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

[yung.carl.jung]

this is completely baffling to me. I have not seen a single person spell Landsknecht correctly. how can this be? it's not even that hard of a word. Kernspintomografie, Heidegger-Rezeption, those are German words that are pretty hard to spell. Lands Knecht literally just translates to land menial, land servant. just two posts above you could look up how it is spelt. not specifically targetting you, it's pretty much everyone on this board.

 

[mbbcam]

this is completely baffling to me. I have not seen a single person spell Landsknecht correctly. how can this be? it's not even that hard of a word. Kernspintomografie, Heidegger-Rezeption, those are German words that are pretty hard to spell. Lands Knecht literally just translates to land menial, land servant. just two posts above you could look up how it is spelt. not specifically targetting you, it's pretty much everyone on this board.

Actually, the Oxford English Dictionary spells it "lansquenet". Use of the word in English (with a slightly different spelling) goes back to 1607. As this spelling makes obvious, the word originally came into English via French, not directly from German. The OED records various spellings used in English over the centuries, including: lancequene(n)t, lansquenight, lanskenet, landsquenet, lamb-skin-it, lambskinnet, lansquenett(e), lansquinnet, lansquenet, landsknecht, and lanzknecht. It also observes that "The German word was at an early date miswritten *lanzknecht*, as if from *lanz* [meaning] lance".

So the forum is just following a long tradition of inventiveness in orthography!

My personal favourite is "lamb-skin-it"

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Does this mod require the latest patch? The one that introduced cocoa and bison I mean

 

[meatpardle]

this is completely baffling to me. I have not seen a single person spell Landsknecht correctly. how can this be? it's not even that hard of a word. Kernspintomografie, Heidegger-Rezeption, those are German words that are pretty hard to spell. Lands Knecht literally just translates to land menial, land servant. just two posts above you could look up how it is spelt. not specifically targetting you, it's pretty much everyone on this board.

You're baffled that people have trouble spelling a word from a foreign language when neither the written form or pronunciation have any similarities with or basis for reference in their own language? Unless someone takes the time to check the game it seems pretty likely that it's going to be misspelt.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Actually, the Oxford English Dictionary spells it "lansquenet". Use of the word in English (with a slightly different spelling) goes back to 1607. As this spelling makes obvious, the word originally came into English via French, not directly from German. The OED records various spellings used in English over the centuries, including: lancequene(n)t, lansquenight, lanskenet, landsquenet, lamb-skin-it, lambskinnet, lansquenett(e), lansquinnet, lansquenet, landsknecht, and lanzknecht. It also observes that "The German word was at an early date miswritten *lanzknecht*, as if from *lanz* [meaning] lance".

So the forum is just following a long tradition of inventiveness in orthography!

My personal favourite is "lamb-skin-it"

that's really cool, I wasn't aware. Lance also makes much more sense than land to be honest. my favorite is probably lansquenight, it just sounds completely ridic

it's also worth noting that I haven't seen a single version of yours mentioned on here, but plenty of Landsnektch, Lanssnechkt, Landknechts (pretty close), Landshknekt and many more.

You're baffled that people have trouble spelling a word from a foreign language when neither the written form or pronunciation have any similarities with or basis for reference in their own language? Unless someone takes the time to check the game it seems pretty likely that it's going to be misspelt.

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.

 

[mbbcam]

my favorite is probably lansquenight, it just sounds completely ridic

Indeed! But there is probably a kind of logic behind the oddity. I'd hazard a guess that the element "night" was used because (in modern English) it sounds exactly the same as "knight" (in earlier forms of English the "k" was sounded). And, of course, the English word "knight" has the same root as the German "Knecht" -- in feudal times to be a servant, or vassal, was a highly honourable thing, hence the title of knight came to indicate a person of high social status.

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.

 

[Chum]

this is completely baffling to me. I have not seen a single person spell Landsknecht correctly. how can this be? it's not even that hard of a word. Kernspintomografie, Heidegger-Rezeption, those are German words that are pretty hard to spell. Lands Knecht literally just translates to land menial, land servant. just two posts above you could look up how it is spelt. not specifically targetting you, it's pretty much everyone on this board.

You drastically overestimate how much I care about checking into it when everyone knows what I'm talking about.

 

[SlightlyMad]

Hi all, I just started playing this mod and it's completely reinvigorated the game for me! I absolutely love the flow of the game, and everything seems perfectly balanced up until around the Industrial era. The problem is that at that point wide empires seem to run rampant, as a lot of the growth checks (like science penalty) from vanilla have been reduced.

I play the Large Earth Map (djvandyke's Greatest Earth Map) from YNAEMP on Immortal Marathon, and I'm guessing the map exacerbates things a bit, but in vanilla it generally hasn't been an insurmountable problem. I tried taking it down to Emperor but the beginning game doesn't present much challenge for me there.

I think just increasing the per-city science penalty would do the trick, as the main thing that lets these wide civs really run away with the game is that their tech advancement explodes as they increase their territory.

