Increasing the Intercity Spacing (mod discussion)

[glider1]

The idea is that if the city spacing is increased, the AI will play better and our games will be more fun. If the intercity spacing is increased, we get at least these benefits:

• Only one city is in range to bombard the attacking army or navy with makes an AI attack more potent
• Less map bottlenecks which makes it easier for the AI to march it's army to the target
• Cannot use cities as frontline weapons against the AI because the intercity spacing won't allow it
• The player has to think out the city placement well, because there is generally less flexibility
• Can still connect cities by road and culture, but there is more of an opportunity cost since road connections are further
• The game feels more epic because typically you play on bigger maps with the same number of civs and city-states

Here is a mod that kicks off the idea. For the idea to work, we need to fix the Firaxis hard-coding of city state placement which is still geared up for the default city spacing (not good programming by them). The mod below is a starting point. We possibly also have to adjust resource/luxury placement as well, although it works pretty well already and I'm having a hoot of fun with it.

I have played through some games on intercity spacing of 5 in the following configuration:

1. Large pangaea(+) continents(+) maps (modified so that more CS are on land)
2. 10+20 civs
3. World age 5000BC (to give the AI more ability to maneuver it's army)
4. Standard speed

The AI plays it surprisingly well after the latest patch. It expands no problems. It also connects it's cities well and captures city states with authority. It places it's cities reasonably well and religion spreads normally.

I think the difficulty increases by half to one complete level at a guess:

Cheers

[glider1]

I have tested the mod and it seems to be working well. The vanilla bug of city states not settling because the inter-city spacing is too small, has been fixed as well. Now if a CS doesn't settle, it is deleted. The diplomatic victory count is automatically adjusted by the game when it detects that a CS no longer exists so that isn't a problem. In practice, on an 8+16 setup, maybe 0-4 CS are deleted depending on circumstances.

The AI_Handicap has been decreased to HANDICAP_WARLORD because the AI plays intercity 5 spacing better. Aristos has suggested HANDICAP_PRINCE but there is a problem. The problem is that if the AI starts with the same happiness penalty as the human (as on prince), when the AI tries to settle its second city, it will migrate a vast distance looking for a place on the map that has a luxury resource (doesn't happen all the time but sometimes depending on how many luxuries exist around the capital). If the AI is given some happiness relief (as on HANDICAP_WARLORD), its second settlement does not have to be on a luxury resource and generally the AI's settlement pattern is more integrated.

Cheers

[Aristos]

Yes, region code is pretty complex. I think the map generator is one of the best things they did for Civ 5 (wasn't little Jon, surpriseeee...!), but it has some "unfinished" business like the CS placement's inflexibility (or they never imagined crazies like me and glider1 looking for a more epic experience with vast territories...LOL).

Anyways, as long as we cannot find a hardcoded cure for this illness (CS not settling when IC > 4), a good workaround (which I like very much because it makes the diplomatic front much more interesting anyways) is to always use the same number of CS as civilizations. From what I checked and understood from the map generator's code, the code places ONE city state per region as long as the ratio CS/Civs is less than 2 (and closer to 1); thus, if we always use 1 CS / 1 Civ, the code makes sure that there will never be two CS close together (inside the same region). The code tries to assign 1 region per Civ as long as the player uses standard settings; in the case of this mini-MAXI mod, that rule is not only preserved, but improved on: we are proposing to use settings from the previous map size, or less (Standard setting for Large, or even Huge maps).

Bottom line, until we can find the lines of code that define that minimum of 4 tiles between cities, a very good workaround (that should be part of the mod anyways, if you ask me) is to use 1 CS per Civ. Believe me, I am playing this for two years now, and everything is more interesting, including the diplo race (not the same trying to control 10 votes with only 10 CS present; you need to have some major friends too if you want to win by diplo, something that increases the challenge.

Finally, I think that this mini-MAX mod needs to incorporate the modified AI_HANDICAP to PRINCE level; with these settings, AI does not need the huge bonus in Happiness anymore, and in fact, that bonus breakes the spirit of this mod. I would add the update to the DEFINES table into the already present XML file where the change to MIN_CITY_RANGE is. The overall effect of this coupled with the increased difficulty as glider1 said is to leave the net difficulty around the same as vanilla, which is good.

My suggestion: try one game in a fractal, LArge map with this mod, with 10 civs and 10 CS, Epic speed, and then come back and tell us your experience. I am sure you will be pleasently surprised.

[glider1]

Aristos I think our fix to CS placement did work all along! When I rechecked the other night before uploading here, the mistake I made was to test it on continents+ pangaea+ which have their own method for placing CS. Going back to stock maps like Fractal, the fix works and have set the hardcoded values from the conservative 9 back to 6 which makes sense for ICS-5. Now when I go to fractal and pick something ridiculous like 10+25 all the CS are placed on ICS-5.

I've uploaded the new version with your suggested AI_handicap change. Could you check it out?
Cheers

[Aristos]

Good to know that you confirmed that the fix is working, because I have to take my words about reducing number of CS as a workaround back. Even if you play with 1 CS/1 Civ ratio, some CS may end up in the same region and conflict with eachother. With your fix, if it finally works, the conflict is really gone. Have you confirmed it using autoplay/no fog in the tuner?

I will give it a try as soon as possible.

[glider1]

No probs when ever you get a chance. I don't even use the tuner. Just enable DebugPanel = 1 in config.ini and CTRL-Z in game then wait till the leaderheads show and hold down the ESC key until all the leaderheads and CS diplo screens are gone. I usually put the settler and warrior to sleep (F) and play one turn before revealing the fog.
Cheers

[Aristos]

I think you should add these two files to the mod. Specially the Worlds.xml file, as some values there should scale down with the IC5. Look into it and change more values if you consider necessary; I just adjusted default values for CS/civs, research percentage, religion number, unhappiness per city and policy cost per city to be similar to the Standard size. I would also add the Rules.sql file that I use with all my mods to speed units and turns up.

[glider1]

Aristos I stuffed up version 9 last night after changing the AI_HANDICAP line and so if you have downloaded it, scrub it. I'll put all your extras and the handicap together in a new mod, test it and then post it. The version that's up there now is rolled back. Catch ya when I've finished it and tested it whenever that will be. Could be quite a while. If you have any more "extras" keep them coming.

Can you think of a better name for the mod?
Cheers

[Aristos]

Yes.

IC5.

It's too short, though. I don't know if the system will accept it (it should). IC5 is true to its spirit: small, simple, huge impact (and it sounds like an intelligence agency somehwere... hehe).

[glider1]

Standard sized maps are totally stuffed on IC5 because even on 8+8 CS don't settle. The good news at least is that it looks like large 10+10 is ok (checking). I'm thinking I might just modify the DLL so that CS settle, even if they do break the spacing rules.

I haven't uploaded anything yet.
Cheers

[glider1]

Aristos or anyone else interested in intercity 5 spacing, I've built the first version of the mod which you can download on the first post. An explanation of how I fixed the CS bug can be found on the second post.
Cheers