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

Update 2.01
There was a bug with great writers that has now been fixed (treaty was at 0 because of a typo). The workshop should auto update. If you use manual install just redownload the mod. Save games should be compatible (but already born great writers should remain at 0 value).

I hope it's the only thing I missed before going in weekend ><
 
Attila + Warrior Code = Battering Ram. Even worse than the upgrade ruin from the warrior because it's totally controllable.


If it's possible to code it to give an actual spearman instead of the UU, you might want to think about that.
 
Hi Acken, I just tried a game with this mod, and am loving it so far. I love the reworked SPs, Piety in particular is buffed tremendously and Tradition and Liberty is back to pre-patch arrangements. OTOH, Harald just reached Ideology on turn 140! Meanwhile Rationalism is pushed back one era and Unis have one less scientist slot so there's not much one can do in the Renaissance to catch up, aside from signing more RAs. Gandhi also built the Uffizi before I even reached PP (Astronomy detour because continents). It seems like pure CV will no longer be a viable VC to me because the catchup period will be well after Renaissance where all the important Wonders are. Even if it's doable, it's not my idea of fun against this much of odds. Continents maps also seem to double the difficulty because you meet the AI Civs too late. I guess you weren't kidding when you said this mod will make Deity harder!
 
So far, v2 Demi-God is very interesting! Started a game as Ethiopia, and found myself 8 tiles from Dido. After opening Piety (missed DF by one turn to Poland, argh) I took 3 in Honor right side and had a bit of a struggle taking her down, having to really be careful with timings, etc. In contrast, I played a v1 Immortal Continents Honor game and took out Poc, Songhai and Nappy without Xbows until the very end. The weaker cities and importance of melee made it almost too easy.

After about 5 Immortal v1 partial games trying out several combos of opening trees, it actually felt like the game was easier than base BNW (although 2 of the maps were fairly human-friendly). Perhaps the human does a better job manipulating the trees? Almost every game I folded in Piety - it is totally my favorite tree now.

I am hoping Demi-God is my new level. What sets it apart again? Does the AI only get one Settler?
 
I did a shortish T136 test run on DemiGod without reading all the info but dived straight into it so it's hard to say anything conclusive about it being harder - doesn't feel that way, yet. T136 Wu hit Industrial to my great surprise as Renaissance started ~20 turns before.
Few observations though; CSs are very keen on building settlers for no apparent reason and another thing which I'd prefer to be changed right away is the (AI) city defence - it's too low atm and cities are squishy like soap bubbles.
 
Hi Acken, having fun but it keeps crashing. I attached the save in the hope that it proves to be usefull. Should crash within a few turns.
 

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Hi Acken, I just tried a game with this mod, and am loving it so far. I love the reworked SPs, Piety in particular is buffed tremendously and Tradition and Liberty is back to pre-patch arrangements. OTOH, Harald just reached Ideology on turn 140! Meanwhile Rationalism is pushed back one era and Unis have one less scientist slot so there's not much one can do in the Renaissance to catch up, aside from signing more RAs. Gandhi also built the Uffizi before I even reached PP (Astronomy detour because continents). It seems like pure CV will no longer be a viable VC to me because the catchup period will be well after Renaissance where all the important Wonders are. Even if it's doable, it's not my idea of fun against this much of odds. Continents maps also seem to double the difficulty because you meet the AI Civs too late. I guess you weren't kidding when you said this mod will make Deity harder!

Are you trying it at Deity. It's certainly no joke :)

I need time testing it more but remember aesthetics also give a lot more tourism than it used to, in order to help this catching up.

So far, v2 Demi-God is very interesting! Started a game as Ethiopia, and found myself 8 tiles from Dido. After opening Piety (missed DF by one turn to Poland, argh) I took 3 in Honor right side and had a bit of a struggle taking her down, having to really be careful with timings, etc. In contrast, I played a v1 Immortal Continents Honor game and took out Poc, Songhai and Nappy without Xbows until the very end. The weaker cities and importance of melee made it almost too easy.

After about 5 Immortal v1 partial games trying out several combos of opening trees, it actually felt like the game was easier than base BNW (although 2 of the maps were fairly human-friendly). Perhaps the human does a better job manipulating the trees? Almost every game I folded in Piety - it is totally my favorite tree now.

I am hoping Demi-God is my new level. What sets it apart again? Does the AI only get one Settler?

