AU Mod: Resource Scarcity

[nbarclay]

In connection with the question of why an AI "should just hand you an SS win" (to quote Tall Stranger), I just recognized another issue regarding resource scarcity. The only AIs that can compete in the space race are those that have or can trade for all three of the strategic resources needed to build the spaceship (aluminum, uranium, and rubber). With those resources more scarce in C3C, there will be more situations in which the AI that is the player's closest competitor in tech will be unable to win the space race because it can't get one or more of those resources. That could lead to situations in which a space race that would otherwise be competitive is handed to the human player on a silver platter. I have no idea how often AIs would find themselves facing that problem, but if the risk is significant for human builder-style players, it is certainly also significant for AIs.

Nathan

[ducki]

the AIs' job is therefore to present the player with an enjoyable game, not to try to win at any conceivable cost.

I agree with this, and I've made similar posts before.
The term that eluded me before, but your post jogged into RAM is "surmountable challenge".

The trick is in the balance. There are so many things we do as players to castrate the "challenge" part of that, turning AIs into mere speedbumps on our way to the HoF.

4-turn pumps to out-manage and out-efficiency the AI.
Suicide curraghs/galleys to monopolize trade.
Artillery(generic) stacks of Leader Generation.
Dragging the AI into inferior governments to slow their economy.

Tall Stranger hints at another one that resource scarcity exaggerates for the human and actually enables for the AI - the resource-denial/punching-bag two-step. If we could get a middle-ground between the current resource allocation shotgun model(scattered over the globe) and the current luxury allocation clumping model, that might be a way to still give the AI a shot at a normally human-only tactic/advantage while still satisfying a more "realistic" model than the current "what do you mean there's not enough coal in the world for me to build rails?" model.

I think the AI(general) as a whole is well-served by some level of resource scarcity so that an AI(specific) may have a qualitative advantage over another AI(specific).

Then again, I think we're talking shades of grey. While we see these two settings, C3C and PtW, as black and white, it occurs to me that were arguing over which side of the top of a Bell Curve is optimal.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae

For the first point, I've already argued that if there's always a resource for trade it's not really strategic (your option count is low - trade for the resource).

If the number of options is only one, trade, it is because of self-imposed restructions under which one option is infinitely preferable to zero options.

More generally, the original concept of strategic resources in Civ 3 was beautifully balanced from a strategic percpective. If you didn't have a resource, you had several different options. You could fight for the resource. You could usually trade for the resource, and sometimes the choice of who to trade with was interesting. You could start off trading for the resource and then later take it from someone. Or you could do without the resource, at least for the time being. Options involving trading were further complicated by situations in which trading with a particular civ would require giving that civ technology for free or close to free. (Even without a tech lead, there could be a backward civ that needs techs in order to trade a resource.) Any of those options could be preferable depending on the particular situation involved, the player's personality, and the style of play the player prefers in a particular game.

In my view, C3C unbalanced the concept of strategic resources by increasing the emphasis on warfare and decreasing the opportunities for trade. There are now fewer situations in which the full range of strategic options (including sometimes having a choice of who to obtain resources from through trade) is available to choose from. Resources are thus more something to fight over and less something to obtain through whatever means fits a player's particular situation and goals best.

Nathan

[Tall Stranger]

I'm going to hold off on responding to your new thought (expressed at the end of your reply and posted again separately) until I have a chance to think through it.

Originally posted by nbarclay


This ignores the fact that Civ is, in large part, a simulation game. Its heritage is single-player, not multiplayer, and the AIs' job is therefore to present the player with an enjoyable game, not to try to win at any conceivable cost.

True, but that doesn't change the fact that making strategic resources less scarce will make obtaining them much easier and thus make winning less challenging.

In contrast, what I want in Civ is AIs that behave in a way that is fairly close to how civilizations might be expected to behave in similar situations in the real world. I want them to give me an interesting challenge (with the strength of the challenge depending on difficulty level), but I don't want them going way out of their way to prevent me from winning. Thus, I think having AIs be willing to trade vital space race resources is a good design decision.

I can assure you, if you really want this to reflect the real world, that Nation A would never, ever trade a resource to Nation B that would ENSURE Nation B's global supremacy. There is no "realism" basis for your argument.

