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

[Ravellion]

V3 improves AI tech/building/expansion/worker/specialist logic.
Note that I'm considering removing the free techs from the AI now

By T170 you can expect Riflemen on the higher difficulties. Was that Emperor ? That's still pretty early for emperor.

Yes, that's emperor. Note that it's not just riflemen; gatling guns and cannons too.

I also just lost a turn 70 Rome 8 spearmen/3 archer/1 ballista/1 warrior attack. I'm moving down to King I suppose, where on "non Acken" I played Immortal reasonably comfortably.

 

[Acken]

Hehe sorry

 

[Chum]

I haven't had a chance to check into this, but is this mod possible to be packed into a "fake DLC" for multiplayer use?

I'm not asking you to do it, btw, I saw the thread about doing that for mods, I just don't wanna go thru all the effort of doing it if it's not going to, and you seem to know more about modding than I do!

The game is much more fun with your mod, and I don't really wanna go back.

 

[Acken]

I haven't had a chance to check into this, but is this mod possible to be packed into a "fake DLC" for multiplayer use?

I'm not asking you to do it, btw, I saw the thread about doing that for mods, I just don't wanna go thru all the effort of doing it if it's not going to, and you seem to know more about modding than I do!

The game is much more fun with your mod, and I don't really wanna go back.

I think it should work but I have no idea if it would work well. Feel free to test for me.

I don't really know if Multiplayer would require some special considerations when making DLL modifications. I'd think my modifications are small enough to not endanger multiplayer stability but I don't really know sadly...
If you report problems I'll work on it at a later date once the mod is done with the biggest changes and ask Fruitstrike what he did for the NQMod.

Of course you need the exact same version for every player.

 

[Senteliks]

I don't know if someone has mentioned this already but information is bit misleading:

If you are looking for an overhaul with huge changes and a totally new experience then you should look into the Community Patch mod which is a bigger mod with talentful modders

You should change part Community Patch to Community Balance Patch because they are not the same thing.CP is bugfix and AI improvement patch and doesn't change game mechanics. CBP on other hand is optional overhaul mod for CP and they as whole are part of CPP.

I am curious though.Why didn't you use CP to begin with ? They already have incorporated few AI mods including (AU) and did various enchantments and improvements upon them.

Community Patch:

This version contains only the DLL bugfixes and AI improvements. No balance or gameplay changes are included. New DLL tables, functions and LUA events are included, however they are not used by the mod.

Edit: Forget about last part, I figure it out, why you chose not to use CP as basis of your mod.

 

[Acken]

Updated the OP for precision.

 

[Legen]

V3 improves AI tech/building/expansion/worker/specialist logic.
Note that I'm considering removing the free techs from the AI now

If you think the AI is solid, it's probably better to reduce or remove free techs and production bonuses. Not every civilization is meant to play catch-up, this could help keeping the civs balanced.

By the way, do you have any change in mind for the civs? You have it in the "To come" section, not sure how minimal they will be.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Geez, the AI is so much more whiny about my taking an early worker. LET IT GO. Please? I want to do things. It's turn 120 ... literally THOUSANDS of years ago ...

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Jeebus ... how did you get the AI to learn how to attack like that?! It actually pulled off a coordinated air/sea assault, holding back its ironclad until I was boned.

DemiGod is HARD. Definitely harder than old-school Immortal.

 

[Dahebbie]

Latest civ version is 1.0.3.279 do you have that ? It would explain why you have problems and why I cannot load your save.

Religious fervor is supposed to be counted in Global Social Policy Happiness so yes it doesn't work based on your screen.
This would indicate that the DLL is not being used properly. If you don't have the very latest version this is bound to happen. You could eventually also check if Artistic Genius gives you extra tourism or not as it is also a dll change.
Finally you should also check if the .dll is in the mod directory (of my mod) to begin with

Note that if it is indeed a .dll problem with mine not being loaded (either due to wrong version or the file not being there) if we fix the problem it will break your save game.


I don't think so

None of those should create problems. All of them are working properly together on my end.

Verify you have 1.0.3.279 first
(I leave for the weekend so no update until late sunday)

Heh. You where right.

I didn't have the dll. My antivirus program took it away after unzipping your mod... So now with the dll, let assume it works. I'm on a new game now, so if you don't hear anymore from me regarding this, it's working.
(Yes, its 1.0.3.279 on my pc to) Probably just missed the "9" first time I looked

Thx man, and sry for all the time you've put into this "non-error"

 

[Acken]

If you think the AI is solid, it's probably better to reduce or remove free techs and production bonuses. Not every civilization is meant to play catch-up, this could help keeping the civs balanced.

By the way, do you have any change in mind for the civs? You have it in the "To come" section, not sure how minimal they will be.

Next version

Jeebus ... how did you get the AI to learn how to attack like that?! It actually pulled off a coordinated air/sea assault, holding back its ironclad until I was boned.

DemiGod is HARD. Definitely harder than old-school Immortal.

For better air attacks you have Delnar_ersike's Artificial Unintelligence to thank

Geez, the AI is so much more whiny about my taking an early worker. LET IT GO. Please? I want to do things. It's turn 120 ... literally THOUSANDS of years ago ...

The AI being angry for attacks (casus bellis) will get a decay counter. So that it doesn't care after a set amount of turns. This will probably make v3 since I already had 75% of the code in when doing v1. Just have to finish it and verify it works.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Also, apparently the anger they feel if you steal their lousy artifacts is greater than the buddiness they feel if you share an ideology :-/.

