10-06-2002 03:47									#1
	Unbalanced World Settings for Killer AI Civs Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

PROLOGUE

It seems to me that there are a several primary playing styles:

* Controller: This is often a warmonger, or someone who has "figured out" the game. Examples that come to mind include Vel, Arrian, Aeson, etc. One way or t'other, a very well-managed core empire, and manipulation of the AI civs around you. I think the "MY Continent" players often fit in here. Might be a hangover from Civ2. This style is very focused on what the OTHER civs are doing. I sort of think of this as playing a "winning style."

* Manager: This is typically thought of as Builder. I make a distinction here, however, as, yes, the building of cities and the empire is the player's focus, but inherent in that is a bit of an isolationist stance... I don't want to fight wars unless I have too; I'll trade but it isn't my game focus; I'll do my own research, thank you very much, etc. Often, this type of player will wait until Tanks or Cav before going military, and will even then only do so when fighting from a position of relative or absolute strength.

I think those are both great, and I'm especially impressed that through the years the different versions of Civ have been so obviously rewarding for VERY different styles, including presenting a balance of such complex factors (war vs. culture vs. research, etc.).

Ahhh, but therein may lie the problem.

I want something more... I'm calling it "games out of balance." (nods to Vel) I want grand epics... great challenges... the sweetness of victory and the ignominy of defeat. I want an enemy that I can respect... and hate through the ages.

The problem is, I think, that the default world settings, which were purposely designed to be "balanced" so that the different kinds of players would find satisfaction, seem to create too much of an "equal opportunity" world, whether for the player or the AI civs.

Forget difficulty level... that's setting the "against the odds" factor, although it does play a part in what I'm envisioning.

So I figured I'd take a shot at figuring out an answer.

OBJECTIVES

Think Greece and Persia. Rome and Carthage. China and Japan. Germany and France. England and France (the French are well, French). The US and Russia.

Essentially, I want a world that results in one or two killer AI civs, and me of course, to really duke it out over time.

But further: I want a world that looks like real life, over time, with winners and losers. A spectrum, if you will, of success, from schmuck to killer civs.

What I'm looking for is a way to set up benefits and detriments for AI civs right from the beginning of the game that will SELF-REINFORCE over time... getting the AI civs out of balance will hopefully result in the emergence of one or more killers.

[Note: This should also deal with two ancillary problems, tech trading and AI spending... the killer civs at the upper end of the spectrum pull away from the losers, and thus trading is reduced, with a further benefit that now the killers have money. Makes a big difference come the showdown].

APPROACH

Clearly, this is all about world settings.

What are we trying to achieve? Well, in summary:

* Uneven land quality: By this I mean some civs should have crap starts, and some great. But, wait, it gets better: Specifically, I want more hills and jungles... developing killers will have the ability to take advantage of these land types, and schmucks won;t.

* Uneven distribution of resources: Same as above, but worse, as the killers will take what they need, again and again.

* Large landmasses: It seems that on standard settings, especially for warmongers, it's too easy to either damage or destory all the civs around you. Like RL, I want continents that are big: big enough to support large civs, and big enough that those large civs are too far away for me to meaningfully impact early on.

* But not too much land: I DON'T want to play builder for 3000 years. Nor do I want the AIs doing that. The civs should be close enough for conflict, but not too close. Builders and Managers may not like it, but there needs to be early warfare to trip the aggression flag, otherwise the killers won't become killers (we've all seen it... you find the other continent in 500AD, and the 3 civs there have just about split it equally, and live in peace and harmony... I want one of'em to be a slavering pitbull).

THE MAP

Let's start with the map. I created 33 maps in various permutations using the editor, and then did various analyses of what I learned (I can't attach a spreadsheet; send me a PM if you want a copy). I know it's not a statistically valid sample, but it was good enough for my objectives.

So, first, starting conditions.

What I wanted was find out what settings would do the following:

Increase: Grassland, hills, mountains, jungles
Decrease: Plains, desert, tundra

[FYI, flood plains and forests don;t seem to vary much, although I suspect that there is a non-consistent increasen in the amount of flood plains when using default settings]

The tested maps were across the following categories:

Size Standard, Large, Huge
Water 70%, 60%
Climate Normal, Wet, Arid
Temperature Temperate, Cool, Warm
Age 4B, 3B

Using MapStat, here is what I selected as sort of the base case:

Size Standard
Water 70%
Climate Normal
Temperature Temp
Age 4B

% of Land Area (not including Coast)
Desert 9%
Plains 14%
Grassland 24%
Tundra 4%
Flood plains 3%
Hills 17%
Mountains 11%
Forest 14%
Jungle 6%

The combination that struck me as most closely matching the desired start state, disregarding map size and land coverage (I'll get back to those), was:

Climate Warm
Temperature Wet
Age 3B

% of Land Area (not including Coast)
Desert 2%
Plains 15%
Grassland 21%
Tundra 3%
Flood plains 1%
Hills 20%
Mountains 15%
Forest 13%
Jungle 10%

A note on age: 3 Billion works for a couple of reasons. First, it adds dramatically to the percentage of Hills tiles, which makes getting certain strategic resources more difficult (killers get it and schmucks don;t), and also they are much more valuable after Despotism, which again favors developing killers. More importantly, it clusters luxury resources... killers are more greatly incented to TAKE an area of land. The only real downside seems to be an overall slight decrease in Flood Plains.