Demi God is 2 workers and almost deity bonuses. No extra settler. It's possible Immortal v1 was a little bit easier. The immortal never was very threatening to begin with.

I did a shortish T136 test run on DemiGod without reading all the info but dived straight into it so it's hard to say anything conclusive about it being harder - doesn't feel that way, yet. T136 Wu hit Industrial to my great surprise as Renaissance started ~20 turns before.
Few observations though; CSs are very keen on building settlers for no apparent reason and another thing which I'd prefer to be changed right away is the (AI) city defence - it's too low atm and cities are squishy like soap bubbles.

Well wouldn't you say T136 AI industrial is highly unlikely in the base game ? :) So it's already at least a bit harder no ? CS settlers are a bug that I can't pin down right now :rolleyes: My guess is that they make this when nothing else is available.

You mean cities are too weak to your attacks ? It has been a common suggestion. My dilemna is that I want AIs to have easier conquests (between them and against the player). Always hated city mechanics in civ5 anyway. If as a result it makes players conquest too easy I'll have to find a solution while keeping this goal. A solution could be to keep the strength but give it back the health. Or simply give a bonus/malus against cities to AI/Human.

I'll happily see how your game evolves.

Hi Acken, having fun but it keeps crashing. I attached the save in the hope that it proves to be usefull. Should crash within a few turns.

I will look into it as soon as I get back. Are you using just my mod ? What should I do for it to crash ? Instead of the save you can also simply send me the crash dump file created in the game directory after a crash.
 
I'm kinda sad to say it, but the game certainly isn't harder on Emperor or below. I dropped one level from my usual Immortal, and the game is a complete joke.

Shoshone, standard/standard/pangaea, I had 6500g in the bank in the Renaissance, bought every Public School/Lab. I'm at 117 happiness several turns after entering Ideology, and my military is inconsequential - any city I want to take, I take in 3 turns with 4 units. To top that off, the AI's are just floundering around. They routinely run from military engagements, or walk right past ranged units -- I have no idea what their goal is. To top that off, after I had researched Machinery, the Celts and Spain DoW'd me, I took Edinburgh and several other crap cities from the Celts and she STILL wouldn't go to peace. After she was finally down to one city, she gave me peace (not of her own initiation) and then STOLE CONSTRUCTION. As you can imagine, that war was more lopsided than usual.

Isabella had the Great Wall, and that didn't matter. She had no units and her cities fell to 2 Xbows, a Knight and a fortified Pike. I have a feeling the artificial UI mod is the problem here - your game would be perfectly balanced for the way the AI is in unmodded civ, but changing the way the AI allocates decision making, and then making the changes you have resulted in a nonsensically inept AI even worse than the original one.

I'll try Immortal this week, but so far, it's quite the far cry from being anything above Cheiftain difficulty.
 

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Thanks for the feedback Chum I'll look into it. I'm a bit surprised though that it ended up that much easier than base Emperor :( I'll admit I spend time mostly testing the last 3 levels but I cannot really see what makes this level perform reasonably well and give you such an easy time on Emperor.
The way the AI evaluates wars is not changed in the mod so her not wanting any peace is not due to the mod. Happens with the base game sometimes. The thing the mod change is to close the loophole where an AI that want a favorable peace would still accept a white peace.

Too much gold has been a remark made a couple times too for which I have a change planned. What policies did you pick ?

There was no real boost to happiness unless you picked Piety. Could you pinpoint what you think gave you too much happiness ?

Finally can you send me a save ?
 
These are the 3 I have currently from this game.
 

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Also, I got the one start that didn't have a good pantheon, heh - Ivory.

I still ended up building a powerhouse religion with Faith from Forests, of which I worked about 4 total until things got rolling, with Cathedrals, and +2 faith from amphitheaters and Opera Houses (which as it turns out, is pretty absurd), with the usual Tithe/50% faster spread.

The Honor Opener, Warrior Code, and the Piety opener are basically too good to not take. The extra policies you get from the reduced culture costs should all go to there, because it makes it so that you sacrifice nothing - you obtain a ridiculously powerful civ in growth, culture, military and religion for a very minor investment.

