Can a civ be a vassal of two different teams?

I've just uploaded the new version of K-Mod with the fixes to unit selection that I mentioned. So if you're interested in seeing some saner unit selection rules, you should check it out.

(Actually, it behaves almost the same as the unmodded rules, but with some bug fixes and some changes in a few fringe cases.)

Also, for players who still find the effect of the Shift key to be a bit unpredictable or confusing, I've implemented a new option called Simple [Shift] Unit Selection. With this option enabled, selecting units with the shift key will always only target a single units - and it will always from a 'group' when units are selected or deselected using shift. So in general, it's basically more predictable and intuitive.

Please try it out and let me know what you think.

lindsay40k said:

When AIs offer peacevassalage (request protection), do they ever offer sweeteners? There's situations where I'd consider throwing away hundreds of turns of building friendship in a war of aggression on my ally if an AI I'd just been beating on offered me a bunch of great techs. If they do, it might explain Asoka's behaviour.

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Currently, the AI never offers anything to human players for peace-vassal deals, or for war requests... I reckon it's something worth looking into. I'm half intending to change it in K-Mod so that the AI will sometimes offer one-time deals where they will give the player something in exchange for war, or whatever. One-time in the sense that if the player tries to renegotiate the deal, then the AI will decline. (There are already some one-time deals like this in K-Mod, where the AI can offer something slightly better than they would usually accept.)

@karadoc
big shame you didn't concentrate only on improving UI/performance and touched balance and game mechanics...

would be much more useful your mod if it was about performance, bugs and improving UI.

and I know you won't undo this since you repeatedly said so.

Well, I don't know what you mean by "repeatedly said so". I don't recall saying anything of the sort, let alone repeatedly...

In any case, let me just remind you that the very first change in the very first version of K-Mod was a balance change to Serfdom.

Agree with Vranasm. A mod that fixes the extreme lag, unit selection issues, general UI stuff, and only that, could comfortably become the "must have" brother of BUG. When changing balancing and game mechanics features however, it instantly narrows the possibilities of widespread use.

Since you seem to be on top of these things and know how to fix them, would it be possible with a separate mod for people who just want to see the UI and such things sorted? Kui-Mod or whatever?

It's not as though the base-game is the holy-grail of balance of mechanics design - in fact, in some parts it's really really bad (eg. global warming and culture spread - which are two areas of game mechanics that have been completely designed and rewritten for K-Mod; again, two of the very early changes I made.) – The only reason anyone plays the unmodded game is that it's the 'standard'. Many of the unmodded rules are junk, and I do not want create more work for myself only to to further ingrain junk rules into the community.

The balance adjustments I'm making to the game are a relatively light-touch. There are no new techs, no new buildings, no new units. All of the existing techs/units/buildings and so on all have essentially the same strengths/weaknesses/usage that they did in the first place - it's just more finely tuned. The goal is the make the game "the same, but better"; in all aspects, not just the UI, not just the AI, and not just performance. In fact, the UI and game performance were actually the last things I started working on in K-Mod.

If you disagree with any particular balance change, I encourage you to say so. Feel free to explain what is wrong and how you think the game should be. I certainly don't claim to be some all-knowing genie of balance or anything like that and I'm always open to advice. Sometimes I'm wrong; but what you need to understand is that sometimes Firaxis is wrong. To say that the rules should be left alone just because that's how the game is -- is a weak argument.

That said, if anyone wants to make their own mod which takes all the stuff they like from K-Mod and subtracts the stuff they don't like - feel free. The full source code is available here. Knock yourself out. But I'm certainly not going to commit to maintaining a "performance only" version, or a "UI only" version, or a "AI only" version, or a "balance only" version, or any combinations of those other than the "everything" version.

It's an understandable position because making another mod would be more work, and K-Mod is probably like a child now, so I understand you don't want to change anything. Think it is a little unfortunate because a mod that exclusively dealt with performance and UI could easily become very widespread and popular. BUG is essentially a UI/more info mod, and it's very popular. One that dealt mainly with performance could have become another essential "must have " mod for the game.

K-Mod may have a better game experience, what do I know, but by changing game mechanics and balance it will by definition be for "special interests". The wide majority will want to use the game as it came, especially when it comes to rules and such, but "light-touch" changes to UI is easier to get people to embrace. I'm thinking for example about Widescreen mods for Baldur's Gate or Planescape Torment and such games. There are a pile of mods that change balance and various rules, but these are not widely used. Widescreen, however, is almost universally used by people who play the games today.

Like I said, it's an understandable position though.

No one's stopping anyone to take K-Mod's performance changes without taking the balance ones.

I know, he said so himself. Had a look at the link he provided, but have no idea even how to begin such a task. Plus, FF crashed when trying to load some of the larger files

Pangaea said:

It's an understandable position because making another mod would be more work, and K-Mod is probably like a child now, so I understand you don't want to change anything. Think it is a little unfortunate because a mod that exclusively dealt with performance and UI could easily become very widespread and popular. BUG is essentially a UI/more info mod, and it's very popular. One that dealt mainly with performance could have become another essential "must have " mod for the game.

K-Mod may have a better game experience, what do I know, but by changing game mechanics and balance it will by definition be for "special interests". The wide majority will want to use the game as it came, especially when it comes to rules and such, but "light-touch" changes to UI is easier to get people to embrace. I'm thinking for example about Widescreen mods for Baldur's Gate or Planescape Torment and such games. There are a pile of mods that change balance and various rules, but these are not widely used. Widescreen, however, is almost universally used by people who play the games today.

Like I said, it's an understandable position though.

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I think you're right that K-Mod would probably get more interest if I could advise it as have no game-mechanics changes; but there are few things I'd say in response to that:

Firstly, I'm not trying to make the most popular mod ever; I'm just trying to make the best mod I can. I don't want to make what I believe is a sub-standard product just because it would make it easier to get players interested.

Secondly, the only reason people look for mods with no changes to game-mechanics is that they know the that the standard game mechanics have been well tried and tested, and have the Firaxis seal of approval. In essence, players trust the professional game designers more than they trust the modders. But I believe that if I can made my mod good enough, then I can demonstrate that I'm at least as capable as the Firaxis developers. The trust put into official developers is somewhat automatic, but the trust in modders must be earnt and propagated by the player community. In my view, K-Mod is already a strong enough mod to be the go-to mod for all players. I see no reason why it couldn't be recommended as a must have mod for new and old players, much like BUG already is. I don't want to move my mod to where the players are. I'd rather the players moved to where the mod is. Because in my view, every change in K-Mod is an improvement over unmodded BtS – not just an difference; but an improvement.

Of course, I'm just one guy with one opinion. I suppose that if I'm wrong, and if the unmodded game genuinely is better or at least not significantly worse, then K-Mod just won't gain much traction and will always have just a tiny fraction of the playerbase. That would not bother me. But if the general civ community does agree that K-Mod is better, then I'd hope they would recommend that other players use K-Mod rather than recommending that K-Mod be changed to match the other players.


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By the way, I have no idea why Firefox crashed for you on github. I use Firefox myself and I haven't seen it crash on that site. Also, if you want to find and remove some of the balance changes, it's probably easiest to look at the commit log rather than directly at the code. For example, this commit is pretty clearly a balance change.