K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

Cruel · Jul 19, 2013

Marguerite Ming said:
I found this argument almost persuasive, until two words came to me: trade enclave. Countries that trade heavily import their people into their local business offices. This adds a small percentage of residents who are foreign nationals. The more trade, the more immigrants.

I agree with you Marguerite

Manujuanel said:
Yes, I was talking about F11. I know that maybe few people use this function, but I like it, so thanks for supporting my idea.

Yes, I'm supporting too.

Marguerite Ming said:
No, it isn't better than no tests at all. You are committing a fallacy known as confirmation bias. It is a serious problem that allows you to take as fact a hypothesis that may be erroneous, and it prevents you from ever discovering your error. So, bad testing is worse than no testing at all. With no testing at all, at least you know that you may be incorrect. Accepting bad testing makes that impossible.

Your statement is only partially true. You need to consider the type of research that is being done. The correct method for each case has several peculiarities. Often when a researcher is still in an early stage of their research is done qualitative research to design how it will further research. These cases have a better idea of what is happening and only then it is possible to validate. In this case is not a bad testing, just a early qualitative testing.

karadoc · Jul 19, 2013

Marguerite Ming said:
Why do you want to nerf it at all? You haven't provided any legitimate reason why it *needs* to be nerfed, you just seem to be determined to do it.

If it ain't broke, don't *fix* it.

I usually wouldn't bother relying to this, since you're talking about something that has already been reverted anyway. I just want to say that I hate the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Wanting to improve something that isn't 'broken' should be respected. In fact, that's generally what people try to do every day in all aspects of their life. And it's the whole point of this mod. Aside from some obvious bugs, Civ4 BtS isn't 'broken'. It works as it was meant to. But with K-Mod I try to improve the game. I try to 'fix' parts of the AI and game balance, not because they were 'broken', but because I think they can be better. Obviously I'm not right about everything all the time, but I think it's fair that I can change something when I think it should be changed. And I think it's absurd to suggest that people shouldn't even try to improve anything that "ain't broke".

Marguerite Ming said:
No, it isn't better than no tests at all. You are committing a fallacy known as confirmation bias. It is a serious problem that allows you to take as fact a hypothesis that may be erroneous, and it prevents you from ever discovering your error. So, bad testing is worse than no testing at all. With no testing at all, at least you know that you may be incorrect. Accepting bad testing makes that impossible.

Following on from what I've just said, I think you're being very rude about this. You're accusing me of confirmation bias, without any reasoning or explanation. I did tests. I did the work to carry out real experiments with real data in a controlled manner. I did not cherry-pick the data, and I did not skew the results, and I reported what I found with the caveat that the data-set was only small. And yet you accuse me of confirmation bias and of obfuscating the truth through my 'bad testing'. You say that what I did was worse than doing nothing at all. I don't appreciate you dredging up discussions that are no longer relevant only to say nasty things to me.

--

Manujuanel said:
Hello Kararadoc, I would like to make a request. I really like that trade routes spread culture in this mod, however it has an annoying side-effect. I don't know if someone has noticed it, but when you change to the global view of the world and check the "show culture" button the world becomes a rainbow chessboard. Culture is so spread that every piece of land has culture form lots of civilizations, this really makes impossible to get an approximate idea of how every civilization is going with culture.

Could you change it so that culture is only shown on the global view when a square of land has something like ~5% of culture from a certain civilization. Only something to avoid the chessboard effect without changing the wonderful new culture system.

You're right. I hadn't noticed that because I never zoom out that far. (Or if I had noticed it, I've forgotten about it.) If I can find the parts of the code that are responsible for handling those colours, I'll definitely change it. (Although I think I'll probably use ~25% rather than 5%, otherwise I think it would still often be checkered.)

Manujuanel said:
Also, I would like to repeat that there's a bug when you declare war on a civilization by dragging your units into its territory. The "Do you want war?" screen always appears twice.