You're also confusing "preventing me from winning" with "not actively aiding in my victory." I'm not saying that civs should gang up on you. I AM saying that the game should not make it easy for you to defeat the AI by buying (for a meaningless amount of gold) the final piece needed to ensure your victory.

I honestly don't see any meaningful challenge in an SS launch victory without resource scarcity. By the time you get to that point in the game, a skilled human player will be economically more powerful than any other AI, better able to prioritize builds AND will understand the reality of victory conditions. Adding in easy access to strategic resources makes it far too easy.

[nbarclay]

The true measure of achievement in a space race victory is less in the race itself than in the achievements leaving up to it. A space race victory is something that a civ's actions through the entire game contribute to, with the Apollo Program and the techs needed for ship parts merely marking the final phase. The kinds of "easy" space race victories you complain about are the truly glorious ones, the ones where the player didn't just win the space race but won it by such a huge margin that the AIs never even had half a chance. If the achievement of being first to send a ship to Alpha Centauri is great, the achievement of doing so while the rest of the world is hardly even into the modern era is even greater.

I think it's a gross perversion to try to turn what was supposed to be a scientific victory condition into a hybrid scientific and military one. People who want to win through force of arms already have conquest and domination; why do they need a chunk of the space race victory condition as well?

As for whether the space race is too easy, have you tried it on Sid yet?

Also note that the only globe a space race victory achieves domination of is about four light years away, and even then, there is no clear indication that the domination would be permanent. Nothing about launching a spaceship to Alpha Centauri would provide domination of our own globe, would it?

Nathan

[Tall Stranger]

Originally posted by nbarclay
I think it's a gross perversion to try to turn what was supposed to be a scientific victory condition into a hybrid scientific and military one. People who want to win through force of arms already have conquest and domination; why do they need a chunk of the space race victory condition as well?

Come on, you should know better than that. It is virtually impossible to win either via conquest or domination without being at least near the top of the heap in science, especially at the higher levels. Despite our perpetual "tank losing to spearman" problem , the reality is you can't easily reach military-style victories without doing a good job managing research and (gasp!) building your infrastructure.

To use your phrase, I think it's a "gross perversion" of both the historical realism you claim to care about AND the intent of the game for pure, peaceful builders to demand that changes be made to make their preferred style of play easier. In the real world, the leading powers ALL have engaged in military struggles. Such is the path to power. As Dom pointed out, the game is designed around a hybrid model of play, which is what MOST people seem to use, based on the comments I've heard.

Suppose I was a pure warmonger and started to complain that "All these rules are making my absolute, eternal war style of play impossible. I don't want to waste time with all these buildings and improvements, so it's not fair that these things are making my life difficult. And this whole 50-turn wait for my next tech (since I refuse to spend money on those science nerds) is just crazy. This game is forcing me to do things I don't want to do!! FIX IT NOW!!!!!!!" (This is obviously an exaggeration, but I hope you see what I'm getting at.)

My point? Trying to win via EITHER a "pure, no aggressive war" approach OR an "always war, ignore all else" approach SHOULD BE VERY VERY DIFFICULT. The game is optimized for the middle, not the extremes. There is already a built-in element of the game (science) which makes the "warrior extremist" version hard. Resource scarcity is a factor which CAN encourage (but IMO does not require) aggressive war and thus makes the "peaceful extremist" approach hard. I think that balance makes sense.

As for whether the space race is too easy, have you tried it on Sid yet?

To answer your question, I have only played a few games on Sid and did not last long. Sid requires a level of MM which I am rarely in the mood to engage in. However, the point is not whether a Sid space race is easy, but whether a space race victory on any given level is easier/ harder than other types. In my experience, they generally are (but remember, I play a hybrid style). Since the space race victory can only occur, by definition, late in the game, you have more time to dig yourself out of the hole you start in. (The higher the difficulty, the deeper the hole.)

[Dominae]

I apologize in advance for being nasty:

Originally posted by nbarclay
The kinds of "easy" space race victories you complain about are the truly glorious ones, the ones where the player didn't just win the space race but won it by such a huge margin that the AIs never even had half a chance.

Yes, I suppose they are glorious. You could probably make them even more glorious by playing at Chieftain level, and using an edited map that gives you all the Strategic resources.


