Apolyton University Mod: C3C version
1.05
Apolyton University is a school of
strategy, where students sharpen their Civ3 skills and share their experiences
in a series of thematic games. When playing an Apolyton University game, gaining and
sharing knowledge is more important than getting a high score, a fast finish,
or even winning the game. Participants are encouraged to share their strategy
after the game, and even to try several attempts.
For single-player games we have developed this AU mod, whose main purpose is to
challenge the player with a need for deeper strategy. To accomplish that goal,
the mod tries to improve the AI and present the player with more strategic
decisions, while changing as little as possible.
Philosophy
The main purpose of the AU mod is to challenge the player with a need for
deeper strategy, while changing as little as possible. Deeper strategy is
accomplished by presenting the player with more non-trivial decisions, and by
improving the AI.
Presenting the player with more strategic decisions is otherwise known as
‘balancing’: strong elements of the game are made slightly weaker, and weak
elements are made slightly stronger. The game is more challenging when the best
approach is not always obvious, or at least when the best approach depends on
the given situation.
Stronger opponents encourage the player to rely more on sound strategy, and
less on one-dimensional approaches that work against weaker opponents.
Therefore, improving the performance of the AI is one of the most important
goals of this mod.
Game-play modifications that do not improve the AI nor balance the game are not
part of the philosophy of this mod. However, cosmetic changes that add flavor
but do not affect game-play might be considered.
Description of Changes
UNITS
- AI Naval exploration:
The AI doesn't fully understand the power of naval exploration, and
doesn't build Curraghs until it has reached an
advanced point in its military and territorial expansion. Most of the
time, this point occurs well after Curraghs have
become obsolete. Another problem is that the AI does not perform any
suicide exploration missions, not even seafaring AI civilizations that get
a reduced sinking probability. The risk of a few sunken galleys is a small
price to pay for the potential reward of a trading monopoly with an entire
continent.
- Curraghs get the 'unload' flag and
are given the AI Naval Transport flag instead of the AI Naval Power flag.
- Curraghs have the wheeled property,
and Ocean is impassable to Wheeled units.
- Sea and Ocean tiles cost 2
MP to enter for Curraghs.
- Ocean tiles cost 2 MP to
enter for Galleys.
- Defensive units with attack
capabilities: Units such as Infantry, Paratroopers, and
Riflemen are marked for AI offense, which encourages the AI to build and
use them specifically for offense, even though their attack factors are
weak for their cost.
- Increased Infantry attack to
8.
- Increased Paratrooper attack
to 6.
- Increased Modern Paratrooper
attack to 8.
- Removed AI offense flag from
Rifleman
- Removed AI offense flag from
Mechanized Infantry
- Removed AI offense flag from
Musketeer
- Removed AI offense flag from
Impi
- Cavalry: A large
proportion of Civ3 games effectively end when the human player gets
Military Tradition. Such a powerful unit makes it hard for the human to resist
the temptation to beeline for Military Traditionand
roll over his neighbors for an easy domination victory over AI, which
often has been researching the upper branch of the tech tree and does not
even have Gunpowder.
- Reduced attack factor of all
Cavalry-level units by 1.
- The Conquistador: A
UU is supposed to provide an advantage to its civilization, but the
occasions where a Conquistador is worth building are very rare.
- Reduced shield cost to 60.
- Increased defense strength
to 3.
- Added ability for Spain to build Explorers when
horses are not available
- Balancing Airpower:
C3C has introduced lethal bombardment to air units. While this change has
added a new dimension to military strategy between humans, the AI does not
cope well. The AI does not build enough air units and builds almost no AA
units, so it's easy to use a fleet of bombers and a minimum ground force
to defeat larger and technologically superior AI foes, taking almost no
damage in the process.
- Removed lethal land bombard
from Bombers.
- Gave Helicopters bombard
strength 6, ROF 3.
- Reduced Helicopter defense
to 1.
- Gave Helicopters lethal land
bombard.
- The Keshik:
The Mongol UU is a Knight replacement with a reduced defense and cost.
That means that Keshiks can't attack as effectively
without defensive support, so they have to advance more slowly. Not only
is this unfair to the Mongols, it's also historically inaccurate.
- Added zero-range bombard
strength of 2
- Modern Armor: Modern
Armor is the best ground unit in the game. Its high attack and defense
encourage players to follow the one-dimensional strategy of building
exclusively Modern Armor as their ground units. You get almost the same
defensive value as Mechanized Infantry, but with awesome attack
capabilities.
- Wheeled units and Impassable
terrain: Wheeled mechanized units and artillery units add some
depth to military tactics. Special forces become
the strongest units in mountains and jungles, which encourages players to
research their optional tech requirements more often.
- Add wheeled property to
Artillery, Radar Artillery, Tank, Mechanized Infantry, Modern Armor, Panzer.