Are you sure? I thought I fixed that already in the most recent version.

alanthreonus said:
Is the SDI working correctly? I just launched a few dozen ICBMs at Sitting Bull, and only about four actually hit. Far less than 25%.

I haven't changed anything related to that, and the code appears to be correct to me. You probably were just unlucky.

Here's the relevant code:

Code:

	iBestInterception = 0;
	eBestTeam = NO_TEAM;

	for (iI = 0; iI < MAX_TEAMS; iI++)
	{
		if (abTeamsAffected[iI])
		{
			if (GET_TEAM((TeamTypes)iI).getNukeInterception() > iBestInterception)
			{
				iBestInterception = GET_TEAM((TeamTypes)iI).getNukeInterception();
				eBestTeam = ((TeamTypes)iI);
			}
		}
	}

	iBestInterception *= (100 - m_pUnitInfo->getEvasionProbability());
	iBestInterception /= 100;

	setReconPlot(pPlot);

	if (GC.getGameINLINE().getSorenRandNum(100, "Nuke") < iBestInterception)

lunfa_reo said:
This reminds me of something that actually troubles me while playing K-Mod: I can't see the amount of espionage points I cumulatively spent on a rival (and vice-versa) when I hover the rival's entry in the scoreboard (I only see the icon that tells me I have more points spent on it than it has on me, but I don't see the actual amounts). That makes it really difficult for me to estimate and decide the proportion of espionage I would spend from then on for that particular civ to pursue a specific strategy or just to enhance my esp defense against it.

It troubles me so much that I've been turning espionage off (which sucks) while playing K-Mod.

So Karadoc, did you remove this feature? Because I looked everywhere (BUG options and all) for a switch to re-enable it but couldn't find such a switch anywhere.
(Maybe it's in an obvious place I'm overlooking, but I've really looked hard)

I can live without the espionage screen telling me exactly how much points each AI spent on me the last turn (I think that's what you were talking about in the post I quoted from you), but without the actual amounts in the scoreboard hover...

I did remove that... I don't remember exactly why right now though. Probably part of the reason was that the way the numbers were displayed previously were somewhat cryptic (there was no way of knowing whether it was your espionage / their espionage, or the other way around other than by testing it and memorizing it), and rather than trying to make it clearer I probably just decided that the AI's espionage spending should be secret anyway. I wouldn't have thought it would be a big deal. Do you really think it's so bad that you have to turn off espionage completely? Can't you just estimate how much espionage weight you should use based how much espionage it takes to see the AI's research and stuff like that?

lunfa_reo · Jul 20, 2013

Hey Karadoc, thanks for your reply!

karadoc said:
I did remove that... I don't remember exactly why right now though. Probably part of the reason was that the way the numbers were displayed previously were somewhat cryptic (there was no way of knowing whether it was your espionage / their espionage, or the other way around other than by testing it and memorizing it)

Yeah it always happen to me too. But I find out quickly after checking whether the espionage icon (showing I have an advantage in esp points against that civ) is present for that civ in the scoreboard.

karadoc said:
and rather than trying to make it clearer I probably just decided that the AI's espionage spending should be secret anyway.

OK, that's an interesting point.

karadoc said:
I wouldn't have thought it would be a big deal. Do you really think it's so bad that you have to turn off espionage completely? Can't you just estimate how much espionage weight you should use based how much espionage it takes to see the AI's research and stuff like that?

I find it pretty bad, actually. For me at least. I'll tell you why:

(the following is a description of how I usually play with espionage, I could be doing things wrong, but I don't know a better or more efficient way)

In a recent non K-Mod game I found myself in the typical situation there are two runaway civs you need to do something about beginning at that exact moment to have any chance of comeback and winning the game. One of them was financial Pacal going for cultural (doing pretty well) and the other one was Zara going for space.

