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

[SlightlyMad]

I have a couple strategy questions regarding the use of archery units. First, they seem pretty ineffective as garrisoned city defenders; do you all tend to use melee instead? Since it seems to take 4-5 hits from an archery unit to kill a contemporary melee unit, they're useless in taking out invaders. A melee who is able to strike and hide back in the city would be much more effective at stopping a wave.

Give that, my second question is what then is the role of archery units now? They're somewhat useful to soften up cities in an ancient or classical era siege, but once catapults show up they're presumably a better choice. Is the idea for archery units to function as support units attacking from behind the front lines?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I have a couple strategy questions regarding the use of archery units. First, they seem pretty ineffective as garrisoned city defenders; do you all tend to use melee instead? Since it seems to take 4-5 hits from an archery unit to kill a contemporary melee unit, they're useless in taking out invaders. A melee who is able to strike and hide back in the city would be much more effective at stopping a wave.

They are still much more effective at this role than melee units are. Maybe you are getting your upgrades too late.

That being said in a serious war you should not even be thinking about putting your melee units into your city - you should be using every single one of them fortified in your own territory to block the enemy as much as possible.

I however completely agree that melee units are your go-to defensive unit, much more effective than archers are.

Are you aware that after staying fortified for two turns their defense bonus increases massively? Try to abuse that as good as you can, place them strategically, so that your enemy can never occupy a tile next to your city.

In a real war scenario the city my enemy is sieging will almost always be at or close to zero health. The only reason why it doesn't fall is fortified melee healing double in my own territory. Combine that with as many Citadels and Forts (I think that's what they're called) as you can.

Make sure to abuse the Hill, Forest and Jungle defensive bonus. Most of the time you will be using Spearmen against Swordsmen and Longswordsmen or Swordsmen against Longswords and Muskets. You need to up your combat strength as much as possible in order to not get crushed.

Give that, my second question is what then is the role of archery units now? They're somewhat useful to soften up cities in an ancient or classical era siege, but once catapults show up they're presumably a better choice. Is the idea for archery units to function as support units attacking from behind the front lines?

Catapults are still horrible in every way and (in my opinion) inferior, even for sieging. Don't even bother until you get Cannons.

The archery line units are your main offense. Seeing as (if you play on DemiGod and above) the enemy will almost always be one tech ahead of you militarily - let's say you're trying to attack your enemy with Swordsmen, they will probably have Longswordsmen. Swordsmen do absolutely no damage to fortified Longswords, it's a hopeless scenario. The only way you can break through is with heavily upgraded Archery-line units.

In my opinion the single most effective push is still a timed push at Crossbows, followed closely by a timed push at Artillery. Though take into account that often times your opponent will have Bombers by the time you have upgraded Artillery, meaning he'll melt your carefully preserved units.

I have witnessed my opponent having 5-15 Great War Bombers by the time I upgraded my Crossbows to Gatling Guns (Deity). It's a hopeless scenario.

Just like in the base game the Archer-line is still your main offense, you just need a lot more blocker units for them now.

If you however play on Immortal and below melee pushes are very effective, maybe even more effective. You should definitely give it a try. A timed Sword rush would probably be the best. Alternatively go for your UU: Legions, Berserkers, Samurai, whatever you have. I have seen some people successfully pulling it off on DemiGod, too, but it is very hard. What is worse is that you can't follow it up very well. Promotions on ranged units mean a lot, promotions on melee units are not as valuable (in my opinion).

 

[SlightlyMad]

They are still much more effective at this role than melee units are. Maybe you are getting your upgrades too late.

It's possible I just had a run of bad luck. I've only just (lost) my first real game with this mod and got invaded in the industrial. I had gatling guns stationed in my cities and managed to get half a dozen up to the front lines immediately after the DOW, but even concentrating all their fire on a single attacker I was generally unable to take them out.

That being said in a serious war you should not even be thinking about putting your melee units into your city - you should be using every single one of them fortified in your own territory to block the enemy as much as possible.

I however completely agree that melee units are your go-to defensive unit, much more effective than archers are.

My thought was that if I keep a melee unit garrisoned in each city along the coast, I can pull them to the front to engage an invasion force. They'd just hang out in the cities during peace-time (since there are policies that benefit them being there) and be readily available for an unexpected attack.

Are you aware that after staying fortified for two turns their defense bonus increases massively? Try to abuse that as good as you can, place them strategically, so that your enemy can never occupy a tile next to your city.