As far as difficulty goes, I was just doing what you recommended - dropping a difficulty from what I normally play on :) I can win at Deity, but it's more effort than I like to expend, so I play at Immortal where I can not micromanage spies and stuff and still be okay. I was pretty shocked at how Emp has gone for me. I got a T88 Attila win yesterday, and now this tech tree game has been a complete joke. I will try out Immortal this week/next weekend and see how it goes, but so far, I can basically say if you're looking for a challenge, you definitely shouldn't be playing anything lower than you normally play on, the AI is pathetic and the bonuses appear to be balanced to give you a chance in Deity. Against non Deity AI, you're just gonna crush them if you have any idea what you're doing at all.
 
Well wouldn't you say T136 AI industrial is highly unlikely in the base game ? :) So it's already at least a bit harder no ? CS settlers are a bug that I can't pin down right now :rolleyes: My guess is that they make this when nothing else is available

Oh noes, T136 Industrial on itself is nothing out of the ordinary but it seemed like a good point to stop that game. I had taken few capitals with CB/XBows but the map really wasn't welcoming any sort of land based domination. The interesting part was the Wu spent or rather didn't spent on Renaissance - she cruised past it like a missile which is a novelty and a welcomed change towards more challenging.
One would assume that there's a binary option to remove settlers from CS's build orders completely.

You mean cities are too weak to your attacks ? It has been a common suggestion. My dilemna is that I want AIs to have easier conquests (between them and against the player). Always hated city mechanics in civ5 anyway. If as a result it makes players conquest too easy I'll have to find a solution while keeping this goal. A solution could be to keep the strength but give it back the health. Or simply give a bonus/malus against cities to AI/Human.

Yes, around T100 XBows cut the cities apart like they were Arties which isn't good at all. CBs were much the same but I only wiped off Attila with them and he isn't keen on building walls so the sample base is small & biased. On the other hand I almost a city to a CS before I noticed the drastic change.

If I'm allowed to make suggestions, keep the AI city HP & defence as it was, lower the unmanned city attack power and increase the effectivity of walls, perhaps hill bonus, too. For human cities decrease in defence in an unmanned city should be enough. In any case even an empty city should be harder to kill than a double cover contemporary melee unit.

AI units starting with double cover makes a nice difference though it gave me few dead CBs & wtf moments early on.


I'll happily see how your game evolves.

Sadly you won't as I abandoned that game but I'll start a new one after making myself more familiar of all the changes. I played that one like any old Liberty/Honor game and the early worker is a welcomed boost to Liberty and makes it less dependant on worker steals.
The Honor tree also looks more tempting now.
 
As far as difficulty goes, I was just doing what you recommended - dropping a difficulty from what I normally play on I can win at Deity, but it's more effort than I like to expend, so I play at Immortal where I can not micromanage spies and stuff and still be okay. I was pretty shocked at how Emp has gone for me. I got a T88 Attila win yesterday, and now this tech tree game has been a complete joke. I will try out Immortal this week/next weekend and see how it goes, but so far, I can basically say if you're looking for a challenge, you definitely shouldn't be playing anything lower than you normally play on, the AI is pathetic and the bonuses appear to be balanced to give you a chance in Deity. Against non Deity AI, you're just gonna crush them if you have any idea what you're doing at all.

I'll see what could give poor performances to AI. Although... if you beat Deity maybe you've forgotten how easy emperor is.
The UUs are not yet balanced. The ram will probably become a catapult though. For it being a spearman never really made sense both in gameplay and historically.

I have a few ideas as to why the AI could get poor performances. I'll see to it when I get back and launch a few test games.

I agree Liturgical drama, choral music and cathedrals are a little too much. My current change will be +1 +2 for LD, +2 +1 for CM, and cathedrals at 2C instead of 3C.

Also the culture exponent will go to 1.95 (1.90 currently, 2.01 base game). The culture/tourism from great works could also get down to 3/2 instead of 4/3. I'll think about it.

Finally as I've said a few times I'll put a cap on the honor opener. Time to do it I guess :)

One would assume that there's a binary option to remove settlers from CS's build orders completely.

Not really, the way it's down is directly in the code. And settlers are put at 0 value for CS. But I've made a modification there and I think there is a possibility where the CS has nothing worth building (all at 0) and will by default choose a settler.

Yes, around T100 XBows cut the cities apart like they were Arties which isn't good at all.

Definetly a problem since it shouldn't be the purpose of range units.

If I'm allowed to make suggestions, keep the AI city HP & defence as it was, lower the unmanned city attack power and increase the effectivity of walls, perhaps hill bonus, too. For human cities decrease in defence in an unmanned city should be enough. In any case even an empty city should be harder to kill than a double cover contemporary melee unit.

