I will refrain form commenting on the new graphics. I wanna hear the users opinions!
Quick question though, before I fill the bug report. Accidentally I have noticed that the expert Jesuit missionary in Free Col cannot self-commission (can't be made a missionary unless there's a church or cathedral in the colony. He'd have to go all the way to Europe and back to do it which kinda sucks). AFAIK he should be able to do another job and then return to missioning, church or not, based on the original Col. That's his profession's unique ability.
To commission any other profession as a missionary you'll need the church or the cathedral.
CONFIRMED!
Last edit: Misiulo 2023-01-04
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But it won't be a true imitation if it does not have the original SoL
formula, which included the colony's central tile in the divisor.
Version 0.13.0 doesn't.
AFAIK the 1.0 version has been published as the milestone to celebrate the 20th anniversary of FreeCol. The game is still being upgraded and the devs are well aware it's not perfect. Keep the feedback coming. You might wanna fill a feature request for this :)
Last edit: Misiulo 2023-01-04
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In 2011 I published a wiki page that included a detailed study of how
Col1 calculated the SoL percentage, and I'm fairly sure I pointed it out
to at least one developer.
It should not need a "feature request" to suggest that it should have
been incorporated from an early date if FreeCol1 was, as claimed, to be
as close as possible to Col1. Even without my study, that formula should
have been easy enough for developers to see and copy.
Huh? well AFAIK the 1.0 version has been published as the milestone to celebrate the 20th anniversary of FreeCol. The game is still being upgraded and the devs are well aware it's not perfect. Keep the feedback coming. You might wanna fill a feature request for this.
(That was in reply to my posting about an hour earlier), following the first posting in this subject):
At long last indeed, sir. Congratulations!
But it won't be a true imitation if it does not have the original SoL
formula, which included the colony's central tile in the divisor.
Version 0.13.0 doesn't.
A "feature request" is the right way to bring something to the attention of the developers. Mentioning it to one of them only helps if they don't happen to forget about your conversation. if the only record of such a suggestion resides in the memory of one developer, that information might effectively disappear if that developer stops working on this project. The feature request documents the issue, so they will sooner or later address it, even if only by responding with an explanation of why they are ignoring it.
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In general, FreeCol v1.0 was designed to be "as close as possible" to Colonization, but it is not identical. There is still a dataset that is designed to enable you to always have settings that apply as close as possible FreeCol to the original Col1. Bugs in Col1 and weird quirks make this a challenge to have high accurancy. Such as how Col1 does calculations, which in some cases is a bit of a black box unless someone goes through and creates a detailed study on a particular subject.
Beyond FreeCol v1.0, the development team is adding new features, functionality, units, goods, gameplay changes, calculations that make the game more balanced or more fun, and even eventually storylines. So I wouldn't necessarily always expect FreeCol to be exactly identical to Col1.
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Possibly useful comparison with FC1.0; the following recent conversation
on the public Facebook Group about Col1:
DAVID P. SICILIA [1]
Wondering if anyone is aware of anyone that has done any detailed
investigation of the precise mechanics of naval combat in Col1?
The manual doesn't say much about it, and the strategy guide basically
says that there are three outcomes (evade, sink, damaged). I've done
some experiments (using cheat mode) of repeated running battles between
two types of ships 50-100 times and collecting statistics. I found some
interesting facts:
Non-war ships can never be sunk, only
damaged.
2. When a privateer attacks a frigate, there is never an "evade"
outcome. You might say that is because the privateer has more movement
points than the frigate, but when a privateer attacks a caravel or
merchantman there is an evade outcome periodically.
3. When a privateer attacks a privateer, or when a frigate attacks a
frigate, the "evade" outcome seems to never happen.
4. When a defending ship loses combat, all war ships on that square are
sunk and all non-war ships on the square are damaged (and cargo units
get destroyed). But, when an attacking ship loses combat, only that ship
goes away + and cargo units on the square.
Generally, the probability for the "evade" outcome is determined by the
difference in total movements points of the attacker vs. defender (the
strategy guide mentions this, and I've confirmed it). However, there are
clear exceptions to that noted above in #2 and #3.
I wonder if there are any resources out there where someone has made
sense of this?
Comments
John Rowland [2]
I think I did a post once about never defeating a privateer when
attacking with a frigate, however, if I put the frigate next to the
privateer sometimes the privateer loses when it attacks my frigate on
the following turn.
Seems ridiculous to me, but it is what it is.
