Player Bonus Settings Revamp

[Frostion]

I have a question concerning the new individual player bonus income percentage.
I think it ruins the simplicity of the "Map Options" window when every and all players are displayed like this:

I think this option displayed in the Maps Options window needs to be changed somehow. On maps like TWW and Iron War the many players makes this option display massive amounts of text. It really floods the screen, ruins the simplicity and the overview.

Would it not be possible to handle this feature with some sort of drop-down list. Like if there in the Map Option windows were only one case of “Player Bonus Income Precentage” displayed followed by drop down menus “Player” and “Percentage“. Or alternatively, just “Player Bonus Income Precentage” followed by one drop down menu “Player” and then a box that changed the percentage number displayer if another player in the dropdown menu is chosen? Something like the Human/Hard AI/Fast AI etc. drop down menu when stating games.

PS: Also, it would be cool to have any alliances be represented in the player dropdown list, like if the top of the player list included a ”All Axis” and ”All Allies”.

[redrum]

So my end goal for AI bonus settings is something similar to HOI4 as I think its one of the better systems I've seen: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-development-diary-12th-of-august-2016-read-op-edit.962543/

There will be a 'default' for all maps that is used if a map doesn't specify anything in the XML. But the parameters will also be available to map makers so they can create the number of different levels with different bonuses. I'd like to have at least 'income %', 'income flat', and 'production %' available. Also they will be able to set whether the bonus slider is available or not for each nation (so might not want bonus sliders for neutral players or minor players).

I'm also planning to move the AI bonuses out of the settings window and into the player selection window as it makes more sense there.

I'm thinking the default will be something like the following but still up for discussion:
Level 1 - +20% income, +10% unit production limit
Level 2 - +40% income, +20% unit production limit
Level 3 - +60% income, +30% unit production limit
Level 4 - +80% income, +40% unit production limit
Level 5 - +100% income, +50% unit production limit

@Cernel - I glanced through some of your posts but that's just too much to read honestly. The one thing I'll confirm is that I plan to completely remove the existing parameters and do understand there are a few maps that used these existing AI bonus parameters (such as AI challenges). Most of the older maps that used them are no longer balanced with the new AI and the other couple of maps are recent and still maintained so can be updated to the new system.

[Cernel]

@redrum said in AI Bonus Settings Revamp:

@Cernel - I glanced through some of your posts but that's just too much to read honestly.

Ok. I believe this is the most important section:

.Starting Resources Multiplication

First of all, an important matter and a whole point I just missed (damn), when putting forward my suggestions, which may well be considered a regression we all overlooked!
In the moment in which I suggested and we agreed to move the bonus from multiplying the PUs stock before purchase to multiplying the PUs flux (the main reason here being not multiplying saved income), we are not anymore multiplying starting income! This is a functionality lost in the old one, where the income everyone had at start game would have been multiplied accordingly, right before the first purchase for that player.
I think this is quite an important matter, especially with reference to the traditional games, where the starting PUs are equal to the starting productions, thus it is nonsensical that players would get more units to buy on round 2 onwards, for the same total production, while not having any bonus on their purchases on round 1. This would have a continuity-breaking feeling as, in the normal games, the PUs the players start with is supposed to be the PUs they would have collected in the round before round 1 (most games don't start at the start of the referring war, but sometimes in the course of it, usually 1942).
So, I think you should add this point as one of the ones at the starting post of the Topic (a point I would have surely added myself, amongst the ones you pasted, had I not just overlooked it totally!):

- Having it multiplying all starting resources, assigned to the respective players (in resource initialize) (particularly important when we multiply placement abilities too).

This is particularly important relatively to the other point about the multiplication of placement capabilities, otherwise, in standard games, the placement multiplication would be not justifiable for the first turn of the benefitted players. Probably not much of a big deal, practically, but it would be a nonsensical element, in the system, making it unrefined.
Moreover, if all starting PUs are multiplied, I think this would be generally more sound for the general impact of the AI bonuses, and lowering the perceived need of assigning both the percent bonus and a bid, too, as the starting PUs multiplication would partially cover the popular balancing-through-bid concept, making the AI bonus alone more self-sufficient, at least as a matter of the feel of it.
Of course, this should apply to other resources, than PUs, just as much as the regular multiplication would.
I think this is practically a regression from the old system, that has to be corrected by assuring the multiplication of all PUs (and any resources) assigned at start game (in the resource initialize).
I actually now think that the main, or maybe only reason, why the old AI bonuses worked that strange way of multiplying what you have before purchase (instead of what you collect) was exactly to assure multiplying the starting income too! I'm not even sure if moving the multiplication from stock to flux (which I suggested) can be considered a net improvement, if we lose this dynamic.
A warning, just in case, is to avoid multiplying the PUs earned when not using some of the assigned bid (the bid getting saved should not be multiplied; only the resources in resources initialize).