My decision was to go after Communism for State Property, build a sizable and strong military and take them down (a serious endeavor).
Since I was behind in tech and they have already gained momentum research-wise relative to me, I decided co complement this strategy by adopting a espionage economy (which has a good synergy with Communism which unlocks Intelligence Agencies). I even avoided Economics to prevent my castles from becoming obsolete (I felt I needed every bit of espionage I could get, and turns out I was right).

It worked like a charm. By knowing the amounts of espionage I had relative to those two civs plus how much I made each turn I was able to manage and direct precise amount of esp points to the right civ at the right time, i.e. which one had the tech I wanted next. And perhaps more importantly, which civ would be cheaper to steal the tech from!
The same with the Great Spies I got and used on infiltration missions.
Bear in mind as you advance down the tech tree techs become more expensive while infiltration missions yields are constant, so as time passed it became increasingly important for me to know the amounts of esp points I had relative to each civ (and vice-versa) to decide who I would infiltrate for the mission to be worth it.

All of this while keeping an eye on the other civs who were fluctuating their esp points against me, so I was able to make adjustments of esp points distribution in order to maintain my esp defense against those others too.

All in all I was successful in this undertaking and it was very rewarding for me seeing I was able to pull it out.

Could I have done it without knowing the exact amounts? Maybe. But I'm sure it would have been far more troublesome and tiring, to the point I probably would have given up that game and therefore miss the fun and the final satisfaction.

You're right one can estimate the esp point spending by checking whether the tech the AI is researching is visible and the numbers for each AI city in the espionage screen (if they are still there in K-Mod, I just don't remember).
But it would require considerable extra effort that could otherwise be saved for the player, and that's the goal of BUG, which most civvers love and you put most of its features in your mod (which I think is great).

Log entries like "X civ will trade Y resource" and its variants, the worst enemy of each one and so on are things the player can see if he/she checks the diplo screens for each civ every turn, but that's an overhead effort for the player. BUG removes much of that by providing the player with information he/she can still find out "manually", but it gives it to you at a glance. And I think all repetitive and tiresome actions that can be spared from the player so he/she can focus on the actual game/strategy/fun is a great thing.

That's why I choose the crappy thing of turning esp off instead of having to do all that during many turns.

OTOH I get your point that AI esp point spending should be secret. But maybe something less radical than removing the amounts from the scoreboard hover? Like removing the amount each AI spent on the player last turn from the esp screen (even I think that's too much

) or making the esp points scoreboard hover an option that can be turned on/off?

What do you think?

Anyway as I said before, I love your mod, the AI keeps me on my toes and the challenge lasts much longer, making my civ experience more enjoyable!

Manujuanel · Jul 21, 2013

karadoc said:
Are you sure? I thought I fixed that already in the most recent version.

Sorry Karadoc, it was my fault. I didn't notice there was a new version (1.41). Well, I have tried it and the bug is gone, thanks.

Sidder · Jul 22, 2013

Well its all the small things of the UI I guess as atm only way to determine how much turns i got left on counterespionage is to make a note myself remembering me its about to run out as to where it was jsut displayed on BUG/BULL

Or the highlighting of all available missions by colour(hell I dont use much missions besides counter/revolt)

Anyhow same thing in city screen where its missing alot of the fluffy hoover highlights(guess thats all BULL mod too)

Bar that err ye deffo better AI on the fighting department

But maybe just a tad overly aggresive lol, im stuck already 300 year in war cant get peace, nor can I get close to his powerlevel(just in case thats maybe when he might negotiate) has double my cities and 3 vassals

So basicly in that game im just hanging on I got a small tech lead but thats fading since I had to whip/draft a lot to stay close to em

Then odd part happend, they took 3 cities but they left it as good as undefended heck the SoD I didnt even fend off just moved back into the FoW, which left me to just take it quite easy back .. but still at war so far and they keep sending in stacks