Dominae

[Catt]

I’m fairly ambivalent about C3C’s resource scarcity – I’d say I favor it over PTW, but not by a large margin. But unlike a bunch of other players, it would seem, I just haven’t found the C3C scarcity to prevent or unduly hinder a peaceful game – which substantially weakens, for me, the argument that C3C scarcity has mandated regular offensive warfare. I’ve been playing most Demi-God, standard maps, all random, mainly peaceful games, and though doing without iron, horses, coal, etc. is challenging, it doesn’t end the game. [FWIW, I’ve played two recent games where the earliest I was able to trade for coal was just after The Corporation (having proceed through ToE on the southern branch) and after Scientific Method but before ToE, respectively. But both those games were outliers in my somewhat limited C3C experience.] I frankly haven’t seen the repeated impossible trading situations that others have reported. Since the controversy heated up (say, a month ago, with Cort Haus’ excellently titled thread “Strategic Resource Scarcity Sucks!”) I’ve paid careful attention to resources across my maps – though my sample is obviously quite small, in all but one instance, at least one AI civ had an extra source of a needed resource (i.e., no uniform distribution). The challenge (one that I enjoy) to the peaceful player given C3C’s resource scarcity, seems to me to be to build a leading economy that allows for close tech parity – securing techs that enable trading for excess resources (and using techs for trades) before other civs have a chance to trade in front of me – it’s something I’ve found fun, and don’t recall that happening all that often in PTW.

Enough of my personal experience; there are others who report differently. There are also a lot of views as to personal likes and dislikes, and there are a lot of theories as to how the game (including AI development) will likely be affected by C3C’s scarcity over the long haul. What I’d like a better handle on is what people’s empirical results have tended to show, particularly around AI implications. Again drawing on my own experiences for the empirical results, I’m not convinced that the C3C scarcity is harming the AI at all – yes, it harms particular AIs on the short end of the stick (who are not nearly as adept as the human at securing necessary resources peacefully, IMHO, nor able to manage their empire in the appropriate context of being a civ without coal or rubber next to a dangerous foe ), but in a peaceful game, to the extent that resource scarcity is a zero-sum game, one AI’s harm is another’s advantage. Maybe I’m experiencing a freakish run of luck (good or bad, you decide ), but I am seeing KAIs much more often in my C3C games than I ever did in PTW, due in part I believe, to resource scarcity. By the time coal comes around, it has not been uncommon in my experience to have the starting 8 civs reduced by a few civs; each of the last 4 games I’ve played (not AU 501), I’ve entered the modern age as one of four civs – in each case without having arranged an AI exit myself. And, BTW, the emergence of KAI’s reduces the impact of scarcity, since resources are more often available on the market – but at potnetially great cost both to the player directly and indirectly by strengthening an imposing foe. In other words, though I can’t state with any certainty to what extent C3C scarcity plays a role, I believe that scarcity contributes to the creation of KAIs. When I play peacefully, this makes the game a lot more challenging and a lot more fun (I’ve been having fun in the Modern Age!), though YMMV.

Putting aside educated guesses as to how the scarcity should affect AIs, I’d like to hear about how it is actually affecting AI development in others’ games. Is there relatively no impact (very similar to PTW), or noticeable impact. If there is impact, is it positive or negative? Are my experiences at one end of the bell curve?

This post may be a little more broad than the thread topic (we’re in the AU Forum, after all), but the implications of any change on the AI collectively is certainly within the purview of the AU community.

Catt

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Tall Stranger
Come on, you should know better than that. It is virtually impossible to win either via conquest or domination without being at least near the top of the heap in science, especially at the higher levels. Despite our perpetual "tank losing to spearman" problem , the reality is you can't easily reach military-style victories without doing a good job managing research and (gasp!) building your infrastructure.

Conversely, if you don't have enough territory, you can't build the research bace needed to win the space race. On difficulty levels and from starting positions where REXing isn't enough, that makes a certain amount of military conquest necessary to achieve a scientific victory. Granted, if the AIs are willing to leave you alone (huge if), you can win a space race victory with all research and no fighting on higher difficulty levels than you can win a domination or conquest victory with all all fighting and no research. But the situation is not nearly as asymmetrical as you seem to imply.

Civ 3 was designed with four distinct types of victory: military, scientific, diplomatic, and cultural. Certainly, each area of the game helps in the others, but each victory condition is centered around preeminence in a particular field and only indirectly tied to others. Except that when resource scarcity forces players to conquer resources in order to win a scientific victory, that creates a far more direct tie between scientific victory and military action.

