Rules.txt changes you have made

[n.c.]

I got both tried of Civ II and frustrated by a good number of the less-realistic rules; I solved both problems with a bunch of rules.txt changes!

I'm not sure I could list them all, but in general I changed the sheild cost for a number of early buildings. They just took too long to build and slowed the game way down. However, I did jack up the tech paradigm, sort of like a tech stagnation in SMAC.

Most of the changes were in the units. I got rid of some, like the Crusader. I also changed some of the hit point and attack/defense values to better reflect reality. A bunch of guys with rifles on horses having 50% more attack strength than a cruiser? Please.

The biggest change, though, was to eliminate all wonders other than the Appolo Program. I set each as having User Tech 2 for the prerequisite and UT3 as the expiration. So, they only pop up at the end and are very soon worthless.

I could get more specific if anyone is interested, and I would love to read what you have tried.

[Sten Sture]

what up n.c.!

Here are some rule changes I have made that make the game more fun for me. I am constantly modifying my old version 2.42. It is definately soup by now

Make Monarchy and prereq's 8,0 so that the AI researches them first. Change Fundy to require Chivalry (Chi) and Mysticism (Mys) but reduce the science max to 30%, and drop Fanatics to 3a,2d,1h,2f all as road, ignore walls. This gives the militant AIs a chance to get agressive early. And I don't let myself use that government. I also change Rep to 4,2 so that the militant AIs don't research it and then try to support an army.

Spys, Tanks (2f), and Mech Infantry (2f) drop movement to 2, but get all as road - that reduces their number of attacks but lets them move freely away from the normal railroads of their time. Marines also get all as road.

Partisans, Paratroopers, and Marines ignore city walls, 1h,2f increases their offensive capacity, but reduces their staying power. Howies don't ignore walls and only move 1. These keep howies from being unbeatable and give some extra help to special infantry forces.

Improvements - generally reduce shield cost. Increased maintenence fees on stuff that help me, especially Univ, ResLab, Bank, StkExchange.

Reduced shield cost of cruise missles to 20 so that the AI might actually use them for something other than defense.

Changed most land units to attack, left Phalanx, Pikes, Warriors and Riflemen as defenders.

Dropped build cost of Archers to 20, Chariots to 20, Elephants to 30, and Explorers to 10.

Terrain - change AI irrigation priority to never for deserts, tundra, & hills, and made swamp & jungle available in Monarchy, but change to plains so the AI still gets a special. Made mining hills start with Monarchy, everything else - never.

I think I've changed a bunch of other stuff, too, but now I can't remember what is the original and what is modified.

[tobyr]

I think you are making the game a lot easier for yourself by eliminating wonders, because you are thus preventing the AI from building them. It might be better if you ignore them but allow the AI to build them as usual.

- toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[Smash]

hmmm....I changed the cost to build of courthouses.Made them same as temples and no upkeep cost.Doesn't help me and doesn't seem to help the AI either.

[Gatekeeper]

Sten Sture:

When you reduce the cost of shields for cruise missiles, does the AI actually *use* them? As it stands now, the AI merely stocks them in its cities and will use them only against ships and submarines.

By creating a new land unit from one of the extras in the rules file, I was able to get the AI to use cruise missiles against my Special Corps. It seems that if a land unit has at least four hit points, it will become a target for cruise missiles ... but nothing less than that.

I've also created two other units:

1. Airship: This baby kicks butt prior to the advent of gunpowder. One needs mathematics to get it, but it has the characteristics of a chopper with medieval attack/defense power.

2. Stingray: A "stealth" transport with a movement factor of 10, defense of 6 and the characteristics that make a sub invisible unless touched. Can carry only four units, though ... after all, one has to leave some reason for using a standard transport (8 units ... hence, an invasion force).

CYBERAmazon

(P.S. The one time I messed with the "universal" numbers in the rules file, the game crashed. I was attempting to make it easier to play on deity by enlarging the number of "content" folks prior to a city freaking out due to growth. It offers only the "content" factor at a chieftain level, thus I bumped it up one (because the effect moves on down the line). IOW, chieftain became 8, warlord 7, prince 6, king 5, emperor 4 and deity 3. Crashed the program, though.)

[Dr.Oogkloot]

I've made lots of changes to my rules.txt. I have a version I usually use, and a version with just cosmetic changes (renaming) for "official" things like OCC so that I can compare with other results.

