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

Grendeldef said:

Aah, ok. I didn't have the patience to ask everyone on every turn to DoW someone but other than this very cheap bribe the mechanic seems to work much like unmodded - some work, most don't.

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The real difference is that before the AI used to not care at all about its relation with the asking player. So if an AI planed to kill you, it would not matter for the bribe and it was easy to send it away.

Now it adds additional modifiers for its relations with you and if it wants to kill you the cost is doubled (but this can also be reduced if it also hates the other guy).

I've currently made modifiers multiplicative rather than additive so that additional modifiers that goes in the same direction have diminishing returns.

civawesome said:

It looks like in all later melee vs range comparisons throughout all eras including info (mechanized vs bazooka) the difference between their combat strengths is about 2x, while sword vs composites is almost 3x. I think melee combat advantages get increasing returns so this is huge. Melee vs ranged strengths seem to differ a little but the sword vs composite's almost the highest at 1.6x, the rest are 1.25-1.45x. It looks like the composite could actually use a buff to 8/11, and the regular archer might be better at 6 ranged strength. I know they don't have to be the same but with what I saw him do with the other units it looks like that's the plan.

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Keeping the relation roughly the same seems like the good target.

Acken said:

The real difference is that before the AI used to not care at all about its relation with the asking player. So if an AI planed to kill you, it would not matter for the bribe and it was easy to send it away.

Now it adds additional modifiers for its relations with you and if it wants to kill you the cost is doubled (but this can also be reduced if it also hates the other guy).

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That seems reasonable & likely. So far the successful bribes have so few anyway that it's probably too early to make much if any conclusions.

Acken said:

I've currently made modifiers multiplicative rather than additive so that additional modifiers that goes in the same direction have diminishing returns.

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That seems like a good change - I have a long standing hate towards buffed units which act like they were from few eras in the future.

I continued my Harun adventure to ~T140 whithout anything drastic but few observations:

- somehow Suleiman & Attila are more keen on archer line units than I'm used to and vice versa the lack of HAs & Janissaries is noticeable which is rather odd
- AI isn't shy on declaring & taking CSs
- either I'm still disliked for totally irrational reasons or, quite possibly, I haven't properly adjusted myself to the changes. AIs are quite willing to change their mind over night without any apparent reason but they rarely pay full price for anything so they probably are overall not so friendly
- taking two capitals after liberating two CSs didn't trigger a single denouncement though I started both wars and took few other cities - I think this actually is fine
- I'm teching extremely slowly due to taking pretty much everything with defensive value as soon as possible which I like - beelining seems more risky now
- early build orders included much more units than usually - vulnerable frontline cities are scary places
- AI units are much harder to kill which is fine but I still feel that their cities are too weak against archer line units including CAs which are still excellent but nowhere near as good as they were so Harun is rightfully so slightly nerfed
- Liberty seems viable though slow again without the need of stealing workers
- Honor can be filled in a reasonable time frame which is very welcomed


If/when I get to Industrial and so on I hopefully have something to say about beaker production as the changes seem big ones. The AI doesn't seem to be that fast either but almost all of their cities, especially capitals are small(ish). Monte's cap is 10 pop @135 and he is the tech lead and hardly a pushover in any other category.

civawesome said:

My religion is:
Founder: Tithe
Followers: 2 happiness from temples in cities above 5 pop (pretty sure this counts as city happiness but I had 16 from religeous before the cities were at 5 and plus I only have 6 cities anyway)
and 2 culture from temples and opera houses
Enhancer: Religion spreads 30% further

My guess is that my religion somehow has another of the happiness founders or maybe even both. It's in 26 cities so maybe those two could give that much. If you want I can send the save(s) but I don't know how to post them.

Also Siam doesn't seem to get its bonus on culture from city states anymore, maybe because you changed the yield. EDIT: They're not getting any from maritime either, maybe the whole civ's bonus broke somehow.

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Please send your save. The siam bug looks very strange. Can't see why. Just go to advanced options and attach a file to a post of yours.

civawesome said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but for at least the first half of the game isn't tall richer than wide? If you do this it might give tall the potentially to have the greatest military which doesn't make sense. Although if you gave wide some sort of gold bonuses, if they would actually need it, that could fix the problem. By tall and wide I'm referring to self made cities in both cases. I know that wide ones made by conquest are generally better at everything since they have even more land.

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What do you mean ? Wider empires still have more production for more units.