Im almost feeling like what noto descriped in some post they units they push out is just :crazyeye:

even his smaller vassals are having np amassing :whipped:

just a couple thoughts and opinions I had and wanted to share

Marguerite Ming · Jul 22, 2013

karadoc said:
I usually wouldn't bother relying to this, since you're talking about something that has already been reverted anyway. I just want to say that I hate the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Wanting to improve something that isn't 'broken' should be respected. In fact, that's generally what people try to do every day in all aspects of their life. And it's the whole point of this mod. Aside from some obvious bugs, Civ4 BtS isn't 'broken'. It works as it was meant to. But with K-Mod I try to improve the game. I try to 'fix' parts of the AI and game balance, not because they were 'broken', but because I think they can be better. Obviously I'm not right about everything all the time, but I think it's fair that I can change something when I think it should be changed. And I think it's absurd to suggest that people shouldn't even try to improve anything that "ain't broke".

Whoa whoa whoa, sorry if my tone came off harsh, it certainly wasn't meant to be.

It seems to me that much of the behavior in the game that you have fixed (thanks for that) has been bugs. I doubt the designers intended for the AI to build workers just to delete them, for example.

I read quite a bit of the discussion on your nerf to representation, and your responses to it, and it seemed to me that you were emotionally invested in your change. When that happens, in general people's judgement can be shifted.

Following on from what I've just said, I think you're being very rude about this. You're accusing me of confirmation bias, without any reasoning or explanation. I did tests. I did the work to carry out real experiments with real data in a controlled manner. I did not cherry-pick the data, and I did not skew the results, and I reported what I found with the caveat that the data-set was only small. And yet you accuse me of confirmation bias and of obfuscating the truth through my 'bad testing'. You say that what I did was worse than doing nothing at all. I don't appreciate you dredging up discussions that are no longer relevant only to say nasty things to me.

All I was trying to say was your opinion was that it needed to be nerfed, you ran a few tests and then presented the data as evidence that you were correct. Your goal was to extend the late game, but most of the games you presented as evidence were games that ended before the late game was even entered. Also, your change did nothing to slow teching for cottage economies, and by your own admission not many of the AIs were even using representation. So, the evidence didn't actually prove that you were correct, and most of it wasn't particularly relevant. Yet you presented it as evidence anyway. Yes, you did acknowledge that it was a small data set, but you still considered it to be evidence.

So yes, I do think your judgement was clouded in the matter.

I did not accuse you of cherry-picking the results, or skewing the data. Both of those things would be dishonest, and you are anything but. In fact, you seem to be quite accomplished, and if you aren't a professional software designer, then you certainly ought to be. The fact that the makers of civ5 didn't hire you on the spot is beyond stupid on their part.

On another note, I tried to load your mod last night (I was playing a marathon game which took me weeks, so this is my first real look at your work) but there seems to be a problem of some sort. I've been playing vanilla, so I'm not experienced with loading mods, so maybe I'm doing something wrong, I don't know. Here are the exact steps I took:

1) I'm running windows XP service pack 3, athlon64 dual core with 3+ gigs of ram, onboard video, geforce 6150 chipset.

2) I downloaded the zip file into the BtS mods folder, and unpacked it there. It created a directory, k_mod_v_41.

3) I start the game, go to Advanced, Load a Mod, and k_mod_v_41 shows up in the list. I pick the radio button, and hit OK at the bottom right.

4) the game seems to load it, and k_mod_v_41 shows up in the upper right corner in a dark band above the regular game screen. I then created a game, and entered world.

5) But inside the game I can't find any new controls. There are no new tabs in the financial advisor (no tabs at all, actually). There is no button on the main screen for BUG mod. The game looks, and behaves, as it always has, as best I can tell.

6) I went into the log directory and checked the dates on the log files (there were 4 files, one was empty) and they were from the game I just started. I looked in them, and saw nothing that looked like an error message.

So, Am I doing something wrong? Am I not looking in the right place? What should I do?

EDIT: I looked in the k_mod_v_41 folder, and the layout isn't quite like inside the other mods. There is a folder, K-Mod, which then contains the mod assets. Do I need to move that up one level, so it is directly in the Mod folder?

