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

[noto2]

@civawesome: expanding to more land does not give increasing marginal returns, lol, that would be absolutely ridiculous and Acken hasn't done that. He's merely toned down the degree to which marginal returns decrease. The formula used to be a straight 5% increase to science costs per city, and in this mod the science cost increase decreases with each new city you acquire, but it is always a positive number. Let's say at 30 cities, the next city only increases science costs by 1%, it's still difficult to argue that adding one city at that point is going to be a marginal gain in terms of science, unless it was some super awesome capital.

The effects of these changes does mean that larger empires are more efficient in this mod in terms of science, but don't let that lead to assuming you need to conquer the world to win. After playing more games than I can count unmodded, and dozens of games in Acken's mod, at Emperor, I would argue that the prevalence of massive empire AI monsters isn't as much due to the science cost changes as it is due to the changes in AI aggression. One of my biggest complaints about the unmodded game was how passive the AI was. Games were a snore fest unless you had someone like Shaka to make it interesting. AI's often wouldn't even bother trying to conquer anything. The AI was effectively role playing instead of trying to win. This is a very common problem in the Civ franchise, and one that the developers even admitted to. Firaxis officially said they designed the AI to sit there and dick around instead of actually trying to win because the average player gets mad when they lose and has more fun just dominating the AI all the time. Yes, they really said that. Unfortunately, they may be right.

In any case, the AI makes more of an effort to win here which is why you see it start conquering its continent a lot more often, and become a scary, run-away power. There are a few ways to deal with this. You can still win with a smaller empire, but four cities is probably too few now. On a standard map, as Acken pointed out, 7-8 should be enough if you have good land. You can also stop run-away civs by going to war with them without trying to conquer them. If CivA is your main rival to victory, you can establish good relations with CivB. When CivA attacks CivB and conquers one or two of CivB's cities, you jump in the war and liberate those cities and fight CivA back across their border. Think America in WW2. What this means is that even in games where you are planning on a space win or culture win, you still need a military and you still need to react to geo-political events, joining wars, etc. I personally find it much more fun and engaging.

 

[Lake.Solon]

I presume the AI still plays on Chieftain difficulty, even though you've bumped the difficulties down one number each to insert Demi-God?

Does your mod apply all the settings from the Mod/AI/Difficulties.xml? Are any settings from the base game still used (something/something/Gameplay/Handicap.xml if I recall correctly)?

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Sometimes the AI is just too religiously fervent. In my current (2 continent) game, I spread my religion throughout my continent while Ethiopia spread fully converted theirs. Then Ethiopia showed up with three great prophets on my continent, and refused to stop converting my cities when asked, which is quite stupid because my military was much larger than theirs. So I had to declare war and kill their prophets which annoys me because killing a couple of prophets is hardly a good reason to all out declare war. Would be nice if you could use your military to simply stop them, or something of the sort. (And inquisitors aren't feasible in a wide empire, especially given that now prophets have 4 movement).

They also kept landing missionaries on another part of my continent (after I DOW'ed them), and my cavalry would kill a missionary and retreat, only to watch another land on the next turn. Such stupid behaviour should probably be stopped.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Can confirm that the AI really has a problem with sending lots of missionaries into an enemy's territory while at war. In my case though it was the AI who declared on me, and I repelled their initial assault before they sent missionaries and Prophets completely undefended to me to get slaughtered.

 

[noto2]

Yep, I've been there many times. In fact, I'd say about a good 1/4 to 1/3 of the wars I start are due to being spammed by missionaries/prophets. I can't think of a simple way to mod that out of the game so I guess we'll just have to take it as part of the game. There's some historical accuracy to war and religion being tied together, but it does make diplomacy more difficult. If I declare war against a civ they are no longer a trading partner. Maybe a civ should get a casus belli if they demand another civ to stop converting their cities, and that civ refuses to stop.

 

[civawesome]

I like the way the AI behaves in this mod too. I also don't do 4 cities all game, not even in the unmodded game. I checked some numbers though, at 20 cities unmodded on standard or below you will need about 2x Science that you would for 1 city to make up for it(and it wouldnt be much less vs 4 cities btw). At 20 on this mod it's about 1/3 more Science. So what this means is that it's very easy to profit in Science for each city obtained. Some people don't know this but you can actually beat even the unmodded 5% if you build carefully so on this mod it becomes insane and I can't see why you wouldn't do all you could to take as many cities as possible and any strategy not supporting that looks like a bad idea.

However for some reason another civ almost as large as the Inca wasn't anywhere near their level of Science so I'm checking to see what other factors could have been involved since I saved every 50 turns. I would play more games for this but I'm going to be too busy.