David P. Sicilia [3]
Author
John Rowland [2] I just ran an experiment where I had a frigate attack a
privateer 75 times, and the results were:
* 73% evade.
* 21% one of the ships sunk, including many privateers.
* 6% one of the ships damaged.
So you can indeed sink a privateer with a frigate, but what I find
puzzling is the evade rate. I'm trying to decide if that is something
that could have been better balanced. As I see it, one of the main
reasons to get a frigate is to strong-arm privateers and get rid of
them. But with an evade rate of ~75% it seems that they are kind of
useless against privateers. And given how expensive a frigate is, do
people even use them?
In general, I'm wondering if people think that the evade rate was set
too high in the game, or if there is a good reason for it.
John Rowland [2]
David P. Sicilia [3] I don't know who decided on that particular
algorithm, but my strategy now is what I said earlier. I just park next
to a privateer and let it attack me on the following turn because it
feels like that gives me a better success rate.
David P. Sicilia [3]
Author
John Rowland [2] I think you are right: in my tests, when a privateer
attacks a frigate, there is zero evade probability (which btw I don't
understand). So that likely means that the battle comes down to the
relative strengths of the units, and so the frigate will win more often,
around 66% of the time (that includes the privateer's 50% attack bonus).
Contrast that with having the frigate attack the privateer, in which
case the huge evade probability means that the frigate (even with 50%
attack bonus) will only with about 25%*80%=20% of the time.
Michael Lonergan [4]
I thought I've had a caravel sunk by a privateer. Could difficulty
factor in to the results
This is obviously not true since I have no problem sinking non-war ships. I think they have been duped by the original game not giving random results when reloading a game.
A proper test would be creating hundreds of units and then attacking with all the different units without reloading the game.
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Hi. I played the 1.0 version, I love the new graphics (you did a great job). But I have a question.
Is it normal for the AI to have like 120 units or more by around 1600?. In my years of playing freecol, its very hard to reach that amount of units in 1600. Did the AI have more immigration bonus, a different strategy or its just cheat?.
I would like to know what is the strategy of the AI to get more units, (every game I play in 1.0 I always am behind. And how they get that amount of dragoons?. I am looking for learn and apply their strategy in my future games. Thanks :)
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The AI is indeed cheating -- and mostly to make the game more fun. For example, the AI refrains from having early scouts snatching all the lost city rumors (LCRs) since being able to scout these LCRs is an important aspect of making the game fun.
However, not scouting all the LCRs early puts the AI at a great disadvantage. Therefor, it's necessary to compensate the income the AI would otherwise get.
The same also applies for trading goods with native settlements ... as it's not fun having the AI meet all the demand.
The main compensation for the AI is that profits from goods sold in Europe gets multiplied by 10.
This allows you as a human player to stop the AI player from getting money/units by blockading colonies, sinking ships etc.
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I would hope that refraining from snatching LCRs and avoiding trade with the natives is something that varies with difficulty level.
Ideally, I'd like to have playing against the AI at sufficiently high difficulty levels be like playing against a human, and a competent human player would do neither of those things. I realize that AI good enough to be a challenge for a human being on a fair playing field is quite different. However, I wish that some large fraction of the work that recently went into making Freecol prettier could have gone into making the AI more intelligent instead. Then it wouldn't need to cheat to compete evenly against human players.
Could you give us a reasonably complete list of the ways in which the AI is playing a different game than the human players are?
For instance, if the AI players are getting 10 times the profit that we are, and if the AI negotiates prices reasonably, human players should be able to sell goods to the AI at a higher price than in Europe. I've never even thought of trying that before, since I assumed that the AI was facing the same type of European market that I am.
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This would be a "Competitive AI" as described below. I don't think you actually want it unless you want really short games as a practice for multiplayer. However, I find it fun to write so you will probably get one eventually.
However, I wish that some large fraction of the work that recently went into making Freecol prettier could have gone into making the AI more intelligent instead.
Well, I did spend quite some time making defensive AI code that creates defensive zones around their colonies, and performs coordinated counterattacks with multiple units. In addition, the AI will now escort artillery with dragoons when attacking colonies.
In addition, I'm working on the AI Colony Management so that the AI players should get much better profits and development of their colonies. When this is done we would probably only need the trade modifier for higher difficulty levels.
...and feel free to contribute on your own spare time if you want to prioritize working on other tasks than we do 😉
Then it wouldn't need to cheat to compete evenly against human players.
It's not really a question of intelligence ... rather, what would be fun.