Next, the size and configuration of the map, together with the number of players.

Although there are some terrain considerations when it comes to size (the bigger maps get, the more jungle as a percentage of total land), the primary considerations are
* distribution of resources
* distance between civs

[Note: I don't know why, but the Total Area reported by MapStat is not consistent with my understanding of map size. They are:
Standard 5,000 tiles
Large 8,450 tiles
Huge 12,800 tiles]

If we think of Standard, 70% water coverage, and 8 total civs, as the baseline, you get the following:

Total Land: 1,300 tiles (26% plus Coast tiles)
# Resource Tiles: 128
Resource / Total: 9.8%
Land per Civ: 163 tiles

In addition to the benefit of 3B years in clustering and difficulty of access, I wanted to decrease the percentage of resource tiles to total land, but without increasing the land per civ, and thus the average distance between them, too much.

Here are the settings I would pick, and results, depending on map size:

Standard
60% water
8 civs
7.0% resource tiles
228 tiles per civ

Large
70% water
10 civs
7.3% resource tiles
220 tiles per civ

Huge
70% water
15 civs
7.2% resource tiles
222 tiles per civ

I think the slightly greater distance between civs gives time for the inherent pluses or minuses of the various starting conditions to play out before military conflict, but does not result in a distance too great for early contact.


RESULTS AND IMPLICATIONS

For both the player and the AI civs, this approach to set-up obviously points to several civ selections... anything Industrious for example. In general, I would lean towards the most flexible civs, as you, the player, are subject to the spectrum of starting conditions as well.

If I'm right, this approach should work, resulting in killer and schmuck civs. Prior to sitting down and actually thinking it through, I had set up a number of games in this direction, and I've developed some unbelievable situations (the Egyptian Mess being probably the best example).

Again, by creating self-reinforcing positive conditions for CERTAIN civs, and poor conditions for others, basically unbalancing the whole game, the natural intercourse between civs should result in a spectrum of success. And again, if that happens, the killers get richer and stronger as they pull away, creating a greater challenge for the human player, when they inevitably meet.

And that's all without touching the editor.

So, in summary, if you're looking for a little more complexity, depth, strategy... or if you're just up for a challenge... try being a little unbalanced.

	10-06-2002 04:18									#2
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You might want to set your tweaking on hold until the next patch. You'll be able to set up equal starts for all players and set which terrain you can built cities on. Making it so that you can't built in deserts or tundra will radically alter the game.

	10-06-2002 09:14									#3
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Hmmm... good for fair starts for all, bad for differentiation.

I don't know yet: do I want the challenge of starting as the RL equivalent of the Incas?

My post was much more about single-player, and developing killer AI civs.

I can't wait to see the framework for MP.

	10-06-2002 11:52									#4
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

try a standard map with 16 civs. i use the korn blitz mod and on emp., i find "killers" chewing up the smaller civs untill its usually 3 or 4 monsters by the modern age. the lack of space provides lots of variety in starting locations and keeps the turn times to a minimum

	10-06-2002 12:05									#5
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Thesues


On the issue of water coverage, the scale in the start-up doesn't give water coverage in %, perhaps you can clarify this by noting the position of the icon we should pick. Or maybe attach a screenshot.

PS, take a screencap, and show us the settings.

You are referencing percentages and settings obviously not available to us in the game start-up. This is probably information from some kind of map analyser, and it makes no sense to some of us.

	10-06-2002 17:15									#6
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Sorry.

Each of the three general settings, 1) archipelago, 2) continents, and 2) pangaea, has three water coverage settings. From left to right, they are 80%, 70%, and 60% water coverage.

	10-06-2002 18:13									#7
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Good post Theseus. I just finished a game as the Romans in which I was the only killer civ, having played the civs on the other continent against each other and bloodied the English to the point of non-contention; once the English were broken, there was no competition left. Not only did I build the spaceship, no one else had even started building theirs. But this was with the standard settings.

It will be fun to start my next game with your suggested variables, and see where things lead. I want some big bad AI civs in the late game!!

	11-06-2002 05:44									#8
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Wow Theseus, thats some deep thinking. Very cool.

	14-06-2002 20:22									#9
	Put an end to popups!

Another way to create imbalances: change the tech costs in the world size setting section of the editor. I've started playing with double the usual research cost, and seem to get killer civs in the game fairly often. Perhaps the reason for this is that a civ with a tech lead in terms of military units has more time to make it count. Roughly speaking, if all techs take twice as long to research, the windows of opportunity for easy attacks (pre-pikemen, kinghts to infantry, tanks to mech inf) lasts twice as long, and the big civ gets more time to take cities before its rivals get to the next good defensive tech. Anyone else tried this and got similar results?

	15-06-2002 01:17									#10
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

hi ,

Theseus , nice job ,

maybe a bigger map like 384X384 would be needed for 24 civ's , ... it would be great but then again , its "huge" , ....


have a nice day