Icemaniaa

Join Date 04/2010

+14

Proposed House Rules

Hey All:

As discussed in various recent threads there are various OP exploits available to defeat the AI without much trouble even on Godlike (granted I’ve played a lot of Gal Civ 3 games now). Hence it’s time to consider and test some house rules with the goal to have the most fun game possible. House rules are not unusual in 4X games (although ideally the developer considers what can be done to minimise the need for at least some of them as many represent not just exploits but OP exploits) and I’m interested in the constructive thoughts of others in the community in formulating them.

Again, for the various community members here that are notoriously overly defensive, I will reiterate the intent isn’t to bash or brag, it’s to discuss house rules and maximise fun. If you don't believe Godlike can be defeated without cheating (sigh) that is a different topic and not the purpose of this thread.

Before going through the proposed house rules I do have some personal preferences. AI bonuses are of course normal in 4X games (% to manufacturing, research and economy) but I’m not a fan of AI bonuses that make it feel like the AI is playing a totally different game. So the ideal is for House Rules that will work at about Genius difficulty. Huge maps are my preference, I prefer the largest maps possible but at this stage I don’t find maps any larger than this fun at least until the micromanagement and automation issues are resolved. I really enjoy playing a Custom race, so don’t want to have to sacrifice that feature (and ideally don't want to sacrifice any feature entirely).

The main area which I find OP to exploit is diplomacy. In recent games I’ve had Alliances in place with all or most AI early which essentially allows you to totally control the game and make victory a formality, so Alliances are banned. I’ve also bribed the AI to declare war on each other (malevolent races will declare war for a measly 3,000 credits) to soften each other up, so that interaction is banned. Free Trade Agreements can be used to readily farm cash and technology from the AI so need to be banned. I think Open Borders and Non-Aggression Pacts are okay to use though. Selling resources and technology can be abused very easily, and as I would prefer not to turn trading off entirely, I’m thinking a limit of 1 item per diplomatic interaction (the OP exploitation primarily comes from trading large volumes) i.e. 1 unit of 1 resource.
I enjoy exploration so tend to play with a lot of Anomalies. Unfortunately, the AI doesn’t explore Precursor Artifacts or Ship Graveyards at all and I’m far more aggressive with Artifacts (which are important as they sometimes provide free technology) so unfortunately I don’t see any choice other than to set Anomalies to around Uncommon.
I tend to be much more aggressive than the AI in exploring and getting Starbases up for Precursor Relics, particularly around the edges of the map. I also had an event in my last game where many new relics appeared which led to some astronomical bonuses, so again while I prefer not to turn off, thinking they should be Uncommon.
Resources I’ll use early game (e.g. Durantium Drivers) to get pretty powerful and relatively low cost early game fleets up i.e. all using resources. To prevent such a large advantage over the AI, thinking they should also be Uncommon.
I plan to turn Pirates Off as they are easy to avoid while the AI often loses ships to them.
The Bureau of Labour is banned as it leads to production, research and economy that the AI can’t seem to use or match.
To prevent a runaway Research victory that would still be possible I’m considering setting to Very Slow.

Your thoughts?

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erischild

Join Date 01/2012

+136

I think your suggestions are excellent. I doubt I have the moral discipline to follow them all at once. However, I am in the process of fine tuning just those setting towards just those directions. My latest trick is to throw one or two Incredible level AIs in among the randomized Genius players. I can't take it with all Incredible players as the bonuses become way too obvious. I randomized the asteroid/nebula/black hole settings. It does interesting flavor things to the maps and often nerfs the resource frequencies.

I am not "committing" myself to this kind of play. There are reasons I enjoy abundant settings. I expect the AI to gradually learn all these tricks and make my handicapping settings an interim and continuing adjustment that changes over time. I am ready to be patient about the AI learning the game. After all, I'm still learning the game, too.

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I think there's a few really important things to consider. One is map density. An insane map with 4 AI in it will play very differently than that same map with 24.

Another is sensor and drive stacking, and cargo ship type abuse earlygame.

Id love to get some thoughts on AI density and difficulty. I think for incredible and godlike dense is undoubtably harder. But when the AI has less extreme bonuses on genius, then I'm not sure what benefits them more...

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Icemaniaa

Join Date 04/2010

+14

@erischild

Completely agree abundant is my preference as well, more density is far more fun, but I don't think there is much choice given the AI doesn't know how to reap the rewards. With uncommon I can take advantage of them but not to the point where it's excessive.

@adam

Map density I agree is a factor. I normally have 8 opponents on a Huge map which should be okay. Although maybe I should increase that to 12 or 16?

I agree on the sensor and drive stacking. I never scout and late game everything has 60-100 moves. Maybe a house rule is needed to limit to say 3 drives or sensors on any design?

I've avoided Thalan Hives but sounds like they should be on the house rules list as well?

