02-11-1999 04:40									#1
	ModifyReputation changes? Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

I have been having problems getting the ModifyReputation action to work. One thing I noticed, the modifier flag cannot be set to a value under zero although in the manual, it says modifier can have a range of -100 to 100.

Take the following example, triggered by something like maybe sacking a certain city:

ModifyReputation
who=Romans
whom=everybody
modifier=100

So, when this action is triggered, everyone should really hate the Romans for awhile, right? But when I go into my scenario and use cheats to trace the progress of attitude, I don't see any changes.

Is it that you can't use wildcards for whom? And I wasn't sure which direction was good or bad but any negative value given for "modifier" gives a rules.txt error although the manual says it should accept a negative number.

Also, I was toying with the idea of making the killing of a certain side's settlers or trade units in my scenario a really bad thing which must be avoided, so I did something like this:

@IF
UnitKilled
unit=Caravan
attacker=Anybody
defender=Romans
@THEN
ModifyReputation
who=TriggerAttacker
betray=10
@ENDIF

However, after a bit of playtesting, I didn't notice any appreciable change in world view to the attacker of some poor unarmed Roman caravan.

As the function of ModifyReputation is different than what is said in the manual (negative numbers not being allowed for 'modifier'), I would like to have how to use it clarified. Are wildcards acceptable? What wildcards? How come you can't use negative numbers anymore? Are the Modifier values absolute like the Betray value? (a modifier=100 means that attitude now equals 100?).

This is a really cool new action as it gives me lots of ideas on how to make the AI look like its reacting to certain things that happen in the game, so I need some clarification on its use.

	04-11-1999 03:27									#2
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You've touched upon a complex subject here.
Reputation or betrayal are not the only factors that influence AI behavior. Many, many other variables are involved. As a result, you often don't see an immediate and obvious response to a betrayal or change in reputation. I wish I could rattle off the algorithms that decide these things but, unfortunately, I've been informed they are multitudinous and live in many places.

I can answer some questions. Reputation ranges from 0 (saintly) to 99 or 100 (reviled). Don't bother with negative numbers.

Betray is not the same as reputation and ranges from 0 (no betrayals to allies) to an upper bound of 8. Your betrayal value of 10 is unnecessary since 8 is sufficient for the maximum negative impact. You can't increment the level of betrayal so killing a second caravan won't change the rating.

There are no wildcards.