The trade modifier is a great way of helping the AI since you can just compete normally with it. For example, you should try to disrupt its trading -- like you would do in any case. It's not like the AI gets a hidden combat modifier, or anything like that.
Please do tell if you know of a popular commercial game with mechanics like Col/Civ that doesn't utilize cheating for the AI players.
Could you give us a reasonably complete list of the ways in which the AI is playing a different game than the human players are?
Just open the game options and view the "AI Cheating".
I've never even thought of trying that before, since I assumed that the AI was facing the same type of European market that I am.
Unless this has been changed in the code since I last worked on the market code, then the different European players have separate markets that only influence the other markets somewhat. That means, both players can profit from a trade.
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What I'm thinking of for a Competitive AI shouldn't be any harder to play against than a human. Correctly implemented, it shouldn't make for any quicker of a game than you would have playing against a human.
When I retired, I made a long list of things that I would do with my copious free time, which did include contributing to both freecol and simutrans. However, I failed to take proper consideration of the fact that I'm now acting as househusband and taking care of two 7-year-olds. That "copious free time" has yet to arrive.
I fully appreciate that intelligent AI is difficult - so difficult that it is necessary to cheat in favor of the AI to make it competitive. I make no claim that any company has avoided that necessity.
The AI Cheating section is under the Difficulty level menu, not the game options one. I don't see a "profits times 10" parameter there. I have only 0.12.0 installed, I haven't upgraded to 1.0 yet. Is it a new parameter?
I know that each player's European market is distinct, but I had thought that (with the exception of the Trade advantage) they all worked basically the same way: pretty much the same starting prices, with some random variation over time, which go down for the goods you sell, and up for the goods you buy, and slowly reverting to normal if you stop trading a given good.
By the way, did you actually mean "10 times the profits"? That would be complicated to implement, keeping track of production expenses. Did you actually mean "10 times the price"?
Either way, as I said before, if you are at peace with an AI player and can trade with them,it should be possible to sell goods to that AI at prices much higher than your own home port will pay, but much lower than the price his home port would pay - except, of course, if you deliberately design their trade negotiations strategy to ignore that fact.
Looking that the AI Cheating parameters, I don't see any that offer the same kind of opportunity for exploitation.
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Each AI player will normally have around 50 units in 1600 if left uninterrupted on medium. I have tried ten games and never passed 65 units.
Perhaps it's the Spanish that have a lot of units? They can get a great many units if located next to the Incan/Aztec cities and/or if they get Juan de Sepúlveda early. The reason is that they have a combat bonus when attacking the natives (and the AI is programmed to take advantage of that).
Note, however, that getting 120 units by 1600 is absolutely possible with normal play. Some quick tips are:
Immediately sell the tools to the natives.
You now have the money to buy the horses for at least one scout, and also money for buying more goods that you can sell to the natives (remember to buy trade goods in addition to any type of goods they state they need).
Focus on scouting and trading with the natives.
Send missionaries everywhere.
Recruit units on the docks until it's cheaper buying Expert Ore Miners.
👍
2
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Thanks Stian. This information is very useful and I will use it in the game. Now I am more confident to play the game. the new AI is agressive and its good because it gives more challenge. its a great improvement. thanks :D
Last edit: Mazim E.A 2023-01-04
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I can make an AI that's fighting competitively, and without cheating, if enough people would find that interesting. In that case, it would be possible to choose either the "Fun AI" or the "Competitive AI" -- since most people would prefer the "Fun AI" (even if they think otherwise).
Note that you can buy artillery as early as 1494 by selling the tools. This makes focusing on building/developing colonies on small/medium maps a losing strategy against a competitive AI (or a really skilled human player).
Come to think of it, I think it should be possible to practice with a competitive AI if multiplayer games start getting popular.
👍
1
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I like to improve the colonies too. maybe I was focusing the wrong way. In my early 1.0 gameplays I made many mistakes. I am using now your strategy. Yes, its very possible to have more than 120 units by 1600. In the years of 1570s (in my actual gameplay) I have near 110 units. I have landed near three Aztecs cities and two arawak villages. I notice that the french was the only one to rush into exploration of Lost city rumors (I dont know why), They have now 130 units. I made a lot of trade with the Aztecs, in one of these I gain 2700 gold (it was very good and helped a lot).
