Acken's Minimalistic Balance for singleplayer (and AI improvements)

Acken · May 29, 2016

What do you mean won't upgrade ? After chivalrY you cannot upgrade the spear to a pike ? Works for me. I'm not sure why you wouldn't.

Civs with a spear UU get their UU with warrior code. Have you tested it ? Since the free unit is by classes and not types it should work.

Chum · May 29, 2016

Acken said:
What do you mean won't upgrade ? After chivalrY you cannot upgrade the spear to a pike ? Works for me. I'm not sure why you wouldn't.

Civs with a spear UU get their UU with warrior code. Have you tested it ? Since the free unit is by classes and not types it should work.

I don't have this problem, but I will go honor next game to check. Not sure if I've gone honor in V6.

-------

Freedom is really, REALLY good now. This liberty game was insane. Zero tradition except for the opener. Zero internal trade routes all game. Every single city I had unpuppeted at the end of the game was working every single specialist and still growing every 5-7 turns. I don't think this is necessarily a problem since Order is a better infrastructure tree, but it is really, really powerful.

Acken · May 29, 2016

Version 6

THIS VERSION IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH A SAVEGAME FROM A PREVIOUS ONE.

Steam workshop has been updated (or soon will be) and if you use the workshop your game will be updated automaticly.
You can find the .civ5mod version there (treat it as a .rar file or simply drop it in the mods folder):
Dropbox

Here is the list of changes:

Spoiler :

Acken · May 30, 2016

There is now a challenge map for this mod.
The difficulty proposed is Immortal.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=568336

consentient · May 30, 2016

Acken said:
What do you mean won't upgrade ? After chivalrY you cannot upgrade the spear to a pike ? Works for me. I'm not sure why you wouldn't.

Do you really mean Chivalry or Civil Service? Normally Pikes are available at Civil Service. I was playing a game, albeit with v5, and the Spearman I got did not upgrade.

And on another game, also with v5, but I saw nothing about a bug fix in the change log, my Persia Honor got a Spearman, not an Immortal.

I can try it again with v6 and see if it's still happening...

.

More importantly (at least to me), I would really like to understand the AI thoughts about settling.

In the attached game, I built a Settler pretty early and moved to a space that in the base game would not generate much hate, to the Natural Wonder to the SW of the starting location. Just before I settle it, the AI drops a crappy city, and so when I settle, he goes nuts. Then I discover another NW to the W, and settle that and another AI goes nuts. Finally, another AI forces me to take a pretty crappy location for my 4th city, and although I build nothing but units after that and successfully fend off a triple DoW (I have a video of this if anyone wants to watch the most painful desperate survival mode ever), the game became completely unenjoyable, and I'm not sure how I could have settled to avoid this triple DoW.

So I'd appreciate it if other players load up the save and settle where they think they won't get hated, and then report back. I need to have some idea of how to do it in the future, otherwise a whole load of Acken maps will just be hell, and that would be a shame, as I'd really like to get into this mod.

Acken · May 30, 2016

I'm still trying to find a good balance for this problem. I may have to push further the influence of personality on the AI reaction so that it's a little more consistant.

Pikes come at chivalry

consentient · May 30, 2016

Ah OK that explains why it wouldn't upgrade.

As for the balance problem with forward settling, is there any way that the solution could be like this:

The AI sees the recommended city spots and if you take one, even one right next to their city, if they have X other locations, then their wrath is diminished by X. I mean, if you take the only good locations from them, I could understand them being annoyed. But what happened in the game I posted the savefile for was just too much to handle. Physically I survived the triple DoW...just. Logistically, I was almost fifteen techs behind and it would have been a royal PITA to try to catch up.

Personality might be one way to handle it but I don't know, if the human is not able to settle decent locations without 2 or 3 AIs hating them for the rest of the game, that seems extreme. A penalty makes sense, but not one that leads to T60 DoW when you've stolen no workers or done anything else to annoy them.

Just my opinion, of course.

Acken · May 30, 2016

That gave me the occasion to see exactly how the AI look for land. I did not know for example that the AI expansion flavor had an influence on their likelihood of wanting your land. Since I have increased the expansion flavor in the mod it certainly can explain why everyone acts as Shaka some times. Instead I'm now using the average between expansion flavor and offense flavor. I've also allowed a bit more room before the AI sees you as forward settling. The lower limits were increased by a distance of 1 tile.