EDIT: The Inca were significantly more grown at turn 51, but they didn't get the Great Library. Funny thing about this is that they and Indonesia were the only ones using Tradition and Indonesia was the strongest on my continent until I defeated them. The Inca had them beat in size at this point too though. Also according to Infoaddict they had a clear lead in Science, Crop Yield, and Manufacturing. Maybe their early lead won them the game though taking all those cities had to help alot. At turn 101 they were still ahead in these areas and also appear to be the first to begin conquering. Perhaps they won from the start, I should go to turn 0 and see what they did (assuming they'll behave the same).

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Yep, I've been there many times. In fact, I'd say about a good 1/4 to 1/3 of the wars I start are due to being spammed by missionaries/prophets. I can't think of a simple way to mod that out of the game so I guess we'll just have to take it as part of the game. There's some historical accuracy to war and religion being tied together, but it does make diplomacy more difficult. If I declare war against a civ they are no longer a trading partner. Maybe a civ should get a casus belli if they demand another civ to stop converting their cities, and that civ refuses to stop.

Disagree with you on the historical accuracy bit. Forced conversions in history usually took place when either the converter was strong enough to threaten the convertee into submission, or, of course, after outright conquest. Contrast that with tiny civs who've done nothing but faith all game but can convert much stronger and larger empires simply by refusing to listen to them.
But like you said, there really isn't any easy fix as religion is made this way. But a casus belli would be nice.. something that might deter overly fanatical AI's from ignoring threats.

Also, I never understood why (in the base game at least) missionaries and prophets didnt require open borders but great musicians did


Infact I wouldnt be against missionaries and prophets requiring open borders, but the problem is that the AI often doesnt give in to threats (for open borders) at all. Maybe something like the threatening CS mechanism (where you can scare them with your troops) would work. Happened a couple of times to me.. AI's with a single crappy city and hardly 1-2 units refuse my demands for OB despite having a large military.

 

[DeAnno]

Yeah, if you care about what a GP is going to do to you and you see 1+ of them showing up near your lands, its probably a good idea to just declare and kill it as long as you think you can at least hold your defensive line. With lessened Warmonger penalties one declare isn't going to hurt you diplomatically all that bad, not like getting your cities spread by Prophets 8 times will ruin you religiously. And if the Prophet hasn't spread yet you may even get a Holy Site out of it (or you could send it to go wreck some 3rd player's core area, but this is probably rarely that effective).

Another thing you can do is just complete Piety and take Unity of the Prophets, and then you're pretty immune to these sorts of shenanigans.

On another note for Religions, is there a reason the AI hates taking Tithe despite it probably being the best (or at least the most consistent) Founder Belief? I can understand if Acken doesn't want to try to balance all the Founder beliefs tightly, but I think the AI should at least be firstpicking the good ones. As it is no matter if I get a late or early religion I usually just end up picking Tithe. I've messed with Charity Missions and World Church but both are pretty risky if you don't have confidence in your Religious game. Interfaith Dialogue is often good too, but situational and the AI does tend to pick it. Ceremonial Burial is rather weak, and since Church Property is basically lesser Tithe there is rarely reason to pick it with Tithe going unpicked.

 

[Laffet]

Hello everyone ,

I'm new with Civ 5 modding. So i have few mods from workshop which doesnt really changing the core game expect Civ 4 diplomacy and Map mods(Communitasi,Perfect World) which i like a lot. From the modding experience with other games i guess cosmetic mods and mods like faster aircraft doesn't conflict with the game changing mods such as ai mods. But i'm a bit suspicious about Civ 4 diplomacy and Map mods, does anyone have any experience with those mods and Acken's ai mod ? Can i use both without any problems or which problems i can encounter with ?

Sorry for the worst english ever :''

 

[Ravellion]

Hello everyone ,

I'm new with Civ 5 modding. So i have few mods from workshop which doesnt really changing the core game expect Civ 4 diplomacy and Map mods(Communitasi,Perfect World) which i like a lot. From the modding experience with other games i guess cosmetic mods and mods like faster aircraft doesn't conflict with the game changing mods such as ai mods. But i'm a bit suspicious about Civ 4 diplomacy and Map mods, does anyone have any experience with those mods and Acken's ai mod ? Can i use both without any problems or which problems i can encounter with ?

Sorry for the worst english ever :''

The Civ 4 diplomacy mod is a DLL mod, like Acken's AI mod. Only one DLL mod can be active at a time. Maps should be fine.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

On another note for Religions, is there a reason the AI hates taking Tithe despite it probably being the best (or at least the most consistent) Founder Belief? I can understand if Acken doesn't want to try to balance all the Founder beliefs tightly, but I think the AI should at least be firstpicking the good ones. As it is no matter if I get a late or early religion I usually just end up picking Tithe. I've messed with Charity Missions and World Church but both are pretty risky if you don't have confidence in your Religious game. Interfaith Dialogue is often good too, but situational and the AI does tend to pick it. Ceremonial Burial is rather weak, and since Church Property is basically lesser Tithe there is rarely reason to pick it with Tithe going unpicked.

Seconded. I always get tithe as well.

