Civ4: Beyond the Sword Rebalanced

[Chris Nahr]

I've uploaded a few tweaks that make the new espionage system in Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword somewhat less annoying. You can find them on my Civilization page (http://www.kynosarges.de/Civilization.html). Here's a description of the changes:

By default, both the Spy unit and many of the destructive mission types are very cheap. Late in the game, this can lead to hostile AI players incessantly spamming their opponents with hordes of spies attempting to destroy barracks, poison water supplies, and so on.

This tactic is not only immensely annoying but also contributes to the game’s sluggish performance. Most human players probably don’t want to emulate this behavior anyway, due to the massive micromanagement involved. I have therefore raised the cost of spies and “harrassment” missions to discourage “spy spamming”.

Changed build cost for Spy unit from 40 shields (equals Swordsman or Missionary) to 100 shields (equals Cannon or Executive).
Changed cost for Sabotage Improvement mission from 75 to 200 points.
Changed cost for Sabotage Building/Production/Project missions from 0 to 300 points. This fixed cost is added to the (unchanged) variable cost that depends on the item being destroyed.
Changed cost for Poison Water Supply and Foment Unhapiness missions from 120 to 300 points.
Changed cost for Support City Revolt mission from 500 to 600 points.
These increased costs are not prohibitive, merely high enough to prevent a scattershot approach with multiple spy attacks per turn. The other mission types are either purely informational or already sufficiently expensive, and therefore remain unchanged.

The new unit cost is stored in CustomAssets\xml\units\CIV4UnitInfos.xml, and the new mission costs are stored in CustomAssets\xml\gameinfo\CIV4EspionageMissionInfo .xml.

BtS-Balance.zip (http://www.kynosarges.de/misc/BtS-Balance.zip) is a small ZIP archive that contains both XML files nested inside their proper subdirectories. Unzip in (My) Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword.

[Chris Nahr]

PS: I'm still working on reducing the maintenance costs of corporate branches! My first attempt had no effect...

[DaleKent]

This patch here might be of interest for you then. Has the corp maint fix (or more correctly, the inflation fix):

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=168750

[Kunikos]

Isn't the proper solution to just run Counter-espionage missions on every Civ? That's what I do, but I guess I'm still getting a lot of spies being caught and some actually poisoning water supplies. I don't seem to ever see buildings or production get sabotaged.

One caveat, though, I guess is that I'm just playing on the default difficulty setting.

[Xemu]

If I could assign a default counter-esp mission, that might work but having to remember to do it every 10 turns is a pain.

My worry with this patch would be not that the AI would do it less, but that the AI would cripple itself trying to do it the same amount as before.

[jpinard]

If I could assing a default counter-esp mission, that might work but having to remember to do it every 10 turns is a pain.

My worry with this patch would be not that the AI would do it less, but that the AI would cripple itself trying to do it the same amount as before.

Yep, that was my concern as well.

<<edit>>

My guess is the difficulty level tells the AI what % of units should be spies and how many resources are put into espionage (based on available funds). Since spies are normally a singular cost it wouldn't look to cross-check its finances against spy production costs.

[Chris Nahr]

This patch here might be of interest for you then. Has the corp maint fix (or more correctly, the inflation fix):

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=168750

Excellent, they're already on the third update! I'll check it out and see what it does for maintenance.

If I could assign a default counter-esp mission, that might work but having to remember to do it every 10 turns is a pain.

Exactly. Permanent counter-espionage kind of works but it's an annoying micromanagement tax to avoid getting swamped with saboteurs. I'd rather remove the issue entirely.

Also -- sorry for bringing up realism in a Civ thread, but with the default parameters, the sheer amount of sabotage and water poisoning that a hostile AI nation on the same continent will perform is simply ridiculous. You have to wonder why they even bother with an army since their spies can apparently smuggle truckloads of TNT into any city hundreds of miles away...

My worry with this patch would be not that the AI would do it less, but that the AI would cripple itself trying to do it the same amount as before.

