OK, mea culpa, 3 more PTW editor Qs --

[Ozymandias]

1. IIRC, the "vanilla" Civ govs are ranked "1" to "6" from despotism to democracy and seem to mirror, to some greater or lesser extent, corruption.

So, Question 1A --

How does the AI actually choose what Gov to use?

Question 1B --

If it's based on the sort of ranking I mention/suspect, can I reference the same Civilopedia entry with 2 different Gov types (say, refer to "Monarchy" with both "Christian Monarchy" and "Islamic Caliphate") to give engender similar/predictable results?

2. What's the algorithm for the AI's choice in building units? --

2A. Is it simply the most powerful per type, or is there a cost/benefit analysis involved (experience makes me suspect not, but I thought I'd ask ...)

2B. How does it really handled "blended" types -- if given one unit tagged Offensive, one Defensive, and one Both, what does it do?

2C. Does -- how does -- the AI make any distinction between building, e.g., cavalry and infantry?

-- And,

3. The on-line editor lets one label each type of improvement to match a Civ attribute, yet the on-line Helpless claims simply that a Civ building a wonder with a matching attribute might trigger a golden age. Surely it does more than that?

Many Thanks,

Ozymandias

[statusperfect]

3. For instance: Militaristic civ build militaristic improvements cheaper.

[zulu9812]

3. Militaristic - cheaper military improvements + greater chance of promotion and leader-generation

Religious - cheaper religious buildings + only 1 turn of anarchy when changing governments

Scientific - cheaper scientiic improvements + 1 free tech per era change (so 3)

Expansionist - free Scout unit as start of game + can build Scouts (but all civs can build Explorers)

Industrious - workers work twice as hard + cheaper industrial buildings (i think)

Commercial - dunno

I think the civ bonuses also have an effect on what happens with goody huts, e.g. an expansionist civ has more chance of generating a settler (assuming the civ meets all the other criteria, e.g. not currently building a settler)

[Ozymandias]

Statusperfect & Zulu,

Thanks for the info! --

I'm aware of the stated starting advantages by trait (BTW, "Commercial" -- at least according to early Civ3 documentation -- is supposed to give extra commerce in the city tile & lower corruption).

... But my greatest curiosity is if checking these boxes will make Civs with the matching trait more likely to build them -- and how will that interact with the OTHER build preferences boxes, e.g., "Build Happiness Never / Often".

At heart, I'm trying to strip away the "labels" of Commercial, Religious, etc, and focus on the game aspects which belong to the labels, e.g., the "Religious" attribute limiting anarchy between Gov changes.

For example, if I wanted to decide that the attribute "Expansionist" (for agrument's sake) be given only to maritime Civs and tried to use this to promote building maritime improvements, would it work.

Thanks Yet Again,

Oz

[Catt]

Originally posted by Ozymandias
... But my greatest curiosity is if checking these boxes will make Civs with the matching trait more likely to build them -- and how will that interact with the OTHER build preferences boxes, e.g., "Build Happiness Never / Often".

At heart, I'm trying to strip away the "labels" of Commercial, Religious, etc, and focus on the game aspects which belong to the labels, e.g., the "Religious" attribute limiting anarchy between Gov changes.

It may take a bit of time, but I'm sure it will be time well spent if you really want to dig into this . . .

Check out the following threads (some pretty long) in the Strategy Forum. Some of us (largely managed and led by alexman) have been experimenting for some time with a lot of the editor levers you're curious about.

Why, oh why does the poor AI . . .
AU: A MOD for the curriculum
Apolyton University Mod (PTW Version)

And, less about modding but I think there's some good info in there . . .

Apolyton University

Catt

[Ozymandias]

Catt,

Many thanks for the great leads!

... BTW doesn't -- or, maybe better put, Why doesn't --anyone from Civ-Land itself ever read these forums and answer these questions ... ?

Anyway, I will definitely spend the time persusing those threads.

Thanks again,

Oz