Call for Suggestions: Better Deity Mod

(I put this in BNW to avoid confusion... let's talk in the context of post-fall patch BNW ONLY)

If you're like me, you find it insanely frustrating that Deity isn't at all like playing against a skilled player, but rather is like playing a totally different game. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to only play multiplayer... but let's be honest: The turn times, the connection issues, the stability issues, the lack of mods... the flakers, etc. It's fun but wouldn't we all rather have a harder AI difficulty level that didn't frustrate?

I know there are other Deity mods out there, but I thought it might be fun to do a call for suggestions thread and see what creative ideas people can come up with for a better Deity Mod. If the suggestions are feasible, I'll code the damn thing myself.

Rules to keep this manageable: Keep your core suggestion to 250 words or so, but feel free to expound on it. Please use this format:

NEW DEITY MODE: .... (250 words or less)

WHY IT'S BETTER: ... (make it as long as you want)

Discussion of each other's ideas is welcome, but please put your own suggestion at the top of your post, if you're going to make one, so it's easier for me to find.

I'll start!

NEW DEITY MODE: Accelerated AIs

1) No more free settler, no more free worker, no more free techs.
2) 10% combat bonus
3) AI get bonuses to production,food,beakers,gold and happiness:
* +6 in the capital
* +4 in the first 3 expos
* +2 in all other cities.

(Numbers to be tweaked after experimentation)

WHY IT'S BETTER:

The free second city makes it very difficult for the player to expand. (Unlike playing a skilled opponent)

The free worker is arbitrary and can be stolen as early as turn 5, which really messes up the dynamics of the game. Extra gold allows the AI to choose something to buy, for free. A worker at +8 is only 39 turns. So by turn 40 they have a free extra worker... if they want.

The free units currently means they go on a barbarian rampage, winning city state favor, and allows civs like Genghis Khan to immediately go on the warpath, unlike a normal game. Plus, it can make it so the player doesn't have to deal with barbs ever.

The free techs mean that all the ancient wonders are gone before the player has a chance at them. With improved tech rate, the AI would still have a huge tech advantage, but it wouldn't be ALL UP FRONT. An AI would have to beeline GL or HG, not just get it without trying. (They'd actually need to choose that over building units, settlers and workers)

First of all, I strongly agree with you. Higher difficulty mostly means a ridiculous headstart for the AI while the game is basically the same once you caught up on all difficulty levels. I'm pretty sure if people could hide the difficulty and just post savegames from turn 200 here, most people couldn't even begin to figure out what difficulty the game is at, no matter how many turns they'd play that savegame. King or Diety? Impossible to tell - besides counting ancient era wonders owned by the player.

I don't think with minor adjustments to production or starting values diety can be made good.

What diety really needs is that every AI enemy picks a victory condition at the start and then actually pursues that victory condition.

Science victory is pretty straight forward, tech up and try to get the ship. Don't start stupid wars to get sidetracked, try to keep good relations with other civs for Research Agreements and so on

Culture Victory, I don't know; haven't really figured out that goal myself yet. Beeline to Archeology, then gobble up dig sites?

Right now, the AI just plays casually along, playing SimCiv rather than Civilization. Just build a bit here and there, with no clear goal in mind. When the AI actually goes for a victory condition, it feels pretty random.
Space victories take the AI much longer from the finishing of Apollo program than they should.
Culture victories I've never actually seen.
Diplomacy victories neither. I usually have too many city states allied with me for the AI to get even close to winning the vote.

Domination, same thing. Sometimes you see an AI take out two civs. Then they stop. They don't go to war anymore, even though they have the strongest army. They just stop half way there. There's nothing more game breaking for me than seeing Shaka go through two civs without breaking a sweat, then just stop his massive army at my border and not going to attack.


What the AI needs most of all is a more solid scripting for combat. If it's a war, the player always wins because he has perfect control of his units, because he can anticipate which units he needs to move where so the AI doesn't get enough attacks on that unit in the next turn to kill it. The player then pulls out those 10 hp units with a fresh promotion and upgrades it rather than using instant heal every time like the AI does. So even if nothing got killed in that exchange, the player ends up being in a stronger position. Until he has double attack, 3 range archers. At that point, he just picks targets and executes them.

The AI also is absolutely incapable of not moving units. The AI cannot fortify units that are in a good position (dear god, in Civ 1 the AI just fortified every unit that was next to a foreign unit and couldn't attack, that was BETTER than what we have here..)
In Civ 5, the AI must use all movement points every turn. That means that if two large armies are facing each other, the AI will repeatedly move units in a bad spot because all good spots are taken but that unit still has to use those movement points. This results in a free kill for the player, who just keeps waiting for more opportunities to pick the enemy army apart.


From what I've read, the AI employs the most basic scripting to move its units during war. I don't really understand why it has to be like that.

I don't play deity, due to the inability to compete in the ancient era. The AI bonus needs to be spread out over all the eras, not all front loaded as it is today.

As so many guides show, it is a race to catch the AI and then win. Not fun for me.

Remove starting AI settler.
Remove AI starting tech.
Nerf ranged weapons. (about 70-80%)
Add +20% research bonus to AI.
Add +20% combat bonus to AI.

why good: Ancient are would be more interesing, with more options, beside build 4 city and 6 archer. Late game would be harder. Defence vs warmonger AI would be harder.

Arilian said:

Remove starting AI settler.
Remove AI starting tech.
Nerf ranged weapons. (about 70-80%)
Add +20% research bonus to AI.
Add +20% combat bonus to AI.

why good: Ancient are would be more interesing, with more options, beside build 4 city and 6 archer. Late game would be harder. Defence vs warmonger AI would be harder.

Click to expand...

Why nerf ranged weapons? To make it harder for the player? I'm not sure I follow.

These ideas could be applied to all difficulty levels.

iamdanno said:

These ideas could be applied to all difficulty levels.

Click to expand...

Is there really a need to tweak the other difficulty levels? I think the game scales pretty well up to Immortal. Basically, you can go all the way to Immortal just by learning the game. To win at Immortal you need to micromanage and learn some core strategies. To win at Deity you need to really be solid. I think that's fine.

However, I can't speak to this... having played previous incarnations of Civ, I don't really have any perspective. I started playing Civ5 on Prince, won easily, tried King once, won easily. It took me a few tries to beat Emperor, then I was stuck on Immortal for a long time before I consistently won. I was stuck on Deity for a loooong time before I consistently won. Maybe the difficulty levels aren't scaled well for total beginners, but other than that the scaling below Immortal feels fine. At Immortal + the game is just... annoyingly different. Because the AI advantages change the way the game plays, instead of just making it harder.