soundjata
reluctant warrior
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2011
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K-mod Deity Fun -- Collaboration of SGOTM teams
- Thread starter Duckweed
- Start date
pomthom
Drive & Reverb
Plus, we might need a little extra support to rant about the culture changes in K-modPretty sure your advice would be precious and appreciated drewisfat.
drewisfat
King
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2011
- Messages
- 936
I think you guys are in a little bit more dire of a situation then you've acknowledged.
- You have no metal / horses
- AI has both metal and horses already in play
- The only way your archers will get decent odds is being attacked, but the AI will only attack you if there's a very significant chance of taking your city, or he has good odds against your unit on a random tile.
- So you can defend, and then he will go pillage mode striking deeper into your empire. You don't have enough roads or the geography to really outplay him, so you'll end up having to just barricade every city with a bunch of archers, and he will pillage you out of the game.
- To top it off you have to get a settler to the two fish spot asap, which I assume would come from your capital and cost you a couple potential defensive archers.
I'm not sure how you plan on getting him to attack you on the gold mine to suicide his stack. The gold mine is on a hill and you do have archers, and he has only one axe, so if you defend it he will probably just walk around. And in general trying to coerce him to attack you here is weak, because you only have archers to clean up the mess, and he would then be defending from the hill tile.
Similarly I'm not sure you can get him to suicide your city without taking a big risk at losing the city.
I've been in this situation early before with k-mod and the way I usually handle it is abuse the way karadoc intended to make the AI stronger. It will no longer suicide units but enter pillage mode looking for vulnerable cities. This is actually a huge vulnerability. By switching whether a city is vulnerable / strong you can often get the AI to walk back and forth forever, or at least until reinforcements change the dynamic.
Stalling can help you get more units/techs. Sometimes my goal is to not fight a single battle and just stall until I can bribe them for peace.
Feel free to not go with that approach, as it's unfamiliar, very risky, and very gamey. But I'm not sure how you get out of this pain free, without some good luck or stalling of some kind. One thing is for sure, I'm glad I'm not the guy who has to do the next set
- You have no metal / horses
- AI has both metal and horses already in play
- The only way your archers will get decent odds is being attacked, but the AI will only attack you if there's a very significant chance of taking your city, or he has good odds against your unit on a random tile.
- So you can defend, and then he will go pillage mode striking deeper into your empire. You don't have enough roads or the geography to really outplay him, so you'll end up having to just barricade every city with a bunch of archers, and he will pillage you out of the game.
- To top it off you have to get a settler to the two fish spot asap, which I assume would come from your capital and cost you a couple potential defensive archers.
I'm not sure how you plan on getting him to attack you on the gold mine to suicide his stack. The gold mine is on a hill and you do have archers, and he has only one axe, so if you defend it he will probably just walk around. And in general trying to coerce him to attack you here is weak, because you only have archers to clean up the mess, and he would then be defending from the hill tile.
Similarly I'm not sure you can get him to suicide your city without taking a big risk at losing the city.
I've been in this situation early before with k-mod and the way I usually handle it is abuse the way karadoc intended to make the AI stronger. It will no longer suicide units but enter pillage mode looking for vulnerable cities. This is actually a huge vulnerability. By switching whether a city is vulnerable / strong you can often get the AI to walk back and forth forever, or at least until reinforcements change the dynamic.
Stalling can help you get more units/techs. Sometimes my goal is to not fight a single battle and just stall until I can bribe them for peace.
Feel free to not go with that approach, as it's unfamiliar, very risky, and very gamey. But I'm not sure how you get out of this pain free, without some good luck or stalling of some kind. One thing is for sure, I'm glad I'm not the guy who has to do the next set
I think you guys are in a little bit more dire of a situation then you've acknowledged.
- You have no metal / horses
- AI has both metal and horses already in play
- The only way your archers will get decent odds is being attacked, but the AI will only attack you if there's a very significant chance of taking your city, or he has good odds against your unit on a random tile.
- So you can defend, and then he will go pillage mode striking deeper into your empire. You don't have enough roads or the geography to really outplay him, so you'll end up having to just barricade every city with a bunch of archers, and he will pillage you out of the game.
- To top it off you have to get a settler to the two fish spot asap, which I assume would come from your capital and cost you a couple potential defensive archers.
