a rudimentary test of ajve-civ's balance

test.sh

VALUES=(conquer discover exchange develop expand consent)
PLAYER_AI=(basic basic2 basic3)

echo 'remember:' ${VALUES[*]}
for PLAYERS in ${PLAYER_AI[*]}; do
	for i in {1..100}; do
		ajve-civ -p $PLAYERS | grep WINNER >> $PLAYERS.txt;
	done;
	echo $PLAYERS;
	for value in ${VALUES[*]}; do 
		grep $value $PLAYERS.txt | wc -l;
	done;
done

example output:

remember: conquer discover exchange develop expand consent
basic
      10
      17
      35
      38
       0
       0
basic2
       1
       3
      30
      67
       0
      99
basic3
       4
      42
      79
      51
      34
      90

these test results indicate the high-level tradeoffs each choice presents:

• conquer wins basically never; it's only useful as a deprivation tactic
• discover is the turtle move. you win if everyone else loses.
• develop wins by killing everyone else and ruining the planet
• exchange wins by growing faster than discover and develop without making as many enemies
• expand never wins and usually dies
• consent wins by making friends. it wins it if lasts.

basic3 test results are such nonsense

progress-a-history should document the history of the ideological colonization of a planet. as such:

• the world itself is a shared resource. you can harm others by harming the world. thus, impacting the world has diplomatic consequences.
• societies are measured by their values. more articulated value-sets tend to require more resources, though some value-sets specifically value requiring few resources.
• living individuals are a backdrop to the articulation of ideologies, so you don't see, modify, or benefit from population and other SimCity metrics.
• societies act on each other as a function of their values, not the result of tactical choices. who your choices target is a consequence of diplomatic circumstances.

so, values:

• empire: feed through war; win by aggressively vampiring other civs
• profit: grow through trade; win by maintaining good trade relations
• knowledge: learn! develops costly future-tech. ex: increases all yield-consuming attributes
• mastery: terraform the world! hurts the world and global relations, but grows yield fast.
• consent: organize the people! peace and love! win by maintaining good relations.
• harmony: lower the resources required to survive! win by growing a healthy planet :3

yield-consuming attributes:

• development: artifacts of terraforming that require upkeep.
• might: your military.
• wealth: trade goods that require maintenance to retain value.

other attributes:

• adaptations: symbiotic integrations with native processes
• biodiversity: the planet's capacity to support life. can be pos or neg.

your society consumes yield each turn equal to dev+might+wealth-adaptations-biodiversity

choice ideas

• empire->conquer: increase your might by 1. gain 1 yield for each society over whom you have more might. reduce their yield by 1, or 2 if your disposition towards them is negative. reduce global disposition towards you by 1.
• profit->exchange: increase your wealth by 1. gain yield equal to the difference between your wealth and that of the lowest-wealth player's who has a non-negative disposition towards you. aka the poorest person who doesn't hate you. they gain yield equal to their wealth, and their disposition towards you drops by 1.
• knowledge->discover: increase might, development, and wealth by 1. increase yield by 1.
• mastery->develop: increase development by 1, and decrease global biodiversity by 1. increase yield by 2x your development. decrease global relations towards you by 1.
• consent->organize: increase global disposition towards you by 1. gain 1 yield for each society who has a positive disposition toward you.
• harmony->adapt: increase your adaptations by 1, and global biodiversity by 1.

other value ideas, which you could implement in the future?

• secrets->sabotage: increase your subtlety by 1. increase your yield by the difference of your subtlety, and the subtlety of the society with the greatest yield. reduce their yield by 1, and reduce their disposition of you by 1.

(when your subtlety is greater than a society that would dislike you for an action, their disposition towards you does not change)