Looking for a better game experience

[japanesesamurai]

Hi guys

Last month I started playing CIV5. I am hooked. 48 hour marathons are no exception. Im a huge fan of MGSV and Dishonored games. I only play games in which I can clear objectives, play through the way I want. So CIV is nice. First turn based strategy game I played. In the late 90’s I tried AOE, but didnt like it. Anyway, there are some mechanics and developer decisions I am bothered with a bit. I am looking for ways (mods, workarounds), to handle these. These problems are:

- on flat maps (no wrapped, cilinder maps), I get these odd ugly grey map border, east and west. This is just a strange artistic choice from the team at Firaxis. I am looking for a mod that changes these into something more appealing.

- I played 1000+ hours on MGSV, I love good gameplay and challenging AI behavior. In CIV5, the AI is just plain bad. Especially with their boats. The developers tackled this problem by giving the AI advantages (I suppose); more gold, less penalties, less waiting times, more units, etc…
Are there any non-dll mods (im on mac) which changes its intelligence slightly, or drastically?

Next to the combat stupidity, the AI's dilpomatic behaviour is beyond ridiculous as well, stuff like this: If I am at war with a computer leader, for no reason (even if we arent physically at war), they offer me free cities and a peace agreement. Or 1 turn after the war ended, they friendly ask me to do some trading. Its ridiculous…

- less important but could change my games up a bit, I am looking for nice modded leaders/civs, with voice (audio) when they say something. And with nice music like the Mali civ.

As for how I play:

I play on these maps:
- pangea, continents, earth, tectonic movement, perfect world.

I usually play with these victories, or (n)one of them:
- domination
- cultural
- diplomacy

My preferred civ's:
Japan, Russia, Austria, America

I’ve been looking for mods for two days and came up with these (didnt play them yet. And I’m on mac, so no dll’s):

- artificial unintelligence light
- falcon ai diplomacy
- barbs evolved
- emigration
- extra victory conditions
- great spy
- events and decisions
- couple of extra congress resolutions
- Resolutions - XCOM Initiative Lite
- realistic border expansion
- unit promotions
- militia defense
- mercenaries
- historical religions complete
- nuclear plants can meltdown
- wonders of tomorrow
- renewable energy
- more city states
- various extra tile improvements, few extra buildings (sewers, enhanced military buildings,..) , pontoon bridge, etc

I tried Enlightment era, but the tech tree is messed up, and I cant click on “choose production”. I have this problem with every extra era I install, sadly

In short, Im basically looking for a better, indepth gaming experience on Mac. I play BNW with all DLC.

Thanks a lot guys

 

[Equilin]

Since you're on Mac things will probably get three times more difficults as a lot of mods have some troubles with Mac.

On AI problems try out the Community Patch, available here on Civfanatics.

For modded civs, 99% won't have voices (voice acting is very expensive, and finding one with appropriate language is not easy, together it's impossible for modders to do). Same goes for music.

I don't think anyone does the map border thing. People usually play maps with either 1. cylinder so no east-west border, and north-south is usually ice, or 2. east-west border is water so does not matter as much.

You can also take a look at Community Balance Patch, also known as Vox Populi (VP), an overhaul of the game which changes a lot of things.

 

[japanesesamurai]

Hi Equllin! Thank you for your reply. Much appreciated.
The problem is that these mods you mention, are DLL-bases. So they won't work on a Macintosh, sadly...

 

[aafritz17]

Hi Equllin! Thank you for your reply. Much appreciated.
The problem is that these mods you mention, are DLL-bases. So they won't work on a Macintosh, sadly...

Hi guys

Last month I started playing CIV5. I am hooked. 48 hour marathons are no exception. Im a huge fan of MGSV and Dishonored games. I only play games in which I can clear objectives, play through the way I want. So CIV is nice. First turn based strategy game I played. In the late 90’s I tried AOE, but didnt like it. Anyway, there are some mechanics and developer decisions I am bothered with a bit. I am looking for ways (mods, workarounds), to handle these. These problems are:

- on flat maps (no wrapped, cilinder maps), I get these odd ugly grey map border, east and west. This is just a strange artistic choice from the team at Firaxis. I am looking for a mod that changes these into something more appealing.