That is not the case in my experience. AIs on the same continent which would otherwise engage in spy spamming will just build fewer spies and perform fewer missions. They don't seem to reduce their regular military. The AI reacts pretty cleverly to changed parameters -- otherwise we couldn't really change any of these XML files.

[jpinard]

Chris, if you're pretty confident about that I'll give it a whirl. I forgot you did the galactopedia. You do fantastic work!

[Chris Nahr]

Hey, it's not as if two XML files might make your computer explode or something. If you don't like the changes you can simply delete them. :)

[Chris Nahr]

This patch here might be of interest for you then. Has the corp maint fix (or more correctly, the inflation fix):

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=168750

Glorious success! For a small civ with six cities, the maintenance cost of my own corporate branches is now lower than the total gold I get from them, so spreading your own corporations around your own cities now creates a net profit. Expenses for foreign branches are no longer crippling, either, though I didn't have as much opportunity to check that out.

However, the worker AI in that patch is sadly broken. I had automated workers shuffle around between two adjacent tiles, doing nothing productive at all, right at the start of the game. :(

[jpinard]

Glorious success! For a small civ with six cities, the maintenance cost of my own corporate branches is now lower than the total gold I get from them, so spreading your own corporations around your own cities now creates a net profit. Expenses for foreign branches are no longer crippling, either, though I didn't have as much opportunity to check that out.

However, the worker AI in that patch is sadly broken. I had automated workers shuffle around between two adjacent tiles, doing nothing productive at all, right at the start of the game. :(

You mean thr workers are worse than before with the mini-patch? I hope not. That will cripple the AI won't it?

[Aeon221]

Glorious success! For a small civ with six cities, the maintenance cost of my own corporate branches is now lower than the total gold I get from them, so spreading your own corporations around your own cities now creates a net profit. Expenses for foreign branches are no longer crippling, either, though I didn't have as much opportunity to check that out.

However, the worker AI in that patch is sadly broken. I had automated workers shuffle around between two adjacent tiles, doing nothing productive at all, right at the start of the game. :(

Speaking of automated workers, I wish someone would design a big sheet that let you set all the parameters (things like farm all grassland near rivers and cottage everywhere else) for your workers. I dunno if I'd want that for individual workers, but I would want it for all of them as a whole. Currently I just micro my workers because they make bad decisions.

[Chris Nahr]

You mean thr workers are worse than before with the mini-patch? I hope not. That will cripple the AI won't it?

Workers are probably no worse than before, it's just that I noticed this "cycling" worker for the first time since it was the only one I had. Once other improvements had been built the behavior of all workers returned to normal. I had hoped that the worker AI would be fixed, though, and evidently it hadn't.

[jpinard]

Chris, can you explain something? Solver had his Military Academy Building fix as:

<Buildings>
<Building>
<BuildingType>BUILDING_MILITARY_ACADEMY</BuildingType>
<bBuilding>1</bBuilding>
</Building>
</Buildings>
<ForceBuildings/>

but you have it as:

<Buildings/>
<ForceBuildings>
<ForceBuilding>
<BuildingType>BUILDING_MILITARY_ACADEMY</BuildingType>
<bForceBuilding>1</bForceBuilding>
</ForceBuilding>
</ForceBuildings>

Why the difference?

[Chris Nahr]

Because I don't have a Military Academy fix at all! My file contains the unchanged lines from the original release version. I would have mentioned any such changes on the website.

Can you tell me what this fix is supposed to... fix? I looked at it but couldn't quite figure it out. Is the AI now forced to build Academies first when spending a Great General in a city?

[Jasper]

Military Academies can be built without the tech they're supposed to require.

[Chris Nahr]

Thanks, that's kind of important I guess. I'll incorporate the fix in my own file then.

edit: The file has been changed, please re-download.

[jpinard]

Thanks, that's kind of important I guess. I'll incorporate the fix in my own file then.

edit: The file has been changed, please re-download.