After the initial expansion (15 colonies that I built so far in the actual gameplay) I think I will slow my rythm of expansion and focuses in developing the manufacture, industries and farm colonies (the farm colonies are one of my strategies, a colony that produces near 50 food per turn, which makes diferences in the late game. :)
Last edit: Mazim E.A 2023-01-11
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Pto tip: Don't hesitate to commission your free colonist as missionaries on the European dock, even if you aren;t planning on using them to establish a mission! It'll increase their movement to two tiles per turn. The only downside is that an active missionary is one of the few unit types who die when defeated.
👍
1
Last edit: Misiulo 2023-01-05
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What are the general plans for v1.0+ in terms of features?
What comes to mind is expanding production chains, hemp/rope, stone, gold/jewelry, and making eg ship costs reflect that, ie ship costs hammers, tools, rope, cloth.
Another thing is, can ships assume roles to eventually have additional guns or crew boosting offense?
Would love to see pirates officially added in some form, and a way to enter enemy ships to capture them or alternatively sink it, and a way to sell ships.
Upgradable roads to train tracks like in civ starting eg 1800?
Making a tile improvement to visually have a small fortification of units?
Same with eg watch towers?
Ability to make channels?
A few ideas, pretty sure some(or all) have been mentioned before. -:)
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My own plan for features beyond standard gameplay (commonly called FreeCol 2) is allowing mods to have more advanced functionality. We can then test various types of gameplay ideas as separate mods, and play-test how combining them might make the game more/less fun to play.
What comes to mind is expanding production chains, hemp/rope, stone, gold/jewelry, and making eg ship costs reflect that, ie ship costs hammers, tools, rope, cloth.
This should already be possible by just making changes to the specification (and adding new images for any new goods type).
( I have also toyed with a few ideas in this area -- including a spreadsheet for an entire WW2-mod with long chains of goods and equipment that can be combined in various factories )
Another thing is, can ships assume roles to eventually have additional guns or crew boosting offense?
Ships should be able to have roles, but it does not currently seem to be supported. I can look into it if you want to develop a mod using that functionality.
Upgradable roads to train tracks like in civ starting eg 1800?
I think this is already possible to do using a mod, but it will not look good without changes to the code.
On my TODO list there's an item for making "connected" a property on a tile improvement -- so that it would be possible to provide variations of image files for the allowed combinations of connected roads/railroads.
Would love to see pirates officially added in some form, and a way to enter enemy ships to capture them or alternatively sink it, and a way to sell ships.
We could add "boarding" as an ability ... so that a unit carried by a ship can attack another adjacent ship. Perhaps also a separate "defendWhenBoarded" ability?
I think one important missing feature is supporting scenarios/campaigns so that it's possible to make a story-driven mod/game. This could also be used for making tutorials.
The main priority is still the same; continue making the core parts of the game better (graphics, AI, interface etc), but I will never-the-less focus a bit more on new gameplay mechanics.
👍
2
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We could add "boarding" as an ability ... so that a unit carried by a ship can attack another adjacent ship. Perhaps also a separate "defendWhenBoarded" ability?
Sounds good, my idea would be in naval combat, first check if crew or guns are carried, ie if ship has a role? The role would be rather unit focused, "hasCrew" and/or "hasGuns" ability? If so, then do the normal calc, if win, offer either boarding/capturing/plundering or sinking.
I had a situation, where the REF had all ships sunk but one, I it took ages to actually sink the last ship. Some improvement what to do with enemy ships would be nice. rather than purely relying on random.
This should already be possible by just making changes to the specification (and adding new images for any new goods type).
Edit: How to set the minimum price for a good so it won't fall towards 1?
The main priority is still the same; continue making the core parts of the game better (graphics, AI, interface etc), but I will never-the-less focus a bit more on new gameplay mechanics.
My time for gaming is rather limited, but I always had a knack for modding, I got no time for effectively like coding on freeol, but some data modeling could be squeezed in.
Yes, a big "want" for mapeditor loading mods, I circumvented it so far by building from source in a branch with mod integrated into game data.
Last edit: artoo 2023-01-05
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Edit: How to set the minimum price for a good so it won't fall towards 1?
This does not seem to be possible through specification changes. I've put it on my TODO-list, but there are lots of other higher priority tasks. Please do tell if/when this becomes a blocker for completing your mod.
Yes, a big "want" for mapeditor loading mods, I circumvented it so far by building from source in a branch with mod integrated into game data.
I added this three days ago. You can try it out using the development build.
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I added this three days ago. You can try it out using the development build.
Already did, one observation is, the ModMessages won't always get loaded, so the editor lacks some strings. But works fine so far to create a small test map for the mod.
