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

Suggestion: Make it possible to always produce National Wonders but at a very high price which drops some amount for each city that builds its buildings (Library to National College etc). I would still support the price of them raising per city owned I just don't like how a weak city can screw things up that much. I also suggested this because I think it would be cool to be able to run some cities that aren't identical to each other.

I'm not sure about this but I don't think the AI keeps good track of their National Wonders. If that's the case this suggestion could buff them.

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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With the lower Science penalties you could actually profit off of bad cities in this mod.

Rhys DeAnno said:

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.

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The simple explanation is that they roleplay. The AI treats the game as real life and has morals and values and doesn't play this like a game. I almost never see the AIs do empty declares, probably for the reasons mentioned. Imo they should have at least added a "Gaming AI Toggle" to switch them from roleplay to competitive. It looks like this mod tries to bring them closer to competitive at least.

noto2 said:

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.

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A diplo hit is all? For the record, you get a much more severe diplo hit for not agreeing to ban a luxury the AI wants to in the WC.

Casus Belli means that you get a cause to declare war on them right? Without that what is the point of the protection at all? The AI throws around big words, I get a small diplo penalty with them, and they continue to attack the CS under my protection.

IMO either you should force the warmonger to declare war on me and my pledged CS or withdraw altogether. Alternatively, give the protecting player a few bonuses if he chooses to attack the agressor (for instance some free influence, or reduction in warmonger penalties).




Additionally, there is the issue with keeping six units surrounding the city state so that the AI cannot capture it at all. Seems like a bug/ glitch.

Rhys DeAnno said:

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.

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Agree.. Like I said previously, the event with the AI confrontation when they declare war on your pledged CS seems random.. so often you can ignore the aggressor without even suffering the relatively meagre 20 hit

civawesome said:

With the lower Science penalties you could actually profit off of bad cities in this mod.

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I don't care if I could profit from it, it is ugly and in the name of aesthetics it has to be burned to the ground.

Akbarthegreat said:

Alternatively, give the protecting player a few bonuses if he chooses to attack the agressor (for instance some free influence, or reduction in warmonger penalties).

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That's already the case. You get more influence out of units gifts and killing units next to a cs border will give you influence.

Well doesn't require Pledge of protection though. But pledges being broken is a hard problem to solve sadly.

Acken said:

That's already the case. You get more influence out of units gifts and killing units next to a cs border will give you influence.

Well doesn't require Pledge of protection though. But pledges being broken is a hard problem to solve sadly.

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Yeah regarding that, slight error in the text; it says "barbarians" regardless of which civ's units you kill.

Some other things I noticed in my game:
- It's kinda ironic when the leaders who "hate warmongering" sometimes start with honour and attacking others. Not to mention, a couple of times after they invaded me and I beat them off, they seemed to propose a DoF a couple of turns after making peace. Quite fickle.
- The AI doesn't value their great generals too much either.. sometimes when the unit protecting it is injured they do not shift him to another unit
- The AI also tends to settle a lot of cities one tile from the coast. Even though it provides a bit of a defence from late game amphibious invasions, it is not worth the extra food/ gold. Not to mention it looks bad.
- Maybe increase the late game culture yield from city states? While the reduced amount seems realistic for the industrial age and before, late game they become irrelevant.
- A general rant, but is it really necessary for city states (even those at peace with everyone) to move every single one of their units every turn? Slows down the game a bit.

- It's kinda ironic when the leaders who "hate warmongering" sometimes start with honour and attacking others. Not to mention, a couple of times after they invaded me and I beat them off, they seemed to propose a DoF a couple of turns after making peace. Quite fickle.

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I don't personally see the irony: Those that "hate warmongering" are referring only to OTHERS that warmonger, not themselves! It's a common occurrence in history and geopolitics. Peace-loving countries are often like that, since they have convinced themselves that THEY are quite justified in knocking heads when they get around to it.
When I am playing the game, I tend to do it myself.

Honor policy tree is 'justified' for its value in defense.

Akbarthegreat said:

- It's kinda ironic when the leaders who "hate warmongering" sometimes start with honour and attacking others. Not to mention, a couple of times after they invaded me and I beat them off, they seemed to propose a DoF a couple of turns after making peace. Quite fickle.

- The AI also tends to settle a lot of cities one tile from the coast. Even though it provides a bit of a defence from late game amphibious invasions, it is not worth the extra food/ gold. Not to mention it looks bad.

