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

civawesome said:

They definitely settle faster on your mod.

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Yeah. I forgot to go a difficulty lower than usual like the first post advises, and regretted it
Atilla had four cities by turn 35 ; and despite being the first to meet 2 religious city states+ going for pottery as my first tech I was one of the last to get a pantheon
Trying out king now


EDIT: Whoops my bad.. that was probably caused by the mod making immortal my default difficulty instead of emperor instead of emperor

Seriously though, Maria has a green embassy in my capital modifier, a red worried about aggressive expansion modifier and a red coveting my lands modifier. Why does she not have a common enemy modifier when we both are at war with the same guy? I thought it was ludicrous that this modifier was so small that the two negative ones override it, but now I realize this modifier doesn't even exist? What? Can someone explain that to me?

It's been three turns since Suleiman declared on me, and a long while since he declared on Maria, and he is still at war with both of us.

Damn the AI can expand quickly on Emperor. I've learned that if I don't see at least two good city spots closer to me than anyone else I need to immediately prepare for early war, no matter what civ I'm playing.

I just had a game as Brazil, I went scout, warrior, settler. I got my Liberty worker and then my Liberty settler very early due to popping a cultural ruin, so I had two settlers very early in the game, something like turn 25ish (I also chopped to hurry it). Even still, I got completely boxed in. Completely. Spain took a city spot in one direction, and Denmark took another. I literally had nowhere to expand. 2 settlers at turn 25ish, maybe turn 28, and I had literally not one single expansion spot. Oh sure, there was some random land around, but no other luxury resources and therefore I couldn't afford to expand.

That's the thing with civ 5, you can have tons of land around you and still get boxed in because unless you can grab lux's, you can't afford to expand.
So anyway the reason I got roflstomped like that and lost the game at turn 30 was because those expansion spots were about halfway between myself and my neighbours.

Lesson learned - if you have expansion spots that are much closer to you than anyone else, go ahead and peacefully expand. Even then you should rush those settlers out like your life depends on it. If the only luxury resources you can see are halfway between you and a neighbour, literally DON'T even try. Rush spears/archers instead, because you're going to be taking an AI city on that spot.

If you're playing NQ Pangea and you're on the coast, there are often some pretty decent islands around accessible without going over ocean. It can be worth going to Optics for the quick embarkation if you have sea resources to make Lighthouses worth it, and there are often even goody huts to grab on the islands that the AI is lazy in getting to. I've used these islander cities a few times when conquest didn't seem that attractive at the moment and I still didn't really have enough cities. It's still pretty situational and hard to predict, but at the very least it usually gets you some huts.

I play continents or hemispheres. Pangea is way too boring for me.

Well, continents is going to limit your expansion ability, since most civs will start on the coast, and therefore expand inland (towards you) because they can't expand outwards.

What has worked for me the best in this mod is to completely box in one civ. What you're doing isn't going to work because you don't have the force to back up your settling. I'll forgo early scouting for babysitting one AI and make sure they don't send settlers my way. Anything coming my direction gets the escort killed and the settler sent to the mines, and then I farm them for workers, and farm their caravans for early gold (the gold you'd lose settling). Military first, and often ends up solving the entire expansion problem. After you've expanded out completely (prioritizing locations away from said boxed in Civ), you can make peace if you want (and this time, promise not to settle near them and not actually break it), or just take their capital early to give yourself some wonders. Stonehenge or ToA is a very nice bonus for this strategy, and it happens pretty frequently.

Might makes right in this game. Peaceful doesn't work, so it's not worth trying. You'll get the land you want this way, and be in good position to handle the inevitable DoW you'll get later.

It's usually not that bad. The problem I had in my last game that ended at turn 30 was there were no luxury resources near my capital. The closest ones were technically a couple hexes closer to rival capitals (other than the standard 2 lux's you get inside your capital). I mistakenly thought I could beat them to the spots.

That's why I said what I said in my post - it's a very specific situation. If the only lux's you can see are halfway between you and the AI, or farther, you need to go to war because you won't get them peacefully.

I am still waiting for an explanation for that missing common enemy modifier...

Takes some amount of turn with a common war to trigger.

Great work on the mod
Currently playing my best and most engrossing civ5 game to date. The AI seems significantly better and I'm not running away with the tech lead even on king despite doing so on emperor usually. Plus the AI is agressive unlike the passive vanilla AI. All this without much of an increase in turn times
Not to mention, England is great for middle game warfare. The seas are completely all yours, and longbowmen give you an entire tree of 3 range units.
Although a couple of caveats:
City states can be unhappy also? Saw one of them getting a combat penalty.
Also, the "CS has provided you with Aluminium since they are your ally" text pops up even if you havent discovered Aluminium.
Couple of others also, can't seem to remember now though.

Also this a hundred times:

Chum said:

Unmodded civ is actually TOO carebear for me. I don't like it because it's too easy to be friends with everyone on the map and never be at war with anyone. That's one of the reasons Acken's mod is such a breath of fresh air to me - I shouldn't get along with my neighbors. Our borders SHOULDN'T touch. We should be clawing tooth and nail for territory. That's the way the world has been for the entirety of civilization on this planet, and we shouldn't be all touchy feely about things.

Seriously, base game diplomacy is pretty easy to work with if you know what you're doing. You can be friends with everyone the entire game if you want to. That's broken, as far as I'm concerned.

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Imp. Knoedel said:

I am still waiting for an explanation for that missing common enemy modifier...

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You were already told this isn't the thread for that.

Also, the "CS has provided you with Aluminium since they are your ally" text pops up even if you havent discovered Aluminium.

