[ModMod] K-Mod-Z

Zholef · Feb 1, 2015

Some of the balance changes to K-Mod I recently proposed in the main thread attracted a bit of interest, which motivated me enough to turn my ideas into a modest "modmod" of K-Mod, version 0.01 of which I am now, with generous permission from Karadoc, happy to present to you. Perhaps some of you will enjoy it, maybe some of the changes will find their way into a future version of K-Mod, but what I'm really hoping to achieve with this is to kick start a discussion about how Civ4 in general and K-Mod in particular could be improved without expanding the game with additional content.

Spoiler K-Mod-Z_readme.txt :

Spoiler K-Mod-Z_changelog.txt :

Zholef · Feb 1, 2015

Changelog for v0.02:

Changed Chichen Itza culture from 1 to 6 as was intended in v0.01.
Updated included map script Caldera from v1.0 to v1.1.

Zacar · Feb 1, 2015

Probably can't comment on everything at once.

Versailles benefit is just positively better now. Not so sure about Hagia Sophia. Do they require the listed techs in addition, or do these tech requirements replace the old ones?

About giving cargo room for various ships; does the AI treat certain ships as warships and others as transporters? If so, I'm not sure if it is a good idea to blur that line. Though various ships could definitely thematically carry spies and such light cargo still. Perhaps not an issue.

I assume that change to Numidian cavalry is a nerf? If not, I would recommend its original form as it works quite nicely. Monastery changes look bad. Drill II & III changes do not go with the theme. I don't quite get the production penalty for Creative. Thematically IMP could probably use some more offensive siege promotion than Drill. The wonders that AGG produces faster now - could as well rename it "American" trait

.

f1rpo · Feb 1, 2015

Thanks for sharing!

I'm wondering that too, if the AI can handle the additional cargo ships. It's an interesting change, one I haven't seen proposed before. The various tweaked numbers look good (though I'm not really qualified to say). Monasteries not becoming obsolete and Cavalry upgrading to Tanks seem like a big changes flavor-wise. About Monasteries, I recall this suggestion from page 2 of the K-Mod main thread:

plastiqe said:
[...] Organized Religion gives double production to building Missionaries instead of being able to build them without a Monastery.

Monasteries are pretty good for the science boosts but they're obsolete even earlier than Sci Method because you can just skip them and use OR. OR incidentally makes building your religions Monastery easier... which you don't build because you're in OR. By giving +100% production on Missionaries they aren't such easy 2-pop whips which is fitting because I don't really think of using slaves to spread a religion.

Zholef · Feb 1, 2015

Zacar said:
Probably can't comment on everything at once.

That's alright, I didn't come up with all of that in a day either. Some of them took a lot of pondering and can't be fully appreciated unless one sees the whole picture. Others are as superficial as they seem. Take your time.

Zacar said:
Versailles benefit is just positively better now. Not so sure about Hagia Sophia. Do they require the listed techs in addition, or do these tech requirements replace the old ones?

Yes, I tried to really buff Divine Right. May have overdone it, not sure. Considering that it's in direct competition with Liberalism, it's probably still a bit weak even with the free Great Prophet. Adding Versailles' extra requirement (yes, these are on top of the normal requirements) was a last minute addition. Historically these wonders would have needed those techs, but they could be removed again to make the wonders stronger. I mainly added the Construction requirement to the Sophia because I was afraid it would be too powerful, especially considering the other Theology wonder is the mighty AP.

Zacar said:
About giving cargo room for various ships; does the AI treat certain ships as warships and others as transporters? If so, I'm not sure if it is a good idea to blur that line. Though various ships could definitely thematically carry spies and such light cargo still. Perhaps not an issue.

The AI is actually more complicated than that and quite adaptive. I ran some tests and was surprised how well it coped with the changes. I observed the AI dropping Galleons full of Knights and Trebuchets along with two Macemen transported in the escorting Frigates.