- The Privateer: This
unit's sole purpose is to attack undefended transport ships, costs as much
as a Galleon, but has less than a 50-50 chance of victory against either a
Caravel or a Galleon. During war time, the Frigate is a superior ship
because of its bombardment ability. During peace, the shields lost by
unsuccessful Privateer attacks make it better to
invest in infrastructure than in Privateers.
- Privateer does not require
support.
- Privateer, Frigate,
Man-O-War unbuildable when Destroyers are
available.
- Marines upgrade to Modern
Paratroopers.
- Increased attack of Modern
Paratroopers to 12.
- Added stealth attack (vesrus all units except leaders, air, and naval) to Modern
Paratroopers.
- Added amphibious ability to
Modern Paratroopers.
- Renamed Modern Paratroopers
to Special Forces.
- The Guerilla: The AI
builds Guerillas, which cost the same as Infantry, even when it has access
to rubber.
- Increased attack to 8.
- Added ZOC.
- Added ZOC to TOW Infantry.
- The Chasqui
Scout: This unit is worse than a Chariot for combat because of
its upgrade path, and worse than a Scout for exploring because of its
double cost.
- Reduced cost to 15 shields.
- Balancing Ground Unit
Bombardment: Ground unit bombardment is more powerful in C3C,
yet the AI still doesn't make use of it on offense. This is most evident
in the age of Artillery, but even Catapults and Trebuchets are more
cost-effective than Cannons.
- Increased cost of Catapult
to 30.
- Increased cost of Trebuchet
to 35.
- Reduced bombard strength of
Artillery to 10
- Added build-never flag to
artillery for all AI civs.
- The Enkidu
Warrior: This unit has only the defense strategy marked for the
AI. That means that the AI does not have an offensive unit available at
the beginning of the game, so it doesn’t get any bonus offensive units at
higher difficulty levels.
- Added AI offense strategy.
IMPROVEMENTS AND WONDERS
- The Colosseum:
Colosseums cost as much as two full-price Temples to build and maintain, but
produce half as much culture and don't allow Cathedrals like Temples do. Their cost is
prohibitive for an ancient city build. Even with the luxury scarcity in
C3C, Colosseums are one of the least built city
improvements.
- Reduced maintenance to 1
gold per turn.
- Reduced cost to 110 shields
- Balancing Naval Bombardment:
Coastal Fortresses do not serve their purpose of protecting a city from
naval bombardment, especially since it’s so easy to avoid the shots from
their ZOC. They are the least often built city improvement in Civ3.
- Increased Bombardment
defense of Coastal Fortress to 32.
- Increased bombardment
strength of Battleship to 12
- Longevity: This
Wonder does not provide the builder with a noticeable advantage because it
comes at a time when most cities have already reached their maximum size,
so they do not benefit from double population growth.
- Changed required technology
to Sanitation.
- Reduced cost to 800 shields
- Cure for Cancer: This
Wonder does not provide the builder with a noticeable advantage because
with it comes at a time when most cities have marketplaces and access to
multiple luxuries, so a single happy citizen rarely makes a difference.
- Increased happy faces to 3
- Crusader upgrades to
Guerilla.
- The Statue of Zeus:
Due to the clustered distribution of luxury resources, the player with
ivory has an enormous advantage. The AI doesn't understand the value of
ivory, and when it has ivory, it doesn't understand the value of
Mathematics.
- Increased cost to 300.
- Removed bonus HP from
Ancient Cavalry.
- The Oracle: This
Wonder is one of the weakest in the game, yet it is usually one of the
AI’s top priorities.
- Reduced cost to 200 shields.
- The Military Academy:
Armies are extremely powerful in C3C. Their power is magnified against the
AI because the AI refuses to attack Armies in the field, it does not use
leaders to build Armies (so it cannot build the Military Academy), and does not build armies
even when given the Military Academy.
- Removed victorious Army
requirement.
- Removed 'increased army
value' flag.
- Removed the 'build Armies
without leader' flag.
- Added ability to spawn an
Army every 25 turns.
- Reduced shield cost of Army
to 1.
GOVERNMENTS
- Republic: The Republic has
always been the most flexible government, and now that free unit support
has been added in C3C, it's even better than before.
- Reduced the free unit
support to 0/1/1 per town/city/metro
- Added 12 flat free unit support.
- All AI civilizations favor
this government.
- Feudalism: There is little
point to Feudalism, as it's worse than Monarchy in almost all situations.
- Reduced corruption to
minimal.
- Democracy: Democracy does not
provide a significant enough advantage over Republic to justify a
non-Religious switch.
- Increased the free unit
support to 0/1/1 per town/city/metro.
- Added 12 flat free unit support.
- Communism: Communism is too
powerful with the new corruption model and the addition of the SPHQ.
- Removed Secret Police
Headquarters Small Wonder.