I'm not sure how you plan on getting him to attack you on the gold mine to suicide his stack. The gold mine is on a hill and you do have archers, and he has only one axe, so if you defend it he will probably just walk around. And in general trying to coerce him to attack you here is weak, because you only have archers to clean up the mess, and he would then be defending from the hill tile.
Similarly I'm not sure you can get him to suicide your city without taking a big risk at losing the city.
I've been in this situation early before with k-mod and the way I usually handle it is abuse the way karadoc intended to make the AI stronger. It will no longer suicide units but enter pillage mode looking for vulnerable cities. This is actually a huge vulnerability. By switching whether a city is vulnerable / strong you can often get the AI to walk back and forth forever, or at least until reinforcements change the dynamic.
Stalling can help you get more units/techs. Sometimes my goal is to not fight a single battle and just stall until I can bribe them for peace.
Feel free to not go with that approach, as it's unfamiliar, very risky, and very gamey. But I'm not sure how you get out of this pain free, without some good luck or stalling of some kind. One thing is for sure, I'm glad I'm not the guy who has to do the next set
Yes, I agree with you. It was a mistake to not settle copper.
shakabrade
Praise Vivec!
Neutral comment:
Open field battles are almost unavoidable in K-mod.
You'd want Catapults soon. They saved the day for me.
And consider settling a city to the Sury on flat terrain so you could lure AIs from that side to attack and capture that city (defend it poorly, fcourse) and then kill his or anyone elses units with CR2-3 Siege and take bait city back. It was difficult to get ahead in techs for me in K-mod and it is better to ping-pong that fake city than having your core cities pillaged.
And I agree with Drew. However, his tactics really shines if you are able to get peace. Otherwise AI puts together too much of an SoD (can cities still produce more than one unit per city if whipping?). Now, that bait city I proposed can also be an offering.
Also, not settling bronze is pretty far from conservative, Duckweed. Especially in K-mod.
Start thinking about making some offensive capabilities cause K-mod can do collateral damage and cities can fall easily. In BTS, warriors can hold your land until Space Colony or until Cuirs/Cavs/Rifles/Cannons, and here they can not and you might be forced to go bottom path to get Xbows, Maces and Trebs early, sacrificing research. Although, it could be possible to survive with less and get some real research as you map is practically heavily cooked for this purpose (I mean the shape adding to SoD travelling time and max width of 3-4 tiles).
GL HF!
Open field battles are almost unavoidable in K-mod.
You'd want Catapults soon. They saved the day for me.
And consider settling a city to the Sury on flat terrain so you could lure AIs from that side to attack and capture that city (defend it poorly, fcourse) and then kill his or anyone elses units with CR2-3 Siege and take bait city back. It was difficult to get ahead in techs for me in K-mod and it is better to ping-pong that fake city than having your core cities pillaged.
And I agree with Drew. However, his tactics really shines if you are able to get peace. Otherwise AI puts together too much of an SoD (can cities still produce more than one unit per city if whipping?). Now, that bait city I proposed can also be an offering.
Also, not settling bronze is pretty far from conservative, Duckweed. Especially in K-mod.
Start thinking about making some offensive capabilities cause K-mod can do collateral damage and cities can fall easily. In BTS, warriors can hold your land until Space Colony or until Cuirs/Cavs/Rifles/Cannons, and here they can not and you might be forced to go bottom path to get Xbows, Maces and Trebs early, sacrificing research. Although, it could be possible to survive with less and get some real research as you map is practically heavily cooked for this purpose (I mean the shape adding to SoD travelling time and max width of 3-4 tiles).
GL HF!
Attacking AI in the battlefield now is asking for :suicide:
Our production is not that good as you guys have imagined. I only managed to produce 2 archers in capital and barely send 1 in time to reach the gold city. Keep in mind that I only had 6 turns to react! Settling on copper won't save us from pillaging, plus that we either lose some great city sites or lose the foreign trade routes for very long time until we could produce enough settlers to claim them.
One thing that most of you probably don't know. We could block the SOD 2S of capital with as few as 1 or 2 archers and defend the gold mine with at most 2 archers.
Our production is not that good as you guys have imagined.