I've also used this opportunity to really force the AI to not stay on less than 4 cities beyond turn 100.

I've uploaded a new experimental to reflect these changes (save game compatible).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0i8w0qxzc4m26ee/Acken's Minimalistic Balance (v 7).civ5mod?dl=0

Make sure v6 isnt loaded if you load a save.

Acken · May 30, 2016

consentient said:
Ah OK that explains why it wouldn't upgrade.

As for the balance problem with forward settling, is there any way that the solution could be like this:

The AI sees the recommended city spots and if you take one, even one right next to their city, if they have X other locations, then their wrath is diminished by X. I mean, if you take the only good locations from them, I could understand them being annoyed. But what happened in the game I posted the savefile for was just too much to handle. Physically I survived the triple DoW...just. Logistically, I was almost fifteen techs behind and it would have been a royal PITA to try to catch up.

Personality might be one way to handle it but I don't know, if the human is not able to settle decent locations without 2 or 3 AIs hating them for the rest of the game, that seems extreme. A penalty makes sense, but not one that leads to T60 DoW when you've stolen no workers or done anything else to annoy them.

Just my opinion, of course.

It doesn't have anything to do with good and bad locations actually. It's all about distances to their capital, your capital and numbers.
We;ll someone could rewrite it I guess but I'm not that good. Meanwhile I've changed it a bit for now.

Chum · May 31, 2016

consentient said:
So I'd appreciate it if other players load up the save and settle where they think they won't get hated, and then report back. I need to have some idea of how to do it in the future, otherwise a whole load of Acken maps will just be hell, and that would be a shame, as I'd really like to get into this mod.

Have you read this whole thread? I know you were off the boards for awhile, but I dunno if that just meant not posting, or not reading it at all. I'm not being condescending with this, by the way.

The reason I ask is because it's something we've discussed since the beginning, and it's part of the acken's mod charm, imo. No longer do you get to settle 4 and turtle your way to victory. No longer can you beeline philosophy, then civil service, then education, and be okay with pikes for defense on T80. The mod rewards aggressive play. The AI can't ask other AI's to go to war with you if you are already at war with them! Now that the NC has been nerfed pretty drastically, you can go to Cbows and Swords right off the bad, swing back to philo later and still be okay. Spend your early money buying units, use them to tribute CS's for more money, buy more units. Use those units to box out AI expansion and farm settlers, workers and plunder trade routes for more units. Get your cities down behind a curtain of military, make peace later. Once your cities are 4-5 pop and your neighbors are cripppled, you are in a much better position. The DoW's will still come, but you will be able to defend until they peace out.

The game we started last night I ended up being surrounded by my MP buddy, Siam, Austria, and Genghis with more units than I have seen in a long time. I basically rotate getting DoW'd by 2 of them every 10 turns. They can't make headway, and I kill units 10-1, but the DoW's still come and interrupt my plans. I kinda like it, to be honest. Base game AI is so easy to bribe off, or so peaceful to begin with, it's a good change. There have always been border skirmishes in history. They haven't all lead to full blown nation destruction, sometimes some land just changes hands on the outskirts. It feels more fun, and less "next turn."

You really do need to adapt your thinking to the mod. If you haven't been playing it since the beginning, that's a bit of a process. I haven't played base civ since Acken put up V1. Science isn't as important in the beginning, military and strategic resources are WAY more important (I hardly ever sell strategics now). Many of the changes have lead to the bottom of the tree being much more important than it was before. The good news that I can tell you is that if you do go full illiterate, you are absolutely fine because you'll steal science techs pretty quick to catch up, and any civ ignoring military will fall pretty easily to you. You're good at domination, just play this mod for domination, and be pleasantly surprised any time you load a map where it's obvious that you won't have to.

consentient · May 31, 2016

Hi Chum. Yes, I have been reading. It's just that I don't think it makes any sense at all when settling the only spots you can settle makes everyone hate you forever more.

However, I just played the expansion phase of a new game with experimental v7. and no insane hate for expansion! So I think we have a solution.

Chum, I'm delighted in general that Acken is taking the time to make a balance mod, and the fact that 4 city turtling is off the cards delights me more than anyone. Perhaps you don't read about my games (no problems if you don't, I don't expect anyone to) but I'm a massive warmonger. I just don't want the mod to be so oppressive that you can't expand without instant DoWs.