- Fascism: Fascism is almost
never better than Communism as a war time government, yet the AI
consistently choose it during war.
- Increased Fascism corruption
level to problematic.
- Added Secret Police
Headquarters Small Wonder.
- All AI civilizations shun
this government.
TECHNOLOGIES
- Philosophy: The free
technology granted by Philosophy in C3C has added a 'no-brainer' decision to
technology research: If you have the opportunity to learn Philosophy
before all other civilizations, you should always try to do so.
- Not required for era
advancement
- Removed half the cost of the
Republic, and added it to Philosophy.
AI
- How to help the AI with
happiness: The AI doesn't use the luxury slider. As a result,
the AI assigns an inordinate number of entertainers, which cripple its growth,
economy, and production. The fact that the AI pop-rushes and drafts more
often than most humans, makes the problem worse.
Also, the AI's combat tactics often result in war weariness, which forces
a switch to inefficient wartime governments and a serious research setback
late in the game.
- Doubled the value of
entertainers.
- How to help the AI with research
choices: The AI’s research priorities are predictable. Human
players with experience can research technologies left by the AI until
late (e.g. Polytheism), in order to get maximum trade value from their
research. The AI also does not take into account its traits when selecting
the next technology to research.
- Added flavors, additional
technology properties, and dummy resources, as described in the related
thread.
- AI build
priorities: The AI build priorities don't always match the
human build priorities. This is expected, as it is often necessary to
compensate for the AI's poor military tactics. However, even taking into
account the differences between AI and human optimal strategies, there are
some areas where the AI build priorities could be improved.
- Added Offensive units to all
militaristic civs and to Iroquois.
- Removed Defensive units,
Growth, and Explore from all civs.
- Added Workers, Air Units,
and Trade to all civs.
- Added Happiness to all
religious or non-scientific civs that didn't
have culture flagged.
- Added Culture to all
scientific civs that didn't already have both
Science and Happiness flagged.
- Added Production to all civs with fewer than 6 build-often items.
- Removed items so that all civs have a maximum of 6 items (Science from China).
- AI aggression levels:
Adjusted AI aggression levels to be more in line with each civilization's
traits, and less based on history.
- Greece from 3 to 2
- America from 3 to 2
- Babylon from 3 to 2
- China from 2 to 3
- Russia from 4 to 3
- Iroquois from 2 to 4
RESOURCES
- Resource Scarcity:
The goal is to have resources which are scarce enough to provide a
challenge, while they are plentiful enough so that they don't force
players to fight a certain war or lose the game. So we want to increase
strategic options while keeping the challenge offered by scarce resources.
- Increased the frequency of
coal from 120 to 160.
MINOR CHANGES
- Removed 'Explore' ability from
Settler, Worker, all ground bombardment units, Tactical Nuke, Leader,
Army, and King units.
These units were not meant to explore the map,
in fact, their zero defensive strength makes it dangerous for them to do
so. Accidentally sending these units exploring in harm's way is quite
common, especially since the 'E' key is right next to the 'W' key.
- Added airlift flag to all
ground bombardment units, scout, Explorer.
If airlifting Modern Armor is allowed, why not Artillery? It's a pain
to have to use transports only for these units, when there is no clear
reason to do so in terms of game play.
- Added foot unit flag to scout
and Explorer,
so they can be transported by Helicopters, just like Infantry. This
restriction rarely comes into play, but there is no clear reason why it
should be there.
Changes from 1.04 (included above)
- The Oracle: This
Wonder is one of the weakest in the game, yet it is usually one of the AI’s
top priorities.
- Reduced cost to 200 shields.
- The Enkidu
Warrior: This unit has only the defense strategy marked for the
AI. That means that the AI does not have an offensive unit available at
the beginning of the game, so it doesn’t get any bonus offensive units at
higher difficulty levels.
- Added AI offense strategy.
- Resource Scarcity:
The goal is to have resources which are scarce enough to provide a
challenge, while they are plentiful enough so that they don't force
players to fight a certain war or lose the game. So we want to increase
strategic options while keeping the challenge offered by scarce resources.
- Increased the frequency of
coal from 120 to 160.
- The Military Academy:
Armies are extremely powerful in C3C. Their power is magnified against the
AI because the AI refuses to attack Armies in the field, it does not use
leaders to build Armies (so it cannot build the Military Academy), and does not build armies
even when given the Military Academy.
- Removed victorious Army requirement.
- Removed 'increased army
value' flag.
- Removed the 'build Armies
without leader' flag.
- Added ability to spawn an
Army every 25 turns.
- Reduced shield cost of Army
to 1.
- Increase Fascism corruption
level to problematic.
- Restore Feudalism unit
support cost to stock level.
- All AIs
favor Republic and shun Fascism.
- Remove SPHQ from Communism.
- Add SPHQ to Fascism.