Another issue I've noticed is that the pantheon belief that gives +1 faith for forests seems a bit OP (mostly because of the Iroquois). Again that might be a problem specific to the map though, since most random maps don't have the same vast forest ranges.

Overall though, amazing mod! Any tips on how to stop runaway civs in the late game would be appreciated! I've got a great Spain game going where I'm in the #2 spot, but Washington has a 10-tech lead on me and about twice as many cities (he has all of North America, and is currently sweeping through Asia and South America).

 

[yung.carl.jung]

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.

that is a incredibly sound explanation, I think I can get behind this. I can definitely see how the accumulation of consonants would be confusing if you are not used to it - it even is confusing to me if it occurs in other languages, especially the slavic ones like czech!

You drastically overestimate how much I care about checking into it when everyone knows what I'm talking about.

I didn't mean you in particular, rather every single person on this board

 

[Chum]

I didn't mean you in particular, rather every single person on this board

Well, one of the biggest obstacles is that spell check isn't going to catch foreign words. I mean, it will, but it will catch them even if you spell them correctly. So whether I spell it wrong or not, it's impossible for me to know, as it's a non native word to English, and didn't exist in my vocabulary prior to Civ 5. Add to that the fact that no one is really confused about what I'm referring to, and the general fact that people that criticize spelling on the internet these days are generally seen as pedantic and you have a perfect storm of easy misspellings!

 

[noto2]

Hmm, I've never felt this aforementioned desperation for a melee unit. Most of the time I do have access to iron... do I prioritize finding it more than most people? Perhaps. I do like the Colossus and get it in a lot of my games, I find I have at least some iron in most games. If not, well, I'd probably have horses, so I'll build those. Failing that, crossbows and spears can work for a while, and muskets come right after longswords. In fact, that's something that's always bothered me...muskets and longswords are so close in the tech tree they might as well be at the same tech. Acken's mod rectifies this somewhat by increasing the prerequisite techs for gunpowder, but it still doesn't feel quite right. I think that either muskets should be the same strength as longswords, their benefit being that they require no resources, or, if they are going to be stronger it should be more difficult to acquire them. Anyway, just a minor gripe of mine (does anyone remember in vanilla Civ4 how grenadiers came one tech after muskets? Why would anyone use muskets in that situation? Stupid balancing, Firaxis)

 

[Chum]

Hmm, I've never felt this aforementioned desperation for a melee unit. Most of the time I do have access to iron...

Most of the time you do. But if you're not playing on strategic balance (which gets a little silly at times, to be honest). then it's not all that rare to not have iron, or to only have 3 or so. 3 won't cut it in a mod where melee is kind, you're going to be running with spears and warriors for WAY too long.

Like I said, it's not every game, but it is a decision that happens shortly after my initial policy tree is done. "What's my iron situation? Am I good, or am I unlocking Lansqueueknickers?"

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Does this mod require the latest patch? The one that introduced cocoa and bison I mean

Anyone?

 

[noto2]

Most of the time you do. But if you're not playing on strategic balance (which gets a little silly at times, to be honest). then it's not all that rare to not have iron, or to only have 3 or so. 3 won't cut it in a mod where melee is kind, you're going to be running with spears and warriors for WAY too long.

Like I said, it's not every game, but it is a decision that happens shortly after my initial policy tree is done. "What's my iron situation? Am I good, or am I unlocking Lansqueueknickers?"

I find 3 swords to be quite enough if I also have 3 spears, 3 horses, and 4 composites, assuming I'm just defending. Of course, if I want to go on the offense I'd need something else. So I've never felt the need for Lanparties... perhaps I'll give them a try in my next game. I'm really caught up in Xcom, though, at the moment

 

[Acken]

Anyone?

.Yes.

 

[Chum]

I find 3 swords to be quite enough if I also have 3 spears, 3 horses, and 4 composites, assuming I'm just defending. Of course, if I want to go on the offense I'd need something else. So I've never felt the need for Lanparties... perhaps I'll give them a try in my next game. I'm really caught up in Xcom, though, at the moment

There is no defending in Ackenmod, only conquering!

No one DoW's me twice!

 

[SirWhale]

The game tends to hang (go unresponsive) when I select the NQ Pangaea v10 mod. Anyone has this problem too?

I tend to select random on some of the other options with that map type selected too, not sure if this affects things.

 

[Chum]

The game tends to hang (go unresponsive) when I select the NQ Pangaea v10 mod. Anyone has this problem too?

I tend to select random on some of the other options with that map type selected too, not sure if this affects things.

Yes, I've had bad luck with the NQ pangaea mod. I've been using Hellblazer's oval instead, which seems to work far better.

 

[Acken]

The game tends to hang (go unresponsive) when I select the NQ Pangaea v10 mod. Anyone has this problem too?

I tend to select random on some of the other options with that map type selected too, not sure if this affects things.

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.

 

[SirWhale]

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 used to be able to start ~25% of the time. More recently, it doesn't start at all.