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

[consentient]

Well I'm recording every game I'm playing, so far.

Interesting highlights so far include the actual Acken Challenge #1, some games that I abandoned because of double/triple DoW (more on this in a minute), and some pretty successful sweeps with Immortal and half-sweeps-in-progress with DemiGod.

The problems I have are numerous though:

1. My laptop is a POS and often overheats so much it dies. Apple are filthy [expletives] and refuse to acknowledge that this is not an acceptable thing for a $1500 laptop to do with a game that is App Store approved. Even when I'm running in Windows, there are times when Windows is sent some signal by a sensor to just instantly shutdown.

2. The Windows version, when in Windowed mode, which appears necessary for screen recording, has numerous graphical bugs. You will see these in my games if you watch, and they often actually get so bad that they make my thought processes impossible and totally distract me.

3. The fan makes a godawful noise and I don't have a headset or money to buy one.

4. Even when stretched to the end of the cord, my mouse clicks seem really loud on the recordings, picked up by the in-built mic.

5. (specific to this mod) I get embarrassed quite a lot when I'm struggling. I'm trying to be as transparent as possible and will upload some of the mistakes I've made. But some of these mistakes get me so irritated that I won't continue the LP. And I can't imagine much value in an LP of a game that isn't finished.

6. My commentary stinks and I end up getting so immersed that I forget I'm recording.

TLDR: The Acken Challenge #1 video represents the best chance you'll have of seeing a finished series, but I can't guarantee it will be very entertaining.

.

As far as these DoWs are concerned, you seem to love them, and that's fine. But I don't really enjoy being so against the wall. I enjoy warmongering, but one brief early window and then turtling to Artillery is not my idea of fun.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I see a whole lot of value in an LP that is left unfinished. I practically learned fast science victories from that one Acken LP where he just shows a fast 4 city NC with Babylon

 

[Acken]

If it reassures you i also die on demigod here and there. Especially when im too greedy. Failed lp at least allow me to see why a player would fail and assess if its fair or if the mod is over tuned

As far as warfare is concerned id say early warfare is probably the easiest actually especially with a UU. I doubt youll beat the world but that is a good start to at least carve an empire that may snowball into a tech advantage for further kills. Turtling to artillery may give you the opportunity to kill a few ais... but im skeptic your tech lead will be so big that you can leverage it further. And then gwb may very well shut you down.

 

[noto2]

I haven't played the latest experimental yet, but I've found the AI's constantly ask me to join them in a war, from almost the very beginning of the game. When I was a newb I would always decline those requests unless I was already preparing to attack the target. I assumed there was nothing to gain from being dragged into an unwanted war.

Now I look forward to these requests, they are what allow me to survive the early game (I'm playing Immortal now, gonna try demigod soon). The AI expands faster than the human, so the AIs seem to get annoyed with each other first, and I use that to my advantage. It's what allows me to often avoid surprise DoW.


I doubt dropping Harold's culture flavour to 1 would be a good idea. Wouldn't that mean he would never build monuments?

 

[Acken]

Not necessarily but yes that is my point.

 

[beetle]

I can offer advise for the least important of these issues, but my perspective is skewed from (until recently) always having access to hardware. Telling someone to drop $50+ is not always so useful…

Apple are filthy [expletives] and refuse to acknowledge that this is not an acceptable thing for a $1500 laptop to do with a game that is App Store approved.

Wait, are you even playing the App Store version? Ask Apple if there is a way to challenge Faraxis’ accreditation. That won’t really help you, but it would be sweet justice to see Civ V de-listed!

The fan makes a godawful noise and I don't have a headset or money to buy one.

Try recording using your mobile phone ear bud mic. It should fit actually. But will the recording software still pick up the game audio?

Even when stretched to the end of the cord, my mouse clicks seem really loud on the recordings, picked up by the in-built mic.

I would try a different mouse. In addition to the Apple line, there are several that do not have a mechanical click button. I wish I could reach through the Internet and gift you one of the spare USB mics I have sitting around…

 

[consentient]

Ask Apple if there is a way to challenge Faraxis’ accreditation. That won’t really help you, but it would be sweet justice to see Civ V de-listed!

