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

[Acken]

We ll see how the first game goes first. Also v6 is still unfinished.

The interesting effect of the change in ai growth is that for the first time in a simulation i have seen ai venice do something. It was one of the leader after conquering some land with a massive salt venice capital at 45pop on turn 200

 

[Chum]

What's been changed in the last V6 revision you posted? I grabbed experimental V6 from the first post last week.

Also, Commerce is fine. It's not as good as it used to be, but that's totally okay because Piety is awesome now and Commerce used to be ridiculously overpowered to the point of being the only choice you should ever take.

 

[Acken]

Akbar the great, Reloading doesnt fix this ?

Chum, almost only ai stuff and minor changes. I dont keep a list of in between experimentals sorry.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Commerce is not "bad" or merely "okay". Everyone just sees the nerfs to the Commerce tree, but doesn't see the much more impactful change: Increasing gold yields on virtually any tile and reducing maintenance.

Specialists now feature an insane amount of gold. As do luxuries. This stacks very well with all the modifiers. All these made Commerce more powerful. Commerce had to be nerfed because it received a huge buff indirectly.

Personally I still think Commerce is the best option for a secondary tree, with Piety clocking in second. Of course I did not count Rationalism, since it competes with Ideology.

People are used to always going right side Commerce first, which is why they think it is weak now. Left side Commerce is a very strong alternative and much better for wide empires in my opinion. The gold from Caravans and Roads is actually very impactful and faster and better Trade Missions is probably the second strongest Commerce policy now, not even kidding.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

@Acken

I tested the new experimental. I played on DemiGod and AI cities were still way too small. I think something is wrong, I don't think your changes were implemented. Nothing felt different in terms of AI growth.

This game was so weird. I went for a DomV with Sweden (5 peaceful opponents, I wanted to test specialists but ended up in a war..). It was way, way too easy. I wasn't even trying and the AI didn't put up a fight. I DOWed the military leader (me having the smallest military in the game) and still crushed him. I was behind in tech, was using freakin Catapults and still annexed all 4 of his cities in no time. The other AIs were mysteriously weak, too. T120 (Quick Speed) and Venice still doesn't have Frigates?

Every time I captured a city I was not asked whether I want to annex, puppet, or raze.. They were all annexed upon capture. Every single one. I'm not sure about this, but I think I didn't get any happiness penalty either. Not for the pop and not for the city. I could annex a city and gain 4 or 5 smiles. Something fishy is going on.

A lot of other things were buggy. For example I could not delete any units.

I am not sure if this is a function of your mod or of my game. I obviously do not play with other mods.

I love all the new changes btw. The game feels very organic to me. Specialist changes were fantastic, so are all the others.

 

[Acken]

Could be the mod was not loaded properly... im not seeing much issues when simulating games. Weird ill upload a new version just in case. Cant work much on it during the week

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. I played with the experimental version before that as you know and none of the bugs appeared..

 

[noto2]

I'm playing the experimental version and I'm not seeing those bugs.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Akbar the great, Reloading doesnt fix this ?

Ugh. My apologies, it was because I had forgotten to remove the NQMod folder before starting the game

 

[Chum]

Minor AB map notes -

They do not appear to have coastal oil at a normal frequency. They are VERY rare. The maps I've started paying attention to have ~4ish sources across the entire map.

The only reason I notice is because I'm a huge coastal oil fan, and I see no reason not to push up to refrigeration after Biology, because typically you can get a work boat out faster than you can clear the marsh and build the oil well.

 

[Acken]

Good catch, Ill look into it

 

[Acken]

I have uploaded a new experimental with the following changes:

Spoiler :

Policies:
-Industrial espionage increases tech stealing by 50% instead of 100%
-New Exploration tree:
Navigation School was replaced by Colonies giving +2 pop +1 worker +2happiness for newly settled cities
Treasure fleets now boosts coastal tiles without sea ressources +1prod +1gold
Both of these policies are based on the work of Fruitstrike for the NQMod so thank him and visit his mod.
The free admiral, more admiral movement and faster admiral generation are now in the finisher. The boost to naval strength has been decreased to 10%.