To use your phrase, I think it's a "gross perversion" of both the historical realism you claim to care about AND the intent of the game for pure, peaceful builders to demand that changes be made to make their preferred style of play easier. In the real world, the leading powers ALL have engaged in military struggles. Such is the path to power. As Dom pointed out, the game is designed around a hybrid model of play, which is what MOST people seem to use, based on the comments I've heard.

Civilizations in the real world fight for two reasons: aggression and defense. Defense is something real-world civilizations have no choice about, and Civ reflects that fact. Aggression is under the control of the civilization's leadership, and Civ also reflects that fact.

In Civ, unlike in the real world, the same leader controls a civilization for up to six thousand and fifty years. That makes it possible to have civilizations that are either more consistently warlike or more consistently peaceful than any the real world has ever seen. But if you imagine what could have happened if a real-world civilizations had similarly consistent leadership, can you find a reason why a civilization that was large enough and maintained a strong enough defense could not prosper without ever engaging in wars of aggresion?

What you seem to be arguing is that because civilizations in the real world from time to time choose to engage in wars of aggression, players should be forced into wars of aggression. I don't buy that.

Suppose I was a pure warmonger and started to complain that "All these rules are making my absolute, eternal war style of play impossible. I don't want to waste time with all these buildings and improvements, so it's not fair that these things are making my life difficult. And this whole 50-turn wait for my next tech (since I refuse to spend money on those science nerds) is just crazy. This game is forcing me to do things I don't want to do!! FIX IT NOW!!!!!!!" (This is obviously an exaggeration, but I hope you see what I'm getting at.)

If Sir Ralph were complaining that it should be possible to win space race victories without ever building a single military unit, I would accept that analogy as valid. As things stand, though, a civ that never builds a miliary unit is in huge trouble if an AI decides to attack it. Even a pure builder needs a military unless he wants to take truly enormous risks.

Further, the only fix I want is to take the strategic resource situation back to its original design, a design that was nicely balanced between peaceful and military options for dealing with resource shortages. From a space race perspective, that design also more closely paralleled the concept of the space race from Civ 2 if I understand correctly. I'm not going way off in left field and calling for a change in the entire nature of the game, which is exactly what the kinds of changes you're talking about in your attempted analogy would do.

My point? Trying to win via EITHER a "pure, no aggressive war" approach OR an "always war, ignore all else" approach SHOULD BE VERY VERY DIFFICULT. The game is optimized for the middle, not the extremes. There is already a built-in element of the game (science) which makes the "warrior extremist" version hard. Resource scarcity is a factor which CAN encourage (but IMO does not require) aggressive war and thus makes the "peaceful extremist" approach hard. I think that balance makes sense.

If there are six instances of aluminum on the map, and each is within the borders of a different AI, how do you win the space race without going to war?

As I explained above, winning a space race victory without engaging in offensive military action should be and is more difficult than winning a space race victory using conquered territory for an economic and research boost. It doesn't take resource shortages in the space race to make a hybrid playing style clearly advantageous over a pure builder style.

To answer your question, I have only played a few games on Sid and did not last long. Sid requires a level of MM which I am rarely in the mood to engage in. However, the point is not whether a Sid space race is easy, but whether a space race victory on any given level is easier/ harder than other types. In my experience, they generally are (but remember, I play a hybrid style). Since the space race victory can only occur, by definition, late in the game, you have more time to dig yourself out of the hole you start in. (The higher the difficulty, the deeper the hole.)

I'm not sure I've ever played a pure builder style game myself, unless you count a tiny number of OCC games. (And I've never tried Sid level at all.) My space race victories are normally a result of conquering as much territory as I want and then not being in a mood to fight any more unless the resource situation pushes me into it. If I don't have a resource and I decide that war is my best option for getting it, I view that as part of the game. But deliberately creating worldwide resource shortages in order to push players into fighting whether they want to or not is far too arbitrary and heavy-handed for my taste.

My point regarding Sid was that if you find space race victories too easy on a particular difficulty level, it is always possible to move up a victory level unless you find them too easy on Sid. There are also other options: you can pursue other victory conditions whenever possible, or you can regard a space race victory as a genuine success only if you win by a particular margin. Or you can do what I do and measure your success in space race victories not just in whether you win but in how much you win by (relative to how difficult the conditions of the game were).