The K-Mod folder contains K-Mod.ini, but the folder above that also has an ini file. So if I move K-Mod up a level, what do I do with the k_mod_v1_41.ini file?

These probably seem like silly questions, but I have no experience loading mods, and I didn't get exactly what the instructions said I would.

EDIT2: Okay, I moved the K-Mod folder up a level, and now it works. But, why the multiple ini files?

noto2 · Jul 24, 2013

Why are you talking about the representation nerf?? I've been playing Kmod for probably 2 years now and that was before even my time.

Karadoc - I have been discussing collateral damage with some other players, such as 6K man and tachywaxon, and have been thinking about it. Right now I find the combat system in Civ4 to be strange and also somewhat boring due to the overwhelming power of siege weapons. This makes battles mostly about who can strike with collateral first, and having enough collateral in the first place. Even a rifle on rifle battle can be decided by one player having a dozen catapults to slam into the opposing stack first.

But, going further with this point- it also effects the metagame. I've also been talking with players like TMIT and discussing how warfare is not balanced to the rest of the game. In Civ, almost everything is decided by war. Even in games where I'm producing a lot of culture, I inevitably get attacked and then I end up winning or losing the game via warfare anyway. It's extremely rare to win a game by space or culture when I couldn't have won it by war, and this is even more true in Kmod. The problem is that, in Civ, it's just far too easy to conquer cities.

So I read some suggested changes from other players and it dawned on me - what would the game look like without siege weaponry at all? What if siege just bombarded defences? In that case, it would be difficult to just swallow up whole empires. Wars would be about taking a city or two, pillaging tiles, sueing for peace.... then perhaps doing it again a century or two later. It would be more historical and also more interesting for gameplay, I think. Without collateral damage, units would actually matter again. The aggressive trait would matter, you couldn't just throw a bunch of catapults at my stack to negate my higher promotions. Cities would be much more difficult to take - but not impossible - the city raider promotion would be more lucrative.

Land would change hands less easily and that would make culture, diplomacy, and building more important. I think this would be a good change. Why, is it because I'm a builder? No, I'm both - some games I just war all game long, some games I try to be a builder, but let's be honest - in Civ, the military is really all that matters. You can win via culture if you want to be cute, but the only way you can pull that off is by having a superior economy and probably military anyway. In the base game you could pull off diplo and culture wins without a military due to the broken diplomacy, you can't do that in Kmod. I don't want stupid base game diplomacy where the AI doesn't play to win, I like Kmod diplomacy, but one side effect is that it makes the military matter even more and everything else even less.

So, I'm not suggesting removing collateral damage completely, that was just a brainstorming exercise I did. But I do think the game could be far more interesting if collateral damage were significantly nerfed. I think siege weapons should be more expensive and do far less collateral damage. Also, and this is not my idea, I think siege weapons should have 100% withdraw so that they just hit the enemy stack, do some damage, and back off, instead of being suicide siege. The damage they do would be drastically reduced compared to now. Actually, catapults and trebs especially should do extremely little collateral damage - they should mostly be for bombarding defences.

I really think it would make the game much more interesting. War wouldn't be a simple matter of just steamrolling a neighbour and taking all their land in the blink of an eye. You'd need a tremendous military advantage to do that. War would be more about fighting a limited war with specific goals - perhaps trying to take a city or two, or pillaging the crap out of your neighbour's land to slow them down and/or suing them for peace - getting techs/gold/resources from them.

Also, keep in mind that under this system it would still be just as easy to conquer cities in the very early game, like with horse archers and prats and whatnot, so that stage of early conquest would still be possible.

Charles555nc · Jul 24, 2013

I think Karadoc already nerfed collaterol damage and has buffed the first strike upgrade to include collaterol damage reduction as well.

I might be in favor of a one power reduction for cannons and artillery. But pros can comment better than me...