Got pretty far in two games and then ran up against The (Great War) Bomber Problem. As I plow towards Replaceable Parts/Plastics, eight Great Bombers start hitting everything, and I've got literally no AA at that point.

 

[Acken]

Also, apparently the anger they feel if you steal their lousy artifacts is greater than the buddiness they feel if you share an ideology :-/.

Got pretty far in two games and then ran up against The (Great War) Bomber Problem. As I plow towards Replaceable Parts/Plastics, eight Great Bombers start hitting everything, and I've got literally no AA at that point.

I have not changed the diplo effect of artifact stealing and ideology. You're right though that the scores given by Firaxis could need work.

Well... hitting air techs has always been a key moment in warfare for civ5. Deity lategame domination speeds up tremendously when the player hit GWB and Bombers. Now, with a better AI the player has to fear being the victim of this now. If a warmonger is outeching you that hard you are likely to hit a wall. You can try to get rid of a runaway sooner (or slow it down). Also with more testing I will adjust the teching penalty of the AI accordingly.

Finally as you are witnessing DemiGod is hard and from one version to the next it's getting harder so I wouldn't pay too much attention to the early posts about it and people finding it too easy . I suggest trying Immortal and Emperor. You will already feel a lot more pressured on these difficulties than you are used to. As presented earlier the Immortal AI will hit late game information era units before 300 turns.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

In both those games I was even in tech or perhaps a bit higher, but I was focusing on the upper end (going for a culture victory) instead of the lower. Definitely was not crushing it on tech, though.

One thing that continues to be annoying is how angry the AI is about my "expanding aggressively", where aggressive expansion seems to be defined as 3 cities total. One yelled at me for breaking my promise when I build my 3rd city 20+ hexes distant from his closest city, which was weird. I'm getting declared on right and left even with having a reasonably decent army. Enough that I can easily hold off one honor-policy Civ, but not two (not while trying to do anything but build units, at least).

So that's frustrating -- I'd like to think that turtling with 3 cities and just holding off one jerk at a time should be at least conceivable.

 

[Acken]

Well let's not confuse things. I have changed the way the AI react to "Too many cities". It will now fire also early with not many cities but the penality is only small at first and you should only see a message "They start to be worried we are expanding too quickly". On the other hand the opinion modifier for close expansion works the same way.

The AI is a lot more mean. That's by design. Turtling on 3 cities is not a thing, you have to expand and kill threatening neighbours or you will run the risk of being overwhelmed later on. DemiGod is hard not in the sense that good players will beat it 100% of the time but in the sense that good players have a good chance of losing. I do not win all my DemiGod games. If it is frustrating please play a lower difficulty, players should chos a difficulty they have fun with

But overtime I'll fix the kind of diplo problems you have been mentioning too

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

The AI is a lot more mean. That's by design. Turtling on 3 cities is not a thing, you have to expand and kill threatening neighbours or you will run the risk of being overwhelmed later on. DemiGod is hard not in the sense that good players will beat it 100% of the time but in the sense that good players have a good chance of losing. I do not win all my DemiGod games. If it is frustrating please play a lower difficulty, players should chos a difficulty they have fun with

But overtime I'll fix the kind of diplo problems you have been mentioning too

I'm okay with having to change my standard strats to where I need to be more aggro, definitely a tough adjustment, though ... really thought having a decent standing army and playing nice would be enough to avoid a 3-front war on turn 120. No wonder-whoring on DemiGod, I guess ...

I am pretty confident I can swing Immortal, maybe I should bump back a level and get at least one win under my belt!

EDIT: Or not. Just for fun I thought I'd play Egypt, go for an early Great Library, which on DemiGod I usually saw being built on turn 32-35. Two attempts, both failed -- the AI built the GL on turn 34 the first game (beating me by one turn) and turn 29 (!!) the second.

I'm not saying the GL is a particularly good idea as a first build but being beaten to it twice like that gives me pause about whether Immortal will be a cakewalk...

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Was it always the case that the AI would get pissy if you religiously converted one of their cities, even if you agree not to convert any more? Yikes!

Also, "aggressive" is misspelled re expansion.

Going to try this again! I have been using nothing but the brand spanking new NQ map, maybe I need to branch out a bit ...

 

[Acken]

The only thing I have changed regarding the AI opinion are:
-Land dispute (bumped up a lot)
-Victory dispute (increased)
-CS dispute (lowered)
-Wonder dispute (lowered)
-Warmonger hate (lowered)
-Overexpansion (lowered)
Also civs that try to win by conquest have their agressiveness increased by a lot

The AI is also more likely to go to war with people they don't like (which is a function of opinion) as well as weak targets.

WonderAI is on my to do list. The problem is the AI likes wonder too much regardless of its strategy. I aim to change that a bit.

 

[Phukit]

any time frame for when v3 will be on the steam workshop?

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

The only thing I have changed regarding the AI opinion are:
-Land dispute (bumped up a lot)
-Victory dispute (increased)
-CS dispute (lowered)
-Wonder dispute (lowered)
-Warmonger hate (lowered)
-Overexpansion (lowered)
Also civs that try to win by conquest have their agressiveness increased by a lot

The AI is also more likely to go to war with people they don't like (which is a function of opinion) as well as weak targets.

WonderAI is on my to do list. The problem is the AI likes wonder too much regardless of its strategy. I aim to change that a bit.

Thanks -- been awhile since I've actually run around converting other caps with great prophets, I guess it was always like that!