Indeed it would, but sadly that is not going to happen. First of all, both companies say its a Steam Issue, when in fact I have tested the App Store version and the same problem occurs. I have a fairly good track record of consumer advocacy but 2K/Firaxis/Aspyr and Apple themselves are pioneers of a new kind of 'customer service' that doesn't even really try to hide how fricken poisonous they are.

Try recording using your mobile phone ear bud mic.

You've made the mistake of thinking that I have a modern phone. I have the cheapest crappy phone I could find. I deliberately traded my iPhone 5 for it, so that I wouldn't be tempted to spend all my time on it. It was $5 and came with $10 of credit, so technically it was better than free! It has a week long battery life and is water resistant, though!

They didn't give me a set of headphones with it, let alone one with a mic in it.

I would try a different mouse. In addition to the Apple line, there are several that do not have a mechanical click button. I wish I could reach through the Internet and gift you one of the spare USB mics I have sitting around…

I only use mouse for civ. Everything else I use Touchpad. No point dropping money on something when most of the time it doesn't bother me. Not everyone who watches the videos finds it annoying anyway.

Anyway, back on topic...

This evening I tried a wide Liberty game with Rome and dropped 7 city NC by T82 with no worker steals and not particularly great dirt. I have to say that I think Liberty is strictly better than Tradition on ModAcken, mainly because of the difficulty in getting workers with Tradition unless you steal them. For AB Pangeaa and HB Pangaea, worker steals are by no means guaranteed. Having Citizenship before T20 and then having such cheap workers is really strong.

I went Scout, Monument, Scout, Worker, Worker, Worker (somewhere in here was the free one), Settlers. I rush bought two Warriors, and used them to guard and escort.

If anyone likes, I can provide the map. It is relatively peaceful but pretty good for most VCs, I would say.

 

[Acken]

While the free worker is good and Liberty definetely get a kickstart, workers are also cheaper in general. 230gold or 60hammers.

By comparison Tradition is also buffed in the mod getting the free culture right away and land elite being a 15% bonus. Moreover, food converts to hammers at a much better rate in the mod while the liberty bonus does not apply to the food to hammer convertion.

 

[mejobloggs_]

I'm getting wrecked on King lol. Need to learn how to play. Don't really understand how I can improve

 

[Acken]

We would need more pointers than that to answer Try Prince too.

 

[mejobloggs_]

I find Prince too easy, trying to improve to step up to King.

I can never keep up on science

(actually v6 seems much harder than v5, maybe I should try going down to Prince again)

Great mod though, default Civ AI annoyed me how stupid it was sometimes.

A++ excellent work

 

[Chum]

Great Engineers. Lets talk about em.

Too many. Too many. I don't ever have to hard build anything I don't want to, I always have an engineer around for any wonder that I need for victory (I can hard build ancillary stuff that I don't care about).

Due to the changes in the way scientists work, it's not beneficial to staff early scientist slots, so typically I don't start working them until I get close to Sci Theory, or my cities run out of improved tiles to work. This means I staff engineers earlier than anything else, and there are also more engineer slots than anything else as well. Since I typically go to metal casting before Education these days, that means my workshops get worked from like T80 or some nonsense all the way until the end of the game. Stack on Windmills and Factories and I'm working 4 engineer slots in all of my big cities and popping just a ridiculous amount of engineers. While I personally enjoy it, it's probably not balanced that scientists don't scale and engineers do. You've slowed the science game down and at the same time, given me nothing to build since I don't have to spend more than 1 turn building wonders.

I'm not sure what the fix is, but the ratio of scientists to engineers really seems off. I shouldn't have 3-4 manufactories around in any game because I literally can't throw these things away fast enough. I've been saving them just to plant on coal/aluminum/uranium instead of obsolete GG's just because I can. Their value has diminished, a lot.

 

[Acken]

Its true that the fourth slot of ge gm comes early compared to gs.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I disagree. GS tiles are amazing to work, you just don't want to pop any. I will always under any condition take 2 beakers over 2 hammers. Especially earlier in the game where there aren't many sources of science. I almost always work the GS slot as soon as I can without hindering Growth, but never get more than 1 planted. The idea is that 8 turns after ST you get your first GS bulb and then the next ones come out super fast because you've already invested so much in every single citx of yours. It takes a lot of microing but I'd say it can cut your finish times down by 20 turns easily. The microing isn't even hard, you just have to pay attention to never spawn a GS. Personally I never get more than a few Engineers and if I do I mostly get them later in the game, say T150++. At that point the strongest wonders are already gone anyway.