Regarding prices, I just noticed in one rare test game, that silvercoin fell to almost 1 ~1600. :(
But its not a mod stopper in any way, just that coins become worthless, I should probably make paper money goods to reflect it :-D
Last edit: artoo 2023-01-09
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On my TODO list there's an item for making "connected" a property on a tile improvement -- so that it would be possible to provide variations of image files for the allowed combinations of connected roads/railroads.
Would come in handy if one wanted to make artificial channel tile improvement as well?
Could colonies be merged that way into one?
AT THE LONG LAST :)
Let's talk about it!
I will refrain form commenting on the new graphics. I wanna hear the users opinions!
Quick question though, before I fill the bug report. Accidentally I have noticed that the expert Jesuit missionary in Free Col cannot self-commission (can't be made a missionary unless there's a church or cathedral in the colony. He'd have to go all the way to Europe and back to do it which kinda sucks). AFAIK he should be able to do another job and then return to missioning, church or not, based on the original Col. That's his profession's unique ability.
To commission any other profession as a missionary you'll need the church or the cathedral.
CONFIRMED!
Last edit: Misiulo 2023-01-04
At long last indeed, sir. Congratulations!
But it won't be a true imitation if it does not have the original SoL
formula, which included the colony's central tile in the divisor.
Version 0.13.0 doesn't.
Robin
AFAIK the 1.0 version has been published as the milestone to celebrate the 20th anniversary of FreeCol. The game is still being upgraded and the devs are well aware it's not perfect. Keep the feedback coming. You might wanna fill a feature request for this :)
Last edit: Misiulo 2023-01-04
In 2011 I published a wiki page that included a detailed study of how
Col1 calculated the SoL percentage, and I'm fairly sure I pointed it out
to at least one developer.
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/User:Robin_Patterson/Col1#Investigating_Col1's_formula_relating_bells_to_SoL_(rebel)_percentage
It should not need a "feature request" to suggest that it should have
been incorporated from an early date if FreeCol1 was, as claimed, to be
as close as possible to Col1. Even without my study, that formula should
have been easy enough for developers to see and copy.
Keep up the great work!
Robin
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/User:Robin_Patterson [1]
On 2023-01-04 18:25, Misiulo wrote:
Links:
[1] https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/User:Robin_Patterson
A "feature request" is the right way to bring something to the attention of the developers. Mentioning it to one of them only helps if they don't happen to forget about your conversation. if the only record of such a suggestion resides in the memory of one developer, that information might effectively disappear if that developer stops working on this project. The feature request documents the issue, so they will sooner or later address it, even if only by responding with an explanation of why they are ignoring it.
In general, FreeCol v1.0 was designed to be "as close as possible" to Colonization, but it is not identical. There is still a dataset that is designed to enable you to always have settings that apply as close as possible FreeCol to the original Col1. Bugs in Col1 and weird quirks make this a challenge to have high accurancy. Such as how Col1 does calculations, which in some cases is a bit of a black box unless someone goes through and creates a detailed study on a particular subject.
Beyond FreeCol v1.0, the development team is adding new features, functionality, units, goods, gameplay changes, calculations that make the game more balanced or more fun, and even eventually storylines. So I wouldn't necessarily always expect FreeCol to be exactly identical to Col1.
Possibly useful comparison with FC1.0; the following recent conversation
on the public Facebook Group about Col1:
DAVID P. SICILIA [1]
Wondering if anyone is aware of anyone that has done any detailed
investigation of the precise mechanics of naval combat in Col1?
The manual doesn't say much about it, and the strategy guide basically
says that there are three outcomes (evade, sink, damaged). I've done
some experiments (using cheat mode) of repeated running battles between
two types of ships 50-100 times and collecting statistics. I found some
interesting facts:
damaged.
2. When a privateer attacks a frigate, there is never an "evade"
outcome. You might say that is because the privateer has more movement
points than the frigate, but when a privateer attacks a caravel or
merchantman there is an evade outcome periodically.
3. When a privateer attacks a privateer, or when a frigate attacks a
frigate, the "evade" outcome seems to never happen.
4. When a defending ship loses combat, all war ships on that square are
sunk and all non-war ships on the square are damaged (and cargo units
get destroyed). But, when an attacking ship loses combat, only that ship
goes away + and cargo units on the square.
Generally, the probability for the "evade" outcome is determined by the
difference in total movements points of the attacker vs. defender (the
strategy guide mentions this, and I've confirmed it). However, there are
clear exceptions to that noted above in #2 and #3.