Warfare:
-Cities have 250 health instead of 200
-Melee units take a bit less damage on city assault
-Captured cities have 65% health instead of 75%

Misc:
-GE, GS, GM no longer increase the counters of each others but GE, GM and GS specialists only give 2 points instead of 3. The first specialist now costs 75.
-Guilds increase gold from trading posts by 1 to preserve for a total of +4G at Economics, staying in line with +2 hammer at chemistry/scientific.
-Caravan food was reverted back to its orignal values
-Spies are no longer more resistant based on level and tech differences
-Spies with levels are now more efficient at stealing cities protected by constabularies and police station
-Spies are more efficient at stealing if there is a big gap in tech numbers
-High Food is converted to production more efficiently when building settlers (max(0,excess-2))
-The map reveal map is now a 5 range circle around the ruin
-If you don't hook the required luxury fro 20 turns in a city for the We Love The King Day bonus, the luxury will be changed.

AI:
-The AI should neglect Rationalism less
-Boosted number of units used by AI for defense a bit
-Increased maximum number of units to CS
-The logic for the AI growth bonus (above prince) has been changed. Instead of diminishing the growth threshold it now decreases food consumption.
-Increased AI tech penalty for cities slightly
-Reduced slightly the default AI era scaling bonuses (further production cost reduction, further growth reduction etc) across all King+ levels.
-The AI no longer has any bonus for making wonders

Techs:
-Machinery is now a prerequisite of Gunpowder
-Manufactories get +1 production from Chemistry, Physics, Steam Power Combustion and Robotics
-Academies get +2 science from Printing Press, Scientific Theory, Electronics and +4 from Atomic Theory and Telecomunications
-Custom houses get +2 gold from Economics, Refrigeration, Steam Power and Computers
-Slight increase of the tech ramp cost

Maps:
-More sea oil
-More randomness in the amount of strategics a tile provides (more 2-3 horses, less 4 horses etc).
-City states now have a choice among 5 luxuries on standard instead of 3
-Less disabled luxuries per map (none on standard size)
-Mount Fuji can now appear on pangeas
-A bit more randomness in luxuries (more randoms, less of those dedicated to a region)
-A bit more ruins

Bug fixes

 

[noto2]

Acken I'm just wondering something - did you increase the total landmass for a standard size map on your balanced continents map? I really like the script, just that it seems there is substantially more room than the base continents map. I'm wondering if that's just my perception or did you increase the amount of land?

 

[Acken]

Yes i did. You can always reduce it with sea level option.

 

[consentient]

@YCJ: I wasn't implying anything, just asking because I'm new to this mod, especially the Windows version, and wanted to know if lower growth in AI cities is normal or not.

I guess I'll just make a LP with bog-standard Domination and see what the differences are: a kind of 'test game'.

 

[Acken]

Good luck if you try deity standard Pangea
Otherwise I suggest Immortal or Demigod for standard domination.

I've changed how growth works somewhat.

Also I need people to test the current experimental and verify there are no bugs or glaring issues.

 

[noto2]

I'm playing the current experimental right now. So far no bugs. I'll keep you posted.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I can verify that there are no bugs in the experimental that I know of.

I figured out that your mod wasn't causing problem, it was my installation of Civ.

I uninstalled everything, even EUI and started a normal game - I couldn't delete any of my units.

This is really upsetting, I have started playing Consentients map and I love it, but I just can't play like this: not being able to puppet cities, not being able to delete units, the game sometimes finishes my turn by itself, my city screens are bugged.. this is spooky. I just uninstalled the game for now. I hope that does the trick. Other people have been experiencing this, but didn't find any help:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=544358

 

[Chum]

I can verify that there are no bugs in the experimental that I know of.

I figured out that your mod wasn't causing problem, it was my installation of Civ.

I uninstalled everything, even EUI and started a normal game - I couldn't delete any of my units.

This is really upsetting, I have started playing Consentients map and I love it, but I just can't play like this: not being able to puppet cities, not being able to delete units, the game sometimes finishes my turn by itself, my city screens are bugged.. this is spooky. I just uninstalled the game for now. I hope that does the trick. Other people have been experiencing this, but didn't find any help:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=544358

Just uninstall/reinstall, should fix itself up right.

 

[SirWhale]

Is it possible to win an Immortal and above game with Tradition anymore..?