Thus, I see no need to force players into fights they don't want just because you want more of a challenge. You can fight as much as you want to with PtW levels of resources, but others can not stay at peace as much as they want to with C3C levels of resources.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae
Yes, I suppose they are glorious. You could probably make them even more glorious by playing at Chieftain level, and using an edited map that gives you all the Strategic resources.

Certainly, any success has to be measured against the difficulty level and other conditions of the particular game. I've said that before, and I'll say it again if the situation calls for it. Nonetheless, all else being equal, is not a large space race victory more glorious than a small one?

[ducki]

What follows is just an opinion. Try not to read too much into it. It's personal observations based on the discussion here.

Why so much concentration on the just the peaceful space race victory?
The "pure" warmonger has two primary "warlike" victory conditions available - Conquest and Domination.
The "pure" peaceful player has 4 "peaceful" conditions - 100k culture, 20k culture, Space race, UN.
Both have histograph/score, but that doesn't fall into a peace/war category. Both can crossover, but then they're not pure, they're hybrid. So...

If you want to play peacefully(a single limiter), you have 4 or 5 ways to win.
If you want to play peacefully and willingly(or is it willfully?) limit your victory conditions to 1(space), you have chosen to reduce your strategic options at the highest level available to the player.

Because a player decides at the outset to play a subset of the game, it is difficult to balance the whole game for any given variant.

On the other hand, if the player decides at the outset to play the whole game and selects the subset that best fits the situation, there is little reason to rebalance the game.

Playing variant rules unbalances the game on purpose and is usually done with the express purpose of throwing the player off-balance. Deciding on "Peaceful + Spacerace" is - in my very biased opinion - just a less extreme variant that limits the player to certain courses of action.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Nonetheless, all else being equal, is not a large space race victory more glorious than a small one?

I'll agree to that!

I guess what you really need to compare is the speed of the victory relative to the difficulties of the map/scenario. Personally I feel that resource scarcity does not make by SS victories any less glorious, as long as you (and anyone that matters) know what challenges you needed to overcome to get there (like lack of Uranium).

By the way, I apologize for the sarcasm in my post above. Completely uncalled-for.


Dominae

[Theseus]

I've been staying out of the fray in terms of the heated discussion here (I will say that I respect the heck outta all of you, and some great arguments/points/thoughts have been made)... but meanwhile:

I'd like to wholeheartedly endorse alexman's proposed balancing solution. I've done so in front of Firaxis (hopefully) for whatever patches may come, but I'd also like to suggest that we seriously consider adopting his proposal for the next version of the AU Mod.

Go slow, test, observe, tweak, adopt. We are obviously one of the testing grounds that Firaxis watches, so rather than so much argument in theory, intent, and limited empirical evidence, let's actually TRY some things that we think might be better.

By making his proposal, alexman has implicitly acknowledged that the various builder strategies (not solely SS, but builder-ish overall) might be better supported by tweaking the availability of certain strategic resources. I concur... let's try it!

[Catt]

I missed out on the fireworks in this thread and have a hard time following it with many edits and deletions.

Then I wrote the novella that is my previous post. After reading some old threads here and at CFC, and noting the exception of few posts (the posters shall remain nameless), I still have seen little evidence of how scarcity seems to play out in actual games versus how one expects it might play out in games.

Is this a solution in search of a problem, or is it a problem that has manifested itself in epic games? If the latter, how has it impacted such games (human problem vs. AI problem; annoyance vs. troubling problem vs. game-breaking problem; etc.) I'm not trying to twist a knife, but are we making educated guesses about a gameplay change or reacting to a clear gameplay problem?

Catt

[Tall Stranger]

Originally posted by nbarclay

Civ 3 was designed with four distinct types of victory: military, scientific, diplomatic, and cultural. Certainly, each area of the game helps in the others, but each victory condition is centered around preeminence in a particular field and only indirectly tied to others. Except that when resource scarcity forces players to conquer resources in order to win a scientific victory, that creates a far more direct tie between scientific victory and military action.

It would seem that we have a fundamentally different view of this game. You seem to believe that you should be able to win every game via whatever win condition you choose. I do not. Some games, military conquest is not plausible. In other games, you'll never get the culture you need to win. Why shouldn't the same be true of scientific (i.e. SS) wins?

But if you imagine what could have happened if a real-world civilizations had similarly consistent leadership, can you find a reason why a civilization that was large enough and maintained a strong enough defense could not prosper without ever engaging in wars of aggresion?