Zacar said:
I assume that change to Numidian cavalry is a nerf? If not, I would recommend its original form as it works quite nicely. Monastery changes look bad. Drill II & III changes do not go with the theme. I don't quite get the production penalty for Creative. Thematically IMP could probably use some more offensive siege promotion than Drill. The wonders that AGG produces faster now - could as well rename it "American" trait .

If you're playing Immortal or Deity, the changes to the Numidian are a nerf. If you're playing below that, they're a buff. You decide. Horse archers are strong either way.

I'm not perfectly happy with the Monastery changes either, but I wanted them to not obsolete with Scientific Method and in front of that background, the +10% Research was too powerful. I'm open to suggestions, of course.

Similar situation with the Drill promotions. They are weak, but making them better in a way that doesn't screw something else up isn't exactly easy.

As for the production penalty for Creative, that's actually just a bonus reduction. Look at the changes to the Colosseum. That is one of the key changes: My attempt at restoring the balance lost through K-Mod's changes to the culture mechanic. As a result, you may have noticed, I could restore a lot of buildings to the culture values they had in stock BtS.

What other promotion would you suggest for the Imperialistic trait?

Yes, lots of American wonders accelerated for the Aggressive trait, but what did you expect? Only about have the wonders in the game are American...

f1rpo said:
Thanks for sharing!

I'm wondering that too, if the AI can handle the additional cargo ships. It's an interesting change, one I haven't seen proposed before. The various tweaked numbers look good (though I'm not really qualified to say). Monasteries not becoming obsolete and Cavalry upgrading to Tanks seem like a big changes flavor-wise. About Monasteries, I recall this suggestion from page 2 of the K-Mod main thread:

That about the ships, I answered above. As for the monasteries, I considered something similar, but I wouldn't know how to do that without changing the DLL, and that's a can of worms I'd rather not open.

Zacar · Feb 1, 2015

For IMP, City Raider I (or Barrage I) would fit best I think. Those lead to Accuracy. This way IMP would assist in founding or capturing cities.

Divine Right and Theology I usually skip in my games, unless I decide to have a game with a religious theme. I don't think you can make them too good accidentally. Free GP from DR is good. If these techs had only one wonder, it would basically go to the first one who discovers them (I assume..) and as such these techs would be good only if you are the first one to get them.. At first I thought that adding extra tech requirements for these wonders would be good, as it may improve the chances of someone else building them, but I'm not sure, it may even do the reverse. For a late discovery, Theology can be useful for a SPI leader, and DR is useless.

I would almost make DR a cheaper tech and throw Versailles to Monarchy with an additional requirement. DR still requires Theo and has Spiral power for the lone discoverer. But it would cause Islam to be founded too early, thematically (also affects supposed spread rate modifier).

Similar to Versailles, Angkor Wat seems to have these fun one-city bonuses that are so rare in world wonders. Chichen Itza remains rather uninteresting.

Hagia Sophia in isolation is not too strong, considering it gets obsolete. With AP, the question is, does one civ get them both or do they go to different civs? If they tend to go to one civ, extra tech requirement makes sense.. if not, it is not necessary and just makes the wonder last less time. I wonder if just giving more worker production bonus would be better though. It would be a bit silly to get slower workers with Steam Power, but gameplay-wise a few efficient workers would be more attractive than a large army of gold eating non-military folk. River bonus works but I'm not sure how fun it is.

On Numidian the change means less differentiation between units. I probably consider it a nerf in any case, as it is a less universal troop now (yet superior to HAs, and now better against stacks without spears). Keshiks (also nerfed, for someone like me who takes Flanking) are a bit poor in comparison, either way. Well, balance-wise you can do anything you want with Numidian (e.g. remove them :lol:

) and Hannibal will stay good, not so sure about Mongols.

On monasteries. Why don't you want them to obsolete? IIRC, you can still build missionaries even after SciMet if there is an old monastery (am I wrong?). If so, I think they could go obsolete. Thematically monasteries could give one hammer, one beaker and some culture, and that, I think, would be fine. But the original monasteries seem OK to me as well. Extra beaker after a long time doesn't really feel significant to me in any way. But all that depends on what monasteries should be. Missionary-allowers? A light mixed bag of bonuses for folks who managed to gain a religion? Could they give bonuses only as long as you have a state religion selected?

