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

[Acken]

I'm not really ready to spend time fixing the game tooltips and descriptions. However truly free great people is probably going to be implemented.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

You don't need to update civilopedia or even some tooltips, but I think it's nice to have a decription for some major changes, like knowing what GP is free, for instance.

 

[Civilopedian]

I'm not really ready to spend time fixing the game tooltips and descriptions. However truly free great people is probably going to be implemented.

What about making all growth bonuses the same type?

Is it just too OP to have Fertility Rites / Swords Into Plowshares surplus growth bonus the same type of raw growth as Temple of Artemis or Landed Elite?

I mean, let's face it, most people that know the religion growth bonuses are only to surplus and not raw never take those pantheons/beliefs.

 

[Jaybe]

It's the Temple of Artemis and Landed Elite raw growth that are OP. THEY should be nerfed to only apply to the surplus!

I suppose I feel that way primarily because I discovered that is how they work only within the last couple of years.

 

[Civilopedian]

Here's the mods that I use with yours Acken

 

[wayneb64]

Is there any way that I could tone down Immortal a tad? What exactly changes from Emperor to Immortal? The step up seems just a bit to much, can't even imagine what Demigod and Deity would be like. Do people really need them that hard to make it a challenge?

 

[Acken]

You can play in the difficulties.xml and handicaps.sql files. Often the lowest the value is the more powerful the ai is. Note that immortal is in the mod files the emperor entries.

 

[Acken]

Whar im likely to do is make prince the level 1 difficulty and ramp up from there to deity to give more options to players. It may get a bit confusing though but i doubt people using the mod play below prince.

 

[Jaybe]

Whar im likely to do is make prince the level 1 difficulty and ramp up from there to deity to give more options to players. It may get a bit confusing though but i doubt people using the mod play below prince.

Awesomeness!

But does it count from '1'
or does it count from '0'??

Spoken as a true Prince or King player.

 

[wayneb64]

The start feels fine, it's the mid through end game where the AIs just seem to run away with it. I can hold them off in the early game, but once they get 8-10 techs ahead it's just not a fair fight anymore. Is there some way to dampen their advantage as the game goes on?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

It's the Temple of Artemis and Landed Elite raw growth that are OP. THEY should be nerfed to only apply to the surplus!

I suppose I feel that way primarily because I discovered that is how they work only within the last couple of years.

Sorry, but this make zero sense to me. It is extremely obvious in my opinion that Temple of Artemis, Landed Elite (only the first part) and the Aztec UB affect food, not Growth. It absolutely clearly states it in the tooltip... There are no "two kinds of Growth". There simply is Growth and then there is food. It's such a simple concept I can't even fathom why someone would have a problem with it.

Also nerfing ToA is not a good idea in my opinion. If it was only Growth, not food, it would not even be worth building! By building ToA you delay Settlers, which is a huge opportunity cost. You might miss an ideal expo spot, get forward settled, pushed in, lose a religion, delay National College.. All of those. ToA is in a good spot right now.

 

[Acken]

The start feels fine, it's the mid through end game where the AIs just seem to run away with it. I can hold them off in the early game, but once they get 8-10 techs ahead it's just not a fair fight anymore. Is there some way to dampen their advantage as the game goes on?

A lot of the AI bonuses are in handicaps.sql. You can increase value there to diminish the AI discounts. (note that the per era modifier is a negative number so increasing it (closer to 0) is still an AI nerf). For techs, the related fields are AIGrowthPercent, AIPerEraModifier and AINumCitiesExponent

Also note that for some reason I noticed that my Train percent on Immortal is set at the same level as DemiGod.

Also note that (and this is the same in vanilla) the jumps in difficulty are due to a simple reason. The AI bonuses are not linear. When the train cost goes from 100 to 90 (Prince to King) this is less of a relative buff than going from 60 to 50 (Immortal to Deity). When you add in also extra workers, techs and settlers it's easy to see why base civ5 Immortal is so much easier than deity.

 

[wayneb64]

So I see AITrainPercent in both the XML and SQL and in the XML it goes from 80 to 65 comparing King to Emperor where as the SQL it goes from 70 to 65. Which one matters? What is AITrainPercent anyway? Does that have to do with promotions for combat? I don't see anything that seems to apply to tech cost or bonuses. What does AIPerEraModifier do?

Is AIGrowthPercent controlling population growth? Is that the biggest 'snowball' factor? Nothing in these numbers seems to indicate the increased difficulty I am seeing, but maybe it's a subtle change that lets them get so out of control.