I wonder if there are any resources out there where someone has made
sense of this?
Comments
John Rowland [2]
I think I did a post once about never defeating a privateer when
attacking with a frigate, however, if I put the frigate next to the
privateer sometimes the privateer loses when it attacks my frigate on
the following turn.
Seems ridiculous to me, but it is what it is.
David P. Sicilia [3]
Author
John Rowland [2] I just ran an experiment where I had a frigate attack a
privateer 75 times, and the results were: * 73% evade. * 21% one of the ships sunk, including many privateers. * 6% one of the ships damaged.
So you can indeed sink a privateer with a frigate, but what I find
puzzling is the evade rate. I'm trying to decide if that is something
that could have been better balanced. As I see it, one of the main
reasons to get a frigate is to strong-arm privateers and get rid of
them. But with an evade rate of ~75% it seems that they are kind of
useless against privateers. And given how expensive a frigate is, do
people even use them?
In general, I'm wondering if people think that the evade rate was set
too high in the game, or if there is a good reason for it.
John Rowland [2]
David P. Sicilia [3] I don't know who decided on that particular
algorithm, but my strategy now is what I said earlier. I just park next
to a privateer and let it attack me on the following turn because it
feels like that gives me a better success rate.
David P. Sicilia [3]
Author
John Rowland [2] I think you are right: in my tests, when a privateer
attacks a frigate, there is zero evade probability (which btw I don't
understand). So that likely means that the battle comes down to the
relative strengths of the units, and so the frigate will win more often,
around 66% of the time (that includes the privateer's 50% attack bonus).
Contrast that with having the frigate attack the privateer, in which
case the huge evade probability means that the frigate (even with 50%
attack bonus) will only with about 25%*80%=20% of the time.
Michael Lonergan [4]
I thought I've had a caravel sunk by a privateer. Could difficulty
factor in to the results
Robin
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/User:Robin_Patterson/Col1
Links:
[1]
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2383150188575001/user/510191/?cft[0]=AZVmlwA6vI9BBuK5cW2irkdnFhLh6Adis2f9HEE877WGzk1EtzytUUg7-MbY7TX5yr19I6Vcbl4pxalUxJhNKRVqy-ycc5iE6U_4a5Fhmf3QKDSaEgRvXUQQX73jZxxVSgeNaQTn66lqnURJxUO-xNdR6yAZ517JPQZj7fN9rKf9t2PIIluuU-gAKQni1RJRY-A&tn=-UC%2CP-R
[2]
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[3]
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This is obviously not true since I have no problem sinking non-war ships. I think they have been duped by the original game not giving random results when reloading a game.
A proper test would be creating hundreds of units and then attacking with all the different units without reloading the game.
Hi. I played the 1.0 version, I love the new graphics (you did a great job). But I have a question.
Is it normal for the AI to have like 120 units or more by around 1600?. In my years of playing freecol, its very hard to reach that amount of units in 1600. Did the AI have more immigration bonus, a different strategy or its just cheat?.
I would like to know what is the strategy of the AI to get more units, (every game I play in 1.0 I always am behind. And how they get that amount of dragoons?. I am looking for learn and apply their strategy in my future games. Thanks :)
The AI is indeed cheating -- and mostly to make the game more fun. For example, the AI refrains from having early scouts snatching all the lost city rumors (LCRs) since being able to scout these LCRs is an important aspect of making the game fun.
However, not scouting all the LCRs early puts the AI at a great disadvantage. Therefor, it's necessary to compensate the income the AI would otherwise get.
The same also applies for trading goods with native settlements ... as it's not fun having the AI meet all the demand.
The main compensation for the AI is that profits from goods sold in Europe gets multiplied by 10.
This allows you as a human player to stop the AI player from getting money/units by blockading colonies, sinking ships etc.
I would hope that refraining from snatching LCRs and avoiding trade with the natives is something that varies with difficulty level.
Ideally, I'd like to have playing against the AI at sufficiently high difficulty levels be like playing against a human, and a competent human player would do neither of those things. I realize that AI good enough to be a challenge for a human being on a fair playing field is quite different. However, I wish that some large fraction of the work that recently went into making Freecol prettier could have gone into making the AI more intelligent instead. Then it wouldn't need to cheat to compete evenly against human players.
Could you give us a reasonably complete list of the ways in which the AI is playing a different game than the human players are?
For instance, if the AI players are getting 10 times the profit that we are, and if the AI negotiates prices reasonably, human players should be able to sell goods to the AI at a higher price than in Europe. I've never even thought of trying that before, since I assumed that the AI was facing the same type of European market that I am.
