Tentative Project - Part Three

[Elucidus]

Well, I believe city sizes are controlled by files named citysize1.txt thru citysize5.txt. I don't know what any of them do or any differences they have, maybe each one is for a different difficulty, I don't know. They may not even play a role, although I think they do. I may play with this file later, but haven't as of yet. I just thought I would share this little tid-bit of info in case anyone missed/overlooked it.

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Yours in gaming,
~Elucidus

[TheLimey]

Regarding the 12 stacks from the AI. When the AI is in defense mode, the offensive stacks are just at a lower priority. It still 'matches the target' just not as often. Why not duplicate the most offensive battleplan, over the top of the defensive one, and see how the AI reacts?

Also, you might want to set up a game with 3 civs, a biggish map, and just build and defend yourself, but let the AI get bigger than you. Use globesat I guess... Watch what happens when the AI can resource however it wants.

Wes> Doesn't the lack of food requirements almost demand a need for lessening slaving. This sounds like an open invite...

The -1 happiness is all well and good if the human is building wonders BUT... if the human ignores them, and lets the AI build them, theoretically the AI could run itself into the ground by building them...

The human could just build the positive happiness ones, and the 'best of the rest' to be sure.

I think we're in for some amount of playtesting to find really good balance.

[TheLimey]

Regarding the 12 stacks from the AI. When the AI is in defense mode, the offensive stacks are just at a lower priority. It still 'matches the target' just not as often. Why not duplicate the most offensive battleplan, over the top of the defensive one, and see how the AI reacts?

Also, you might want to set up a game with 3 civs, a biggish map, and just build and defend yourself, but let the AI get bigger than you. Use globesat I guess... Watch what happens when the AI can resource however it wants.

Wes> Doesn't the lack of food requirements almost demand a need for lessening slaving. This sounds like an open invite...

The -1 happiness is all well and good if the human is building wonders BUT... if the human ignores them, and lets the AI build them, theoretically the AI could run itself into the ground by building them...

The human could just build the positive happiness ones, and the 'best of the rest' to be sure.

I think we're in for some amount of playtesting to find really good balance.

[TheLimey]

Regarding the 12 stacks from the AI. When the AI is in defense mode, the offensive stacks are just at a lower priority. It still 'matches the target' just not as often. Why not duplicate the most offensive battleplan, over the top of the defensive one, and see how the AI reacts?

Also, you might want to set up a game with 3 civs, a biggish map, and just build and defend yourself, but let the AI get bigger than you. Use globesat I guess... Watch what happens when the AI can resource however it wants.

Wes> Doesn't the lack of food requirements almost demand a need for lessening slaving. This sounds like an open invite...

The -1 happiness is all well and good if the human is building wonders BUT... if the human ignores them, and lets the AI build them, theoretically the AI could run itself into the ground by building them...

The human could just build the positive happiness ones, and the 'best of the rest' to be sure.

I think we're in for some amount of playtesting to find really good balance.

[TheLimey]

Regarding the 12 stacks from the AI. When the AI is in defense mode, the offensive stacks are just at a lower priority. It still 'matches the target' just not as often. Why not duplicate the most offensive battleplan, over the top of the defensive one, and see how the AI reacts?

Also, you might want to set up a game with 3 civs, a biggish map, and just build and defend yourself, but let the AI get bigger than you. Use globesat I guess... Watch what happens when the AI can resource however it wants.

Wes> Doesn't the lack of food requirements almost demand a need for lessening slaving. This sounds like an open invite...

The -1 happiness is all well and good if the human is building wonders BUT... if the human ignores them, and lets the AI build them, theoretically the AI could run itself into the ground by building them...

The human could just build the positive happiness ones, and the 'best of the rest' to be sure.

I think we're in for some amount of playtesting to find really good balance.

[Drakenred]

quote: Originally posted by TheLimey on 11-27-2000 06:29 AM Regarding the 12 stacks from the AI. When the AI is in defense mode, the offensive stacks are just at a lower priority. It still 'matches the target' just not as often. Why not duplicate the most offensive battleplan, over the top of the defensive one, and see how the AI reacts? Also, you might want to set up a game with 3 civs, a biggish map, and just build and defend yourself, but let the AI get bigger than you. Use globesat I guess... Watch what happens when the AI can resource however it wants. Wes> Doesn't the lack of food requirements almost demand a need for lessening slaving. This sounds like an open invite... The -1 happiness is all well and good if the human is building wonders BUT... if the human ignores them, and lets the AI build them, theoretically the AI could run itself into the ground by building them... The human could just build the positive happiness ones, and the 'best of the rest' to be sure. I think we're in for some amount of playtesting to find really good balance.