Chris, sorry for the stupidness. I thought you'd changed it after you saw solver's thread. And since I forgot to compare your file vs. the original (just against solver's) - I was confused!

By the way... do you know how to change the minimum settling distance between cities? I want to change it from the default of 2 and make it 4 (for a Gigantic map).

[Chris Nahr]

No, but I'd love to have a minimum distance of 3 even on smaller maps so that the AI can't cram cities into tiny little gaps on my cultural borders...

[Islanti]

So I assume this is still required with 3.02, but what about Solver's patch?

[AndrewM]

Solver's patch was released after 3.02, so probably.

[jpinard]

I figured minimum distance out and there's a bug in the game, so you HAVE to edit the original file (but it's no biggie).

GlobalDefines.xml in \Beyond the Sword\Assets\XML\

edit line 222

relavent code:

<DefineName>MIN_CITY_RANGE</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>3</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>

you can see I set mine to 3... and for super ginourmous maps I'm even considering 4.

Once again, this will not work if just dropped in CustomAssets. I think files that do not reside in subdirectories are ignored in CustomAssets.

[Chris Nahr]

Thanks! I'll have to try a Small map game with a greater minimum distance. Four-city empires for the win!

[Chris Nahr]

I've uploaded a second version of my little game balance patch (http://www.kynosarges.de/Civilization.html#Balance). This one contains all the espionage changes but also added upkeep costs for modern units. The purpose is to keep late-game army bloat in check.


Gunpowder units cost 1 extra gold per turn: Airship, Cannon, Cavalry, Cuirassier, Frigate, Galleon, Grenadier, Ironclad, Machine Gun, Musketman, Privateer, Rifleman, Ship of the Line.
World War units cost 2 extra gold per turn: Artillery, Anti-Tank Infantry, Attack Submarine, Battleship, Bomber, Carrier, Destroyer, Fighter, Infantry, Marine, Paratrooper, SAM Infantry, Submarine, Tank, Transport.
Current units cost 3 extra gold per turn: Gunship, ICBM, Jet Fighter, Mechanized Infantry, Missile Cruiser, Mobile Artillery, Mobile SAM, Modern Armor, Stealth Bomber, Stealth Destroyer.
Weaker missile units cost less since they are expended in one attack: Guided Missile (1 gold), Tactical Nukes (2 gold).


No more 100-unit armies on small maps!

[Jakub]

I have the Steam version of this.

I get the feeling the AI patch won't work... there's nothing in my "assets".

[Sam Jones]

I have the Steam version of this.

I get the feeling the AI patch won't work... there's nothing in my "assets".

Are you looking in the right place? You want the Civ4 BTS folders in your My Documents / My Games folder.

[Chris Nahr]

Or are you talking about the Apolyton patch? That one goes in the Assets folder of the Civ4 BtS installation folder...

[TomChick]

BTW, what the holy heck is going on over there at Firaxis or 2K or wherever that there isn't an official patch for Beyond the Sword yet?

-Tom

[Chris Nahr]

Yeah, in the Apolyton thread they've been saying for at least a month that the official patch should be out "soon". Maybe they figure the unofficial patch is good enough!

[AndrewM]

BTW, what the holy heck is going on over there at Firaxis or 2K or wherever that there isn't an official patch for Beyond the Sword yet?

I've put BTS on ice waiting for the patch, but it has been quite a while. Maybe I should just grab the unofficial patch.

[jpinard]

Apparently they put more into the patch and had some major bugs. Each time it goes back to the dev's and gets re-worked and re-submitted for testing. It is ridiculous how slow its going, and it seems if you fix one big bug you shouldn't have to restart the whole round of testing. How long did it take for the big patch fixes to show up for the previous game?

[TomChick]

Yeah, this is pretty goddamn sad. I loved the expansion, but what the holy hell is going on with Firaxis' post-release support?

-Tom

[mystery]

I started playing this again recently, and some of the updates in the last patch did some good for the playstyle in the game. Certainly I'm not bombarded by spies, at least.