I think we're probably on the same page

Chum · May 31, 2016

consentient said:
Hi Chum. Yes, I have been reading. It's just that I don't think it makes any sense at all when settling the only spots you can settle makes everyone hate you forever more.

However, I just played the expansion phase of a new game with experimental v7. and no insane hate for expansion! So I think we have a solution.

Chum, I'm delighted in general that Acken is taking the time to make a balance mod, and the fact that 4 city turtling is off the cards delights me more than anyone. Perhaps you don't read about my games (no problems if you don't, I don't expect anyone to) but I'm a massive warmonger. I just don't want the mod to be so oppressive that you can't expand without instant DoWs.

I think we're probably on the same page

I think we're on the same page too, I learned a lot about warmongering from you. I just didn't know if you were annoyed about the warmongering in this mod because you weren't really planning for it, or if you just haven't played enough games to know it's always the case or what.

Carl and I have developed a pretty good strategy of gold -> units -> tribute -> units -> slavery and plunder -> units -> victory that seems to keep you up pretty well in this game, so I just wanted to make sure you weren't getting too frustrated with it, because it is definitely manageable. If you're planning on getting double DoW'd on T50, you can survive it. If you're not, that's when I think people would say "WTH? This mod is BS."

Acken · May 31, 2016

To be transparent my current philosophy is that only ais going for conquest should care about your close expansion. I really like the added pressure but i also would like a slightly better balance in ai behavior.

Maybe ill refine the code overtime to be more flexible than only caring about distances.

In my latest tests the ai still attacks its neighbours ans so id expect it to also attack the player but gandhi should probably tolerate a city 5 tules from your capital.

I have kind of neglected this aspect of the mod up to v6 and therefore i think ill dedicate v7 to mostly ai behavior. The current experimental contain the first changes.

I also plan to work on leaders flavor a bit. Im for example frustrated harald goes into culture mod so often...

beetle · May 31, 2016

Acken said:
I also plan to work on leaders flavor a bit. Im for example frustrated harald goes into culture mod so often...

Taking a quick look at CivData.com and the only attribute I find is for Culture Flavor. Is there anything anywhere else?

Harald has “5” rating which puts him firmly in the middle of the pack. There are only two AIs less than that, Dido with 4 and Shaka with 3.

I really think the AI bias values were not sufficiently considered. I would like to see a mod where all the 5s were changed to either 10 or 1!

That is certainly not the right way to do things, but it seems to me that there should be much more of range. (There are many rows with no 10s or 1s.) I think probably the default value for most attributes should be a 3 or 8 -- so that most AIs have a distinct stance. All the 5s just mean everything is up to RNG, especially with the value being adjusted each game by +/- 2.

A 5 rating is not “this AI does not care” but rather “this AI is skitzo”.

consentient · May 31, 2016

Chum said:
If you're planning on getting double DoW'd on T50, you can survive it. If you're not, that's when I think people would say "WTH? This mod is BS."

If you like, I can upload a video where I survive a triple DoW on DemiGod.

I'm not a chump!

But my point is that if I simply don't want to go into every game having to prepare for it.

I'll give you a comparison. When I was playing Magic: The Gathering, and I found the variant that I enjoyed the most (Duel Commander), I went to a tournament in France where a deck was being used that could win in like 4 turns quite consistently. This is extremely hard to deal with when you're building your own deck that aims to win in 10-20 turns against a variety of decks. The Animar deck was so evil that loads of players started changing their deck just to deal with Animar. I didn't have the money or the inclination to do that, so I just refined my own deck and entered the next tournament and my deck made mincemeat of the decks that had been changed (inadvertently nerfing themselves) to deal with Animar and got to the final, where I faced Animar and beat him.

So what I'm saying is that I'm really happy to adjust my gameplay, to an extent. The LPs I'm making with Acken's mod are brutally honest in showcasing a player having to adjust to new things. I'm still showing up to the battleground with slightly the wrong ratio of melee/ranged, for example.

But if playing this mod on DemiGod means that you have to endure early-game DoWs, every game, that would take a lot of the fun out of it for me, because I like being able to decide what my proactive strategy is, and then succeed or fail on the back of it.

Acken said:
To be transparent my current philosophy is that only ais going for conquest should care about your close expansion. I really like the added pressure but i also would like a slightly better balance in ai behavior.

Maybe ill refine the code overtime to be more flexible than only caring about distances.

In my latest tests the ai still attacks its neighbours ans so id expect it to also attack the player but gandhi should probably tolerate a city 5 tules from your capital.