In a real war scenario the city my enemy is sieging will almost always be at or close to zero health. The only reason why it doesn't fall is fortified melee healing double in my own territory. Combine that with as many Citadels and Forts (I think that's what they're called) as you can.

Make sure to abuse the Hill, Forest and Jungle defensive bonus. Most of the time you will be using Spearmen against Swordsmen and Longswordsmen or Swordsmen against Longswords and Muskets. You need to up your combat strength as much as possible in order to not get crushed.

This works out great for a small empire where you can fortify a defensive border, but going wide with 40+ cities makes it more difficult. In my last game I had to pull most of my standing army into two other wars so I was caught with only my city garrisons when a third DOW came.

Catapults are still horrible in every way and (in my opinion) inferior, even for sieging. Don't even bother until you get Cannons.

Good to know. I guess since melee can really take out a city on their own now, there wouldn't even be much use including cats and trebs just to farm the promotions and get 3-range or double-strike by the time you get cannons.

The archery line units are your main offense. Seeing as (if you play on DemiGod and above) the enemy will almost always be one tech ahead of you militarily - let's say you're trying to attack your enemy with Swordsmen, they will probably have Longswordsmen. Swordsmen do absolutely no damage to fortified Longswords, it's a hopeless scenario. The only way you can break through is with heavily upgraded Archery-line units.

Good thoughts here. I've often found mounted units to be more effective for this type of "nut cracking" since you can get them in place quickly and hit with as many as you need to without worrying as much about the terrain to set up archery positions.

In my opinion the single most effective push is still a timed push at Crossbows, followed closely by a timed push at Artillery. Though take into account that often times your opponent will have Bombers by the time you have upgraded Artillery, meaning he'll melt your carefully preserved units.

I have witnessed my opponent having 5-15 Great War Bombers by the time I upgraded my Crossbows to Gatling Guns (Deity). It's a hopeless scenario.

Just like in the base game the Archer-line is still your main offense, you just need a lot more blocker units for them now.

If you however play on Immortal and below melee pushes are very effective, maybe even more effective. You should definitely give it a try. A timed Sword rush would probably be the best. Alternatively go for your UU: Legions, Berserkers, Samurai, whatever you have. I have seen some people successfully pulling it off on DemiGod, too, but it is very hard. What is worse is that you can't follow it up very well. Promotions on ranged units mean a lot, promotions on melee units are not as valuable (in my opinion).

Thanks for all the tips! I started a few DemiGod games not realizing the difficulty scale had changed (since my defaults were on Immortal previously) and got pretty well trounced by the mid-game. I was well on my way to a win on Immortal in my last game, but I simply wasn't prepared for the war that finally took me out.

Another thing I noticed is that coastal cities are really a liability in a way that was never a concern in SP before. My strategy from now on is certainly going to involve a large defensive naval fleet as well.

 

[chumchu]

I have gotten really good mileage out of catapults and trebutchets on demi-god. Catapults benefit from the nerf to city fire and the ranged units in general. I also value the speed in taking cities they give you as warfare is more costly in the mod.

I try to clear away most units of the AI and then move in blocker units ZOCing units that can attack my catapults. The sword/catapult timing is especially sweet but swords/trebs works as well. They also have access to cover immediately but I have managed by using a slightly damaged melée unit tanking the city shots, getting a few of them to logistics but not that and range. Maybe with zulus or persia?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Good thoughts here. I've often found mounted units to be more effective for this type of "nut cracking" since you can get them in place quickly and hit with as many as you need to without worrying as much about the terrain to set up archery positions.

I agree, cavalry work great as "softener"

Another thing I noticed is that coastal cities are really a liability in a way that was never a concern in SP before.

Agreed.

I have gotten really good mileage out of catapults and trebutchets on demi-god.

I personally only use catapults and trebs when going honor, upgrading to cannons when you just got logistics is amazing.

I also value the speed in taking cities they give you as warfare is more costly in the mod.

Cities melt in the mod anyway, there usually is no need for siege.

I am by no means an authority whatsoever, very much possible you have a lot more exp with the Cat line than I do!

 

[Lake.Solon]

Everytime ? I had noticed that bug in an earlier version and thought I had fixed it. This happens when the mapgenerator gets stuck in a while loop. If problem persists I suggest going in the imported folder and delete the NQMap folder and then do a manual installation of it and see if it fixes the issue. For the next version I'll try to see if I can rework hellblazer script to tackle this and other problems or just remove it from the mod instead.