I'd really like to see a patch that addresses performance issues. Even with good fast hardware and a lot of RAM, I'm left reading a book between turns in the late game with a map any larger than Standard with the default player amount.

I'm also wondering if someone has a good mod (or set of mods) out there that could extend the Future War mod. I'm particularly interested in yet more technologies that radically change playstyle. I'd love to see someone implement the water-based enhancements that came with that one expansion for Civ ...3? I forget.

[Chris Nahr]

For reference, here's the Apolyton thread (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=170205) about the official upcoming 3.13 patch. The list of fixes is like a million miles long. Looks like they want to fix every single outstanding issue in this patch.

[Chris Nahr]

The computer still builds way too many units, so I've tweaked the alternative version of my game balance patch (http://www.kynosarges.de/Civilization.html#Balance). Support costs for most military units were raised to 1-10 gold per turn.

Maintenance costs are derived from build costs and start out with 1 gold for archers. Since archers cost 25 shields to build, a unit’s support cost usually equals 1/25th of its build cost.

Land units range from 1 (Archer, Axeman, Spearman, Chariot) to 9 (Modern Armor) extra gold per turn.
Naval units range from 2 (Galley, Trireme, Caravel) to 10 (Missile Cruiser, Stealth Destroyer) extra gold per turn.
Air units range from 3 (Airship) to 8 (Stealth Bomber) extra gold per turn.
Non-military units cost no extra gold: Settler, Worker, Scout, Spy, Executive, Missionary, Work Boat, Great Person.
Warrior units cost no extra gold since they are extremely weak and many nations start out with one.
Missile units cost only 1/250th of their build cost since they must be stockpiled to be useful: Guided Missile (free), Tactical Nuke (1 gold), ICBM (2 gold).
These costs are really pretty harsh on militarists. Aside from keeping army sizes in check, they also make the Space Race victory condition actually challenging, and not just a mere formality for any nation that survives until 2050.

[Alan Au]

Good stuff, but out of curiosity, why don't spies cost gold?

- Alan

[Anaxagoras]

Chris... your anti-military tweaks seem to further gimp an AI that already isn't all *that* hot. (The AI loves its pointless stacks o' troops.) Why the push to further penalize the AI?

Also, how does it make the Space Race Victory more difficult? Presumably, you'll have fewer forces for defense, but the AI will also have fewer units to attack with, right?

[Lum]

I like the Fall From Heaven solution that puts a hard cap on the top tier units. The AI isn't going to build stacks of Paladins because they can only build 3.

[Anaxagoras]

I like the Fall From Heaven solution that puts a hard cap on the top tier units. The AI isn't going to build stacks of Paladins because they can only build 3.
The problem with this solution is that defense become almost impossible. I can have 3 good archers. (Maybe 6 or 9, if there are 2 or 3 top tier archers.) The enemy can punch through my defenses with *his* 3 good attack units wherever my defensive guys aren't.

Since the AI in FFH can't keep up real well, it's rarely my defense that suffers. It's the AI's. The entire game becomes one big mop-up operation, except for the few battles where our top tier units are duking it out. And even then... by that point, I've usually crushed his economy & taking out his uber stack is pretty much a formality.

[Chris Nahr]

Good stuff, but out of curiosity, why don't spies cost gold?

Hmm... good question. I didn't really think about that, I just made all non-combat units exempt. Maybe I should add support costs for spies.

OTOH, spy missions already cost another resource (espionage points), and typically you keep only a small number around so it wouldn't matter anyway. The AI loves spamming sabotage missions but I don't think it actually has all that many spies at any one time, it just keeps rebuilding them when they fail a mission.

Chris... your anti-military tweaks seem to further gimp an AI that already isn't all *that* hot. (The AI loves its pointless stacks o' troops.) Why the push to further penalize the AI?

These tweaks apply to AI and human player equally, so they don't penalize the AI as much as force everyone to adopt a play style other than "swamp enemy with a gazillion troops". The AI is actually pretty adept at handling this change, except for the militaristic psychopaths who deserve no better!