I have kind of neglected this aspect of the mod up to v6 and therefore i think ill dedicate v7 to mostly ai behavior. The current experimental contain the first changes.

I also plan to work on leaders flavor a bit. Im for example frustrated harald goes into culture mod so often...

That's all music to my ears. Not only do the changes to v7 seem to have at the very least lessened the expansion DoWs, but I would really welcome flavour adjustments that you can feel. The Vikings didn't care a hoot about culture so yes, it's stupid for Bluetooth to start bulbing Great Writers....although there was that one really good saga

Chum · May 31, 2016

consentient said:
If you like, I can upload a video where I survive a triple DoW on DemiGod. I'm not a chump! But my point is that if I simply don't want to go into every game having to prepare for it.

Definitely didn't intend to imply that you are a chump. Like I said, I learned a ton about domination directly from you and your domination thread. I agree a lot with your conquest tier listings. You've done a good service for this forum now that players like Peddro aren't around as much.

But if playing this mod on DemiGod means that you have to endure early-game DoWs, every game, that would take a lot of the fun out of it for me, because I like being able to decide what my proactive strategy is, and then succeed or fail on the back of it.

Well, too be fair, it's like that on all the other difficulty levels too. I play on Emperor with a less skilled buddy, and we experience the same stuff, even when I am vastly outteching the AI. Actually, it's usually me, come to think of it. For some reason, he ends up avoiding most of the DoW's since he isn't as aggressive in his expansion as I am. A good game for him is a 3-4 city NC and MAYBE 6 later, where as I usually run 8-10 cities before I start cracking into other people's capitals.

So I guess what I'm saying is I've been playing this mod for a long while now, I've adapted to it, and I expect the DoW. I can see how double/triple DoW's on T50 would surprise people who haven't, and that's all I was addressing. If you've done a science victory on Acken's mod though, you'd know that peaceful games aren't all that amusing anyway - that tech tree takes an awful long time, and I'm still trying to speed it up. That's with using Rat finisher for Adv Ballistics and Oxford for Nanotech too. Domination is MUCH quicker and more interesting, and some games I'm kicking myself for not just slaughtering the surviving 4-5 AI's 100 turns before the sci victory :lol:

Acken · May 31, 2016

beetle said:
Taking a quick look at CivData.com and the only attribute I find is for Culture Flavor. Is there anything anywhere else?

Harald has 5 rating which puts him firmly in the middle of the pack. There are only two AIs less than that, Dido with 4 and Shaka with 3.

I really think the AI bias values were not sufficiently considered. I would like to see a mod where all the 5s were changed to either 10 or 1!

That is certainly not the right way to do things, but it seems to me that there should be much more of range. (There are many rows with no 10s or 1s.) I think probably the default value for most attributes should be a 3 or 8 -- so that most AIs have a distinct stance. All the 5s just mean everything is up to RNG, especially with the value being adjusted each game by +/- 2.

A 5 rating is not this AI does not care but rather this AI is skitzo.

The computation is more conplicated than just looking at the flavor. The ai will choose every turn one of the four strategy goals. His flavor play a role not even to the same degree for all victories. Then there in game considerations that effect the score, what it was doing just before etc and also a random roll. Then it picks the highest score

beetle · May 31, 2016

Acken said:
The computation is more conplicated than just looking at the flavor. The ai will choose every turn one of the four strategy goals. His flavor play a role not even to the same degree for all victories. Then there in game considerations that effect the score, what it was doing just before etc and also a random roll. Then it picks the highest score

Okay, but what are the parameters you can change for Harald without effecting the other AIs? Or can different AIs use different algorithms to decide of the four strategy goals?

Acken · May 31, 2016

Well there are multiple ways but yes you are right that if i put culture at 0 for harald and his offense at 10 he will always choose conquest. The problem is that flavor has to be balanced for other aspects of the game. Harald still has to make some culture. One way is to change haralds scores somewhat and change how these scores affect strategy. Or you can even use 4 new flavor scores that are used for strategy alone. There are a lot of options.

yung.carl.jung · May 31, 2016

Chum said:
Have you read this whole thread? I know you were off the boards for awhile, but I dunno if that just meant not posting, or not reading it at all. I'm not being condescending with this, by the way.

