Super Deity?

[Chris1111]

quote: Originally posted by drake on 05-09-2001 11:43 AM or how about the fact that it says 60,000 for popultaion in the status bar............... Smells fishy........

Not really, All I did was start as the japanese and passed turns and defended my meager city from hordes of mongol troops using the cheat menu and putting in a few mech infantry :P I didnt "actually" play that game was just testing to see what the AI can do. Map to the right is also really poor if you couldnt tell, bad screen capture.



[This message has been edited by Chris1111 (edited May 09, 2001).]

[Chris1111]

quote: Originally posted by Father Beast on 05-09-2001 11:18 AM The game starts getting goofy at these levels. notice the city of Kazan is a size 32 with only 2 squares that have irrigation. somebody want to explain that?

I could be wrong but couldnt that be because of the smaller food production box. The AI civs only had 3 lines of 10 foodeach(right? not looking at game) in that box on the city screen. It only has to fill up that little space for new population.

(well I'm done for now I hate being sick)

[Father Beast]

quote: Originally posted by Chris1111 on 05-09-2001 01:50 PM I could be wrong but couldnt that be because of the smaller food production box. The AI civs only had 3 lines of 10 foodeach(right? not looking at game) in that box on the city screen. It only has to fill up that little space for new population. (well I'm done for now I hate being sick)

The food box is ridiculously small, but it still takes 2 food to feed a citizen. In my +4 game, a city nearby would reach size 40 sometimes, despite having no farmland. whenever I investigated, the city was experiencing massive starvation. like 38 food produced, hunger 42. pop always went down during the next few turns, but I have no idea how it got like that in the firstplace!

[Guest]

In my experiments the AI cities can grow to even size 120, starving enormously. The explanation might be a new progamming "bug" appearing in these new artificial difficulty levels. Probably some kind of "integer overflow" which converts the actual negative food surplus into same amount of positive one. If that's the case then the cities will grow faster and faster the bigger they grow, filling that tiny food box full every turn.

Then, has someone actually won any super deity games? IIRC I have only read about the thriving AI's compared to player's pitiful civ constantly rioting and getting techs painfully slowly.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Julius could you just explain me once again the workaround for MGE. I didn't understand which .txt, and line to change.


[This message has been edited by OneFootInTheGrave (edited May 11, 2001).]

[Father Beast]

I don't know if the same applies for MGE (I don't have it), but this is what I do:

in game.txt scroll down to the line that says "@DIFFICULTY" (about 140 lines down). it lists the difficulty levels available for you to choose. simply add to them, adding lines after "Deity (toughest)". Mine looks like this:


@DIFFICULTY
@width=320
@title=Select Difficulty Level
@options
Chieftain (easiest)
Warlord
Prince
King
Emperor
Deity (toughest)
God Hates You (even tougher)
Lost Cause (forget it)
Really, Really Bad
Don't Even Try It

You will then be able to select these difficulties when starting a new game or scenario.
Then we run into the second problem, the fact that your first citizen is unhappy on God Hates You, and really unhappy on Lost Cause (red and black clothed citizens). If you want to play like that, more power to you. If you want the higher difficulty, but want to play with your cities having deity level unhappiness, you can alter your rules.txt.

in rules.txt, edit the Cosmic Principles section (almost at the top). there is a line that says "city size for first unhappiness at chieftan level" after the semicolon. it is normally set to "7". what you want to set it to, depends on what difficulty you want (assuming you want Deity normal unhappiness. first citizen happy, second citizen not). if you are going to play at deity +1 ("God Hates You" on my machine), you would set this value to 8. if you want to play on Deity +4 ("Don't Even Try It"). set that value to 11.

WARNING: The AI has unhappiness at king level, so at deity +4 the AI cities will have their first unhappy citizen at size 8, with that value set at 11.

SECOND WARNING: this cosmic principles change effects ALL your games in the main directory ( for those with FW, it doesn't change the scenario directories that have their own rules.txt), so if you go back to a regular deity game, remember to change it back or you will find the unhappiness level isn't right.

if you really want to keep it separate, you could (if you have FW) create a scenario directory (call it "Damn Hard) with the altered rules .txt copied to that directory. that way you could kepp you main directory on the original settings, then play the hard games in the other directory.
To do this, start a new game on whatever difficulty, save it immediately to your hard directory, then quit and reload. it will then be using the rules.txt from that directory.

Hope this helps. guys, tell the stuff I missed, like what to do different (If Any) in MGE.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Thanks guys,

I have done it, but as mentioned earlier in the thread, if I save a game the game crashes, as well at the end after final score shows up. I thought that Julious suggested a workaround for MGE now, or I will have to wait until someone hacks MGE civ.exe, since this super-deity works for the first version of civ2, but not for MGE.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

I'am just trying and the superior barbarian level works for MGE. I have now only added the barbarian line, and I am playing on deity. A quater of my screen is red .

Good that at least this improvement works for MGE.

[Chris1111]

For kicks I "actually played" a diety+3 game. The game started off good I was able to research monarcy as my first tech(started with alph,code,and burial). It quickly went down hill as I discovered I was on a small island with one other civ and couldnt sufficiently expand cause of unhappiness and just NO ROOM. I quit the game at 1AD .

It seems being on a large continent and having contact with lots of civs is ideal at this level. You will need to make alliances and beg for gold and tech also praying that you can get lots of huts wouldnt hurt either. Attempting to build wonders is almost a feeble attempt if you have gold and writing try to bribe the cities away after they build the stuff.