I changed number of supported units to 5 for both commie and fundie, to make commie stronger and fundie weaker
Changed max science rate for fundie to 80%
Renamed ceremonial burial to mysticism, mysticism to cosmology
Renamed Environmentalism to Solar/Wind Power (no place for environmentalism in my world )
Renamed all the government techs (see below)
Renamed labor union to armored vehicles (makes more sense with mech.inf)
Changed plumbing to Heavy Weapons (machine tools and tactics)

Renamed Granary to Farm and Courthouse to Castle
Renamed Research Lab to Laboratory
Renamed most wonders to more fantastical projects:

Holy City (oracle)
Count Dracula's Castle (sun tzu)
Hovering Island (king **** )
Mu Statues (marco polo)
Sistine Chapel (mike's, still looking for a better name )
Star Observatory (copernicus)
Voyage Around The World (magellan)
Polar Journey (shakespeare)
The Time Machine (leo)
Voyage To Beyond (bach)
Discovery of Atlantis (newton)
Philosopher's Stone (smith)
Journey To Core Of Earth (darwin)
Ruler Transformation (statue of liberty)
Space Gun (eiffel)
Fountain of Youth (w.suffrage)
Cold Fusion (hoover, REQUIRES FUSION POWER: now there's one more good reason not to go fundie and to keep researching)
Global Council (UN)
Interstellar Voyage (apollo)
The Internet (seti)
Human Cloning (cure for cancer)

Lowered defense value for settler and engineer
Renamed fanatics to Militia Force
Changed Alpine troops to 6-4-1 (to prevent them from defending cities too well)
Created heavy inft unit: 7-5-1, 2-1 cost 50 requires heavy weapons

Renamed Glacier to Arctic, Buffalo to Horses, Wheat to Grain

Renamed all the governments to be more ideologically acceptable :
Anarchy, Mr., Mr.
Monarchy, King, King
Empire, Emperor, Emperor
Technocracy, Minister, Minister
Totalitarianism,General, General
Aristocracy, Lord, Lord
Republic, Senator, Senator

Changed some civ-specific titles
Removed all the female leaders and replaced with second male (changed labels.txt too)
Changed Sioux to Inca (Atahuallpa, Manco Capac), bronze age cities, Rational Civilized

Caravan commodities:
Changed Dye to Fruit (seems one of the most common goods, and I like Fruit )

Also, I'm really thinking about changing Catapult, Cannon and Artillery to have lower attack value but ignore city walls. This would be more realistic and it would make city walls less all-powerful.

Well, that was just about it, I think...

Dr.Oogkloot

"Show me your rules.txt and I'll tell you who you are"

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Dr.Oogkloot (edited August 29, 2000).]</font>
[This message has been edited by Dr.Oogkloot (edited August 30, 2000).]

[Bohlen]

Whew! Now that's a list of changes!

I've been thinking about making some changes myself to make the game more difficult. I don't want to sound like a braggart, but the usual Deity settings are now easy for me to beat and I need a new SP challenge. MP is THE challenge IMHO, but my schedule is pretty limited, so SP is how I play 75% of the time. I've always been hesitant to mess with rules.txt too much. I don't really know why.

I know there have been some threads in the past that deal with rules.txt changes in order to make the game more challenging, but how about some new ideas? Does anyone have 5 or so changes that really seem to impact game difficulty?

Dr. O: I like the WOW name changes. Great originality and creativity.

Sten: It looks like you focused your changes on military unit power and movement. I like the Fanatics idea. Question is...Is the AI any more competent because of these changes, or is it a wash because of the AI's inability to properly use any military unit, regardless of what specs are created?


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Proud Warrior of the O.W.L. Alliance

[Gothmog]

I've moved the Republic advance farther along the timeline, so that you can't get it before Monarchy.

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"There is no tiddle-taddle nor pibble-pabble in Pompey's camp."

[Sten Sture]

Bohlen - The AI is not remarkably more competent. If anything it is just marginally less stupid. I think the biggest impact my tinkering has made so far has been in adjustments to the research numbers.

In addition to what I posted about Monarchy first, I changed a bunch of others to try to steamline militarists toward Chivalry or Fundy and rationalists toward Feu and OCC type stuff. I set up a spreadsheet with the advance adjustments in different columns and sorted them by priority to see what the AI would focus on. So far - okay. I have just been testing the 50 or so turns to try to get it right and I am not sure if 3/2 2f fanatics survive gunpowder... I may need to adjust that. The ai seems to like the all-as-road thing.