 

[Acken]

Like I said the values for Immortal (HANDICAP_EMPEROR) are wrong, they should be at 75.

The XML numbers are overwritten by the SQL numbers. So it should look like this :
UPDATE HandicapInfos SET AITrainPercent = 85 WHERE Type='HANDICAP_KING';
UPDATE HandicapInfos SET AITrainPercent = 75 WHERE Type='HANDICAP_EMPEROR';
AITrainPercent is the AI % cost for making units.
AIPerEraModifier is the AI per era extra discounts to many bonuses.
AIGrowthPercent controls AI pop food consumption in the mod while it controls AI food requirements for growth is vanilla.

Teching is a combination of growth, happiness, the per era bonus and AINumCitiesExponent which control the exponent of the AI per city tech penalty.

 

[wayneb64]

So I made the following changes to just the SQL to see if that tones it down a bit:

UPDATE HandicapInfos SET AITrainPercent = 75 WHERE Type='HANDICAP_EMPEROR'; // fix
UPDATE HandicapInfos SET AINumCitiesExponent = 55 WHERE Type='HANDICAP_EMPEROR'; // tweak

 

[Chum]

So, this isn't mod specific, it happens in the base game as well, but it happened so many times last night that I feel I should bring it up.

If I capture a civilian unit, that unit can not do any actions until next turn. I can't move it, I can't spread religion, I can't get it to work on something, nothing. No action buttons come up when I select it. That's totally okay.

What's NOT totally okay is when you get backstabbed by an AI, they run into your lands with a half dozen horsemen, capture your workers and then delete them on the same turn. Why the hell does this happen? I have NO chance to even recapture my workers, they're just being captured by horses and deleted on the same turn. I can't do that. I can't capture AI missionaries and then delete them so I don't have to pay a turn of maintenance for them.

It happened 3 times last night, and Dido single handedly crippled my economy with her damned elephants. Come in, capture my workers, pillage my stuff, and now I'm down all of the normal war stuff AND I can't even fix it.

 

[Acken]

V7 will probably be released soon with the following changes :

Spoiler :

Warfare
-City strength base has been increased to 7 from 8, city strength from pop has been increased to 0.33 from 0.30
-Chariot Archers now upgrade to Crossbowmen instead of Knights
-Pikemen now upgrades to Musketmen instead of Lancers
-Catapults, Trebuchet, Canons now have the indirect fire promotion
-Catapults, Trebuchet, Canons and Artillery cost more production
-Knights now are 21 strength

Policies
-Industrial Espionage has been reduced to 33% increased espionage speed.
-Military tradition no longer boosts the production speed of the Heroic Epic, instead the Heroic Epic gives 4 happiness.
-Warrior code now gives 2 warriors instead of a spearman and an archer.

Misc
-No limit for barb exp
-Better spy rate in the later eras. Customized spy formula.
-Some national wonder cost were reduced or how much extra cities make the cost grow
-The cost of science and culture buildings in faith (reformation beliefs) has been increased by 33%.

AI
-AI should be a little more tolerant for other civs early expansions
-Deceptive AIs are more likely to build an army but now the AI no longer hides whether or not it covets your land.
-New AI flavors to encourage culture and science buildings under specific conditions (mostly city size)
-More AI building decisions improvements
-Slightly higher AI tech penalty exponent due to city number

Fixes
-The change to GPP generation was not working properly. GSEM specialists now give the correct 2 per specialist.
-Removed the vanilla bug allowing to easily renew friendships on the turn it expired. The AI will now update its opinions before the player is able to send a demand.

 

[Jullego]

Random thoughts:

1. Is there a way to prevent city states wanting great musicians before turn 100? It's only possible from liberty finisher or Maya's long count but who's gonna do it anyway.

Quoting myself. In my current game this happened as early as on turn 25, so any chance to modify this?

Also, now you can buy culture and science buildings with faith as well as military, but nothing that directly helps diplomatic victory. So what about following change to charitable mission (30% more influence with gold gifts): Can buy influnce with faith.

 

[consentient]

Buying influence with faith would be completely broken. If you wanted a fair way, it would be for the Prophet to add influence as well as converting citizens.

So strength 1500 prophet converts citizens and adds 45 influence, or something. Raw faith for influence would be soooo broken.

 

[Jullego]

I agree it might be hard to balance this but if you faith buy influence, you aren't buying great people, other buildings or military with faith. Buying influnce could also work like buying great people: the more you buy from the same city-state the more it would cost.

Your idea sounds good too.