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

[chumchu]

Ironclads can be defended against with naval promoted frigates if you have a critical mass (5-8). Use privateers to convert ironclads as well.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

As for Oligarchy - I think it is now far stronger than before. On DemiGod, but especially on Deity, where you can be expected to be rushed at roundabout turn 30 or 40 Walls are desperately needed.

Do they even make a difference? In my games, when i get attacked by CB+spear (i guess a Deity AI will have at least those by T40) walls don't really make much of a difference for me. if i have some units to block AI spears so they can't attack my city with more than 1, or a perfect spot (riverside hill with mountains so AI can only attack from 1-2 tiles and have to cross the river), i can survive. If i don't, my ciy falls, walls or not

Another point you brought up - I often find myself founding big empires with Tradition. Usually Five or Six cities at the very least, but more often than not Seven, once even Eight cities.

Yeah, this i finally understood, with this mod you really need to stop thinking Tradition = 4 cities. Yet, i'm impressed you managed to get 8.

The idea is to settle your faraway cities first in order for them to get Walls and grab the best tiles, then fill the holes between your border cities and the capital. That is how I play Tradition now. This way the border cities are well-developed, have a headstart and have early walls, which is essential.

I would really like to see an LP from you.
I too try to put forward cities first, but unless i go all-in for an early settler (so i have no troops to protect them), the AI will plant a city 2 tiles away from where i want mine, more often than not the very same turn my settler used his 2 moves to get on that hill. Of course i can "dance" with their settler if i expect them to move to that spot but sometimes it won't delay them enough and sometimes my scouts are just busy doing scouting or trying to grab a worker.
Still, if you can get as much as 8 self founded cities with tradition, it might be too strong if they all get free buildings (especially aqueducts). Maybe the finisher should double aqueducts production instead, but in every city. I really think the whole 4 cities stuff tends to lock players into thinking that tradition = 4 cities max, while it's simply not true, especially with this mod.

I also think the Tradition discussion is a little trite, since this is no either-or scenario.

Of course it's not, however mixing Liberty and Tradition also has opportunity costs (no Piety for strong religion giving you happiness and gold, capital reaching full potential later, Liberty finisher coming too late for a fast NC - unless you are Poland of course).
Anyway, being able to mix them isn't a good reason for one tree to be inferior. Tradition might not be inferior now, maybe i just don't play it right, but i don't think the discussion is trite.

I still don't think Tradition needs a buff.

Again you might be right, but i think it would benefit from not throwing you into 4 cities mode, even if it means some of it's bonuses should be smaller.

We really oughta come up with something better. Ethiopia is a Civ that has to change.

Yep, they have a really bad mix of UA and UB. No matter how you play them you need to abandon half their uniques.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I would really like to see an LP from you.
I too try to put forward cities first, but unless i go all-in for an early settler (so i have no troops to protect them), the AI will plant a city 2 tiles away from where i want mine, more often than not the very same turn my settler used his 2 moves to get on that hill. Of course i can "dance" with their settler if i expect them to move to that spot but sometimes it won't delay them enough and sometimes my scouts are just busy doing scouting or trying to grab a worker.
Still, if you can get as much as 8 self founded cities with tradition, it might be too strong if they all get free buildings (especially aqueducts). Maybe the finisher should double aqueducts production instead, but in every city. I really think the whole 4 cities stuff tends to lock players into thinking that tradition = 4 cities max, while it's simply not true, especially with this mod.

Here is a thing that greatly helped me yet I see barely any players do it. I often make it a point to invest a ton of early production into Spearmen, sometimes Warriors and pretty much never get Archers. What you will need is two Spearmen and a Warrior plus your regular two or three Scouts and one or two escort units. That is a lot of units. You will need a lot of units for many reasons:

1) Protect your Workers from steals
2) Steal a Worker from a City State or AI
3) Get your military score up (this is one of the most important)
4) Tribute from city states (this is by far the most important)

Even in games where I know I will be peaceful for the first 100 turns I will still produce that many units, because two Spearmen and a Warrior are enough to tribute almost any City State early game. Two Tributes give you yet another Spearman, which should give you more tributes. This snowballs out of hand very quickly, especially when you can also buy early Workers or a Library to speed up NC, since now settling until T100 is completely fine. Since this is AckenMod, not the unmodded game, this tactic will not work past turn 60 or 70, since almost all CS end up building a lot of units. You have to make use of this extremely early. This is how you defend yourself early on.

Of course, if an AI attacks you, you will not be able to defend without ranged units. That is not the point of this. If a Deity AI attacks you on turn 30 you will not be able to defend either way. Even if all you build is units, zero buildings, you might not survive an early onslaught.

