K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

yes, kmod strategy is something i would like to hear about t00!

I find the AI in Kmod plays exactly like a ruthless human player in MP, just going for conquest/domination victory and doing it well. How do you guys deal with this?

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by dropping the difficulty! i feel your pain but was only prince level anyway. think ive become a better player cause of kmod though. i havn't played that many games yet but mine pan out similarly, has anyone had a game won with another victory type?

the ai does seem to happily declare war from serious distances away, possibly to the human players advantage. is there something to be said for not scouting/meeting other civs early on and letting grudges develop between others first?

I won an emperor game, a couple versions ago. But Im not on the most up to date version (need a break).

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Love it !

Regarding strategy and the AI's tendency to generate "runaway" players ... I deal with it in the lategame by massing an army to go destroy anyone who gets too close to a victory condition. Until then, I speak softly and carry a big stick. *innocent whistling*

The K-Mod AI is a lot better at warring but it's still nowhere near a good human player's level of skill at massing an army and fielding it correctly. (That's not a criticism of Karadoc's programming btw - it's so much better than the default AI already that I could almost cry.)

Keeping some floating defenders at home in case of a dogpile/naval invasion is also a good idea.

K-mod has reached an incredible level of balance with the AI.

The Civ 4 AI tried to maintain flavor and roleplaying to make the diplomacy more involved, but sometimes it was too extreme and some AIs existed only to throw the game to other AIs. The Civ 5 AI tried to play to win and acted like a warmongering psychopath regardless (though it doesn't know how to win) that would hate you for "trying to beat the game"

K-mod however has AIs that try to win and pursue their own goal but also have their own personality and flavor. Gandhi still loves peace and won't backstab you, but he'll tech like crazy like never before and go culture at times. In one game I saw, he was a beast, holding off a dogpile started by Monty and still managed to outtech everyone, and remained largely intact.

Gandhi is very strong in K-Mod with the changes to how the AI pursues Cultural victory. Given even footing with the other 2-3 strongest Civs, he will backdoor a Cultural win with no problem if you aren't careful. xD Cyrus oddly was the same way for me when he was a rather large world power controlling a lot of the landmass and with a sizable military. In hindsight, it somewhat reminds me of a human player who conquers a lot but then settles in to Culture up. o.0;;

Mansa Musa's effectiveness seems to have improved less (comparatively) than others have from the twoish games I've had with him, but this is just anecdotal evidence anyway. I suspect that if Karadoc makes further tweaks to how the AI goes about pursuing the Space Race option, Musa might end up using his tech-mongering savvy to stomp the competition more often. x.x

karadoc said:

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Good Idea!

You say the AI still can't fight as well as a human, but combat in Civ4 is actually quite simple - it really just comes down to collateral damage and numbers. If one side has a much bigger stack it's quite difficult for the other side to win. I find Kmod AI fields insanely huge armies. I can't count the number of times I've had a stack of 30 cross my border in the middle ages and I manage to defeat it (with some difficulty) and think I'm in the clear, and then 15-20 turns later a stack of 50 comes at me.
Anyway I play with "random personalities" to make the game more interesting/challenging, I never know who might backstab me. How do you guys manage the balance of power? If I just always join a war on the side of the loser to make sure no one gets too strong, I end up making everyone hate me.

Does the AI still get the same production/science bonus as well as the improvements?
Or are these behaviour improvements are in place of the AI bonus?

^ Quoted from the download page: "It's also worth noting that the AI in K-Mod actually cheats /less/ than the standard AI; not more."

The AI still gets cheats (the Deity AI still starts out with all of those archers, two scouts, a worker, and two settlers, for example), but there are fewer of them.

Wow I just played a prince difficulty game and ROFLSTOMPED the AI. It wasn't even close. The game was in the bag by the era of trebuchets, there was no contest. Why is the gap between prince and monarch so enormous? I lost like 15 monarch games in a row, and then a prince game was far too easy. What gives??

Um the Muse said:

^ Quoted from the download page: "It's also worth noting that the AI in K-Mod actually cheats /less/ than the standard AI; not more."