The reason I ask is because it's something we've discussed since the beginning, and it's part of the acken's mod charm, imo. No longer do you get to settle 4 and turtle your way to victory. No longer can you beeline philosophy, then civil service, then education, and be okay with pikes for defense on T80. The mod rewards aggressive play. The AI can't ask other AI's to go to war with you if you are already at war with them! Now that the NC has been nerfed pretty drastically, you can go to Cbows and Swords right off the bad, swing back to philo later and still be okay. Spend your early money buying units, use them to tribute CS's for more money, buy more units. Use those units to box out AI expansion and farm settlers, workers and plunder trade routes for more units. Get your cities down behind a curtain of military, make peace later. Once your cities are 4-5 pop and your neighbors are cripppled, you are in a much better position. The DoW's will still come, but you will be able to defend until they peace out.

The game we started last night I ended up being surrounded by my MP buddy, Siam, Austria, and Genghis with more units than I have seen in a long time. I basically rotate getting DoW'd by 2 of them every 10 turns. They can't make headway, and I kill units 10-1, but the DoW's still come and interrupt my plans. I kinda like it, to be honest. Base game AI is so easy to bribe off, or so peaceful to begin with, it's a good change. There have always been border skirmishes in history. They haven't all lead to full blown nation destruction, sometimes some land just changes hands on the outskirts. It feels more fun, and less "next turn."

You really do need to adapt your thinking to the mod. If you haven't been playing it since the beginning, that's a bit of a process. I haven't played base civ since Acken put up V1. Science isn't as important in the beginning, military and strategic resources are WAY more important (I hardly ever sell strategics now). Many of the changes have lead to the bottom of the tree being much more important than it was before. The good news that I can tell you is that if you do go full illiterate, you are absolutely fine because you'll steal science techs pretty quick to catch up, and any civ ignoring military will fall pretty easily to you. You're good at domination, just play this mod for domination, and be pleasantly surprised any time you load a map where it's obvious that you won't have to.

You have someone to play this mod with in multiplayer? I gotta admit I'm pretty jealous

I have a friend who tried the mod but he's still struggling with Immortal. I just play this game too much I think.. :lol:

@Consentient

What really helped me avoiding the DOW is keybinding Demographics to something easily reachable. I took that from multiplayer. I just hit "1" every turn and look at the difference in unit score between me and all neighbours. It really is just a numbers game. Often time it is not about actually being able to defend when you are going for a peaceful victory, it's much more about avoiding the DOW. Because with the production bonuses the AI will have on Deity you are looking towards a 50 turn stalemate where you kill all their troops and get absolutely nothing out of it because they'll just be rebuilt instantly. So often times I will get Spearmen instead of Composites, even though the latter are better for defending. I also bribe much earlier than I do in my typical games. Often times all my gpt will be used up for bribing. Early diplomacy is so much more important now. Sometimes I'll even refrain from settling good spots if they're not in a very defensable position. In almost every game I play on DemiGod or Deity I will not settle a city that doesn't have at least two or three hills or mountains surrounding it.

When you are playing peaceful you have to adapt your entire playstyle. It's not about optimal cities anymore, it's about surviving the early and midgame. I have come to really like this, it means early diplo matters that much more. Whenever I'm expecting to eat up a neighbour though I can settle perfect cities, be really aggressive and still benefit from it.

I, too haven't found the right balance between melee and ranged, it seems off every game. However I do think Crossbows are still the key unit you want to use for domination. In the early game a mix of Swords and Comps is most effective, after that Crossbows with a mix of blocker units and Knights and Artillery now has a very narrow timeframe where it can be effective. The AI will get flight as early as turn 150 - 170 on Deity and 160 - 180 on Demigod from my experience. As soon as a few GWB accumulate all those promotions on the arties will be lost. I really do think early rushes and then turtling to Arty and your Anti Air of choice is the best way to win Dom/Violent Culture/Violent Space now.

Most of my domination attempts so far have failed, though I did manage to win one Dom game on DemiGod as England. Longbows were essential and got me 5/8 capitals. The later three were taken with Navy and Artillery plus Cavalry spam.

Also I'd really love to see you do a video of domination for this mod. I myself can't win Dom on most Immortal/DemiGod maps and am still looking to improve my play. I've seen most of your other videos and really enjoyed them.

By the way, I was 100% sure I'd have seen every Monty Python sketch there was, but I was wrong. Thanks so much! :lol:

Acken's Minimalistic Balance for singleplayer (and AI improvements)

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Domination!

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Domination!

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Domination!

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