This would be a "Competitive AI" as described below. I don't think you actually want it unless you want really short games as a practice for multiplayer. However, I find it fun to write so you will probably get one eventually.
Well, I did spend quite some time making defensive AI code that creates defensive zones around their colonies, and performs coordinated counterattacks with multiple units. In addition, the AI will now escort artillery with dragoons when attacking colonies.
In addition, I'm working on the AI Colony Management so that the AI players should get much better profits and development of their colonies. When this is done we would probably only need the trade modifier for higher difficulty levels.
...and feel free to contribute on your own spare time if you want to prioritize working on other tasks than we do 😉
It's not really a question of intelligence ... rather, what would be fun.
The trade modifier is a great way of helping the AI since you can just compete normally with it. For example, you should try to disrupt its trading -- like you would do in any case. It's not like the AI gets a hidden combat modifier, or anything like that.
Please do tell if you know of a popular commercial game with mechanics like Col/Civ that doesn't utilize cheating for the AI players.
Just open the game options and view the "AI Cheating".
Unless this has been changed in the code since I last worked on the market code, then the different European players have separate markets that only influence the other markets somewhat. That means, both players can profit from a trade.
What I'm thinking of for a Competitive AI shouldn't be any harder to play against than a human. Correctly implemented, it shouldn't make for any quicker of a game than you would have playing against a human.
When I retired, I made a long list of things that I would do with my copious free time, which did include contributing to both freecol and simutrans. However, I failed to take proper consideration of the fact that I'm now acting as househusband and taking care of two 7-year-olds. That "copious free time" has yet to arrive.
I fully appreciate that intelligent AI is difficult - so difficult that it is necessary to cheat in favor of the AI to make it competitive. I make no claim that any company has avoided that necessity.
The AI Cheating section is under the Difficulty level menu, not the game options one. I don't see a "profits times 10" parameter there. I have only 0.12.0 installed, I haven't upgraded to 1.0 yet. Is it a new parameter?
I know that each player's European market is distinct, but I had thought that (with the exception of the Trade advantage) they all worked basically the same way: pretty much the same starting prices, with some random variation over time, which go down for the goods you sell, and up for the goods you buy, and slowly reverting to normal if you stop trading a given good.
By the way, did you actually mean "10 times the profits"? That would be complicated to implement, keeping track of production expenses. Did you actually mean "10 times the price"?
Either way, as I said before, if you are at peace with an AI player and can trade with them,it should be possible to sell goods to that AI at prices much higher than your own home port will pay, but much lower than the price his home port would pay - except, of course, if you deliberately design their trade negotiations strategy to ignore that fact.
Looking that the AI Cheating parameters, I don't see any that offer the same kind of opportunity for exploitation.
Each AI player will normally have around 50 units in 1600 if left uninterrupted on medium. I have tried ten games and never passed 65 units.
Perhaps it's the Spanish that have a lot of units? They can get a great many units if located next to the Incan/Aztec cities and/or if they get Juan de Sepúlveda early. The reason is that they have a combat bonus when attacking the natives (and the AI is programmed to take advantage of that).
Note, however, that getting 120 units by 1600 is absolutely possible with normal play. Some quick tips are:
Thanks Stian. This information is very useful and I will use it in the game. Now I am more confident to play the game. the new AI is agressive and its good because it gives more challenge. its a great improvement. thanks :D
Last edit: Mazim E.A 2023-01-04
Thanks, that's good to hear! :-)
I can make an AI that's fighting competitively, and without cheating, if enough people would find that interesting. In that case, it would be possible to choose either the "Fun AI" or the "Competitive AI" -- since most people would prefer the "Fun AI" (even if they think otherwise).
Note that you can buy artillery as early as 1494 by selling the tools. This makes focusing on building/developing colonies on small/medium maps a losing strategy against a competitive AI (or a really skilled human player).
Come to think of it, I think it should be possible to practice with a competitive AI if multiplayer games start getting popular.
...and that being said: I prefer building/developing colonies, and therefor a fun AI, when playing singleplayer :-)
I like to improve the colonies too. maybe I was focusing the wrong way. In my early 1.0 gameplays I made many mistakes. I am using now your strategy. Yes, its very possible to have more than 120 units by 1600. In the years of 1570s (in my actual gameplay) I have near 110 units. I have landed near three Aztecs cities and two arawak villages. I notice that the french was the only one to rush into exploration of Lost city rumors (I dont know why), They have now 130 units. I made a lot of trade with the Aztecs, in one of these I gain 2700 gold (it was very good and helped a lot).