I think you should be able to give the AI a happynes bonus to ofset that, although frankly i find the -1 hapyness bonus to be a bit odd.(the Real Wonders of the world were for the most part a souce of Pride in the empire in question)

as for WOTW, i would think that it would be a lot more realistic to have a modification of the way they expire. Specificaly, they Expire when your Civilisation builds a new Wonder of the World(logicaly, they should also continue to provide a minor hapynes-Tourist trade efect bonus for the City when they expire(IE the statue of Liberty, starts off providing a empire-wide hapyness/growth bonus, but when it is replaced by a later WOTW, within its empire, then it simply provides a minor Comerce bonus (say +10%, and +1 hapyness) to that city only)(also, i think that the bonuses should decay a bit after time, say all wondres provide their max benifit for (say)100 turns(200-250 in CTP2), then slowly start to demisnish in efect,(or terminate in Efect all together) or only provide full efects to fewer cities, or the top X number of cities that would most benifit from that WOTW

[Drakenred]

quote: Originally posted by TheLimey on 11-27-2000 06:29 AM Regarding the 12 stacks from the AI. When the AI is in defense mode, the offensive stacks are just at a lower priority. It still 'matches the target' just not as often. Why not duplicate the most offensive battleplan, over the top of the defensive one, and see how the AI reacts? Also, you might want to set up a game with 3 civs, a biggish map, and just build and defend yourself, but let the AI get bigger than you. Use globesat I guess... Watch what happens when the AI can resource however it wants. Wes> Doesn't the lack of food requirements almost demand a need for lessening slaving. This sounds like an open invite... The -1 happiness is all well and good if the human is building wonders BUT... if the human ignores them, and lets the AI build them, theoretically the AI could run itself into the ground by building them... The human could just build the positive happiness ones, and the 'best of the rest' to be sure. I think we're in for some amount of playtesting to find really good balance.

I think you should be able to give the AI a happynes bonus to ofset that, although frankly i find the -1 hapyness bonus to be a bit odd.(the Real Wonders of the world were for the most part a souce of Pride in the empire in question)

as for WOTW, i would think that it would be a lot more realistic to have a modification of the way they expire. Specificaly, they Expire when your Civilisation builds a new Wonder of the World(logicaly, they should also continue to provide a minor hapynes-Tourist trade efect bonus for the City when they expire(IE the statue of Liberty, starts off providing a empire-wide hapyness/growth bonus, but when it is replaced by a later WOTW, within its empire, then it simply provides a minor Comerce bonus (say +10%, and +1 hapyness) to that city only)(also, i think that the bonuses should decay a bit after time, say all wondres provide their max benifit for (say)100 turns(200-250 in CTP2), then slowly start to demisnish in efect,(or terminate in Efect all together) or only provide full efects to fewer cities, or the top X number of cities that would most benifit from that WOTW

[Drakenred]

quote: Originally posted by TheLimey on 11-27-2000 06:29 AM Regarding the 12 stacks from the AI. When the AI is in defense mode, the offensive stacks are just at a lower priority. It still 'matches the target' just not as often. Why not duplicate the most offensive battleplan, over the top of the defensive one, and see how the AI reacts? Also, you might want to set up a game with 3 civs, a biggish map, and just build and defend yourself, but let the AI get bigger than you. Use globesat I guess... Watch what happens when the AI can resource however it wants. Wes> Doesn't the lack of food requirements almost demand a need for lessening slaving. This sounds like an open invite... The -1 happiness is all well and good if the human is building wonders BUT... if the human ignores them, and lets the AI build them, theoretically the AI could run itself into the ground by building them... The human could just build the positive happiness ones, and the 'best of the rest' to be sure. I think we're in for some amount of playtesting to find really good balance.

I think you should be able to give the AI a happynes bonus to ofset that, although frankly i find the -1 hapyness bonus to be a bit odd.(the Real Wonders of the world were for the most part a souce of Pride in the empire in question)

as for WOTW, i would think that it would be a lot more realistic to have a modification of the way they expire. Specificaly, they Expire when your Civilisation builds a new Wonder of the World(logicaly, they should also continue to provide a minor hapynes-Tourist trade efect bonus for the City when they expire(IE the statue of Liberty, starts off providing a empire-wide hapyness/growth bonus, but when it is replaced by a later WOTW, within its empire, then it simply provides a minor Comerce bonus (say +10%, and +1 hapyness) to that city only)(also, i think that the bonuses should decay a bit after time, say all wondres provide their max benifit for (say)100 turns(200-250 in CTP2), then slowly start to demisnish in efect,(or terminate in Efect all together) or only provide full efects to fewer cities, or the top X number of cities that would most benifit from that WOTW