Herein lies the value of melee units and walls. It makes your military score higher than that of peaceful AIs, which means you will be the second or the third target of the AI, which in turn gives you more time for more units. The most important thing is to prevent a war, not to be able to defend, because you won't.

Acken's new game he uploaded is actually extremely weird - with that little units and the fact that he stole a worker I am highly surprised he did not get DOWed before turn 50. For me I can say that that is very, very rare. Even when I am sixth or seventh in military score (assuming 8 players) I often get DOWed before turn 50.

Anyway, being able to mix them isn't a good reason for one tree to be inferior. Tradition might not be inferior now, maybe i just don't play it right, but i don't think the discussion is trite.

You're completely right, I wasn't thinking. I just think people generally have this mindset of either/or. Also it is stuck in peoples heads that policy trees have to be finished.

Here is the deal: with the new, faster policy acquisition I can often get Tradition done at T60 standard speed or even earlier with cultural CS allies. That means getting one or two, sometimes three additional policies until Medieval for Commerce (which I almost always take if war is coming). In my opinion Liberty is also a very good second tree, even though it is centered around giving early benefits. The +10% Production bonus is absolutely insane and works very well together with Workshop in a time where you have to build Stables, Markets, Universities, Temples, all those key buildings. The -33% policy cost for every city you found (I think) is also really, really useful seeing as you get many more policies than in the unmodded game and the costs go up significantly.

 

[Acken]

So if a civ I have a DoF with gets attacked I can DoW the attacker and take one city without a warmonger hit?

Is that turn standard speed only or is it 50 for all game speeds?

I've wondered what the cassus belli line was in the relationship screen, guess I should pay more attention to the update log.

Yes for the first question. For the second I'm pretty sure I forgot to scale it for speed. I probably should.

 

[Tombaugh]

Tradition has never been nerfed by this mod.

Tradition itself is stronger than before, my fault. However my traditionplay is very often based on cargo ships, which are nerfed. I somehow mixed this up.
In addition to that I am not quite sure if my post was clearly understandable. Improvement of TPs and custom houses is caused by the foodbonus, a rebalancing of plantations might be necessary. Problem: Monarchy would be overpowered (40 pop/gold -> +20%food)

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Here is a thing that greatly helped me yet I see barely any players do it...

Thanks for the tips.
I bet you need some good production to get those units early plus settlers and a few buildings. Do you usually re-roll if you don't have stone/wheat/cow/oasis? It's not unusual for me to have neither 3 tiles (allowing to work a hill and still grow) nor 21 ones.
I didn't know walls add to your military rating.

I've started putting together some of the civ changes i suggested for my own use. I might upload those if somebody's interested.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Thanks for the tips.
I bet you need some good production to get those units early plus settlers and a few buildings. Do you usually re-roll if you don't have stone/wheat/cow/oasis? It's not unusual for me to have neither 3 tiles (allowing to work a hill and still grow) nor 21 ones.
I didn't know walls add to your military rating.

I've started putting together some of the civ changes i suggested for my own use. I might upload those if somebody's interested.

You do need a good production start. I don't care much for 3 food tiles aside from the capital, since I will almost always prefer the production. Also I use a lot of Workers early, probably more than the really good players on this page use because my micro is not as good. Therefore I will always have early 3 food farms. Typicall for Tradition it is recommended to have N (amount of cities) + 1 Worker, for me it is usually N + 2 or even N + 3. I tend not to steal from the AI on Deity, only sometimes on DemiGod. On all difficulties below it's no problem.

I don't reroll if I don't have any stone or pastures but I sure as hell will reroll if my capital has four hills or less. To me, mines on hills are absolutely essential, even early game, because fast Settler production is much more important than in the unmodded game.

Walls don't add to the military rating iirc, but walls definitely factor into the equation of an enemy declaring war on you. Even pathfinding does. So Walls are not needed to give my cities more defense rating, but rather to stop early DOWs, much like the melee units.

 

[rkade8583]

So I just did a 10 hour long Huge Marathon game and I have learned two things:
1. The Zulus are backstabbers now.
2. My computer can not handle Huge Marathon games at the end.

Oh Shaka, we could have ruled together!

 

[Dahebbie]

So I just did a 10 hour long Huge Marathon game and I have learned two things:
1. The Zulus are backstabbers now.
2. My computer can not handle Huge Marathon games at the end.

Oh Shaka, we could have ruled together!

LOL

 

[yung.carl.jung]

@TheGrumpyBuddha

I finally did it! Played a full game as Aztec. This is by far the best science game I've ever had in more than 1000 hours of Civ. Thank you for that.