Grendeldef said:

- somehow Suleiman & Attila are more keen on archer line units than I'm used to and vice versa the lack of HAs & Janissaries is noticeable which is rather odd
- AI isn't shy on declaring & taking CSs
- either I'm still disliked for totally irrational reasons or, quite possibly, I haven't properly adjusted myself to the changes. AIs are quite willing to change their mind over night without any apparent reason but they rarely pay full price for anything so they probably are overall not so friendly
- taking two capitals after liberating two CSs didn't trigger a single denouncement though I started both wars and took few other cities - I think this actually is fine
- I'm teching extremely slowly due to taking pretty much everything with defensive value as soon as possible which I like - beelining seems more risky now
- early build orders included much more units than usually - vulnerable frontline cities are scary places
- AI units are much harder to kill which is fine but I still feel that their cities are too weak against archer line units including CAs which are still excellent but nowhere near as good as they were so Harun is rightfully so slightly nerfed
- Liberty seems viable though slow again without the need of stealing workers
- Honor can be filled in a reasonable time frame which is very welcomed

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-I'll put them in a game to see if it's abnormal. Maybe it's just RNG from your game.
-The AI has a current: allied or destroyed behavior with city states. Certainly helps warmongers, may diminish their agression when not going for domination.
-Liberating diminish warmonger score (as in the base game). Declaring war doesn't do much warmonger score.
-CA being good against city is a non issue. In general I'm fine with OP UUs. But tell me if you still manage to roll over cities with mostly normal ranged units.

Acken said:

Maybe it's just RNG from your game.

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I'm willing to put quite a lot on the tap of RNG - the # samples is just too low atm

Acken said:

-CA being good against city is a non issue. In general I'm fine with OP UUs. But tell me if you still manage to roll over cities with mostly normal ranged units.

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Quite so but I welcome the slight nerf - still my favourite unit.

The latter part may actually be harder to test as I think it's highly dependable on the map. The changes in melee units makes getting an XBow in a shooting position much harder so the cities might be as safe as before though slightly different reason so the changes might actually favor civs with mobile ranged units over others.
In my current game Istanbul for example was in a location that it was untouchable before Arties apart from CAs/Keshiks as trying to kill the defenders would've been suicidal.
Cities easily attackable from several 2nd tiles will fall quickly and ping pong cities are more now even with higher post-capture HP. Two-edged sword really and perhaps a small step back to vanilla where settling on flatlands was a no-no.

Looking at units I feel the balance of power is actually maintained. There are more melee than ranged units so it's not always the same ratio but if we view it as:
Archer 7/4 vs Warrior 8
CB 10/6 vs Spearmen 12
CB 10/6 vs Swords 16
XB 17/11 vs Longswords 23
XB 17/11 vs Muskets 27

Archer is 1.14 2 ratios, CB is 1.2 2 ratios and 1.6 2.67, XB is 1.35 2.09 and 1.58 2.45. Comparatively the CB is worse against a swords than a XB against a musket and better against a spear than the XB is against a Longsword.

But I think there may be a point in construction being too pricey if you want to use it comparatively to Bronze Working or Iron Working. So I'm thinking about removing the Wheel prerequisite for Construction.

Acken said:

What do you mean ? Wider empires still have more production for more units.

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If that's enough to be worth it. Tbh I can't really say for certain I'm not a deity player yet.

Btw I didn't watch your religious game but if you didn't manage to spread much maybe it happened to you too? 3 happiness or so could be easily overlooked. Though maybe Siam's the problem since they aren't getting their city state bonuses. I have many more saves if you need those for more perspective. Note that I'm not using the Piety tree, and got my Great Prophet from the Liberty finisher. Also like I said in the last post I made all 5 of my settled cities get the religion at once by keeping them at 1 pop I don't know if that somehow breaks something.

civawesome said:

If that's enough to be worth it. Tbh I can't really say for certain I'm not a deity player yet.

Btw I didn't watch your religious game but if you didn't manage to spread much maybe it happened to you too? 3 happiness or so could be easily overlooked. Though maybe Siam's the problem since they aren't getting their city state bonuses. I have many more saves if you need those for more perspective. Note that I'm not using the Piety tree, and got my Great Prophet from the Liberty finisher. Also like I said in the last post I made all 5 of my settled cities get the religion at once by keeping them at 1 pop I don't know if that somehow breaks something.

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OHHH !! Guys using Tithe may have had an easier game than expected !

Ok found the typo:

UPDATE Beliefs SET HappinessPerXPeacefulForeignFollowers=6 WHERE Type='BELIEF_TITHE';



Basically Tithe was giving the effects of Peace Loving (1 happy for 6 foreign citizens)
now to find the problem with Siam will edit when I find it.

Edit: Ok found it, at some point I had added a way to make policies increase the value of city states but instead of adding it to the same bonus from an UA it is replacing the value (by 0 in this case).