[redrum]

@Cernel So that is correct that it currently isn't multiplying starting PUs just PUs produced during turns. I'm aware of this and not sure how I feel about it. My initial thought is that the new system is simpler as it just focuses on giving bonuses to actual income and initial balancing would be handled through bids. But I can see your point as well.

I think I'll add a comment to the first post around starting resources and see what other players think.

[Hepps]

@redrum Starting could be handled easy enough by the map maker by the map maker or the player with an Edit.

Either a mod(s) could be made which adjusts the starting income based on the scenario... it could simply be referenced in the game notes.

[redrum]

@Hepps True though my goal for TripleA as a whole is that Edit mode should be a last resort for regular games (mostly should just be used if a mistake was made or something isn't working properly).

I mostly just want the available AI bonus parameters to be straightforward and feel intuitive. So if you were to say I want my AI opponents to get '+25% income' would I expect the initial resources to be increased by that as well?

[Cernel]

@redrum said in AI Bonus Settings Revamp:

I'm thinking the default will be something like the following but still up for discussion:
Level 1 - +20% income, +10% unit production limit
Level 2 - +40% income, +20% unit production limit
Level 3 - +60% income, +30% unit production limit
Level 4 - +80% income, +40% unit production limit
Level 5 - +100% income, +50% unit production limit

Uhm, I'm thinking it would be better to allow for defining the percentage, I mean having an almost continuous slider, giving the ability of setting +25%, if wanted, without having to jump from +20% to +40%. That would allow fine-tuning a challenge, trying to inch till the uppermost level you can manage to win vs the AI. If having steps, I suggest them being 5% each (5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%...).

Also, I don't see why having the placement increasing half than the income? As I suggested, I proposed a switch for having / not having a same placement bonus as the income bonus, but maybe, instead of a boolean, you can have a percent of how much the unit production should increase with the income (so, in your case, you would set it at 50, but you can set it at 0 or 100).
If the matter is not risking, due to the placement abilities being sometimes limited and forcefully integer, the placement factually increasing more than the income, in some territories, I'd go for just having both increasing by the same percentage, but the income approximating normally, while the unit placement always rounding down. Thus, if you have 25% bonus income, you would have the following placement changes:
1->1
2->2
3->3
4->5
5->6
6->7
7->8
8->10
9->11
10->12
I would still suggest just approximating both the same ways, but I think this alternative solution would be better than having the placement increasing half than the income, which I can't really see a reason for. As you can see, the above system is already pretty modest; a 25% is pretty strong bonus, if the AI plays well, and, in common maps, would just give a +1 placement from 4 to 7 and a +2 placement for 8 or more.

Tho I'm not sure I really understand, the rest of the system / concept sounds cool, but I'm personally against having a default different from no cheat. I think a game should not have AI bonuses default, unless it is clearly presented as an AI challenge. Noobs (and not only noobs!) might overlook, and you would have to wonder, in some cases, if they were using a bonus or not, if they don't have to actively choose one.

[Cernel]

@redrum said in AI Bonus Settings Revamp:

So if you were to say I want my AI opponents to get '+25% income' would I expect the initial resources to be increased by that as well?

Of course waiting for others, as you already know my answer, but, just to formalise: yes, especially in the basic games in which the starting PUs are the same as the starting productions and especially (but not only) if on round 1 I get a bonus to my placement abilities.

[Cernel]

A related note, since we are also talking about that in
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/128/resource-system-assessment-and-improvements
is that we might have collection at start turn (but I don't even know if it currently exists a map that does it, actually). In that case, not multiplying starting resources would not be a big deal (the starting resources would be what the players are supposed to have saved the theorical round before the start of the game only), but I think it would be still fine to do it, or at least I would not make exceptions.

[Frostion]

@redrum
Yes, please keep the AI bonus system simple and correspond as much with what players would intuitively expect when the AI is getting bonus. That is also why the current multiplilying of the bank PUs is kind of wired.