Here is a complete Journal Log up until 1AD(hopefully it can be viewed, let me know) enjoy
http://personal.lig.bellsouth.net/~pannellc/Diety+3.doc

[samson]

I just played, and won, a standard OCC game on Deity+5, Barbarian Wrath.
Landed on AC in 1645, one year before the AI.

The first citizen turns red-face when you build your first military unit.
In my game, I used a NON archer in my city and quickly built a temple.
The extra-unhappiness stuff never kicked in. By the time I was building
military units, I had SHAKES. For OCC, this means you can get by without
messing with the COSMIC PRINCIPLES. In any case, the game plays well on
the +5 level. The AI is competitive and actually kept up in the research
race, even though I had COLOSSUS, COPES and NEWTONS and was set to 100%
science after Democracy. That's quite something.
The human's cost of research is substantially higher, while the AI's
is lowered.

The huge AI cities in the end game look a bit ridiculous, but everything
seems to work okay. It was an enjoyable game and I just barely got to AC
ahead of 4 other civs.

The barbs actually bother the AI more than they do an OCCer whose single
city is immune to barbarian capture. So I'm not sure Barbarian Wrath
makes an OCC game more difficult. In any case, they weren't a factor
in my game until the very end, when they took out the French.

It was quite a rush to deliver a Gold caravan to a size 54 city that demanded it.
I got 500+ gold bonus from a city that was 6 squares away.

Thanks for posting about this one, it's a real treat.

samson

P.S. for Marko and Julius

For my next project I'm going to play a Deity+5/Barb Wrath OCC game
using a single size 1 city on a MGE gigamap with a polar start.

[Father Beast]

unbelievable, samson!

I was only able to build a wonder once, playing at +3. I started building the collossus, and was 10 turns from finishing it when the zulus started on it. they finished when I still had 5 turns left. I switched and was able to build HG before anyone else jumped on it.
then they left me in the dust.
To hear that you had all those OCC wonders makes my head spin.
at +5, the first citizen in blackhaired, and martial law won't cut it.

How can you get anything done in a city size 1, anyway?

I have to agree, the AI is a lot more hassled by the masses of barbs than the human player, even though their cities are about invulnerable to them.
well, not always. I remember seeing a barb city in the top 5 cities once.

[samson]

Dear Beast,

The Colossus was a close one. In OCC I rush-build caravans using the gold
given as gifts from my allies (I had 3 at that point in the game).
Four caravans can be built pretty cheaply in 8 turns if your city has 10 shields or more.
I was actually building Copernicus and was on my 5th caravan when I got
the announcement that the Egyptians had almost finished Colossus.
So I pumped in 3 caravans and bought the rest to get it before them.
After that lesson, I was very stingy with techs that led to Wonders
I wanted -- Astronomy, Gravity, Medicine. I almost lost Darwin's, too.

quote: at +5, the first citizen in blackhaired, and martial law won't cut it.

What I was trying to say above is that the extra level of unhappiness
in Diety+5 (the blackfaced citizen) seems to be triggered by building
your first military unit, not "after three turns" as someone posted above.
If you never build a unit, it doesn't ever kick in. Try this out:
Found a city in Diety+5 and start building a barracks while researching
CB. When you get it, switch to a Temple and build that. You never get
the blackfaced citizens. If you defend the town with a NON-unit,
the unhappiness is the same as at regular Diety.

However, the AI's advantage in other areas (production, food, research)
IS turned on from the start. I didn't realize this until I was almost
at the end of my game. That's because I never built a defender until
after I launched my Ship. By then I had Shakespeare's Theatre and it
didn't matter. In other words, the game I played was AS IF the happiness
factor was set for normal diety, but with AI advantages in production, food,
and research jacked up by +5. This produces a nice balance, IMO.

It was strange to look at the top 5 cities and see my magnificent OCC city
ranked 4th in the world.

samson

As for the single size 1 city thing, see the post in CIV2/STRATEGY --
"OCC size 1 revisted". It's really not that hard to win in Deity
with single size 1 city played as OCC. Weird, huh?

[Julius Brenzaida]

Great achievements, Samson. For the MGE OCC size 1 polar start, one thing worries me though. According to my experience, the super levels don’t work well : can’t save and can’t get to hall of fame. Please tell if it is the same for you.
This summer I will try seriously to get over it.

------------------
Oh Man, when will you understand that your greatness lies in your failure - Goethe

[samson]

Julius,

If Super Deity doesn't work on MGE, then I guess those are two seperate
challenges -- Deity+5/size1 OCC and Gigamap/MGE size1 OCC.

I've played a bit more with Deity+5 on V2.42. The super-unhappiness
does NOT affect the AI cities. So there's no need to fiddle with the
COSMIC PRINCIPLES on their account. Also, I've confirmed that with only 1
city the human player does not see super-unhappy effects unless you
have a supported military unit (in or out of the city). However,
founding a 2nd city causes super-rioting which throws your capital
into super-unhappy, with or without units.

Deity+5 is a real boon to OCC players. The AI becomes competitive.
Under normal Deity, you are really playing against other humans in
comparison games or against your own previous efforts. Now you can play
against the other civs. If you wait to found your city until after you
have a NON unit for defense, the unhappiness problem is solved. Well,
not "solved" of course, you still have to deal with normal Deity level unhappiness.

samson

[Father Beast]

OK, samson, I hadn't realized that about the unhappiness. I knew that it didn't activate immediately, but I wasn't sure what the trigger was.

I will head over to strat and read that size 1 thread. I guess my head's about to explode again!