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I've actually friended warmongerer types after wars too. It seems alot easier to do if I started the war though because if they started it they probably hate me for other reasons too. In fact they don't even seem to care very much in this version or the base game even if I took some cities off of them(unless it's the capital).

I haven't played enough lately to say for sure but are you taking into account whether they already have coastal cities somewhere? Idk if Acken changed the AI this way but I always try to avoid having a coastal city too far from another one or my navy has to be split up, which would be much more important in this mod with melee naval ship hit and runs.

Jaybe said:

I don't personally see the irony: Those that "hate warmongering" are referring only to OTHERS that warmonger, not themselves! It's a common occurrence in history and geopolitics. Peace-loving countries are often like that, since they have convinced themselves that THEY are quite justified in knocking heads when they get around to it.
When I am playing the game, I tend to do it myself.

Honor policy tree is 'justified' for its value in defense.

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You make a fair point, but I can't seem to think of any non-recent examples of that.
Again, it is the warmongering penalties that I disagree with.

civawesome said:

I've actually friended warmongerer types after wars too. It seems alot easier to do if I started the war though because if they started it they probably hate me for other reasons too. In fact they don't even seem to care very much in this version or the base game even if I took some cities off of them(unless it's the capital).

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Yeah; often they wont hate you for capturing a settler or a couple of outside cities but theyll get pissed if you take that city belonging to some civ they dont care about thats on the other end of the continent Still think general warmonger penalties should be decreased, and warmonger penalties for attacking their friends/ protected or allied city states should carry much more weightage.

civawesome said:

I haven't played enough lately to say for sure but are you taking into account whether they already have coastal cities somewhere? Idk if Acken changed the AI this way but I always try to avoid having a coastal city too far from another one or my navy has to be split up, which would be much more important in this mod with melee naval ship hit and runs.

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Well they did have quite a few other coastal cities. It does help against destroyers, but a city one tile in is just as vulnerable to battleships as a coastal city.

They are decreased in the mod. By quite a big amount.

Acken said:

They are decreased in the mod. By quite a big amount.

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That's great.. didn't see that in the changelog; didn't even notice it in game (probably because I was liberating too many CS anyway).

What about the penalty for taking the last city of a civ?

Well all cities follow the same formula. Last city as well as the 10th city. It's just that it's a function multiplicative of 1/X where X is the number of cities left. So the last city used to be 1/1 while the 10th is a factor 1/10.

In the mod the factor is 1/(X+2) and also it depends on diplo relations (a combination of yours and your target's)

Ok thanks. That's great.. was just asking because Shaka was down to one crappy city and I was pondering on whether I should kill him

Also how about restricting Nature's Blessing to unimproved forests? Can get quite powerful with the Iroquis (start bias+the longhouse).

Well it's not like the iroquois are reallyan overpowered civ to begin with.

Well fair enough.




Exploit of sorts.



That city



EDIT: An idea was floated some time ago, about shifting resetllement to exploration; what are your views on it?

Akbarthegreat said:

EDIT: An idea was floated some time ago, about shifting resetllement to exploration; what are your views on it?

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That really sounds like a great idea.

Also dear god please tell me you are working on whatever is responsible for horrid city placement like that.

I'm trying an Immortal game and am about halfway through and I noticed the giant Inca on the other continent is in the Atomic Era while I'm in the Industrial Era. He may have beelined quite a bit but Infoaddict shows him with a huge tech lead.

It's very clear that the main goal on your mod is to take as many cities as possible. So is there any reason to play for anything other than a Domination Victory or Domination Victory playstyle and choices then pick up another victory(aka is stuff like the Aesthetics tree useless)?

Btw don't get me wrong I like this mod I'm just a little worried about this possible loss of variety (unless I'm incorrect).

My Byzantium game is basically won with 7 or 8 cities culturally on DemiGod (signature or earlier in thread). Aesthetics is almost mandatory to win culture (ok it's not very useful for the other victories). I think there are also some examples of science victories on Immortal difficulty without conquering the world on the forum.

I don't really understand the problem here. One of the AI is winning because it has become huge... That's similar to how most episodes of the series work: land brings power (with diminishing returns). A runaway AI is a threat to winning. At least that's how I remember high level Civ4. The ability of tiny empires to win in their turtled area is not something very satisfying in my opinion.