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Happens in base game too. You probably never saw it since it's pretty easy to be way ahead of the CS's on tech in base game. In Acken's, you're always gonna be behind some part of the tree, which is pretty nice. Prevents the non stop wonder steamroll at the late game.

Chum said:

You were already told this isn't the thread for that.

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I am playing with this mod. I encounter this issue in this mod. Hence it is appropriate to post in the mod's thread, especially since it is an issue that the mod claims to address, namely the AI.

I can understand Imp. Knoedel's frustrations, diplomacy in the game is not coded anywhere near as complexly as it should be to make the in-game experience realistic, but Acken's mod is not here to address that. It offers those who are bored with peaceful play a more challenging game by amending the AI's responses to different situations, however those who like to have peaceful elements to their games are not going to respond as favourably. That's the nature of the beast, as with the vanilla game you either like it or you don't, there will never be a way of making it definitively 'better' for everyone. Unfortunately I think we're only one step away from those who do not like war being seen as not 'proper' Civ players, which is daft.

Both the vanilla game and this mode will throw up unrealistic diplomatic situations, because the diplomatic function in the game cannot handle not doing so. Those unrealistic situations will bug some people while others will not even register. Unfortunately there are many examples in history of leaders and nations acting like total tools, so any unrealistic behaviour often gets explained away with "yeah well, so and so did this thing once and that was pretty dumb, so yeah". What is a game-breaker for some is easy to accept for others. I often find myself wondering why someone on a different continent who I have just met covets my lands when they haven't even seen them, but that's Civ I guess. Imp. Knoedel being frustrated by these things is understandable, and the response of 'the AI acts like a dick because it's programmed to act like a dick' isn't going to abate those frustrations. But I don't think there's anything that will.

It should be obvious that this is not the thread to complain about excessive aggression, as generally this is what attracts people to this mod. The work that has gone in to this should be commended, and while tinkering with Civs and the tech tree may be a step too far for me when I start playing Civ again I'll definitely com back to this modded version (albeit at an easier difficulty level). The diplomacy function of the game is just a step too far.

The whole thing with City State protection seems quite broken to me atm. For instance, In my current game Genghis Khan has gobbled up most of the continent including 3 city states. But currently (in the modern era) my military vastly outguns his. However he's had his eye on Bucharest (my ally; I liberated it from Sweden and pledged to protect it) so he decided to attack it (back in the industrial era). I was waiting for the diplo message; but none came. He quickly captured it in two turns, but lost it to sweden sson after. I recaptured and liberated it once again. Now (in the modern era) he decides to attack it again, and now the message shows up -"Imma attack your ally what will you do about it". I choose the "youll pay for it", but since I'm much stronger than him he doesnt declare war on me. However he continues to attack the CS; which makes absolutely no sense. Eventually I had to take 6 units and surround Bucharest so that he couldn't capture it despite getting it down to zero strength.

To me this seems just silly; when I choose the "youll pay for it" either he should back off OR attack me as my ally is under my protection. The whole pledge to protect makes very little sense this way.

Also, is it just me or is it really hard to demand something from the AI? Its happened a few times.. like a civ down to a crappy city or two with most of its units killed while you have a large empire and massive military; but they still wont give you a luxury or open borders. They tell me to "come get what I want" ; I would, but their cities are really horsehockye

Also what's up with awfully settled cities? Like I have this one city state freaking one tile off the coast, and I can't even burn it down because it's a city state!

Imp. Knoedel said:

Also what's up with awfully settled cities? Like I have this one city state freaking one tile off the coast, and I can't even burn it down because it's a city state!

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That isn't even that bad.. in my current game Mombasa (maritime) is on a 8 or 9 tile island in the ocean, and somehow its still inland !
I'll put up a pic of it tomorrow.. the fail is quite high

The CS protection mechanism is working as intended. You can choose to lose influence with the CS and avoid diplo penalty with the aggressor, or avoid an influence hit but take a diplo hit.

What I don't know is how the AI takes protection into consideration when judging whether or not to attack a CS. In any case, you need to actually protect your CS allies in practice, not just in words. You can gift them troops and you can station troops near them. You need the ability to project power if you want to defend them, which usually requires a navy.

Does an AI attack on one of your CS allies give you a casis belli, Acken? I can't remember.

In any case, the AI picking on a CS is often a great opportunity for you. You can swoop in just after the city has fallen and fight the AI's troops while they're still injured, and then liberate the city. You'll get tons of influence on it and weaken a rival's military.

Not at the moment but I've considered it.

I can see why it giving a CB might seem unwise, since the cost of just spamming Pledge of Protection on all CSes and thus getting a ton of free CBs randomly falling into your lap would be pretty low. This comes back to my thought that Pledges should be more costly somehow, either in making them or more preferably in failing to back them up.

On the other note, City States in general do seem to often be especially awful cities, a level above the awfulness of even normal AI cities. I actually think this is good since it disincentivizes Civs from gobbling them; I even wish they would get natural wonders less often for this reason.

I'm not too frustrated with sort of random AI deception and war declares since that aggro behavior helps the AI win. What does irk me though is random Denounce backstabs that seem to serve the AI no purpose and that it doesn't follow up with any sort of attack or even empty declare. I've been DoFed with Eygpt before attacking a civ that was between us with Eygpt also attacking, none of us had any cities nearby each other and randomly in the middle of the war Eygpt backstabs and denounces me for seemingly no reason at all. This is a more frustrating sort of behavior, as it does nothing to help the AI and is just hurting the both of you.