City Expansion mod, the AI and game balance

[MrBaggins]

*THIS IS THE REAL THREAD... NOT THE 'CITYMOD' ONE*

I haven't played City Expansion Mod before... not thinking I liked the removal of choice to improve as I wish... but I revisited the subject, thinking about game balance.

Here are my thoughts:

* The AI does not improve well in a production/commerce sense. Its strategy is flat, and its difficult to fine tune it, to deal with the complexities of smart improvement.

* The AI does farm and grow well: this is, perhaps, the simplest improvement strategy.

* City Expansion Mod simplifies the choice of improvement, by:

A) Limiting it
B) Adding significant production and commerce - the weakness of the AI improvement strategy

* Rewarding growth

Limiting the game engine to allow the AI to cope, is very Civ3. It's effectively limiting a choice which the AI can't deal with well, and as such I'm not sure I like it entirely. A mix of both 'improvement improvement' and engine simplification would be beneficial I feel.

I do wonder how it plays out in games. Would people care to comment how well City Expansion Mod works for them and the AI?

MrBaggins

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
I do wonder how it plays out in games. Would people care to comment how well City Expansion Mod works for them and the AI?

I wonder too since i never played the city expansion mod on it own. Only with my modifications

[MrBaggins]

I think this aspect needs to be play tested.

I'm willing to do so... but it would be very helpful if others would too.

One comment though... we should increase the prod and commerce bonuses that the city expansion improvements give, to make the effect more obvious.

MrBaggins

[MrBaggins]

GAME NOTES:

Pillage of city squares is too powerful: dead expansion squares become 'dead tiles'. You cannot replace them without reducing your population to below the point that you gained those expansions. Multiple pillages become catastrophic. No pillage of expansion cities should be allowed. Enemy troops (only if at war? if we can) occupying expansion squares should cause unhappiness... as a more rational and reasonable downside...

The values of the expansion squares are insufficient: a regular tile gives you a total of about 25, not including improvements. The expansion square should give at least this value... 5/15/15 seems reasonable for ancient... increasing by 5 or 10 per age...

Automatically placing a defender in a square would break the game engine... to a large degree: unconventional attacks and even establishing embassies become impossible... like the "Wall of Beef" permitted by cows in a few early CtP1 mods.

You certainly should allow optional garrisoning of the expansion cities... and if possible extend the defensive properties of the main city to the outer squares by using the mod_UnitDefense event.

We need to be able to keep track of which city builds which city extension: this will allow the improvement of the dead city first, as opposed to virgin territory.

Settler based pop reductions should only cause pop reduction if the pop is reduced to the next (size*3) down. Settlers are 'normal' pop reduction and cities should not be penalized with dead squares because of their production.

Thats all for now...

MrBaggins

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Pillage of city squares is too powerful: dead expansion squares become 'dead tiles'. You cannot replace them without reducing your population to below the point that you gained those expansions. Multiple pillages become catastrophic. No pillage of expansion cities should be allowed.

You can also terraform the dead cities. And the dead city terrain become clean in 100 turns. In my modification this values drops to 10 turns to clean up. Since i thought the penalty of dead tiles is just to big!
Funnily enough i was considering on also reducing pop in case a city expansion is pillaged what would make the feature even more powerful.

Originally posted by MrBaggins
The values of the expansion squares are insufficient:

I thought they were alredy too big. As i imagined a City Expansion would be something undesireble. Since it kill all food collecting in the tile and prevents the building of others TI. I never though on using them as bonus.
But in a secind thought if they were bonuses it could reduce ICS.
Although they do add production and commerce to the city. I did not mean City expansions to be good things.

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Automatically placing a defender in a square would break the game engine... to a large degree: unconventional attacks and even establishing embassies become impossible... like the "Wall of Beef" permitted by cows in a few early CtP1 mods.

Why? Units can enter City Expansion. They dont prevent enemy units from moving to the city! It would just be the same as placing the unit if the TI werent there you still would have the same wall. Dont see much difference.

Originally posted by MrBaggins
You certainly should allow optional garrisoning of the expansion cities... and if possible extend the defensive properties of the main city to the outer squares by using the mod_UnitDefense event.