Otherwise what is the point of military besides domination ? It's the power by which you take down the winner if you're lagging behind. Culture and science have use for a domination victory so military should be an available tool to help you achieve other goals.
I sincerely disagree that you absolutely must crush everyone's territory before being able to win a game. Especially culture which is an available win while being a bit behind in tech. Well at least that's how I experience the mod. If there is a feel that snowballing civs are absolutely uncontrollable it's an easy task to tone size scalability down. What is true however is the need for a sufficiently big empire (8+) and most of the time this is achieved by grabbing some land. But it's no more a domination victory at this point than reaching 75% literacy for domination is a science victory.

By the way are you even able to beat the incas militarily in that game ?

Granted, continents may be harder because of how it's harder to stop their power growth on the other continent. On the other hand coastal attacks are way easier to deal with.

@Akbarthegreat
Cant see images.
Maybe, exploration feels a bit underwhelming anyway but the biggest issue of it is that it is only half useful if not all your cities are on coast. Maybe a redesign of the tree to give both land and coastal cities a bonus would be a better idea. I don't know, this dichotomy of usefulness make it a difficult tree to make.

Well I think Order's Resettlement would make a lot more sense for Exploration, after all European colonization from the 16th century onward has had a lot bigger impact on world history than whatever Stalin and Mao did within their countries. If there is any period after the early game where rapid expansion with settlers should be encouraged it should be right before Industrialization and Ideologies, not a bit after and even then only when you are communist.

Acken said:

By the way are you even able to beat the incas militarily in that game ?

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Honestly I don't think I could currently beat them if I fought them right now but we're not going to be fighting for a while since they don't even hate me yet. I'm going to tear through my continent and hope that it's enough to either catch up or have what I need to be able to run a strong enough military. Their only option will be Science or to defeat me with their military so we'll see it's only the early 200s atm.

Acken said:

My Byzantium game is basically won with 7 or 8 cities culturally on DemiGod (signature or earlier in thread).

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Around turn 200 I was at 6 strong cities and a tiny extra 1 and it clearly can't compete which is why I'm about to take over my continent (I will succeed I set this up very well). This might be because....

Acken said:

I don't really understand the problem here. One of the AI is winning because it has become huge... That's similar to how most episodes of the series work: land brings power (with diminishing returns).

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Unless you changed the Science cost boost per city exponent since you've began this mod, I think it's increasing returns rather than diminishing in this mod(not sure if you were referring to your mod or not for this). I think each city they take hurts their science less than the last.

Acken said:

Otherwise what is the point of military besides domination ? It's the power by which you take down the winner if you're lagging behind. Culture and science have use for a domination victory so military should be an available tool to help you achieve other goals.

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I understand but for example if I actually manage to take the Inca out there's no reason at all for me to stop there and win another victory except that it takes a while to move all those units. I might as well go Domination at that point there's no way anyone could stop me. So I'm wondering why I shouldn't go with a Domination plan every time for best results.

EDIT: Btw for some reason Austria who was almost as big as they were had a whole lot less Science so I'm wondering what other factors there were here. They hit the Info Era (Telecommunications) at about 220-230 on Immortal.

Acken said:

@Akbarthegreat
Cant see images.
Maybe, exploration feels a bit underwhelming anyway but the biggest issue of it is that it is only half useful if not all your cities are on coast. Maybe a redesign of the tree to give both land and coastal cities a bonus would be a better idea. I don't know, this dichotomy of usefulness make it a difficult tree to make.

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Are you looking at the pictures on your phone? I couldn't see them either.
http://postimg.org/image/mald76ean/
http://postimg.org/image/3wau371zz/

Giving land cities a bonus would go against the feel IMO. Instead maybe you could give some additional to cities founded on another continent.

I would prefer moving resettlement to Exploration as I liked the system in RFC, where cities founded in the medieval era would start at size 2 and have a granary, while cities founed in the industrial era would start at size 4 and have more buildings. Legends of Revolutions had a mid-late game replacement for the settler, called the pioneer, which could defend itself and would found larger cities with basic buildings. This would give a better feel to Exploration as well.

But the problem with this would again be its highly situational nature. It would usually be next to useless in continents/pangea maps but would be a great help on a Terra map.

Imp. Knoedel said:

Well I think Order's Resettlement would make a lot more sense for Exploration, after all European colonization from the 16th century onward has had a lot bigger impact on world history than whatever Stalin and Mao did within their countries. If there is any period after the early game where rapid expansion with settlers should be encouraged it should be right before Industrialization and Ideologies, not a bit after and even then only when you are communist.

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Good point, but like I said, I don't see it making much of a difference on continents/ pangea (which seem to be the most played maps).