Whether you like that different play style or not is obviously up to you. Personally I don't like building tons of units so these changes force the AI to play in a style that I prefer.

Also, how does it make the Space Race Victory more difficult? Presumably, you'll have fewer forces for defense, but the AI will also have fewer units to attack with, right?

You greatly underestimate the effect of these upkeep changes. The cost of maintaining any sort of military goes up dramatically, so even with a nominal defense force you'll be forced to lower your research output. That's what makes the space race victory harder to achieve.

[Chris Nahr]

Okay, I've had it with spies. And corporate executives, too. Here's how to completely delete nuisance units from the game!

To remove Spy units from the game, simply open the file CIV4UnitInfos.xml in your CustomAssets folder, find the XML element <Class>UNITCLASS_SPY</Class>, and delete or comment out the entire containing UnitInfo element. The game engine and AI do not seem to have any trouble with this radical change. Espionage points still provide intelligence on foreign cities, though nothing else.

You might want to do the same to the Corporate Executive units that can become a similar nuisance late in the game. Their classes are called UNITCLASS_EXECUTIVE_1 through UNITCLASS_EXECUTIVE_7, and they are defined by the next seven UnitInfo elements following the one for the Spy unit. Corporations can still be established and provide the usual benefits, you just cannot spread them to other cities.

I should have thought of it before but I didn't expect such a simple and drastic change to work. I've documented these steps on my website (http://www.kynosarges.de/Civilization.html#BalanceRadical) but I didn't change the downloadable files since this change is probably too radical for many players.

[TomChick]

this change is probably too radical for many players.

I hate espionage as much as the next guy -- actually, more! -- but this does damage the game's balance. Many wonders, buildings, and techs are specifically balanced for the new espionage system. If you can't spend those points, their place in the Grand Scheme of Things is messed up, and the AI probably won't know this. So don't expect I won't be hovering over your shoulder calling you a cheater. :)

Also, why on earth would you establish a corporation if you can't spread it to another city?

It is cool, though, that Civ IV lets you muck around with the basics. I just downloaded a collection of mods called BUG that changes the interface. Ahhh, nice.

-Tom

[Alan Au]

Why not just drop them down to being national units, limit 1?

- Alan

[Chris Nahr]

I hate espionage as much as the next guy -- actually, more! -- but this does damage the game's balance. Many wonders, buildings, and techs are specifically balanced for the new espionage system.

I don't think wonders & techs are a big problem since they usuall have other benefits. I do think the AI is going to overspend on espionage points, though...

Also, why on earth would you establish a corporation if you can't spread it to another city?

Corporations always give a small culture boost and some other specific benefit to the headquarter city. Think of it as a national wonder. The real question is whether the corp benefit is greater than just adding the Great Person to the city. I haven't looked into that yet.

It is cool, though, that Civ IV lets you muck around with the basics. I just downloaded a collection of mods called BUG that changes the interface. Ahhh, nice.

You mean this one? (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=268) There doesn't seem to be a FAQ or the like. There's a sticky thread called "Faq" which... does not contain a FAQ. What does that mod do?

[Chris Nahr]

Why not just drop them down to being national units, limit 1?

What would be the point? The AI would just keep resending spies and rebuilding them when they get killed.

[TomChick]

Yep, that's it, Chris. It's a collection of interface mods from different folks, but all managed from a single screen.

I stumbled across it because I hate espionage. Specifically, I was sick of having to constantly check my spies to figure whether they'd been stationary for five turns, so I asked on CivFanatics if there was some mod to give a unit a five-turn sentry command. Some dude pointed me to the alert function of BUG. ALT+M brings up a dialog box where you set a message and a number of turns. In that amount of time, the message pops up with the rest of the alerts! It's a great way to sentry a spy and then remind yourself when he'll have the full stationary bonus five turns later.

