Leaders and Personalities

Each of the fourteen playable tribes has a 58-byte record in civt[16] (src/GAME.C). Entries 1–7 are the first tribe of each colour slot and entries 9–15 the alternate tribe; entries 0 and 8 are empty.

struct civ_type {
    char leader[16];
    char plural[16];      /* empty: the adjective plus "s" */
    char adjective[16];
    int f0, f1, f2, f3, f4;
};

f0, f1 and f2 are the personality. Each is −1, 0 or 1. f3 and f4 are tune numbers passed to sound(); f4 plays when the leader’s portrait appears and f3 when its emissary arrives, when it captures a city and when it discovers an advance.

Trait labels

The foreign-affairs dossier in ADVISORS.C prints a label for each non-zero trait:

A debug key in CONTROL.C replaces all three traits of every tribe with rand_scaled(3) - 1 and reports “Leaders randomized.”

Where the traits are read

Aggression (f0). In a leader audience, leader_audience() counts the AI’s reasons to be conciliatory, such as wars with stronger rivals, subtracts f0, and drops its hostility if the count is high enough. An Aggressive leader needs one more reason and a Friendly leader one fewer. In AI-to-AI diplomacy, alliance_ok() subtracts f0 from its count of the civilization’s wars before comparing military strength. See Leader Audiences and AI Diplomacy Between Rivals.

Expansion (f1). ai_order() in UNITAI.C lets a settler with a destination keep travelling while (f1 + 1) * ai_zone_places[region] > towns_on_region * 16, where ai_zone_places counts the continent’s possible city sites. A Perfectionist (f1 = −1) therefore stops at once and turns to terrain work; an Expansionistic tribe keeps founding cities on a continent until it holds about one town for every eight sites.

Civilization (f2). This trait affects several decisions:

• init_civ() in NEWGAME.C sets the starting science rate to f2 + 3, and ECONOMY.C adds f2 when the AI resets its science rate.
• The AI production chooser divides each improvement’s rank by f2 + 3 (rank = 3 * rank / (f2 + 3)). A lower rank wins, so a Civilized tribe favours improvements and a Militaristic tribe favours units.
• The settler rank uses 4 - f2 (with a Granary) or 6 - f2 as its factor, so Militaristic tribes build fewer settlers.
• advance_value() returns a + f2 * b from the advance’s advance_attrs entry. It weights the AI’s random research choice, the advance taken when a city is captured and the advance an AI demands in an audience. Advances with a negative b, such as Bronze Working or Gunpowder, appeal more to Militaristic tribes.
• During the AI’s city pass, CITYMGT.C subtracts from margin_democracy 7 - f2 (or 5 - f2 when the city has improvement bit 0x10) for each unit counted as abroad. unit_phase() adopts the Republic only while margin_democracy is not negative, so Militaristic tribes with armies abroad keep a Monarchy or Communism.

The “Nuclear Gandhi” story

A widely repeated story holds that Gandhi’s aggression was stored as 1, that adopting Democracy subtracted 2, and that an unsigned byte wrapped to 255. The recovered code does not support it. Gandhi’s f0 is −1 (Friendly), the field is a signed int, and no code adjusts it when a government changes. The traits change only in the debug randomizer.