- I played 1000+ hours on MGSV, I love good gameplay and challenging AI behavior. In CIV5, the AI is just plain bad. Especially with their boats. The developers tackled this problem by giving the AI advantages (I suppose); more gold, less penalties, less waiting times, more units, etc…
Are there any non-dll mods (im on mac) which changes its intelligence slightly, or drastically?

Next to the combat stupidity, the AI's dilpomatic behaviour is beyond ridiculous as well, stuff like this: If I am at war with a computer leader, for no reason (even if we arent physically at war), they offer me free cities and a peace agreement. Or 1 turn after the war ended, they friendly ask me to do some trading. Its ridiculous…

- less important but could change my games up a bit, I am looking for nice modded leaders/civs, with voice (audio) when they say something. And with nice music like the Mali civ.

As for how I play:

I play on these maps:
- pangea, continents, earth, tectonic movement, perfect world.

I usually play with these victories, or (n)one of them:
- domination
- cultural
- diplomacy

My preferred civ's:
Japan, Russia, Austria, America

I’ve been looking for mods for two days and came up with these (didnt play them yet. And I’m on mac, so no dll’s):

- artificial unintelligence light
- falcon ai diplomacy
- barbs evolved
- emigration
- extra victory conditions
- great spy
- events and decisions
- couple of extra congress resolutions
- Resolutions - XCOM Initiative Lite
- realistic border expansion
- unit promotions
- militia defense
- mercenaries
- historical religions complete
- nuclear plants can meltdown
- wonders of tomorrow
- renewable energy
- more city states
- various extra tile improvements, few extra buildings (sewers, enhanced military buildings,..) , pontoon bridge, etc

I tried Enlightment era, but the tech tree is messed up, and I cant click on “choose production”. I have this problem with every extra era I install, sadly

In short, Im basically looking for a better, indepth gaming experience on Mac. I play BNW with all DLC.

Thanks a lot guys

About the borders - I've seen that when I had the video option "Fog of War Quality" set to "Minimal". (I'm at work, can't confirm the wording, but I think they're both correct.) Try changing that.

 

[japanesesamurai]

About the borders - I've seen that when I had the video option "Fog of War Quality" set to "Minimal". (I'm at work, can't confirm the wording, but I think they're both correct.) Try changing that.

Just tried, but doesn't work... Still the grey surface and weird looking edges (I tried Europe map)

 

[japanesesamurai]

After some play with some of these mods, I find most of them not really worth it, unfortunately...
The city state diplomacy is an interesting idea, but isn't improving gameplay imho. And its tedious to get your guy across their border.
The mercenaries expansion is just too much; way too much stuff to build and buy. Less is more, I suppose
Also, with all due respect (really), to all the wonderful modding people: please dedicate some time to review your spelling errors and typos

Fwiw, I kept these:
- barbarians to terrorists (with great generals disabled; doesn't make sense in early games for them to have a general)
- great spy (I like this one. No more kidnapping enemy prophets to spy their land with)
- unit promotions (adds some tactical depth to battles and makes your units more personal, I am willing to accept typo's in this one )
- realistic border expansion
- militia defense (this is a cool one, for human and AI. I added my own rule: they are unable to cross city borders from cities in which they are spawned. Police Jurisdiction and what not)
- mines on flatlands
- trading posts to towns
- reforestation
- artificial unintelligence light (didn't notice any difference yet)
- falcon ai diplomacy (same as above)
- 3rd unique component (together with unit promotion and militia, the Japanese become a bit overpowered when defending, though)

Also, I think some mods are colliding with each other, because the game tends to crash when exiting to main menu or desktop...

 

[japanesesamurai]

As for the typo in "Promotions expansion pack V9"
In the *.XML, in line 1277:
<Row Tag="TXT_KEY_PROMOTION_GUARD_HELP">
<Text>+30% [ICON_STRENGTH] near the [ICON_CAPITAL] capital. Based on Capital proximity (-5% per tile distance beetween unit and [ICON_CAPITAL] capital) </Text>

Change beetween to between

Much better