 

[Acken]

Guys i think ill have to do what i said earlier in the thread and fix gs bulbs at this rate...

I cant say im happy with people trying to avoid generating them.

 

[Chum]

I disagree. GS tiles are amazing to work, you just don't want to pop any. I will always under any condition take 2 beakers over 2 hammers. Especially earlier in the game where there aren't many sources of science. I almost always work the GS slot as soon as I can without hindering Growth, but never get more than 1 planted. The idea is that 8 turns after ST you get your first GS and then the next ones come out super fast because you've already invested so much. It takes a lot of microing but I'd say it can cut your finish times down by 20 turns easily. Personally I never get more than a few Engineers and if I do I mostly get them later in the game, say T150++. At that point the strongest wonders are already gone anyway.

Yeah, totally not my case. Of course, most of my civ hours are in MP these days, and I play a lot of liberty too, so 8-10 cities.

So, with the above in mind, here's how it goes - I try not to take 20 minutes a turn, so I keep the micro to a minimum. I don't want early GS's, and neither do you, so I just don't work the slots unless I'm out of improved tiles to work. Using the above strategy, I will end up with 1-2 academies. However, since I'm playing liberty and I have 8+ cities, I have a LOT of engineer slots being worked, and to a greater extent later, merchants. I generate an insane amount of engineers. It is not uncommon for me to GE the NC with liberty finisher, and have another GE BEFORE Pisa to burn on something like ND or Alhambra or something, and then I generally will have a GE around to hit Pisa with, and then I take another GE on Pisa because a GS at that point would be useless (too late for academy, too early for bulb -- I actually took a prophet from Pisa a couple games ago, because converting my cities back from AI spam looked a lot better than a GS or a useless Engineer). I had 3 GE's sitting in or near my capital when I was building Hubble a couple of games ago. Just nothing to burn them on.

Saving 20 turns late game would be a good thing, for sure. I can only manage about T270ish SV's running thru the tree. A lot of times I trigger diplo early enough that I can't finish the tree before the vote comes up. That's even with saving Oxford for Nanotech and Rat finisher on Adv Ballistics. The flipside is I'm buying that 4k faith GS pretty much every game, and a lot of games, I can get the 6k one too. But even with all that, I'm still basically hoarding engineers because I don't want to pop scientists.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

My SVs are usually around T240 to 250 with my strat. Never plant more than 1 Academy and that is usually not from a naturally spawned GS, often Liberty finisher or Maya UA or Pisa. You do have a point though, my turns tend to take way too much time. It furthers the immersion for me so it's not bad, but my games do take forever.

It is true that lategame GEs are almost useless, but I can't think of a way to change that mechanic. As soon as all the good wonders are gone they don't do anything for you anymore. I think your idea of saving them for strategics like Coal and Aluminium is probably the best you can do.

Guys i think ill have to do what i said earlier in the thread and fix gs bulbs at this rate...

I cant say im happy with people trying to avoid generating them.

Maybe make them 6 turns worth of science but the bulbs not fixed on creation? But then there would still be the issue of lategame GE being useless.

 

[Acken]

I was thinking something more drastic. Like making gs science based on era and not on your bpt. Similar to gms with a linear progression. Easy to balance academies with it.

Ge late game can be turned into manufactories and also i need to do something with the crappy late game wonders anyway

 

[consentient]

What are the major changes to the culture game? I'm assuming the AI gets to Archaeology absurdly early so it's harder to get relics. But what about lifetime culture, and the importance of faith for musicians, etc?

In NQ, CV has changed so you don't need rationalism or musicians. I've now had sub T200 CVs with France on Deity. So I was just wondering if anyone here can speak about CVs under AckenMod?

 

[Acken]

Its relatively similar to the base game with aesthetics being better and everyone also getting more culture. No way youll get a sub200 win.

Youll be able to pick rationalism really easily with the massive culture per turn a culture game provides.