On the whole defense is pretty strong when compared to offense at certain points in the game.

noto2 · Jul 24, 2013

I wouldn't say defence is strong at all. The defender does get the advantage of striking first due to being able to use his roads, so with equal army quantity/quality the defender would win, provided the attacker doesn't manage to get his troops in a forest or something. It's super lame, though, that your medieval stack wins against another medieval stack because you were able to throw 8 catapults at it first. Oh look, my pikes are killing your macemen because they got super tired from smashing my catapults that they can't lift their maces anymore!

Defending cities is basically impossible... and I'm fairly sure that Firaxis did not intend it to be so easy to obliterate cities. Collateral in this game is ridiculously strong. If you read the articles describing the game when Civ 4 came out they talked about collateral as if it were supposed to stop people from using stacks. Apparently they wanted the game to look more like 1UPT and thought collateral would do that. As we all know now, that didn't work out at all. It just seems like really bad design to me... almost as bad as Civ 5's combat

Charles555nc · Jul 24, 2013

I guess you missed the rest of my message, where Karadoc has already helped the issue you are referring to.

On another note,

Anyone else would like 2 or 3 flat beakers on monasteries instead of the 10% beaker boost? And maybe a ~10% production discount for missionaries?

noto2 · Jul 24, 2013

The changes to the drill promotion line were good, imo, but Karadoc has not seriously nerfed collateral damage.

Charles555nc · Jul 25, 2013

Anyone else think that the aqueduct is just a bad version of a harbor or a grocer?

Maybe after building an aqueduct and a colosseum should allow you to make a 2nd engineer specialist (the first being from the forge)?

lunfa_reo · Jul 25, 2013

Charles555nc said:
Anyone else think that the aqueduct is just a bad version of a harbor or a grocer?

Maybe after building an aqueduct and a colosseum should allow you to make a 2nd engineer specialist (the first being from the forge)?

Currently it's hard to get a Great Engineer during the first half of the game. I think it's intended to be that way, otherwise players would use GEs to rush early wonders that can provide a really big advantage when built early enough, as opposed to later wonders which are cool but don't impact the game that much during, say, the Renaissance and forth.

So IMO it's good as it is: hard to get GEs early on.

Regarding siege and collateral, I think collateral was introduced to counter SoDs, which is a good thing. However I agree using siege as kamikaze units is unrealistic and a flaw. Right, you need to soften your enemy before you go in for the kill, but that is achieved by bombardment IRL.
So siege could be used for ranged bombardment exclusively, it could be given the limitation "can only defend" and therefore be used like actual artillery weapons, as they are supposed to be.
This way they can still bombard city defenses and counter SoDs without the silly suicide action.

noto2 · Jul 25, 2013

Yes they were intended to counter stacks but everyone uses stacks anyway so it really is a broken system. No one plays Civ 4 as if it were Civ 5 - spreading their army out over many tiles. You make a stack and if your army is really enormous maybe you make two stacks. So the whole anti stack thing is really pointless unless you do something that actually gets rid of stacks, as they did in Civ 5, and I think they did it very poorly. Completely changing the combat system is probably beyond the scope of this mod, so I would just propose a balance tweak. I'd like to see collateral damage nerfed significantly and I'd like the cost of siege weapons to go up, however, to compensate, I think siege should have a high withdraw chance, possibly very high, so that it rarely dies when attacking. As I said in the previous post - not only would it make combat more interesting but it should improve the meta game as well, by making non-military game aspects actually matter. Non military victory conditions would become more than just a novelty.

karadoc · Jul 25, 2013

I'm pretty sure Charles555nc is referring to the reduction in the max-collateral units of some siege weapons rather than the Drill changes. That was a direct nerf to siege from quite awhile back.

I'm not convinced that nerfing siege units would actually reduce the importance of military. I think players would build different units, but not fewer units.

Winning a war would still have the big advantages that it currently has, and without the collateral damage from siege units, wars would be essentially about who has the most units - which I think is a bad thing as it would increase the snowball effect for big civs. (If you can't wipe out a big stack with collateral damage, then what can you do?)