Still playtesting... the AI still doesn't know much about what units to use, but early Monarchy helps them avoid running out of production... a recent move to make explorers available with alpha resulted in massive hut popping by the ai - fwiw.

comments and recommendations welcome

[Sten Sture]

CYBERAmazon - the AI will use them if you reduce the cost. I need to tweek it some though because if you make them too cheap they won't build anything else. In the WW2 scenario (is that one awful or what) the AI was chucking them at everything. I raised it back up to 40, where I used to have it and backed off the attack to 10 and it uses them sensibly. Well relatively sensibly - it is still the ai. I also put 1d in for their defense. Not sure why, but if it doesn't seem to be working try that.

[n.c.]

Thanks guys! I had a big response that got lost in cyberspace. As a result I have been a little discouraged to post again, but I will!

[Bohlen]

Sten Sture said: "The AI is not remarkably more competent. If anything it is just marginally less stupid."

Understood. I guess you have to take what little you can get.

I started messing with rules.txt last night, throwing in a little creativity as suggested by the Dr., and am thinking of how I'd like to change some unit specs.

Sten, it sounds like you've been working hard on this. When you feel happy enough with your changes, I'd love to see the rules file and play it myself. Keep us posted.

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Proud Warrior of the O.W.L. Alliance

[Sten Sture]

Bohlen et al: I will try to get my "modpack" organized for release if I ever get happy with it. For now I am content to get and give input here. Maybe we can keep testing these ideas here and come up with an Apolyton Marginally Less Stupid AI Modpack

Here are some thoughts to playtest:

AI rarely uses Mtn squares or hills for that matter, even when they have specials. Reduce the trade and shield benefits of hill and mtn specials. Alternatively give grassland or plains a 1 trade to start with - that may help the AI more than it helps you. Though a SSC on roaded grassland rivers might be too much. Conversely change ocean to 2f0s1t - not sure how the AI will use them in that case...

Maybe have Copers and Isaacs expire - via techs on different reseach paths.

The AI always runs out of shields to support their army, increase support coverage of Monarchy to 4. Reduce build cost of factories to 6 or 8.

To counter the happy benefits of commie increase palace distance to 8 or 10, so atleast they have waste.

Airfield-roading is a huge advantage for the human powered civ. Does Airport control the build airbase ability of engineers? Or Radio. Probably airport. Perhaps move Airport to Stealth or make Radio occur late.

Reducing Walls to 4, but increasing maint cost to 2. AI still doesn't always build them, but when they do, they get done faster.

Reducing granery build to 4 and removing maint cost. Same rationale and reduces power of Pyramids.

Adjustments to earlier changes - explorers 20 instead of 10. They were just too cheap and the AI popped so many huts that it messed them up getting to Monarchy. Maybe they should be moved to Map or CoL.

Goth's recommend to move Republic back does make a lot of sense. Most major republics other than Rome occur much later in history, and you can probably argue that effectively Rome was an oligarchy. You could I suppose put Rep in the tech chart where Dem is and then move Dem to require Rep and Leadership (Ldr). I suppose that that would heavily favor ICS with early fundy or ICS with Monarchy and the HGardens.

How could ICS be weakened without hurting the AI??

[Smash]

I decided to try and bring The Oracle into play by lowering it to 200 sheilds and having Communism(ala Matthew) as the obsoleter.

I see the ai with walls all the time.This is bad as they build them while they should be building settlers.

The ai loves that grassland.But adding some trade to it would probably help the player more than the ai.


[This message has been edited by Smash (edited November 07, 2000).]

[Sten Sture]

I like the Oracle change. I think it should last longer. I have been kicking around making the other MC & JSB) happy wonders expire around Commie time too. Maybe one with Recycling (Rec) and one with Corporation (Cor).

I fully agree that the AI should be building settlers rather than walls - but if they are going to build walls I want them done ASAP so they can get back to settlers. Do you happen to know what the build orders are for different civs? When or why they do what they do? We already know from MP that they will switch build orders from a nearly complete happy wonder to a temple if they take over your civ in mid turn. If they build walls faster do they move on to the next item on the list? If the build cost of an improvement is lowered will they be more likely to build it??

Inquiring minds!