This ain't Tomb Raider!

[blinder2451]

Ok, I remember my sister and my girlfriend said they hated some video games cuz they were always getting killed.

Meanwhile I would keep playing, dying a lot but progressing through the levels. Killing the boss meant dying a few times until you found their vulnerable spot. For some reason, my female friends could take this with Mario Bros, any other game made it too intense. (There were a lot of 'Fighters' but only the Simpsons brought both sexes, and you die a lot in that game!)

My point is, some of us want to play a peaceful game of Civilization or Call to Power. Others want to die and deal death and convert the planet to a wasteland.

Thanks for all the help getting the AI to kill me! I can't wait to see what's next.

[4]

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[3]

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[62]

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[8]

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[Dale]

Folks,

Just so you know, even though I've been saying I can't be bothered fixing the AI, I'm looking into the one section as I see as needs work. Diplomacy, and it's prioritys. So last night I ran some experiments.

1 - I changed the prioritys on sending and receiving certain diplomatic events (namely pacts and alliances).
2 - I set the regard bonus amount for each turn at peace/pact/alliance a little higher.
3 - I changed a couple of the response priorities as well.
4 - I fiddled with roads to make them more 'attractive' bonus wise for the AI, and added roads to the lists of improvements to build for all categories (growth, production, etc).
5 - As an expansion on diplomacy-war, I made the ATTACK and SIEGE goals almost irrisitable to the AI.

Here's what happened. Remembering that at this point I'm working on extreme conditions and will narrow down to something balanced.

Setup a mid-size planet with 8 civs on impossible. I cheated and gave each civ advance: cannons (and everything below it added in auto), 10000 PW and 20000 gold. I also gave each civ 4 settlers. Basically, I wanted it to be a bit further on than a beginning game. Myself as a player did nothing but build defense units (keeping 6 in my city at all times, disbanding excess). I didn't improve or anything. I quickly ran through 50 turns. Turning off FOW I saw:

1 - The AI had spread all round the globe.
2 - The AI had built roads EVERYWHERE! It had gone nuts with them. I even saw a roman city in the centre of 6 cities with double roads to each city. Even roads going to nowhere.
3 - Units flowed down these roads comfortably. There was no congestion of stacks, no blockages or whatever. Just stacks moving comfortable to where they were going without hindrance.

I took a look at the diplomacy of every civ. 3 civs were fighting an all-in war (with stacks of cannon/riflemen on the borders). But the interesting thing was that these three civs had built roads to this triple-border area and had connected. Therefore, battles were occuring between AI stacks. 2 civs had research pacts with each other, one of them having a normal pact with civ number 8 as well. Civ number 7 was on an island all by itself, and only had a couple of contacts, but couldn't do anything as it hadn't got diplos to them yet. I kept the turns rolling. I noticed:

1 - The AI would declare war, fight an intesive battle with someone, then after a while when one sues for peace the war ends. The wars were short and bloody. I saw one civ send three stacks of 6-8 units at another civ at the one time. When peace reigned between two civs, the regard went up quickly till the next war (or sometimes turned into a pact).
2 - During peace, the AI built roads like nuts for infrustructure. During war, it built roads near the frontier (reminding myself to add forts to the improve lists as well) thus making unit movement good.
3 - The diplomats of the AI civs actually interacted. Admittedly it was usually an extreme (refuse a pact and they declared war) but it was something.

Maybe there is life in there afterall. Will go back to moding tonight.

------------------
Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[Triumphus Romanus]

Awesome work Dale!!
Thats very encouraging news.
And I am soooo jealous.....I want to come to Australia bad. Been there twice....oh to be wealthy with nothing to do.
..
Gary

[MrFun]

I perked up when I read our interesting modifications. But please clarify - you said you changed this and that but in those documents and on those lines, what specifically did you enter as the new modifications?

[Dale]

At this point as I mentioned I used extremes, so I wouldn't base my mods into a real game.

But here's an example of what I did in diplomacy.txt

The original:

ProposalElement {
Proposal PROPOSAL_TREATY_ALLIANCE
SendPriority 100
AcceptPriority 110
RejectPriority 100
SenderRegardResult 200
ReceiverRegardResult 200
ViolationRegardCost -100
ViolationTrustCost -30
}


The moded:

ProposalElement {
Proposal PROPOSAL_TREATY_ALLIANCE
SendPriority 200
AcceptPriority 200
RejectPriority 50
SenderRegardResult 250
ReceiverRegardResult 250
ViolationRegardCost -300
ViolationTrustCost -50
}

As I said, an extreme. But the increased priorities made the AI consider them. By increasing accept priority to the same, it makes the AI accept more alliance requests, as lowering reject makes it not want to reject it. The violation costs make the AI want to hold onto it a little longer. For example, with a -50 trust, by violating an alliance, the other party is going to take a LONG LONG time before it trusts the violator again. More in line to how I think.

I'll try and fine-tune the diplo a bit more tonight and let you know tomorrow.

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Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[joe77]

hey dale ...where do you find the road stuff ??

[MarkG]

quote: Originally posted by joe77 on 01-11-2001 04:57 AM hey dale ...where do you find the road stuff ??

in the strategies.txt
look for RoadUtilityBonus

[Dale]

Hmmm...... having trouble getting AI to build diplos. If I give him a diplo, he gets stuck in diplo. However on the plus side, I actually got this request from the Greeks:

- They requested 200 gold in a haughty tone.
- I refused.
- They threatened war.
- I still refused.
- They declared war.

After declaring war, they sent a couple of stacks at me, which I brushed off and they requested a cease-fire.

This is the weekends goals:

1 - Make the AI build diplos.
2 - Make the AI pursue diplo functions as per their government (communist with other communist, repub with other repubs, etc) Birds of a feather flock together basically.
3 - Make the AI pursue diplo functions based on their personality. Eg. Militarilist leaders pursue demands/threats. Scientists pursue advances/research pacts. Etc.

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Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[Alpha Wolf]

I like the way people are approaching AI changes. Set goals then try to achieve them. I think we have a great opportunity to recreate CtP2 as a playable game.

Keep the ideas flowing.

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History is written by the victor.

[Savant]

Dale - Your changes are encouraging. You might want to communicate what you are doing and what you've found with Wes as he is seeking input on what changes ot make to create a revised mod pack.

------------------
'Blood will run'

[Dale]

Have got the diplomacy mod happening well, intertwined with Blueo's frenzy mod (See general forum for teaser readme). It is however, the ai.slc I downloaded last friday, so the script may have errors. Since I don't have a website, who wants to host the zip file for me?

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Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."