I think I may have a way to reproduce this, or perhaps another similar bug (only happens with Acken's enabled, and seems to be independent of other mods).

Small maps, with overloaded civs/CS headcounts.

The one that works fairly reliably for me: Skirmish map, tiny size (meant for 4/8), add 8 Civs with 8 CS. I (usually) get a spinning globe as soon as I hit "Start Game".

If it does load, hitting "Restart Game" will usually lock it up in a similar way after a few tries.

I've never had it survive long, but if you get [un]lucky: start again.

I like to sometimes play these mini, cramped, games on Marathon pace. I'd love to try them with Acken's mod, but so far haven't been able to (as it usually takes a few restarts to get a sane start as you're very likely to be shoved against the map edge).

 

[fimbul]

Acken I am not sure if this works but if you add lplaced = true under

print("-"); print("Failed to place second Luxury type at start in Region#", region_number, "-- no eligible positions!"); print("-");

i think it should allow the mapscript to exit the while loop concerning lux placement (it wouldnt place the second lux but it shouldnt hang). Pls dont blame me if it breaks something else though!

It might be more worth your time to remove the NQ script from your mod (less lua.log troubleshooting) but then you might have to re-balance things since the NQ script places luxuries very liberally.

 

[Legen]

yet I haven't seen a single person spell "Feitoria" wrong, even though it is very unlikely that the majority of this forum speaks portugese. catch my drift? Landsknecht really is an odd one.

One thing about germanic languages that is difficult for speakers of other languages is the accumulation of consonants. "Landsknecht" (I hope I've spelt that correctly) is a perfect example. Two vowels and nine consonants. People usually get the vowels right, but the forest of consonants is confusing for them. I taught English in Italy for ten years and this sort of thing always caused trouble, partly because consonants are sort of interchangeable in Italian. The simple name "Rocky" got spelt as "Roki", "Rocchi", "Rochy" and many other ways, because they all sounded much the same in Italian. I once heard a linguist describe "strength" as the archetypical germanic word, because "one vowel is strangled by seven consonants". Sometimes we don't know how difficult our languages are.

There's a historical explanation: english has a lot of words with Latin origin. Linguists estimate that around 60% of its words come from Latin, and that increases to 90% if you consider only words with two or more syllabes.

Portuguese is a Romance language (i.e. derived from Latin), just like Italian, so its words sound similar to 60% of the english words. Moreover, its phonemes map extremely well to the Latin alphabet for obvious reasons.

Germanic languages, including English, adopted the Latin alphabet, which wasn't designed for their consoant-heavy phonetic system. As a result, many different phonemes end mapped to the same Latin letter, or required multiple consoants for a single sound, ending in something seemingly illogical. "Landskenecht" having so many different spellings over the centuries is a consequence of that.

So, a word like "Feitoria" is usually written corretly, but pronounced wrong (sounding like "Fietora" in portuguese writing), by a english speaker due to the shared cultural (Latin) heritage. More specifically, "Feitoria" derived from the latin word "factore", which you can easily guess the english word it gave origin to.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

These supposed AI improvements this mod promised didn't affect their hypocrisy or general sociopathy in any way, did they? How am I supposed to go wide when everyone hates me for founding more than three cities? I'm especially looking at Suleiman, who had 6 cities while I had 5, no shared borders or anything, and he thinks I am expanding too aggressively. Even more ridiculous is Askia thinking I'm expanding too aggressively as well, even though he is on a different continent and we literally just met over a stray trireme! Then there's Maria of Portugal hating my guts for literally no reason, against all logic! Seriously, Suleiman declared war on her and took a city off her, then declared on me as well. No, he didn't make peace with Portugal. Yes this means I and Portugal have a common enemy and every interest in cooperating. Does Maria care? Haha no. She literally said "How is your little war going? Not too well I hope", referring to the war I was fighting on her side. And demands a gazillion resources for one lux of her own.

This was the point I ragequit. No point in playing with completely moronic hyopcritical sociopaths who all hate me all the time for no damn reason and whose highest priority is not building their own civiilizations or even just survival, but making me suffer even if it hurts themselves.

 

[DeAnno]

I have played a couple games on Immortal recently where an opponent wilted against my Longsword rush. In one game I even rushed an opponent with them capturing a city, and then managed to rush them back to defend against a sneak attack on the other side of my empire, wiping out a carpet of Classical age Persian units.