If strategic resources in the real world were as important as they are in the Civ world, I can promise you that the dominant powers in the world would be those which were either "born with" or forcibly seized these resources.

What you seem to be arguing is that because civilizations in the real world from time to time choose to engage in wars of aggression, players should be forced into wars of aggression. I don't buy that.

And I don't buy your claim that you are ALWAYS forced into aggression. Let's use your example of 6 aluminum in the entire world (and 6 AI civs remaining; fewer than 6 civs makes the problem go away, more is essentially covered below), and follow a couple of hypothetical situations:

1. You are in the tech lead, and first to see all deposits. You discover that one (ore more) AI civ has 2 deposits. In this case, you should easily be able to obtain the resource. You may need to give that civ all the techs required to see (and thus trade) aluminum, but you CAN get it peacefully.

2. You're behind in tech, and most/ all other civs can see deposits. One or more AIs have 2 deposits. This situation is harder, since all the aluminum may be spoken for in AI-AI deals. My first comment is, quite honestly, you should rarely be so far back in the pack that EVERY AI has beaten you to obtaining aluminum. If you've allowed yourself to fall that far behind, an SS victory isn't the best choice anyway. Even so, however, with some Machiavellian moves (steep bribes to get embargos; signing an MPP with the supplier and inciting a war with the purchaser) you CAN get the deals broken without seizing territory or doing much in the way of fighting. Once the deals are broken, you swoop in and trade for your resource.

3. This scenario applies pretty much regardless of tech lead, focusing on the case that each AI civ has 1 deposit. Problematic, as aggression is likely your only choice. HOWEVER, there are a couple other possibilities: if the deposit is near another AI civ border, you may be able to incite a war between the 2 civs (may require you to declare and even fight, but not necessarily expand your territorial holdings) or even a "grand alliance" against the weakest state holding the resource, with the hope of eliminating it from the game or at least depriving it of the key resource. Not easy, but possible.

My point is that you have some underhanded diplomatic and economic means which can be used (along with, in some cases, limited military power) to get the resource you need. Sure, it's not as easy or mindless as looking at the map and buying it from the nearest civ, but it is, in many cases, possible. My question for you is, are you so dead set against using military force in the late game that you won't even consider being that devious? If so, my view is that you are once again trying to optimize the game for an extreme type of game, rather than for the hybrid style most players use.

Further, the only fix I want is to take the strategic resource situation back to its original design, a design that was nicely balanced between peaceful and military options for dealing with resource shortages.

That "original design" was changed, for reasons we do not know. Some have argued that it was accidental, while others claim it was deliberate. (To the best of my knowledge, we've never gotten a definite word on this from Firaxis, but I could be wrong.) Just understand that not everyone thinks that the original design was "nicely balanced." If we all did, we wouldn't be having this debate.

Thus, I see no need to force players into fights they don't want just because you want more of a challenge. You can fight as much as you want to with PtW levels of resources, but others can not stay at peace as much as they want to with C3C levels of resources.

As I've already said, I don't believe you're FORCED to fight.

Either you're not getting the point or you're ignoring it. Yes, warmongers can still fight, as they did in PTW. That's irrelevant. My argument is that the resource scarcity, as it exists, improves the overall game challenge in the following ways:

1. Given the AIs poor combat tactics, the absence or presence of a strategic resource (and the ability to use it) is a major factor in the outcome of AI-AI wars. Resource scarcity makes it more likely that one of the AI combatants will be severely beaten or destroyed.

2. The destruction or near destruction of some AI civs by other AI civs contributes to the emergence of KAI's.

3. However one wishes to win, the player faces a greater challenge defeat 2 KAIs than, say, 5 or 6 roughly equal AI civs.

4. The changes you want to make will have an impact, NOT JUST ON PEACEFUL SCIENTIFIC VICTORIES, but on every single victory condition. Believe me, if changes can be made that will make your style of play easier without undermining mine, I'll support them in a heartbeat. Based on my experience, the overall challenge posed by the AI has risen from PTW. I believe part of the reason is resource scarcity.

To use your words, I see no reason to reduce the challenge to the game-style which the majority of people use just because you want less of a challenge for your style. As I've pointed out before, YOU are the one imposing severe restrictions on how you are willing to win. I don't think the AU mod should be tailored to help a specific play style.