Also regarding pantheons, the AI seems to prioritise the +5 strentgh to cities a lot. 3-4 games now and all of them that has been the first picked one. Isn't too great IMO, especially if you have resources boosted by a pantheon nearby.

 

[meatpardle]

Yeah Tithe is always available for me, no matter how late I found a religion.

 

[meatpardle]

I've been having quite a lot of cases of the AI DoWing me but not attacking. Latest example - started a game last night and was sandwiched between Genghis and Atilla. I forward settled both of them to the point where eventually our borders will touch; Atilla demanded I stop (I agreed), then denounced, then DoWed. Genghis DoWed on the same turn (best explanation ever - essentially 'I doubt I'll win but I can't be bothered to pretend I like you any more'), but neither really did anything.

I put up a wall of 4 CB's between my border and Atilla's and picked off a few stray CB's that appeared at his border but no attempt to launch a co-ordinated attack, and then agreed peace about 50 turns later.

Genghis didn't even patrol his border, did send one wave out (about 10 units) after peace with Atilla but came up against my 3 CBs and didn't even attack any, just shuffled around next to them or stupidly embarked catapults inside my border whist I picked off each unit. Still at war, and keeps sending peace offers including me handing over two of my cities (!).

So, long winded way to get to two (technically four) questions:

i) I'm playing level 4 (usually play King or Emperor on vanilla), does this relatively easy level affect whether the AI actually attacks after DoWing? Is the AI more hesitant at lower levels? Or make dafter decisions?

ii) What is the mechanism for demanding peace, or why on earth would Genghis keep insisting I hand over my cities to get peace when he has put me under no pressure at all to want peace? Atilla is ranked #1 in military and I'm #4 but not far behind, so even if Genghis is above me his military isn't that much stronger, and he has suffered significantly greater losses.

 

[chumchu]

The post people referred to: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=14121696&postcount=840

Exploration will probably remain a niche tree if it unless we change it completely as it is dependent on map type and most people play pangea or maybe continents. It can not be that much stronger too compensate for players sometime not having that many coastal cities as it would then be OP on archipelago maps.

What can be done however is making the tree forward loaded and flexible so that it might be worth putting a few points in it without completing the entire tree. I would design it with that in mind.

Opener:
+ 1 trade route +3 gold from naval trade routes.

Level 1: - Colonisation policy
- 3 hammers in coastal
- 1 move and sight on naval units, faster generation of admirals

Level 2 (requires extra hammers policy) Half price naval buildings and they provide 1 g
(requires extra hammers policy)1 happiness for each naval building

Finisher: 1 gold on all sea tiles and 10% strength on naval units.

The opener is generally useful and you can then can go for either better settling or buffing your naval infrastructure or buffing your naval combat. I can see splashing into exploration for better naval combat or settling without finishing it.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Spoiler :

Turn 60 (difficulty 5) on a standard map

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Pretty bad experience.. for some reason half my continent denounced me (even friendly leaders) for settling on a one tile island in one corner of the continent. This includes America, whos stronger than me and relatively close to the city, but I was friends with them, and they had 11 or so cities while I had 5. Also includes Rome and the Iroquis, who were on the other end of the coninent, and were pretty meh towards me previously.
Is this caused by chain denuonciations? If that's even a thing, several leaders denounicng the player simply because another leader did.

 

[Acken]

Could be yes. Anyway I'll have to work on those territorial disputes mechanic. Right now the change is rather crude in the mod, simply bumping the value and not changing the base game logic. Mostly I think your friends at least shouldn't be angry about you expanding.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Sometimes the AI is just too religiously fervent. In my current (2 continent) game, I spread my religion throughout my continent while Ethiopia spread fully converted theirs. Then Ethiopia showed up with three great prophets on my continent, and refused to stop converting my cities when asked, which is quite stupid because my military was much larger than theirs. So I had to declare war and kill their prophets which annoys me because killing a couple of prophets is hardly a good reason to all out declare war. Would be nice if you could use your military to simply stop them, or something of the sort. (And inquisitors aren't feasible in a wide empire, especially given that now prophets have 4 movement).

They also kept landing missionaries on another part of my continent (after I DOW'ed them), and my cavalry would kill a missionary and retreat, only to watch another land on the next turn. Such stupid behaviour should probably be stopped.

Just a few snyde remarks:

Often even a single Great Prophet (esp if it has not been used) is enough of a reason to DOW, it might give you a Holy Site after all.

The AI focuses way, way less on religion than it does in the unmodded game. This is not even up for debate. Both getting a religion and spreading your religion is far easier.

The AI landing Missionaries while at war is bad behaviour, but does not have anything to do with this mod, they do it in the base game all the time.

Generally the AI does not care in the slightest if you tell them to stop converting, so you might aswell just deal with it (ignore it or DOW them).

 

[Damthe]

@Acken Is this compatible with Enlightenment Era ?

 

[Acken]

Yes and no. It should load but there will most certainly be issues and inconsistencies.