I only managed to produce 2 archers in capital and barely send 1 in time to reach the gold city. Keep in mind that I only had 6 turns to react! Settling on copper won't save us from pillaging, plus that we either lose some great city sites or lose the foreign trade routes for very long time until we could produce enough settlers to claim them. One thing that most of you probably don't know. We could block the SOD 2S of capital with as few as 1 or 2 archers and defend the gold mine with at most 2 archers.
4 archers are available now, plus one in gold city, which will be ready next turn.
shakabrade
Praise Vivec!
Spoiler :
That's why I have cared about our tech rate and advocated gold city 1st and less cities again and again, without tech lead, how could you fight deity AIs in the field? We are still long way from getting catas and our only productive city now is capital. Fighting with hammers is just slowly dying.
shakabrade
Praise Vivec!
Spoiler :
drewisfat
King
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2011
- Messages
- 936
It does require a bribe to get peace, but I think you're going to have to bribe to get out of the war. From what I've seen the AI will not simply make peace because it's failed to cripple you in 20 turns. It will say "hey look at how many more units I have then you, give me a city". You can try for a tech hopefully he won't have, but that risks obviously him having it. Or you could try a dummy city as shaka said, but that risks both the ability to settle it safely, timing concerns, and the possibility that the junk city still isn't enough.
I like the dummy suicide city to weaken his stack and bring them to flat ground, but with only archers and no catas, it's not really going to work here.
@duckweed, I don't see what you mean by trapping the stack 2S of capital. Could you elaborate?
And as for being conservative in kmod, in general that's a tough call. Given how high the risks are early game you have to certainly be more defensive, but if you play conservatively enough to truly make it impossible to lose early, then it will be impossible to win late.
Also I'm pretty sure the AI can still double whip cities (stupid). But this is mostly a concern when you're on offense, and by the time you really go on the offense in kmod, the AIs tend to be done with slavery anyway.
I like the dummy suicide city to weaken his stack and bring them to flat ground, but with only archers and no catas, it's not really going to work here.
@duckweed, I don't see what you mean by trapping the stack 2S of capital. Could you elaborate?
And as for being conservative in kmod, in general that's a tough call. Given how high the risks are early game you have to certainly be more defensive, but if you play conservatively enough to truly make it impossible to lose early, then it will be impossible to win late.
Also I'm pretty sure the AI can still double whip cities (stupid). But this is mostly a concern when you're on offense, and by the time you really go on the offense in kmod, the AIs tend to be done with slavery anyway.
@drewisfat
You probably don't know why I said conservative play. When I face something that I'm unsure (like how k-mod AI expand) or going for some wonders, or defending barbarians, I'm willing to adopt the suboptimal ways to achieve my goals in a safer way since I don't reload because of disaster decisions or unlucky results. For instance, in this game, researched archery, settled the stone site in a suboptimal way to completely block the northern area, chopped forests and wasted worker turns to speedup GLH. In another words, I don't gamble big for small. My decisions are not necessary to lead to best possible results, but are reasonable and flexible based on the known information.
OTOH, I don't know what your conservative referred to. If you referred to that I don't want to amass axes to fight, as I explained already, I could not figure out where are those hammers from, plus that it's impractical to compete deity AIs with hammers, especially in early stage. First we don't have time and production to produce enough Axes in 6 turns to fight the initial SOD. Even we do have the productivity, how do you expect the the battle odd, and how do you handle the whip angers afterwards. 2nd, Sury's army won't be those 5 units only, there will be more reinforcements coming soon. In order to wipe out his troops in the field, we need to produce ~10 axes in ~15 turns, which is impossible with our current empire.
I ran some tests with random seeds to study k-mod AI's warring behaviors. 3 archers are enough in the city, and 2 archers in a hill are enough to deter a 5 units SOD like that, sometime even 1 is enough. The situation is going to change when the reinforcements arrive, the original SOD will attack in order to merge with the reinforcements. As far as I can see, defending and blocking with archers is the only and most economical way in current situation.
@shakabrade
Here are some maps I had played with poor start or malicious environment, being backward and struggled all through the game.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=324004 -- Immortal AW
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=343185 -- Deity Team
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=315805&page=3 LHC Boudica
You probably don't know why I said conservative play. When I face something that I'm unsure (like how k-mod AI expand) or going for some wonders, or defending barbarians, I'm willing to adopt the suboptimal ways to achieve my goals in a safer way since I don't reload because of disaster decisions or unlucky results. For instance, in this game, researched archery, settled the stone site in a suboptimal way to completely block the northern area, chopped forests and wasted worker turns to speedup GLH. In another words, I don't gamble big for small. My decisions are not necessary to lead to best possible results, but are reasonable and flexible based on the known information.