Of course suggestions are encouraged. Yes the garnison bonus will definetly be improved.
A buff to health and base strength is probably what I'll try first. Range could also do with a penalty similar to Mounted.
 
Started an another game to see the effects on earlier war and I didn't like it - the problem of defenceless cities is even worse. An untrained Archer doing same dmg to a warrior than lvl 9 capital just doesn't sound right.

On the other hand defending own cities by one's own means is impossible so early expansion relies highly on luck which shouldn't be the case. An aggressive neighbour can in theory wipe one off with their starting units and by the time AI has Catas/Spearmen they only need 3 units to take a city in one turn.

Surely there's a design philosophy involved whether (early) cities on their own should be any sort of obstacle - I'm of the opinion they should - but still, this makes luck too much part of successful expansion.

I'm curious to see how this plays out with Shaka/Attila but I assume the result isn't pretty. Previously spawning beside Shaka was a bit of tip-toeing diplomacy or extremely quick military wipeout but now the military option is most likely gone and vice versa few Impi in players' hands can wipe out the planet. Rams can do the same just much, much earlier.

In it's current mode I very much prefer the un-modded city functionality but some tuning could change this. At least a city with a garrison should be much harder to take but like it is now & raging barbs I think it's likely to have barb cities.
 
Barbs can't capture cities :p

I'll put work in city fighting mechanics once I get home + a few of other change for a 2.1 version sometime this week.

If you have time playing or make small tests I could even regularly post experimental version to get your, and other candidates, thoughts. Would help the process.
 
Re: warfare.

My impression so far is that war is more varied and fun, but not much harder on the offense. This is not that strange as the AI is at its weakest when it comes to warfare, so any changes that makes warfare more important is probably going to benefit (good) players over the AI.

I think the design decision to lessen the impact of cities is perhaps the biggest change in the mod and I completely agree with it but it can be done in different ways: strength, hp and ranged attacks, unit changes.

I personally would like to do away with city attacks for three reasons: 1) It creates bottlenecks as units avoid city bombard range. 2) It breaks 1 upt balance by allowing multiple attacks form a single tile 3) without it barbarians might be less of a joke in this game.

Barring that I would argue that decreasing the strength of cities was good and I think that this strength or slightly more is optimal. If you want to makes them more defensible you should make their hp 200 again. I have no clear opinion on the change to heal rates.

I think the mod accomplishes the goal of making AI attacks more of a threat. You can defend against an early AI neighbor war in most cases, but you will have to go straight for Bronze working and build a lot of spears. This makes early game decision more interesting and changes the tech path a bit.

On the defense, it is more of a hurdle. It is harder to kill off the AIs melée spam, and you will take some losses but once you are past that getting the cities is much faster. Try massed cavalry, for maximum speed. I like it, but it can feel a bit broken when you manage to surprise or distract them. Getting the AI to competently defend cities was and is a tough problem: it might require some AI coding =(
 
Barbs can't capture cities :p

I'll put work in city fighting mechanics once I get home + a few of other change for a 2.1 version sometime this week.

Hah, I still live in old Civ world but they still should.


I also did a 60 turn DemiGod Attila test std Pangaea- wiped off 3 civs around T50 but the next one was hiding behind few hills and when it takes literally a dozen HAs to kill a Swordsman the advance isn't exactly fast. I would also call it unbalanced but I do like the sudden rise of melee units in terms of usefulness. Currently the very early turns seem too on/off when it comes to making war.



*** addition ***


Just in case I sound like overly negative I'm actually not and I mostly agree with this part


I think the mod accomplishes the goal of making AI attacks more of a threat. You can defend against an early AI neighbor war in most cases, but you will have to go straight for Bronze working and build a lot of spears. This makes early game decision more interesting and changes the tech path a bit.

The problem is that even in case where one actually does build units to defend it's totally up to the AI whether it'll take a city/cities as one or few well placed defensive units are not gonna hold like they used to. Archer line units could be more effective on defence than in offense and not only handicapped against cities ie some sort of buff while in a city/near own cities/on friendly territory vs them being on neutral/hostile territory. The requirement to have all types of units is welcomed.
 
I think the fact that it takes a while to kill all the AI troops and only one or two turns to take the city is good realism. I'm going to do a game tonight with DemiGod and Mongolia


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