At 23 strength if the opponent is still fighting you with classical age units there is really not much they can do, and contemporary cities barely do scratch damage to them. It's very binary though, (in that if you can't get to them before the enemy has units that can fight them it probably won't work at all), so I can see how it might be impossible to execute on Demigod. Seeing how things seem to revolve around either rushing with Longs or defending a Long rush depending on difficulty level though, it's possible they are a bit strong.

 

[Acken]

How am I supposed to go wide when everyone hates me for founding more than three cities?

Penalty is less than it used to be. Mod is a WIP and is never going to be perfect.

I have played a couple games on Immortal recently where an opponent wilted against my Longsword rush. In one game I even rushed an opponent with them capturing a city, and then managed to rush them back to defend against a sneak attack on the other side of my empire, wiping out a carpet of Classical age Persian units.

At 23 strength if the opponent is still fighting you with classical age units there is really not much they can do, and contemporary cities barely do scratch damage to them. It's very binary though, (in that if you can't get to them before the enemy has units that can fight them it probably won't work at all), so I can see how it might be impossible to execute on Demigod. Seeing how things seem to revolve around either rushing with Longs or defending a Long rush depending on difficulty level though, it's possible they are a bit strong.

I'd say it has more to do with how easy it is to beeline these if there is a problem. It's true that the gap compared to classical can be high but isn't that the case of all higher military techs ? Crossbows vs classical or Artilleries vs Renaissance also melt the opponent.

Killing someone early is not too much a problem either, as long as you still have to somewhat stop and it doesn't guarantee you a win right there. This is a bit where the mod being aimed at SP is an important factor too. A MP mod would be more contrived to avoid having easy kills due to player frustration. I enjoy having aggressive expansion as a valid early development tool. It's both realistic and fun in my opinion. What I don't like is a feeling of early wars being a waste of time or a complete deity map being beaten by crossbows.

On the subject of weak cities, I don't think I'll bring back strong damage but a possibility I've considered is to further increase the health of cities.

 

[DeAnno]

On the subject of weak cities, I don't think I'll bring back strong damage but a possibility I've considered is to further increase the health of cities.

Maybe focus a health buff on the defense buildings instead of just across the board? That way it would leave uninvested cities still weak but let them buff themselves up with effort. Also it would help differentiate Tradition more and shore up what is often a bit of a weak policy.

 

[beetle]

On the subject of weak cities, I don't think I'll bring back strong damage but a possibility I've considered is to further increase the health of cities.

I am ambivalent about strong damage, but it does seem that cities should recover health faster. If I have a city brought down to 0 health (but never captured) and peace out, ten turns later it is only at like 60%. Either cities should recover faster or the minimum turns for peace should be increase.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I have played a couple games on Immortal recently where an opponent wilted against my Longsword rush. In one game I even rushed an opponent with them capturing a city, and then managed to rush them back to defend against a sneak attack on the other side of my empire, wiping out a carpet of Classical age Persian units.

At 23 strength if the opponent is still fighting you with classical age units there is really not much they can do, and contemporary cities barely do scratch damage to them. It's very binary though, (in that if you can't get to them before the enemy has units that can fight them it probably won't work at all), so I can see how it might be impossible to execute on Demigod. Seeing how things seem to revolve around either rushing with Longs or defending a Long rush depending on difficulty level though, it's possible they are a bit strong.

people have made it work on DemiGod. it's still a viable strat, especially if you're say Caesar or Harold

Maybe focus a health buff on the defense buildings instead of just across the board? That way it would leave uninvested cities still weak but let them buff themselves up with effort. Also it would help differentiate Tradition more and shore up what is often a bit of a weak policy.

this is a fantastic idea! I would say all defense buildings aside from walls though, those are rarely to ever built. if we buff walls then tradition will be even stronger in comparison.

 

[Lake.Solon]

I found myself wanting to review the tech-tree changes without having the game loaded, so here is an Imgur album of the Acken's Mod v4 tech tree.

One image per era transition (two eras on each image).


The base BNW tech tree is already posted.

 

[Lake.Solon]

I've seen others bring up the way Great War Bombers (GWB, bombers) have changed their place in Acken's mod. A quick search of this thread for simply "bombers" shows quite a few posts (I doubt this link will work). And my games so far have been similar experiences.