The TIs give defense a unit over them as you can see the line in the CX_tileimp.txt

      DefenseBonus 0.25

But i never thought on garrinson but i dont think add defense in the main city tile would be a good idea

Originally posted by MrBaggins
We need to be able to keep track of which city builds which city extension: this will allow the improvement of the dead city first, as opposed to virgin territory.

I meant them to be random. I just like the idea of surprise. And from all the stuff you named thats the hardest (But still quite easy to implement).

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Settler based pop reductions should only cause pop reduction if the pop is reduced to the next (size*3) down. Settlers are 'normal' pop reduction and cities should not be penalized with dead squares because of their production.

Thats to keep the rate of 1 City Expansion per 3 pop number. Otherwise a city that builds a lot of settler could in a crazy scenario be a size 1 and have 10 City Expansion. Thats a kind of thing i dont want to see.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
You can also terraform the dead cities. And the dead city terrain become clean in 100 turns. In my modification this values drops to 10 turns to clean up. Since i thought the penalty of dead tiles is just to big!
Funnily enough i was considering on also reducing pop in case a city expansion is pillaged what would make the feature even more powerful.

You can terraform a location to remove a dead city and hence get back to a state of no city at all. To get a city back you STILL have to starve/settler the city down to an appropriate size*3 so that you can regrow the city squares... or they are 'lost' forever.

Pillaging becomes an incredibly powerful tactic to use against bigger cities, as you can very quickly turn their land dead. (for the purposes of siege)

I thought they were alredy too big. As i imagined a City Expansion would be something undesireble. Since it kill all food collecting in the tile and prevents the building of others TI. I never though on using them as bonus.
But in a secind thought if they were bonuses it could reduce ICS.
Although they do add production and commerce to the city. I did not mean City expansions to be good things.

I don't see why you'd want them as a penalty. They are already a limiting factor insofar as limiting that square to *just* the expansion value... and denying 'extra' growth.

It also, by proxy, helps the AI develop productive and commercial cities: something it finds difficult.

You need not give unreasonably large bonuses, but having a penalty would, indeed, encourage ICS or city killing, which the computer can't handle intelligently.

Why? Units can enter City Expansion. They dont prevent enemy units from moving to the city! It would just be the same as placing the unit if the TI werent there you still would have the same wall. Dont see much difference.

In the City Expansion 2 thread, some mention was made of 'automatic militas' in these city expansions, like in the main city. THIS would be a bad thing... cheap or free defenders automatically placed in a ring around the city would stop unconventional warfare at size 24. Its not that the technique can be done that bothers me... its that it would be done automatically.

The TIs give defense a unit over them as you can see the line in the CX_tileimp.txt

Code:

DefenseBonus 0.25

But i never thought on garrinson but i dont think add defense in the main city tile would be a good idea

The idea with using mod_UnitDefense is to alter the 'bonus' of a defender based on defensive improvements of the actual city... so if it has a city walls then it gets a +50% defence... and so on. The idea is to avoid significant 'free' defensive bonuses.

I meant them to be random. I just like the idea of surprise. And from all the stuff you named thats the hardest (But still quite easy to implement).

I don't think that it makes sense that a city would choose not to rehabitate a city extention, rather building one in virgin territory.

Thats to keep the rate of 1 City Expansion per 3 pop number. Otherwise a city that builds a lot of settler could in a crazy scenario be a size 1 and have 10 City Expansion. Thats a kind of thing i dont want to see.

I'm not suggesting that this should happen, just that the death shouldn't happen if you build one settler, when your city is size*3... that the destruction wait till a lower figure. If you keep track of how many extensions have been built, you can still have to grow it to the next size*3, to get another city extension, so what you're suggesting wouldn't take place.

[The Big Mc]

Well I have been looking into city expansion for a scenario I am making (that pedrun is to informed about it). The idea I was looking into was to give the city improvements the basics of all tile imps (eg top movement top food etc).

The idea being that the ai on this one city state will kick the back side of all the close cities.

I had the idea of urbane warfare where for every battle in the city there is the chance of few bystanders having there head blown off. The advantage would only be possessed by the defenders if they are dug in. the city itself would heel when the attacking army pulls out of the city.

The real idea being to capture the city you must own at least 1/2 the squares the city expansions are placed on. Then and only then can you take out the city centre.

The total city control would be recorded by occupying forces so more solders are needed to control a large city then a small one.

Well that is my two pence