, so the others would automatically become more powerful. An AI civ with no iron would not last very long against knights. Doesn't that mean that we would end up with fewer but stronger empires?

Also, since it is very rare to reach the middle ages without access to horses and iron, for example, the advantage of units that don't require resources (longbowmen, elephants, samurai, keshik, etc) is minimal. Making resources more rare, would probably enhance unit balance.

Thoughts?

[Stuie]

Originally posted by alexman
I just had an idea that might help make killer AIs.

What if we slightly reduced the appearance ratio for strategic resources? Some AI civs (or the human) would end up not having all resources, so the others would automatically become more powerful....

This is exactly what I did to try and push some of the AI Civs to greatness, except my reduction was drastic, not slight. Having played several games with the reduced resources, it does seem to encourage fewer, but stronger AI Civs in the late game - the Ancient Era wars seem more frequent, too. The AI seems to know that it should go after another Civ's source of iron if no other is available.

Also, I made the reductions more drastic for the later appearing resources to reflect the fact the fewer Civs would last to the later stages of the game. This sets up some great showdowns in the late game, really emphasizing the importance of the resources.

But, seeing as the AU Mod is trying to preserve the essential essence of Civ 3, you may not want to cut the appearance ratios too drastically. I just found that slight adjustments did not achieve my goals for my mod.

[Catt]

Shame that the CM experiment didn't work. I must have been misremembering the AI using them aboard naval units whay back when.

The communism tweaks sound better than our earlier musings. @alexman - you are a masterfully creative modder with the editor tools

Catt

[alexman]

Well, it would have been nice if the Communism fix had worked, but the change unbalanced Despotism compared to Monarchy. It turns out the Despotism tile penalty is not enough to make a significant difference in the income of those two governments. The 1/3 reduction in distance corruption for Monarchy is more significant than I had thought. We should still think about adding a Communism-specific building, but for now I am restoring Despotism and Communism corruption levels to where they were.

Also, the 50% increase in OCN is not enough to make the AI win by domination on standard maps. But it certainly helps. Another 100% increase (for a total of 150%) should do the trick at least for maps up to standard or large (the ratio of OCN to number of tiles increases as map sizes get larger). Remember, this OCN increase affects only the AI, as long as we decrease the "percentage of optimal cities" to compensate.

Finally, I would like to try the idea of making strategic resources more scarce.

I updated the initial posts with version 1.15, reflecting these changes. I did it now because we are spinning off an AU MP mod from this mod.

[player1]

Should high increase would surely make building FP almost impossibile.

At standard map you'll need 20 cities.

20 CITIES!!!!!

+50% OCN with need for 12 cities could be swallowed, but

20 CITIES????

(FP availability is calculated by original OCN, diffi % is not applied)

[alexman]

You're right. I forgot about that...