The AI still gets cheats (the Deity AI still starts out with all of those archers, two scouts, a worker, and two settlers, for example), but there are fewer of them.

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Um, when i read that passage I thought it was a refferance to the AI getting information about hidden resources and player builds etc. But there was nothing eluding to this bonus AI get in normal Civ4.

BTW, why is it that Deity AI getting starting bonus units considerd a cheat? That is part of the difficulty level and the related challenge. However, AI placing a city in a location because iron is going to be discoverd within that city before IW is known is a cheat or just unintended programming logic error.

However, AI placing a city in a location because iron is going to be discoverd within that city before IW is known is a cheat or just unintended programming logic error.

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What im about to say comes from my experience and need confirmation. I usually dont settle till i see if have something useful, but if i see a suggested "bad" position for a city im 100% sure there is something important there, like iron/horses/uranium... Maybe suggested city sites are a "cheat" by default and AI uses that method. That doesnt mean AI knows there is a resource, but follows a suggested site.
Someone plz confirm or deny this.

Iirc in the unmodded game the AI has no clue about resources it can't see (90% sure it was proven by DanF). Was tested by making a X shaped island with resources at each edge the same barring a hidden resource, the south western corner had no hidden resource (all things being equal the AI chose the lowest coords to settle) and every time it settled the SW corner.

Htadus said:

Does the AI still get the same production/science bonus as well as the improvements?
Or are these behaviour improvements are in place of the AI bonus?

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All of the special bonuses from the handicap levels are still the same; including production & science boosts, free archery and bonus units, and so on.

When I said the AI cheats less, I did not have those things in mind. I don't consider those bonuses are being cheats - but rather pre-agreed advantages that the AI players get to make up for them being weak players...

There is one special AI handicap bonus thing that is removed in K-Mod: in the unmodded game, the AI gets additional free unit support for one unit per city. This can have a pretty big impact on the early game, and it's something that has been taken away in K-Mod -- I consider that to be a cheat because it isn't specified in the handicap info xml!

The cheats that I've removed are just things like automatically knowing where enemy cities, knowing the best places to settle, and stuff like that.

.. Umm.. when I say "knowing the best places to settle", what I mean is that the AI use to choose its city sites as if the entire map was explored. -- But never had special knowledge of unrevealed resources. (ie. it wouldn't know where iron was without iron working, but if it did have iron working, then it would know where all the iron was, including unexplored areas. -- Whereas in K-Mod, it doesn't know that either.)


The suggested city sites for human players and for AI players use essentially the same system. And I can assure you, it does not take the presence of unrevealed resources into account when choosing them.

The suggested city sites for human players and for AI players use essentially the same system. And I can assure you, it does not take the presence of unrevealed resources into account when choosing them.

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I have to believe u on that one. My experience says different. I dont know how to explain it tbh

How can i enable 50 civ dll? is it possible to use it with K-Mod?

Also, if not, when playing with 18 civs, will this prevent colonies formation?

Thanks

karadoc said:

The suggested city sites for human players and for AI players use essentially the same system. And I can assure you, it does not take the presence of unrevealed resources into account when choosing them.

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Really? I will take your word.

Btw, i like your mod. However it is a little more mm intense for me as in workers getting captured by barb warriors and double clicking not stacking units. This led to my pillage teams getiing seperated and getting killed by appropriate counter units.

But I find the culture modifications very interesting.

I'm going to once again recommend those addition to k-mod:

Events With Images
Culturally Linked Starts
Show Hidden Attitude Mod (if compatible with k-mod ai)
Maybe some balance-friendly features from Advanced Diplomacy Mod v2 (soon v2.1)
50 civs dll

Bug report: when enabling the BUG message feature of peace treaty, i get that peace threaty message (Mario will trade peace) also when i declare war (or someone declares war to me). This is not intended indeed, since he's not going to make peace in the first turn of war.

Another note: When using Bug from Better BUG AI mod, i get a nice feature in the scoreboard: when an Ai doesn't want to talk it displays a "!" near it's name, is it possible to have it also in k-Mod? i'0ve tried many options in the Bug button with no success.