On Drill, should something be done to the promotion tree to help that promotion line? Do we have some math in some thread that examines how weak or strong Drill is..? Or are they weak because some units are Immune to first strikes?

Zholef · Feb 2, 2015

Zacar said:
On monasteries. Why don't you want them to obsolete? IIRC, you can still build missionaries even after SciMet if there is an old monastery (am I wrong?). If so, I think they could go obsolete. Thematically monasteries could give one hammer, one beaker and some culture, and that, I think, would be fine. But the original monasteries seem OK to me as well. Extra beaker after a long time doesn't really feel significant to me in any way. But all that depends on what monasteries should be. Missionary-allowers? A light mixed bag of bonuses for folks who managed to gain a religion?

Yes, if you're lucky enough to have built a monastery of a particular religion before SM, you can still use it later, which just makes monastery obsoletion even stupider. If something is obsolete, it should no longer function and something else should be there to replace it, which there isn't. The only way of spreading religions past SM that may be left to you is OR, which is also stupid. Why should OR be more suited to spreading religion than Free Religion? What real countries have the greatest religions diversity? Countries without freedom of religion? The main reasons, however, for me wanting monasteries not to go obsolete is my disapproval of graceless obsoletions (e.g., Great Library going obsolete with SM, graceless; Hagia Sophia going obsolete with SP, graceful). They cause the player to avoid certain techs under certain conditions. Doing that for the purpose of bulbing is already silly, but to not research something so your stuff continues to work is positively insane. That's just bad game design.

Another problem I have with the original monasteries is that they make most sense in commerce or science cities, which makes no sense historically. Monastics historically sought out remote places, bringing with them their religion, culture and modest education opportunities for the local population. That's one reason why I think yields make more sense than modifiers for monasteries. Gameplaywise, in my opinion, they should serve to spread religion and help small, remote cities in culture battles. Yields make them easier affordable for such cities than tiny modifiers. In their current configuration, for example, you might, given a particular city, value the two culture points and the one research point the same as two hammers. Then you'd have your investment on the monastery back in thirty turns. Having monasteries yield extra hammers or gold or even commerce (akin to cottage improvements) are all options. I'm just not yet sure how much exactly they should get, which may be because I somewhat lack experience in that regard. When faced with culture pressure, I tend to react by building more military.

Zacar said:
Could they give bonuses only as long as you have a state religion selected?

Unfortunately, I don't think that's possible without changing the DLL.

Zacar said:
On Drill, should something be done to the promotion tree to help that promotion line? Do we have some math in some thread that examines how weak or strong Drill is..? Or are they weak because some units are Immune to first strikes?

Yes, there's quite a bit in forum threads and among the War Academy articles. I also ran World Builder tests of my own. Basically, disregarding some special cases, Drill is only superior to Combat or specialized promotions when your unit already has the advantage (e.g., Longbowmen in cities on hills defending against Axemen). When going up against more powerful units (e.g., Longbowmen vs. Macemen in the open), then the difference the Drill promotions make shrivel significantly. The reduced collateral damage aspect can be interesting when defending or when your opponent has no mounted units, but that's, again, very circumstantial. In general, you're unlikely to regret promoting Combat instead of Drill, which makes not promoting Drill an easy decision, and easy choices are, in my opinion, a bad thing in a game that's all about making good decisions.

Zacar · Feb 3, 2015

On drill, I can see two paths: either alter the promotion tree so that Combat is not obviously better, or increase Drill bonus to start its progression from +1 First Strike, so half strike further bonus.

On monasteries, I think the original logic goes with "religion allows instant bonuses vs science allows long-term benefit". Just like going DR is suboptimal vs Lib, a religious playstyle strays you away from science, allowing you monastery science boost for less scientific tech paths. Also, it slightly increases the value of a religious playstyle when pagans going SciMet have a harder time gathering the benefits of multiple religions. In general I agree with you with gracelessness being a bad thing, but I'd think of this as a good exception.