OTOH, I don't know what your conservative referred to. If you referred to that I don't want to amass axes to fight, as I explained already, I could not figure out where are those hammers from, plus that it's impractical to compete deity AIs with hammers, especially in early stage. First we don't have time and production to produce enough Axes in 6 turns to fight the initial SOD. Even we do have the productivity, how do you expect the the battle odd, and how do you handle the whip angers afterwards. 2nd, Sury's army won't be those 5 units only, there will be more reinforcements coming soon. In order to wipe out his troops in the field, we need to produce ~10 axes in ~15 turns, which is impossible with our current empire.
I ran some tests with random seeds to study k-mod AI's warring behaviors. 3 archers are enough in the city, and 2 archers in a hill are enough to deter a 5 units SOD like that, sometime even 1 is enough. The situation is going to change when the reinforcements arrive, the original SOD will attack in order to merge with the reinforcements. As far as I can see, defending and blocking with archers is the only and most economical way in current situation.
@shakabrade
Here are some maps I had played with poor start or malicious environment, being backward and struggled all through the game.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=324004 -- Immortal AW
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=343185 -- Deity Team
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=315805&page=3 LHC Boudica
Manco Capac
Friday,13 June,I Collapse
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2010
- Messages
- 8,051
Since all my K-mod experiences come from a mod that pretends to have included the latest K-mod AI, stuff I have to say must be taken with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, it joins a lot what both shakabrade and drewisfat said.
From my experiences:
K-mod is a terrible mod when it comes to higher levels and despite the recently added threshold from Mr.K , forbidding archer rushes (I suppose), when playing K-mod on deity, it comes even more random than it was. Sure, it was occasionally game over with stock BTS on deity when the AI decided to make an very early rush with copper within the two first cities, but the biggest advantage - for both the human and the victim AIs (especially on slower speeds) - is suicide stacks. Stock BTS AI had a ridiculous threshold that let many stacks doomed to suicide. In a sense, the warmonder was quite often the loser in the situation. K-mod is synonymous to stack reinforcements and stoneaging effects on the victim AI. K-mod increases the threshold to such reasonable threshold for the offender that many of my games went down to the garbage because the threshold is still too risqué. Offensive was the best defense; now, it is almost the only acceptable defense.
And the mod I am mentioning allowed such an advantage to gain GG points from barbs that Raging Barbs ended up to be such a great boon allowing me high level super archers. Because super drill archers are the answer until Knights.
Since BTS doesn't allow easy way to early GG, until gotten, the early game is gambley. If one is lucky, the AI's will fight each other, perhaps with much more encore since K-mod seems to have made the AI quite persistent (sometimes to ridiculous level).
Sadly, even though it's rather impossible to afford such an early army, copper is the must for early game until DA ARCHER. Because, just like AW games, a super drill IV archer will do marvel in luring stacks into suicide because it gives the false sense the stack has the upper hand. Until reaching that point, axes/HAs (if the GG still not there...) are quite advised to gain GG points and avoid stacks roaming around the empire, pillaging everything in its wake. Raking GG points are even more invaluable than before. So for border hill cities and copper for the early game.
One fervent lover of K-mod named noto2 posted a thread on how he loves jaguar soldiers and any resourceless units. Many laughed at him, saying what he said was grotesque. In the basic BTS, it is rather unnecessary given how the base game works, but copper is the must of K-mod. K-mod made Civ4 almost a pure war game. All my games on K-mod sees the AI in constant wars. Sometimes, it is ridiculous to see the AIs spending 7/8 of the game in wars. It's rather stupid. Diplomacy ended up to be bribe on friend onto someone, so he can leave you alone until you are really alone with the psycho, friendly or not.