[Drakenred]

quote: Originally posted by TheLimey on 11-27-2000 06:29 AM Regarding the 12 stacks from the AI. When the AI is in defense mode, the offensive stacks are just at a lower priority. It still 'matches the target' just not as often. Why not duplicate the most offensive battleplan, over the top of the defensive one, and see how the AI reacts? Also, you might want to set up a game with 3 civs, a biggish map, and just build and defend yourself, but let the AI get bigger than you. Use globesat I guess... Watch what happens when the AI can resource however it wants. Wes> Doesn't the lack of food requirements almost demand a need for lessening slaving. This sounds like an open invite... The -1 happiness is all well and good if the human is building wonders BUT... if the human ignores them, and lets the AI build them, theoretically the AI could run itself into the ground by building them... The human could just build the positive happiness ones, and the 'best of the rest' to be sure. I think we're in for some amount of playtesting to find really good balance.

I think you should be able to give the AI a happynes bonus to ofset that, although frankly i find the -1 hapyness bonus to be a bit odd.(the Real Wonders of the world were for the most part a souce of Pride in the empire in question)

as for WOTW, i would think that it would be a lot more realistic to have a modification of the way they expire. Specificaly, they Expire when your Civilisation builds a new Wonder of the World(logicaly, they should also continue to provide a minor hapynes-Tourist trade efect bonus for the City when they expire(IE the statue of Liberty, starts off providing a empire-wide hapyness/growth bonus, but when it is replaced by a later WOTW, within its empire, then it simply provides a minor Comerce bonus (say +10%, and +1 hapyness) to that city only)(also, i think that the bonuses should decay a bit after time, say all wondres provide their max benifit for (say)100 turns(200-250 in CTP2), then slowly start to demisnish in efect,(or terminate in Efect all together) or only provide full efects to fewer cities, or the top X number of cities that would most benifit from that WOTW

[colorme]

Wes,

Thanks. As long as there are guys like you, there is hope for a better CTP2 .

I think we should stop comparing CTP2 with Civ2 though. CTP1 was good (in my view), but CTP2 doesn't offer anything substantial beyond CTP1. OK correction: it offers substantial things like mayors, but I don't think these could have been too hard to implement.

Better AI IS harder to implement, and there doesn't seem to be any change in CTP2 over CTP1, in that respect.

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Depp and anyone else interested...
I'm playing a couple of test game setups now with the following modifications to the game.
First, in the terrain values that Wes posted at the beginning of this thread, I changed to the following:
Terrain Food-Prod-Gold
Grassland 10----5---5
Plains ---10---10---5
Forest---- 5---15---5
Jungle--- 5---10---5
Desert---- 0---10---5
Swamp--- 0----5---5
Hill---------5---10---5
Sand Dune--0---10---5
Polar Hill---0---10---5
Mountain---0---15---5
Brown Mtn--0---15---5
Polar Mtn--0---15---5
Tundra-----5----5---0
Glacier----0----0---0
Beach----- 5---0---10
Shallow---10---0---10
Shelf-----10---5---10
Trench-----5--10---10
Kelp------10---0---10
Reef------10---5---10
Deep Water10---0---10
Volcano---10--20---10
Rift-------5--20----5
Special1--15---5----5
Special2------------5
Basically, I reduced the amount of food from a 'raw' tile in Grassland, Jungle, Swamp, Beach. Then I increased the Food added by Farms, Advanced Farms, Nets, Fisheries by +5 each. In a nutshell, to get the same food and population increase as before you now have to improve the tiles with PW. In addition, I jacked the effect of the Food Silo improvement (comes with Railroad) to +25 Food instead of +15. I haven't played that far yet, but I hope the result will be a near-historical "surge" of size in cities with the railroads.
In combat, the only change I've made is to give the Longship an attack factor of 10 instead of 0 and to increase the effect of City Wall from +15 defense to +25. I would love to introduce the Legion and a Chariot or Light Cavalry Flanker unit for early in the game and slow down the introduction of Knights and the Renaissance advances in general, but that will require more work than I have time for right now - I'm working all this coming weekend, and introducing the 4-7 new tech Advances in the Ancient -Renaissance era plus new units will take some time to do right.
On a completely different note, has anyone else noticed an alternative 'resource' buried in the game? There's a Sprite GUO1.SPR described as "cattle" which was apparently left out of both CtPI and CtPII. This would make an interesting variant - a Tile Improvement which provides Food and Gold in the same PW element. Since cattle were considered money (the first metal ingots were cast in the shape of a stretched cowhide) this could be introduced early, say, by returning 'Domestication' to the tech tree. The trick would be to provide a boost to terrain values lowered even further from my current test totals, but the totals from Cattle would be less than what you could get later from Farms, Mines, Trading Posts and such separately.
Another Hidden Goodie in CtPII: in the ColorsOO.txt file in gamedata/dfault there is a listing of codes for color sets for Players numbered 0 thru 16 - a total (potentially) of 17 civs (or 16 if, as I suspect, one of them is Barbarians). Wes or somebody with more experience with tweaking the internals, is this a clue as to the real limits to the number of civs we can pack onto a single map?
What intrigues me is the idea that there may be 'extra' civ colors built into the game already, just waiting to be used. In playing CtPI with the CD mod I had several games in which at least one civ was wiped out by barbarians (which, incidentally, NEVER happened in an unmodified CtPI game). Is there some way to take that process one step further? That is, after X turns in which a city has been controlled by Barbarians, it changes color and becomes a new civilization with, perhaps, the tech the original city's civ had plus some random tech (supposedly) picked up by the barbarian tribes as they traveled. This would, it seems to me, add a very interesting set of variables to the game: you would not be faced by the same opponents throughout a long game, but might suddenly find that peaceable green neighborly state replaced by a bunch of expansionist fuschia fanatics! I noticed a list of 'barbarian city' names and barbarian leader data in the txt files already, so some thought was given somewhere in the design process to having a much more 'player-like' Barbarian presence, but they apparently never followed through with it.