I'm fairly proud, this is probably my earliest Plastics ever, even earlier than my Korea games. And I didn't even play the map multiple times, this is the first try for this map. Had I gone Rationalism right away I could've gotten to Plastics even faster, but I like my 6 Order Cities as they are. With Rationalism I could've probably gotten to 1400 or 1500 Science, no problem.

Some info: This is my first game on Emperor, so far I've only played Immortal, Demi and Deity. Even though this is Emperor I was DOWed three times in total. Twice by Assyria. However there is barely any competition for Wonders. Then again I had a DemiGod game where I got ToA, Hanging Gardens, Oracle and Macchu Picchu, so really everything is possible.

Map was above average but not insane. Coastal cap with only one good Coastal expo available, meaning I only had 1 Cargoship. Also the Cap only had a single maritime ressource. My expos were all insanely good as you can see. What really made me snowball though were the CS, I had two CS allied for most of the early and midgame and later on 5+ allies at every point in the game.

Your request was for 1000 BPT at Turn 190 if I remember correctly, so this should suffice. I will play this game out and aim for the fastest victory time possible (SV) soon.

A few benchmarks: Four cities into National College (T85 or something iirc). No one picked Liberty so I got the opener for a T90something Pyramids. Then two cities, both Settlers built in a different expo so the Cap can grow. Got Education on Turn 101, Universities up ~T111 in my core cities, much later in the other ones. Engineered Notre Dame. Then I went for LToP. Got a free Engineer, used it for Globe Theatre. After that I went for Observatories. Then, instead of going for Public Schools, I rushed Industrialization with a GS, bought a CS improvement and bought three Factories for instant Order. I timed it so that I got a GW only a few turns after and got Factory Science. Rushed ST with a GS, beelined Plastics, but got both my GS a little too late. Could've easily had Plastics T170 had I played better.

Social Policies: Full Tradition. Liberty Opener. Commerce until cost reduction and wagon train. Order: -33% cost for buildings, +25% GP generation, +1 Smile for Workshops etc., Factory Science, +2 of each yield per city. Then Rationalism into Secularism. I had a really good culture game. Buying buildings and having three wars also helped with culture generation. I love the new Commerce tree.

I did not get a religion even though I had a very strong faith Pantheon (I think it was +1g / +1f from Gold, Silver, Copper). Five AIs went Piety, one AI went Honor (of course it was my neighbour) and one AI went Tradition. I could have been so, so much better had I gotten a religion with growth, religious community, pagodas or mosques.

Spoiler :

 

[noto2]

Nice screen grab, did you have more cities? That's a lot of beakers. Btw, what kind of swords are those? They look different...

 

[Acken]

The Lanskenecht ?

 

[mbbcam]

I just downloaded the Mac version and noticed that the folder called "Miscellaneous" is misspelled. Not a big deal, of course, but somebody might search for it using the correct spelling and not find it as a result.

 

[Dahebbie]

Hmmm, it this the mod or something else?

 

[Acken]

What should I be looking at ? If it's about EUI showing roads buildable in a lake then its not the mod afaik.

 

[Jaybe]

Send worker to lake; on following turn see if road building task is available; ...

if it IS available, then after 'road is built', see if worker can move via road from within the lake
(requires adjacent road hex).

BTW, if you don't try this, I intend to check it out myself just for giggles. I'm in a late huge-map game with excess ... everything.

 

[bc1]

What should I be looking at ? If it's about EUI showing roads buildable in a lake then its not the mod afaik.

seems more like a minor BNW DLL bug to me, plot:CanBuild returns true for building roads or railroads in lakes

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Nice screen grab, did you have more cities? That's a lot of beakers. Btw, what kind of swords are those? They look different...

nah that's it, no more cities than pictured. as acken said those are landsknecht, I got DOWed by assyria turn ~160 and needed defensive units fast-

 

[noto2]

nah that's it, no more cities than pictured. as acken said those are landsknecht, I got DOWed by assyria turn ~160 and needed defensive units fast-

lol, 800 hours into Civ5 and I've never even seen them on the map once. Guess that shows you how often I use the commerce tree

 

[Chum]

lol, 800 hours into Civ5 and I've never even seen them on the map once. Guess that shows you how often I use the commerce tree

They are much more important in Acken's mod.

With Pikes not coming at Civil Service, and Iron being required for Swords and Longswords, you need a unit better than Spearmen until chivalry. If you're specifically rushing Chivalry, you can get outteched on the bottom half of the tree by the AI and have Pikes/Longswords show up while you still have Spears and no way to stop them.

Basically, you need to decide pretty quickly after getting Bronze Working what your plan is. If you don't have enough Iron to support your military, or no prospects for obtaining Iron, you need to count on taking Commerce after you finish your opening tree so you can buy Landshneckts.