Please don’t forget my concerns about ALL resources types being multiplied by a factor and how it might not fit the map and the purpose of the special other resources. An XML option to turn on / off multiplication would be very welcome.

A % slider would be cool. And If a player was to get +20% bonus through the entire game, why would it be a problem that this also meant to any starting PUs? I would think that if a player was to be boosted during the entire game, then it might as well include the stating money.

Also, I like the idea about a general level setting that could raise a player’s chances, but I do have concerns about a placement bonus thing. If placement amount is a part of the map rules, like in Iron War where players might expect factories to only produce 5 units, or Age of Tribes and Dragon War where different factories also have fixed production stats, I would not like players to get confused by seeing some of these factories produce more than they should. I would prefer advantages / handicaps be “hidden” when playing, in the sense that players could just feel a bit more pressure from the player getting bonuses, not that the player getting bonus could also do stuff that normal players could not do.

[Cernel]

Ideally, the best would be a "production bonus" (like you place 6 armours at the cost for normally placing only 5, and taking only 5 placement abilities), but, since you cannot really have that working well on an integer base, then my suggestion was to indirectly obtain it by boosting the income collection and starting resources; this is also why the suggestion of scaling back income when you capture it from the AI.
Probably the best would be if the AI gets the income bonus right when spending it, but only for the income actually spent (thus, like the old system, but excluding to multiply saved income). I don't know if this would be feasible, but I'd rather suggest going that way, if it is (for example, when the AI has 24 PUs and a bonus of 25%, it will be able to spend 30 PUs using 24 PUs or spend 27-28 PUs using 22 PUs and saving 2 PUs). This would remove the need of multiplying any starting resources, as well as not worrying about capturing income, and would work the best in case you switch a player between human and AI, during the game, as the income would be just multiplied right before spending it and only if you spend it, not in the bank.

@Frostion Not sure, but I tend to agree. Likely better to apply the placement bonus only to factories following the rule of placing depending on what the territory allows (usually placement equal to territory production), not to those factories that have a fixed production per turn, regardless of the territory they are in. For example, in 270bc, the city should get the placement bonus, but not the legionaire (building 1 fort per turn regardless). This means that factories like Age of Tribes, in which you have the caves producing 1 in any, the forts producing 2 in any etc., would probably better not get any placement bonuses, as it would really make sense only if you are using them at 100% (doubling all). However, I believe this can be argued both ways; it is just a problem relative to having to round it to integer levels, while factories may be just production 1, 2 or so, so it would take some thinking at what level they get the +1, eventually (plus people may wonder if a 2.5 would be rounded up or down).

Yeah, I saw that this topic would have been not that easy to sort out.

[Cernel]

@Frostion said in AI Bonus Settings Revamp:

Also, I like the idea about a general level setting that could raise a player’s chances, but I do have concerns about a placement bonus thing. If placement amount is a part of the map rules, like in Iron War where players might expect factories to only produce 5 units, or Age of Tribes and Dragon War where different factories also have fixed production stats, I would not like players to get confused by seeing some of these factories produce more than they should. I would prefer advantages / handicaps be “hidden” when playing, in the sense that players could just feel a bit more pressure from the player getting bonuses, not that the player getting bonus could also do stuff that normal players could not do.

In a map where all factories always produce 5 units I guess this can be left just totally to the players if they want a +20% bonus to raise factory production to 6 or not.

[redrum]

So I've decided to get rid of the idea of increasing unit production for now. I think it ends up complicating things a lot as many maps have different unit production systems.

@Frostion Yeah, the plan is to move the AI bonuses to the player selection window instead of settings window. So they would be alongside the dropdowns where you select AI vs player for each nation. I do also plan for the bonus to apply to all resources by default but have the ability for mapmakers to disable bonuses for certain resources where it doesn't make sense.

[Cernel]

@redrum
Another idea, going a very different way, may be having a % chance of unit duplication upon placement.

Meaning that if you set it at 25%, each time the AI places 1 unit there is a 25% of another unit being added up for free (not taking placement spots, either).

Otherwise, I agree that adding (or not) placement expansion should be left for for a second time, after the system is otherwise in its final form. And, it should definitely be an optional choice if to have any bonus placement or not.

[Cernel]

@Cernel said in AI Bonus Settings Revamp:

@redrum
Another idea, going a very different way, may be having a % chance of unit duplication upon placement.