Both bugs will be fixed shortly in the experimental directory (+ a couple new changes).

Edit: Done, your save should fixed itself after spending a turn.

Acken said:

Edit: Done, your save should fixed itself after spending a turn.

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Unfortunately I didn't know about the experimental version when I started. I'll just play as if I don't have it, I'll still get a bunch of golden ages but I also don't have Siams bonuses so it probably balances out enough to enjoy at least.
Also it's pretty surprising how I can get 36 happiness like this. Maybe tithe isn't so awesome after all if you actually manage to spread the religion. Granted I used somewhat of an exploit to do it (though idk if it's worth the turns of science wasted or not). Btw I only have 24 faith per turn and I have over 30 cities with this religion. Can piety outdo this? Even though piety gets the free prophet it won't have as many cities as liberty does which was the main thing that spread this so hard.

6 cities is not that hard to achieve with Piety so yes. Also like shown in the lets play, getting the cheaper great prophet cost on top of mandate of heaven reduces great prophet cost by almost 50%.

If you want to use the experimental version you will have to install it yourself. If you preffer to wait for the official update because you use the workshop version for example, then that is fine, the mod will be updated this friday.

@Grendeldef

What I meant about realism was that when a city is unguarded or uncontested, it's gonna be really easy to take. Alexander found this in many places, as did the U.S. army in 1991 in their 100 hour war.


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Oh, I didn't doubt that It's just that for me a city here represents a number of citizens of various professions that are willing & able to defend their permanent preference of location against some ragtag mob hence taking anything that qualifies as a city shouldn't be a total walkover for ancient units.
Having a garrisoned unit there should increase the quite a lot compared to a military-free city. Once again it's a matter of taste within the game.

---
I also managed to put few more turns to my Harun game and quickly remembered what & why I hate few concepts in the game. Nothing major regarding the mod but when Alex backstabbed me few turns before our RA when came by with 8 Gatlings, 1 Rifle & few Galleases which seem to indicate what I noticed earlier that AI is extremely keen on archer line for some reason. He also had almost a monopoly of horses but still waged war without mounted units.
Also a 1st game where a Holy City isn't a capital and more over cities, including Holy ones switch religions like I switch socks.

Hmm I have changed the Range flavor of the AI at some point and I'm no longer seeing too much range units. Maybe you haven't updated since.

On a side note the official 2.1 will be uploaded Friday for those that preffer to wait for final versions or use the workshop.

I think I'm using version I downloaded on Monday.

Another curious thing I noticed which might have not anything to do with the mod but the frequency of ghost units seem to have increased drastically since I last played few months ago. Didn't take too much notice of this while playing the DCL 38 which in my standards was a very short game but with current one I've taken a habit of switching to strategic view & back every other turn to reveal them and to avoid totally unnecessary deaths.

I don't know how this bug appears to begin with. I assume you mean the units without their icons.
Unlikely to be a consequence of the mod though. Didn't notice anything strange on that part.

Btw, does the change in the AI include them never automatically peace out from a changed CS alliances? It seems in my games in the mod half or more of the CS seems to be nommed by the AIs all the time. And they're all my allies.

No they should make peace with CS. But they also have a higher tendencies to eat CS they aren't allied with in general. Especially warmongers.

Acken said:

No they should make peace with CS. But they also have a higher tendencies to eat CS they aren't allied with in general. Especially warmongers.

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I found it really easy to keep CS alliances and I'm wondering if the double influence loss with ALL city states that you get when you attack city states more than once might be holding them back now. At least this seemed to happen to me in the unmodded game.

Not really, it's just me bumping up their agressiveness toward CSs they don't like. The biggest bump is for warmongers (an AI that is going for a domination victory).
I think it makes sense for them to eat city states. Easy additional cities and it's thematic.

However right now Diplomatic Victory can sometimes be impossible. A good change from it being stupidly easy. I've had simulated games where no CS remained at the end due to warmongers winning the game. Right now the only way to get a DiploV is to Liberate and protect stuff.

I will have to think how to maybe maintain a better balance of CSes.

I did notice the whole protect and liberate thing too but I was actually saying the AI might be harming themselves by doing it and disabling any possible cs alliance with the extra influence lost per turn.

Also I'm getting an error as shown in the attachment. I'm running your experimental version, saved a game and tried loading and it keeps doing this. However I'm also running infoaddict, are they incompatible?

This problem is usually due to either:
-Trying to load a game of a different version but all v2+ versions should currently be compatible.
-Me having made an error in the load/save logic... but I can't remember me changing any of it lately.

Infoaddict is not supposed to do that either.

Can't really see why right now. Try without Infoaddict, try to make a new game, save it then load it.