I think Acken's mod has exposed a bit of poor game design in the BNW tech tree that is obscured in the base game. Here are some thoughts on how this has come about (I'm sure others will have their own interpretations, and am looking forward to hearing how terribly wrong I am).

Science Surge

In BNW we're all accustomed to timing our social policies around Rationalism being in the Renaissance. I'll hold off on a culture push if I'm close but not quite to the Renaissance, and I'll change my research to begin the Renaissance earlier if possible before an upcoming policy adoption. But of course the AI presumably doesn't do this so their tech rate doesn't accelerate as hard as the player's in the Renaissance-Industrial eras.

Of course play style, the game's difficulty level, and how a particular game has developed will alter specifically when a player overtakes the AI in research but after playing some Acken's Mod I realize in hindsight that sometime during BNW's Industrial era is... well it's when I get lazy. In my very first Acken's game I had to recall my spies from rigging elections back to stealing techs when I realized the top AI had kept pace with me.

Counters: Rock, Paper, Scissors

Horsemen are an early Classical era unit on the "middle" path of the tech tree, but their Spearmen counter comes earlier in the late Ancient era and is on the "lower" path. If you and your opponent are researching the middle path you both get horsemen and you're both matched. If instead you take the lower path they'll have horsemen before you but you'll still have spearmen by then.

You can still get caught out by mounted units if you didn't build their counter, but the tech tree makes it unlikely you won't have it available.

Back to Bombers

Great War Bombers become available in the early Modern (Flight, middle path). Their primary counters are Triplanes, Anti-Aircraft Guns (AA), and Destroyers. The latter two come a half-era further in the late modern. The middle path gives AA guns but Ballistics requires Flight anyway. The bottom path gives Destroyers but Combustion requires Railroads which requires Steam Power and Dynamite, whereas Flight itself just requires Steam Power.

Triplanes are therefore the earliest counter coming with the very same tech that gives the bombers themselves. But like the Bombers they require Oil, which comes in the late Industrial on the top path (Biology).

This is entirely different to how the situation is handled in other parts of the tech tree, and pretty atypical for similar mechanics in other games as well. In BNW we didn't care so much about this because it happened when we were typically "countering" with a surge in tech.

Acken's Version 4.1

I'm sure you're already thinking about ways you'd approach this (or how I've misinterpreted the situation), and I'm really curious what other ideas people have (I've got a few odd-ball ideas myself).

But at first glance I think the simplest way to smooth things out is leaving Triplanes where they are in Flight and moving Great War Bombers to Ballistics (requires Flight and Railroad) alongside AA guns.

P.S. Apologies for the double-post, but it didn't seem appropriate to edit into my previous post.

 

[Acken]

You do have a point about needing both bio and flight for defense against planes. AA guns could be unlocked more easily to compensate especially as they are a lot less efficient than fighters to fight planes anyway (because of the cover range).

The horseman vs spearman situation is a bit trickier to solve.

 

[003]

The AI is extremely aggressive with expansion; they're building cities in areas where it might be all tundra, but a single source of deer. I guess this will explain why they tend to focus on building units instead of focusing on their many cities!

 

[Chum]

These supposed AI improvements this mod promised didn't affect their hypocrisy or general sociopathy in any way, did they? How am I supposed to go wide when everyone hates me for founding more than three cities?

IMO, Acken's mod has made this worse.

I've played 2 or 3 vanilla games in the time since I've been playing Acken's mod (I picked it up pretty much right away), and the rest has been spent in here. I've been playing Liberty a lot in both now that it's very viable in the mod, and it's easily 10x easier to deal with the AI in vanilla than in the mod. Literally every game goes the exact same way now - I expand, the AI asks me not to expand in their direction, I say I'm sorry (well, I stopped doing that actually, since it makes no difference), and then they denounce me the next turn, and within 10 turns I'm at war with 2 of my neighbors. You need to try pretty hard to do that EVERY game in the unmodded game.

There IS a change, I can't reproduce that level of psychosis in the unmodded game, but it happens literally every single game with the mod. But, I guess the thing is - I enjoy it. I like wafflestomping an AI in the early game where unit strengths are measured in teens rather than 100's, so it makes it a lot easier to manage. I just plan for it now and assume I will be at war sometime in the first 60 turns, and it won't be my choice.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

But, I guess the thing is - I enjoy it.

Good for you. I'll let Civ5 gather some dust for the next few months, maybe then the modding community will have made a decent game out of it.