Meaning that if you set it at 25%, each time the AI places 1 unit there is a 25% of another unit being added up for free (not taking placement spots, either).

Nevermind about this weird idea. There is the problem that additional fighters may not have a carrier to land on, tho they could be redirected to the land territory, if they don't. But probably this is just too random a bonus; duno. Tho it could like apply to the starting setup too, besides the new placement. Probably just too strange / random a bonus tho, on a second thought (maybe noone would like such a thing).

[redrum]

Next set of changes are submitted: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/pull/1791

Highlights:

• Bonus income now works for all resources
• Starting resources are increased by bonus as well
• Updated wording of bonus in history and end turn report
• Adjust bonus income range to only be positive (0-999)

[Hepps]

@redrum Well done sir. That was a very quick turn around. Very impressed.

[redrum]

@Hepps Thanks. Any feedback is appreciated.

My next steps are to move the AI bonus properties to the player selection screen and then add XML parameters for maps to customize which players bonuses are available for, which resources are influenced, and set recommended bonus levels.

[redrum]

Latest changes have been merged so feel free to test it out.

[Black_Elk]

Will grab this and play a test game when I get home from work.

These days I basically use tripleA as a player, so that's my main frame of reference. In early days though I used to make maps for tripleA, so I have a little bit of that perspective too.

I think as a map designer the idea of players messing with things on the fly can be a little unnerving. I'm sure Larry feels this way about bids in A&A for example. And anytime someone modifies something that has been carefully designed in such and such a way, there's some reason for pause.

That said, the reason why I like income modification as an approach to game balance, is because it just seems a lot less extreme.

When it comes to things like adding units, changing how combat works (altering how the dice work, or changing the abilities of units directly), altering production, or introducing new rules or new core features like resources, my opinions there all over the place. I like having a bunch of novel solutions for these sort of games. But one thing I'm pretty confident about is that most perceived imbalances in A&A style games (whether between players or within the game itself) can be corrected by simply changing the money.

Another approach not really mentioned much is to change something about the turn order (I would include there the idea of the restricted opening which skips the combat phase.) But just sticking with the money for now...

One thing I really wish we had, since all this stuff is still under discussion, is a very basic Bid that only goes to starting income.

I'm not talking about pre-placement bid, which involves a purchase phase and adjusting the starting unit distribution. I mean simply adjusting the starting values of a player/nation's starting income.

This was the earliest bid convention, even before the bid for preplacement units, (despite the fact that the later was ultimately more popular with Classic), so it would be cool if the player/designer had this as a simple default option for the bid too. In other words a way to prevent the bid from being used outside of the normal phases. Right now this can be player enforced PvP, but the default for the AI is to immediately spend the bid for pre-placement units.

We should have an option to turn that off entirely if desired. So among the various standards that have been discussed (whether the bid can be spent on units in such a such a place, or under such and such conditions) I'd dig if there was also a standard option there that says the bid cannot be spent at all, except during the normal purchase phase of the first turn.

These bids are of course often higher than a similar amount spent on extra starting units. But they are also less disruptive to the opening TUV trades.

I know this is among the simplest things to edit, but if we're talking about establishing defaults and standard practices, that seems like it my be a good one to have as a possible option.

Again talking about PvP as well as the AI.

I guess I'd also stress that I like being able to control for the thing that's being modified as a game balancing mechanism. So having the ability to adjust resources or production seems like it would be cool for a lot of maps, but I have misgivings about a single option that tweaks all the stuff at once.

Just to give an example. The v6 map is extremely low income and low production. This is a map where Cernel's idea of being able to increase production is really applicable. But in that case I don't know if having proportional increases for income and production would necessarily be ideal. You might want to increase the production by doubling it while doing something different to income. Or as in the bid concept above, just with a starting income bid. Or maybe a lower income percentage, or much higher one. In any case I see a definite case to be made for having them as separate. My guess is that resources are probably much the same, where proportional increases might not be constructive as say having a consistent ratio, but with different values for each. Or turning on one, but not the other.

Really great stuff by the way! Just wanted to say that too. I'm glad to see this generating a robust discussion and some very helpful changes to the UI. It's something I think a lot of people will get excited about.

More functionality for the game options (and the edit mode too), and lately the cool stuff for the AI and quality original maps in the pipeline, is really what sets TripleA apart from other ways to play these sorts of games.