I think it's important that there be some kind of mechanism for using a small army to defeat a larger army - and collateral damage is that mechanism.

I do think the way collateral damage units work in Civ4 is quite bizarre (kamikaze catapults?). But I don't intend to make significant changes to it. For better or for worse, suicidal siege units with collateral damage play a core role in the current combat system.

You've claimed that everyone puts their army into one stack in Civ4. Well, I don't think you're right about that - but regardless, I don't see how nerfing siege units would make it advantageous to spread armies out anyway.

Manujuanel · Jul 25, 2013

noto2 said:
Yes they were intended to counter stacks but everyone uses stacks anyway so it really is a broken system. No one plays Civ 4 as if it were Civ 5 - spreading their army out over many tiles. You make a stack and if your army is really enormous maybe you make two stacks. So the whole anti stack thing is really pointless unless you do something that actually gets rid of stacks, as they did in Civ 5, and I think they did it very poorly. Completely changing the combat system is probably beyond the scope of this mod, so I would just propose a balance tweak. I'd like to see collateral damage nerfed significantly and I'd like the cost of siege weapons to go up, however, to compensate, I think siege should have a high withdraw chance, possibly very high, so that it rarely dies when attacking. As I said in the previous post - not only would it make combat more interesting but it should improve the meta game as well, by making non-military game aspects actually matter. Non military victory conditions would become more than just a novelty.

What about limiting the maximum number of units on one tile? Would it give too much problems?

noto2 · Jul 25, 2013

But a smaller army can defeat a larger one if it is technologically advanced and/or if it has more promotions. If I have combat 1, pinch rifles I can defeat a much larger army of muskets, even taking hammer costs into account.

Why should a small army with no technological advantage and no promotion advantage and no terrain advantage defeat a larger army? What's the necessity of that? So that we can beat diety level AI that gets huge bonuses? If I want to do that I don't have to play Kmod. I thought the point behind Kmod was making the game and AI more challenging so that it presented a real challenge even without bonuses. Reduced siege weapons would probably make the game harder to win on diety but I don't care about that. I'd like a better, more balanced, and challenging game at emperor or even monarch. Being a turn based strategy game, numbers really should matter. This isn't Rome Total War. In RTW I can use brilliant tactics to win battles where I'm outnumbered 3 to 1, with no quality advantage in troops, but that suits the game. In Civ, really... a larger army, all else being equal, really should beat a smaller army. (except in the case of defender advantage, which practically doesn't exist in the game as is)

Charles555nc · Jul 27, 2013

I thought we were discussing making seige units slightly less powerful, not making military a weaker choice. I think Karadoc's changes so far in this regard have been nothing short of excellent.

Spamming cottages and sitting back all game in peace is more of an issue than spamming seige units imo.

In general, I think that the "tech focused" ai could use a little less tech focus and a little bit more on units- if only for defense- if you catch them at the right moment you can just wreck them before they get an age ahead.

And the "war focused" ai could be a little bit more active in trying to expand, especially after it has vassaled it's first neighbor.

noto2 · Jul 27, 2013

if you read my posts you'll see that I tie the two issues together.

Manujuanel · Jul 30, 2013

Hello Karadoc, I would like to make a request.

I like playing huge maps with 18 civs. The thing is that when I research optics and get contact with civilizations found in other continents they always ask me to declare war on other civs. If I cannot transport troops there is no point for an overseas war declaration, it is very annoying to see all those AIs asking me to declare war on people who I cannot reach and get bad relations with them because I refuse to. I would like that the AI only asks for an overseas war declaration if the player/AI they are trying to bribe has researched Astronomy (or Optics for the Portuguese, because they have the carrack).

K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

King

AI programmer

Warlord

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Emperor

Prince

Emperor

Prince

Emperor

Prince

Warlord

Emperor

AI programmer

Chieftain

Emperor

Prince

Emperor

Chieftain

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