You mentioned bulbing. In a way it would be cool if settling GPs was more attractive than it is now. Now the best uses are clearly shrine/corp, golden age and bulbing. If you dislike bulb-management, perhaps having less techs in the bulb tree would make it more relaxed, though not sure if the game allows the occasional situation of no bulbable techs.

Zholef · Feb 3, 2015

Zacar said:
On drill, I can see two paths: either alter the promotion tree so that Combat is not obviously better, or increase Drill bonus to start its progression from +1 First Strike, so half strike further bonus.

Not sure what you mean by the former, considering that K-Mod already did that. As for adding more First Strikes, I've tried that. It makes Drills much stronger in the rare situations where they already are strong, but not much more so in situations where they're not.

I think the Drill promotion line was conceived as a generalist defensive counterpart to the generalist aggressive Combat promotions. It just didn't turn out very well because there's too many situations in which these promotions are simply weak. Perhaps letting them heal faster in friendly territory is worth considering.

Zacar said:
On monasteries, I think the original logic goes with "religion allows instant bonuses vs science allows long-term benefit". Just like going DR is suboptimal vs Lib, a religious playstyle strays you away from science, allowing you monastery science boost for less scientific tech paths. Also, it slightly increases the value of a religious playstyle when pagans going SciMet have a harder time gathering the benefits of multiple religions. In general I agree with you with gracelessness being a bad thing, but I'd think of this as a good exception.

I'm sorry, but I don't get what you're trying to say here.

Zacar said:
You mentioned bulbing. In a way it would be cool if settling GPs was more attractive than it is now. Now the best uses are clearly shrine/corp, golden age and bulbing. If you dislike bulb-management, perhaps having less techs in the bulb tree would make it more relaxed, though not sure if the game allows the occasional situation of no bulbable techs.

No, bulbing is fine by me. Things like avoiding Fishing so one can bulb Engineering are a bit silly, but it's too integral a part of the game than that I'd want to mess with it.

As for settling GPs, I think that's strong enough, considering it's the fallback option that ensures GPs are always at least somewhat useful.

Zholef · May 26, 2015

A minor update occurred. Changelog in second post.

lucidstorm · Jan 7, 2017

Hej I think there is a mayor problem with the mod and that is the catapult/any other siege weapon damage problem and that they don't die,

I play on deity giving myself 15 ancient base buildings via game builder in the one city capitol (seems like much but it ain't with that setting, the game just too hard anyway but it's more fun to play this way for the massive AI bonuses,if you have all science buildings unlocked the AI is still faster in research with massive cities spam). No quechua rush just normal game.

the enemy ends up attacking me with a huge army in late medieval game or when I research grenadier unit, let's say I have 10 super trained archers with everything unlocked, the enemy attacks me with siege weapons (trebuchet), no enemy trebuchet dies but 1-2: my defending forces are seriously crippled so my 6 promotions for archers are garbage (even a prehistoric unit can kill me)

I repeat almost no enemy siege died in the process, so please balance this thing out the siege is just OP, -2 on health or bigger dying probability (at least look into it), now I know if I want to win I can go 10 maceman vs 10 super trained rifleman just bring 6 trebuchet, something is off, try play with my setting and experience the trebuchet spam. I don't remember this in other game mods or vanilla and I have like 2.000 hours vs AI on all levels with or without game builder. That is to say: 1) I am not a total noob 2) the super trained archers units like longbowman on hills should at least kill some trebuchet but they don't (WTH)

also the leaving vassal state is happening way too often, ''you're no longer able to protect us'' whilst I have an army of 20 grenadiers and the enemy just archers

btw. I love k-mod for the AI challenge, really a huge improvement, I seem to like other balances but the praetorian (which is sacred, you should never touch my fav unit haha

please make this great mod even greater

Zholef · Jan 7, 2017

Oh, I didn't think anyone was actually playing with this little experiment of mine (which has since greatly changed in an unreleased version on my hard drive).