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It would be interesting to map the number of hexes in a map (map volume) to number of AI and try and find a density rule or relationship

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GCIII total tiles on map:
- Tiny: 2791 tiles
- Small: 4921 tiles
- Medium: 10981 tiles
- Large: 15769 tiles
- Huge: 27361 tiles
- Gigantic: 97741 tiles
- Immense: 173521 tiles
- Excessive: 253171 tiles
- Insane: 434341 tiles

GCIII diagonal dimensions:
- Tiny: 61 tiles
- Small: 81 tiles
- Medium: 121 tiles
- Large: 145 tiles
- Huge: 191 tiles
- Gigantic: 361 tiles
- Immense: 481 tiles
- Excessive: 581 tiles
- Insane: 761 tiles

GCIII map edge dimension:
- Tiny: 31 tiles
- Small: 41 tiles
- Medium: 61 tiles
- Large: 73 tiles
- Huge: 96 tiles
- Gigantic: 181 tiles
- Immense: 241 tiles
- Excessive: 291 tiles
- Insane: 381 tiles

GCII total tiles on map:
- Tiny: 2025 tiles
- Small: 3600 tiles
- Medium: 5625 tiles
- Large: 14400 tiles
- Huge: 32400 tiles
- Gigantic: 72900 tiles
- Immense: 108900 tiles

GCII corner-to-corner distances (both edge and diagonal):
- Tiny: 45 tiles
- Small: 60 tiles
- Medium: 75 tiles
- Large: 120 tiles
- Huge: 180 tiles
- Gigantic: 270 tiles
- Immense: 330 tiles

Since you asked...

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Well, based on tile volume, if a tiny map represents a balanced 1v1 duel with the AI, then an insane map at similar density would require 154 AI players! This assumption may be wildly wrong.

i am currently playing an insane-abundant with 24 AI - which density wise would be like me duelling an AI on a large map!

iceman, that would be the equivalent of invreasing your AI numbers from 8 to 19... over double!

actually, now I'm curious - has anyone beat a godlike AI on a tiny map?

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And thanks joe!

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Actually it would be 310 AI on my insane map - forgot to multiply by 2...

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Icemaniaa

Join Date 04/2010

+14

Quoting adamb1011,

reply 6

actually, now I'm curious - has anyone beat a godlike AI on a tiny map?

Here is a Turn 20 Godlike Tiny map Alliance victory save game (before the usual suspect asks there were no reloads and I only saved at all on Turn 20).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b5kdmmyn2yn6bjg/Tiny%20Godlike%20Turn%2020.GC3Sav?dl=0

I might give double the AI a try on Huge. Without house rules it's a catch-22 though, I'll have less colonies and so on but more AI to exploit in the diplomacy system. With house rules though it might be cool.

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Let me add a few more house rules then:

1) upgrading ships is fine, but you may not upgrade into a different ship type. Ie no colony ships to transports, constructors to colonies, sensor boats to trade, etc. Upgrading to differrent weapon load outs is fine - ie beam to missile.

2) maintaining 2 opposing ideologies at once should probably be disallowed. ie having a death furnace running while bee lining down benevolent ideology tree makes no sense.

want to beeline down benevolent? Destroy the furnaces etc.

optimally this would not be disallowed, but just discouraged through stronger penalties.

the idea being that it makes total sense to have a benevolent republic slowly morph into a genocidal xenophobic empire - but usually such changes are somewhat gradual or if done quickly they are accompanied by drastic social upheaval.

in civ5, your empire must be unhappy before you can change "ideologies".

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and it makes no sense that you preserve all the great benefits of being malevolent and benevolent at once!

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Icemaniaa

Join Date 04/2010

+14

Alright agree on the additional house rules. I'll end up just focusing on Malevolent due to the benefits of the production bonuses and miss a few construction ships.

Interestingly on the tiny map you seem to get more research points from the starting technology trait so I got Universal Translators on Turn 1. Then on Turn 2 I discovered some minor races and traded those techs for all their cash and more. So unusually I used the construction ships from Pragmatic for starbases (i.e. no colony ship upgrades) because I had enough cash to just buy colony ships to saturation, LOL! Hence having three times the colonies (including both Precursor Worlds) than the Godlike AI.

This house rules list is getting rather long.

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Yeah, the game plays like it's still in beta. It's got a long way to go

luckily the devs are still supporting and seem to be maintaining reasonable pace of improvement.

i think there is still big issues with AI economic management. One issue I've seen is that my pop tends to grow exponentially during he colonisation phase, while there's tends to grow linearly. I wonder if they arent building enough farms at the right times,, forgetting hospitals (big mistake), leading to pop stagnation and missed economic growth potential?

but once the devs clean up some of the exploits I've seen players use , and do a little more work on AI tech choices and economics, then we should see a big improvement

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