From my experiences:
K-mod is a terrible mod when it comes to higher levels and despite the recently added threshold from Mr.K , forbidding archer rushes (I suppose), when playing K-mod on deity, it comes even more random than it was. Sure, it was occasionally game over with stock BTS on deity when the AI decided to make an very early rush with copper within the two first cities, but the biggest advantage - for both the human and the victim AIs (especially on slower speeds) - is suicide stacks. Stock BTS AI had a ridiculous threshold that let many stacks doomed to suicide. In a sense, the warmonder was quite often the loser in the situation. K-mod is synonymous to stack reinforcements and stoneaging effects on the victim AI. K-mod increases the threshold to such reasonable threshold for the offender that many of my games went down to the garbage because the threshold is still too risqué. Offensive was the best defense; now, it is almost the only acceptable defense.
And the mod I am mentioning allowed such an advantage to gain GG points from barbs that Raging Barbs ended up to be such a great boon allowing me high level super archers. Because super drill archers are the answer until Knights.
Since BTS doesn't allow easy way to early GG, until gotten, the early game is gambley. If one is lucky, the AI's will fight each other, perhaps with much more encore since K-mod seems to have made the AI quite persistent (sometimes to ridiculous level).
Sadly, even though it's rather impossible to afford such an early army, copper is the must for early game until DA ARCHER. Because, just like AW games, a super drill IV archer will do marvel in luring stacks into suicide because it gives the false sense the stack has the upper hand. Until reaching that point, axes/HAs (if the GG still not there...) are quite advised to gain GG points and avoid stacks roaming around the empire, pillaging everything in its wake. Raking GG points are even more invaluable than before. So for border hill cities and copper for the early game.
One fervent lover of K-mod named noto2 posted a thread on how he loves jaguar soldiers and any resourceless units. Many laughed at him, saying what he said was grotesque. In the basic BTS, it is rather unnecessary given how the base game works, but copper is the must of K-mod. K-mod made Civ4 almost a pure war game. All my games on K-mod sees the AI in constant wars. Sometimes, it is ridiculous to see the AIs spending 7/8 of the game in wars. It's rather stupid. Diplomacy ended up to be bribe on friend onto someone, so he can leave you alone until you are really alone with the psycho, friendly or not.
From this I gather we only want 3 Archers in the city [2 current+produced IBT] and remaining 2 Archers can go on gold [current+1N of Shanghai].
Before making any long-term plan, it'd be nice to know the outcome of this turn... so, if the above makes you feel nervous, make your voices heard so that Archers can be shuffled according to team decision.
The remaining units with movement for the turn:
Nanjing worker (GH mine)
Double fish worker (road)
Double fish warrior (1W or stay in place... no difference)
Guangzhou warrior (stay in place ... does leaving a city empty entice AI DoW? No clue.)
OB with De Gaulle: upon further inspection, keep closed borders until Nanjing pops borders - we have to cross ocean tiles.
shakabrade
Praise Vivec!
@Duckweed
It is a shame I never stumbled upon those threads while I was trying to improve. It is a catapult, no, trebuchet to the whole next level. And so many great players in one thread...
I will always be sad I joined when party was over. Games with human ''rivals'' are always more fun and force you to adapt (learn) quicker. I did most of the job almost alone and have lost almost all my civ passion in the progress.
It is a shame I never stumbled upon those threads while I was trying to improve. It is a catapult, no, trebuchet to the whole next level. And so many great players in one thread...
I will always be sad I joined when party was over. Games with human ''rivals'' are always more fun and force you to adapt (learn) quicker. I did most of the job almost alone and have lost almost all my civ passion in the progress.
drewisfat
King
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2011
- Messages
- 936
@Duckweed
Lol, I realize I formatted my post foolishly now My conservative comment was actually meant to defend you not settling on copper, and I agree with the reasons you gave.
The only thing I meant to direct you was what did you mean by trap his stack 2S of capital?
I agree that 3 city archers and 2 hill archers should be enough to deter the attack next turn, but that means he's going to enter pillage mode and probably sneak around the right side to the rest of your empire. Assuming he moves 1NE to the forest next turn, how do you plan on responding?
Lol, I realize I formatted my post foolishly now
My conservative comment was actually meant to defend you not settling on copper, and I agree with the reasons you gave.The only thing I meant to direct you was what did you mean by trap his stack 2S of capital?
I agree that 3 city archers and 2 hill archers should be enough to deter the attack next turn, but that means he's going to enter pillage mode and probably sneak around the right side to the rest of your empire. Assuming he moves 1NE to the forest next turn, how do you plan on responding?
pigswill
fly (one day)
Its all very Roman, the audience baying for blood sitting safely in the stands 
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