Anyway, I'm not convinced that this is a balance problem (as opposed to a realism problem). Nor would I know how to fix it if I was convinced. The thing is that allowing units on the same plot to defend each other (which allows the forming of "stacks of doom") gives defending units an extreme advantage that somehow needs to be counterbalanced. "Collateral damage" is how the designers of Civ4 have done that.

So if siege units were significantly weakened, the advantage in any war would shift to whoever can produce the biggest army at the expense of players who cunningly use collateral damage and "flank attack" units.

Siege units are expensive, slow and weak on defense (trebs are even only good for attacking cities and forts). Opposing siege units in your territory are what make you need and want to not hide behind your city walls. The 10 "super trained riflemen" in your example could simply kill the 10 macemen in the field and watch the 6 trebs run for safety. Although, writing this, I'm thinking maybe their max. damage could be reduced slightly to lessen the impact of mass siege unit attacks. I'll definitely look into that.

In the meantime, thanks for your interest and suggestions.

lucidstorm · Jan 8, 2017

Zholef said:
Oh, I didn't think anyone was actually playing with this little experiment of mine (which has since greatly changed in an unreleased version on my hard drive).

Anyway, I'm not convinced that this is a balance problem (as opposed to a realism problem). Nor would I know how to fix it if I was convinced. The thing is that allowing units on the same plot to defend each other (which allows the forming of "stacks of doom") gives defending units an extreme advantage that somehow needs to be counterbalanced. "Collateral damage" is how the designers of Civ4 have done that.

So if siege units were significantly weakened, the advantage in any war would shift to whoever can produce the biggest army at the expense of players who cunningly use collateral damage and "flank attack" units.

Siege units are expensive, slow and weak on defense (trebs are even only good for attacking cities and forts). Opposing siege units in your territory are what make you need and want to not hide behind your city walls. The 10 "super trained riflemen" in your example could simply kill the 10 macemen in the field and watch the 6 trebs run for safety. Although, writing this, I'm thinking maybe their max. damage could be reduced slightly to lessen the impact of mass siege unit attacks. I'll definitely look into that.

In the meantime, thanks for your interest and suggestions.

I like all other ideas of yours like monastery not becoming obsolete,
(also I would leave the economic bonus and spy bonus on the castle which makes logical sense, the castle was the focal point in a medieval city and the centre of power similar to the palace in the game, leaving castle at just + culture is plain wrong in my opinion, should be more production cost, more aforementioned bonuses).

last suggestion is if you could implement the ''cease bothering us'' line in the diplomacy interface (the one under the animated leaders, I think revolution DCM has it), the AI seems harassing me way too often and that ruins the flow (I don't want to use the stop trading, I still want to trade and bully the AI)

cheers and good day to you (now I know that the only mod I will be playing is your mod and I;d love see it improved)

Zholef · Jan 20, 2017

lucidstorm said:
I like all other ideas of yours like monastery not becoming obsolete,
(also I would leave the economic bonus and spy bonus on the castle which makes logical sense, the castle was the focal point in a medieval city and the centre of power similar to the palace in the game, leaving castle at just + culture is plain wrong in my opinion, should be more production cost, more aforementioned bonuses).

last suggestion is if you could implement the ''cease bothering us'' line in the diplomacy interface (the one under the animated leaders, I think revolution DCM has it), the AI seems harassing me way too often and that ruins the flow (I don't want to use the stop trading, I still want to trade and bully the AI)

cheers and good day to you (now I know that the only mod I will be playing is your mod and I;d love see it improved)

Sorry for the late reply...

I'm looking into the "cease bothering us" thing. I suppose that's useful when you play with lots of civs. Personally, I almost never play with more than eight, so I've never been too annoyed by AI requests.

keldath · Jan 21, 2017

I'm looking into the "cease bothering us" thing. I suppose that's useful when you play with lots of civs. Personally, I almost never play with more than eight, so I've never been too annoyed by AI requests.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/k-mod-far-beyond-the-sword.407049/page-143#post-14622780

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