But I was delighted to discover a bunch of other cool stuff in BUG, all of it optional. For instance, you can toggle a progress bar on the main screen for your next Great Person and Great General. You can set an alert every turn for events such as a city growing, another nation making a new tech available for trade, or how much gold each nation has available. There's a bunch of new data you can put on the score display. And the F1 city management screen is blown wide open in terms of what kind of information you can display. I think I'd have a hard time going back to BUG-less Civ IV now.

-Tom

[Mike O'Malley]

Does BUG have any applicability to Fall From Heaven?

[Alan Au]

What would be the point? The AI would just keep resending spies and rebuilding them when they get killed.Good point. I guess I was hoping that the AI would have to choose where to use its one spy/executive, but that might still be annoying. Mostly, I think it'd be nice to have some way to spread corporations, which I find more tolerable than espionage. Maybe limit executives to national unit, limit 1, requires corporate HQ for production. I'll have to play with this in the XML and see if it has any impact. Granted, I usually don't have problems being overun by foreign corporations.

- Alan

[TomChick]

Does BUG have any applicability to Fall From Heaven?

BUG "installs" to the core files of Beyond the Sword, so it won't be in effect if you load a mod like Fall from Heaven or Rhyes and Fall.

-Tom

[Anaxagoras]

I stumbled across it because I hate espionage. Specifically, I was sick of having to constantly check my spies to figure whether they'd been stationary for five turns, so I asked on CivFanatics if there was some mod to give a unit a five-turn sentry command.

What's special about five turns?

[TomChick]

For every turn a spy remains stationary, there's a -10% cost on his actions, up to a maximum of -50%. So to optimize your espionage, you need to park your spy on his target for five turns. In other words, micromanagement. Bad Firaxis, bad! No cookie for you.

-Tom

[Jason McCullough]

They should at least have a "wake up in 5 turns" button.

[Kunikos]

Apparently they put more into the patch and had some major bugs. Each time it goes back to the dev's and gets re-worked and re-submitted for testing. It is ridiculous how slow its going, and it seems if you fix one big bug you shouldn't have to restart the whole round of testing. How long did it take for the big patch fixes to show up for the previous game?

Actually, you do have to do all the testing over again. It's called regression testing. It's how you prevent old bugs (not necessarily caused by the same code lines) from coming back, or new bugs in old functionality from popping up due to new fixes.

[Chris Nahr]

That BUG collection has lots nice stuff! Unfortunately the new city screen doesn't let me set production for all selected cities, or am I missing something here?

[TomChick]

Unfortunately the new city screen doesn't let me set production for all selected cities, or am I missing something here?

Do you mean the F1 screen? You should be able to shift click on cities and manage their build queues all at once. You can also do this from the main gamescreen. I just verified that this works for me, even with the BUG mod installed.

However, you mention the "city screen", so I'm a bit confused. From a single city's screen, I don't think it's ever been possible to manage build queues for multiple cities.

-Tom

[Chris Nahr]

Er, yes, the F1 screen (domestic advisor). Somehow I got the impression that I couldn't access build items with the new screen up. Maybe I should first single-click on a city to select it.

I've added the spy and exec units back in, by the way, and I'm also a bit dubious about the extra unit support costs. The AI can handle all that in theory but in practice it really doesn't seem to have a clue how to win the game if it can't permanently keep hordes of units around. :(

Or maybe I'll just up the difficulty level and let the AI cheat a bit...

[AndrewM]

The AI can handle all that in theory but in practice it really doesn't seem to have a clue how to win the game if it can't permanently keep hordes of units around. :(

I've read that the reason they let the computer keep around huge hordes of units is because its tactical AI isn't very good.

[TomChick]

It's absolutely true that the computer needs a numerical advantage to make for a tactically challenging game. I like the AI in Civ IV, but I can definitely see the holes when it comes to combat. I know Chris hates having to face so many enemy units, but that's built into the difficulty levels by adjusting the cost the AI pays for military units and therefore how many it can field.

-Tom