[Alpha Wolf]

This being my first post, I'd like to start it by saying how happy I am that i'm not the only annoyed at the lack of offensive play by the AI. CtP was so annoying how a good friend at a peace level would send a single ship-of-the-line to bombard one of my cities. it was too easy to roll just one or two stacks against them, completely wiping them out before they had a chance to mobilize into an effective force. i remember the question being "what do i gain by starting a war?", but the AI has no ability to determine whether attacking someone strong is to their advantage. if possible, I'd like to see the AI only attack if its ready to fight or if the number of my units nearby is say less than 5. Is there any way to allow the max AI stack to be larger than the human player stack? And if the AI cant figure out how to follow fuel rules on planes, maybe planes should not be allowed by anyone. Nothing like getting my units kiled by some AI planes, then hearing them crash at the end of the turn.

[Alpha Wolf]

This being my first post, I'd like to start it by saying how happy I am that i'm not the only annoyed at the lack of offensive play by the AI. CtP was so annoying how a good friend at a peace level would send a single ship-of-the-line to bombard one of my cities. it was too easy to roll just one or two stacks against them, completely wiping them out before they had a chance to mobilize into an effective force. i remember the question being "what do i gain by starting a war?", but the AI has no ability to determine whether attacking someone strong is to their advantage. if possible, I'd like to see the AI only attack if its ready to fight or if the number of my units nearby is say less than 5. Is there any way to allow the max AI stack to be larger than the human player stack? And if the AI cant figure out how to follow fuel rules on planes, maybe planes should not be allowed by anyone. Nothing like getting my units kiled by some AI planes, then hearing them crash at the end of the turn.

[Alpha Wolf]

This being my first post, I'd like to start it by saying how happy I am that i'm not the only annoyed at the lack of offensive play by the AI. CtP was so annoying how a good friend at a peace level would send a single ship-of-the-line to bombard one of my cities. it was too easy to roll just one or two stacks against them, completely wiping them out before they had a chance to mobilize into an effective force. i remember the question being "what do i gain by starting a war?", but the AI has no ability to determine whether attacking someone strong is to their advantage. if possible, I'd like to see the AI only attack if its ready to fight or if the number of my units nearby is say less than 5. Is there any way to allow the max AI stack to be larger than the human player stack? And if the AI cant figure out how to follow fuel rules on planes, maybe planes should not be allowed by anyone. Nothing like getting my units kiled by some AI planes, then hearing them crash at the end of the turn.

[Alpha Wolf]

This being my first post, I'd like to start it by saying how happy I am that i'm not the only annoyed at the lack of offensive play by the AI. CtP was so annoying how a good friend at a peace level would send a single ship-of-the-line to bombard one of my cities. it was too easy to roll just one or two stacks against them, completely wiping them out before they had a chance to mobilize into an effective force. i remember the question being "what do i gain by starting a war?", but the AI has no ability to determine whether attacking someone strong is to their advantage. if possible, I'd like to see the AI only attack if its ready to fight or if the number of my units nearby is say less than 5. Is there any way to allow the max AI stack to be larger than the human player stack? And if the AI cant figure out how to follow fuel rules on planes, maybe planes should not be allowed by anyone. Nothing like getting my units kiled by some AI planes, then hearing them crash at the end of the turn.