After the initial expansion (15 colonies that I built so far in the actual gameplay) I think I will slow my rythm of expansion and focuses in developing the manufacture, industries and farm colonies (the farm colonies are one of my strategies, a colony that produces near 50 food per turn, which makes diferences in the late game. :)
Last edit: Mazim E.A 2023-01-11
Pto tip: Don't hesitate to commission your free colonist as missionaries on the European dock, even if you aren;t planning on using them to establish a mission! It'll increase their movement to two tiles per turn. The only downside is that an active missionary is one of the few unit types who die when defeated.
Last edit: Misiulo 2023-01-05
What are the general plans for v1.0+ in terms of features?
What comes to mind is expanding production chains, hemp/rope, stone, gold/jewelry, and making eg ship costs reflect that, ie ship costs hammers, tools, rope, cloth.
Another thing is, can ships assume roles to eventually have additional guns or crew boosting offense?
Would love to see pirates officially added in some form, and a way to enter enemy ships to capture them or alternatively sink it, and a way to sell ships.
Upgradable roads to train tracks like in civ starting eg 1800?
Making a tile improvement to visually have a small fortification of units?
Same with eg watch towers?
Ability to make channels?
A few ideas, pretty sure some(or all) have been mentioned before. -:)
My own plan for features beyond standard gameplay (commonly called FreeCol 2) is allowing mods to have more advanced functionality. We can then test various types of gameplay ideas as separate mods, and play-test how combining them might make the game more/less fun to play.
For example, here's an idea for a combat mod:
https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/141200/thread/7decd315e2/#3b07/7552
This should already be possible by just making changes to the specification (and adding new images for any new goods type).
( I have also toyed with a few ideas in this area -- including a spreadsheet for an entire WW2-mod with long chains of goods and equipment that can be combined in various factories )
Ships should be able to have roles, but it does not currently seem to be supported. I can look into it if you want to develop a mod using that functionality.
I think this is already possible to do using a mod, but it will not look good without changes to the code.
On my TODO list there's an item for making "connected" a property on a tile improvement -- so that it would be possible to provide variations of image files for the allowed combinations of connected roads/railroads.
We could add "boarding" as an ability ... so that a unit carried by a ship can attack another adjacent ship. Perhaps also a separate "defendWhenBoarded" ability?
I think one important missing feature is supporting scenarios/campaigns so that it's possible to make a story-driven mod/game. This could also be used for making tutorials.
The main priority is still the same; continue making the core parts of the game better (graphics, AI, interface etc), but I will never-the-less focus a bit more on new gameplay mechanics.
Sounds good, my idea would be in naval combat, first check if crew or guns are carried, ie if ship has a role? The role would be rather unit focused, "hasCrew" and/or "hasGuns" ability? If so, then do the normal calc, if win, offer either boarding/capturing/plundering or sinking.
I had a situation, where the REF had all ships sunk but one, I it took ages to actually sink the last ship. Some improvement what to do with enemy ships would be nice. rather than purely relying on random.
Yup, I made a simple test mod that could serve as base. No buildings yet, but the rest should be functional. I could pick it up for polishing if enough interest.
https://github.com/udeved/freecol-mods/tree/master/expandedProductions
Edit: How to set the minimum price for a good so it won't fall towards 1?
My time for gaming is rather limited, but I always had a knack for modding, I got no time for effectively like coding on freeol, but some data modeling could be squeezed in.
Yes, a big "want" for mapeditor loading mods, I circumvented it so far by building from source in a branch with mod integrated into game data.
Last edit: artoo 2023-01-05
This does not seem to be possible through specification changes. I've put it on my TODO-list, but there are lots of other higher priority tasks. Please do tell if/when this becomes a blocker for completing your mod.
I added this three days ago. You can try it out using the development build.
Already did, one observation is, the ModMessages won't always get loaded, so the editor lacks some strings. But works fine so far to create a small test map for the mod.
Regarding prices, I just noticed in one rare test game, that silvercoin fell to almost 1 ~1600. :(
But its not a mod stopper in any way, just that coins become worthless, I should probably make paper money goods to reflect it :-D
Last edit: artoo 2023-01-09
Would come in handy if one wanted to make artificial channel tile improvement as well?
Could colonies be merged that way into one?
Some screenshots of more resources...
Last edit: artoo 2023-01-05