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

NOOOO!!! But you never nerfed the Stealth Bomber!

(I guess I'll have to get off my lazy butt and figure out how to do it myself.)

Anyway, thanks for what I consider to be by far the best balance mod for Civ5. If Civ6 is going to be as unbalanced at launch as I think it's going to be, then you've got your work cut out for you.
 
Expect I don't want to get rid of the Stealth Bomber. Unlike the GDR and the XCOM Squad, it actually exists in real life and I think it has a place in Civ5. I just don't want it to break the game, that's all.
 
Hi Acken - quick question about h

Question about the DemiGod difficulty - I'm playing some of the DemiGod Games on the strategy boards.
I see that the AI starts with benefits in between Immortal & Diety.

How viable do you think it is to get early wonders on this difficulty setting? Original Diety level ancient Wonders are almost entirely out of the question, but are they easier to get on your difficulty?

I.e. does the AI start with free technologies? Do they tend to snag a lot of wonders before turn 30? Thanks and great looking mod.
 
Its usually easier to get one but not guaranteed at all. Its possible the latest patch made it a bit harder to get the very early ones compared to previous version of the mod. Reason being that i slowed down their expansion phase making them more likely to spend some turns building wonders. But the ai in the mod is programed to on average care more about its economy than spamming wonders so overall id say you have a fair shot if you beeline one.
Later in the game though what can be hard is that the AI can get ahead in science and snap wonders before you even get the tech. But youll also get engineers to help you get some.

All ai levels have a bit less free techs but some nonetheless.
 
I have updated the mod to v8 with the following changes.

Spoiler :
Buildings :
-Constabulary and Police Station give 1 happiness.
-Caravansary gives 2 gold
-The CN Tower give one free musician instead of pop/happiness
-The pentagon also gives 1 free copy of your land units similarly to the terracota army
-The terracota army now gives 3 culture instead of 1

Misc :
-SS parts no longer require alluminum (mostly an AI buff here due to AI stupidity)
-Truly free great people

AI:
-Significant nerf to AI unit experience. They are closer to humans on Immortal and above difficulties with only 15 free and 25% bonus instead of 30free and up to 100% bonus.
-The AI should care more or less about your lands based on its meanness stat.
-AI will wait a bit more before pumping settlers


Sadly at this stage the mod is unlikely to receive more updates considering civ6 is around the corner. The interest for the mod by users also has decreased since the anouncement.

I'm quite happy where it's at even though not everything was fixed in my opinion.

I plan to mod civ6 instead. Civ6 is very likely to release with balance issues from what I see but on the other hand the features of the game look really interesting with a lot of gameplay options. I think we'll have to wait a bit for the modding tools though.

If civ6 is trash and I end up returning to civ5 then I may continue working further.

All I have to say is thank you for improving my Civ V experience tenfold. I believe I have played almost as much Civ V with Acken Mod as I have without, easily 500+ hours if I had to guess. It's the best balance mod out of all the ones I have played and actively participating in its creation by testing has been a fun process for me. You are a great modder and a very reponsive person, you actively try to engage in criticism and actually listen to peoples opinions. Furthermore you were the person who introduced me to the higher-end strategics of Civ V and made me a player that could beat Deity. ...And after that gave me the satisfaction of being one of the very few people that actually manage to beat Acken Deity, an experience that was much more satisfactory than my first Deity win, which was extremely boring and tedious. If you remember my write-up, there was a full-scale nuclear war, paratrooper action, crazy james bond style spy games, ridiculous bulbs with a peaceful 10 (?) city empire and much more. Simply the greatest game of Civ I've played to date.

I don't think too highly of Civ VI so far, but don't want to jump to early conclusions. I most likely won't play it when it comes out anyway, but will be watching your videos. If it ends up being hot garbage I will for sure return to Civ V and spark up this mod again, you can count on me! :goodjob:
 
Hi Acken - quick question about h

Question about the DemiGod difficulty - I'm playing some of the DemiGod Games on the strategy boards.
I see that the AI starts with benefits in between Immortal & Diety.

How viable do you think it is to get early wonders on this difficulty setting? Original Diety level ancient Wonders are almost entirely out of the question, but are they easier to get on your difficulty?

I.e. does the AI start with free technologies? Do they tend to snag a lot of wonders before turn 30? Thanks and great looking mod.

Dear Redaxe,

I have wonderwhored harder in AckenMod games than in any unmodded games. In my opinion, wonders on DemiGod are easier to come by than on unmodded Immortal. In my Acken Deity playthrough I actually managed to get Temple of Artemis and two or three other early game wonders (Pyramids, Petra and some other stuff I believe), four or five midgame wonders and all of the lategame wonders I wanted.

I'd say if you really shoot for a wonder you can almost always get it. Sometimes you can pick one up without focussing on getting it. Sometimes you can even get an early game wonder in an expo. I did it with Petra and Oracle multiple times.

I have had very few games where -any- wonder went before t30 on DemiGod.
 
Thanks for the words carl.

I think at this stage that civ6 look like a really rough gem. The game looks interesting but its inevitable with the current behind schedule appearance of the game that it will be a rough experience. But I have good hopes for it and think that most of the current problems are balance issues.

Now if the AI is at least in a decent state similar to civ5 there is room to make it fun. And its only Vanilla.
 
Hey thanks for feedback.

Yes I've been playing the Rome map you submitted (i'll probably put a status update on soon).
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=569900

It's very strange how the random number seeds work. The first game I played using your mod on that Rome map, I wasn't playing too serious, rather just trying to get a feel for the map & the changes. I managed to build StoneHenge on turn 40 or something?

I tried again more seriously from the start and that Wonder always gets snagged by the AI between turn 27-30 no matter what I do....
Anyway the thought of having a Wonder with 2 engineer points so early in the game proved irresistible but ultimately I had to give it up.
Ultimately & perhaps ironically though it made no difference to my game plan, as I realised afterwards I probably did better to ignore it.

Noticing though from the initial playthrough how many ruins there were on the map, I opted to build 4 scouts rather than the usual 2 + shrine/monument and holy sh!t did that pay off.

I scored
-2 culture ruins
-3 faith ruins (free pantheon, so i didn't need a shrine)
-2 free technologies
- 2 free gold sums
- 4 population ruins

And holy hell 4 population ruins meant I had a size 6 city by turn 30! I think that handed me the game, that much productivity, I could build settlers in 2-3 turns, Wonders in 8-11 turns...

I gotta say i'm kinda shocked how quickly I expanded. That Ancestor Worship Pantheon is insane is arguably the best pick in the lot (to get 2 free culture per turn per shrine almost from the get go in incredible).
As far as Wonders go I got in order Pyramids, Oracle, Hagia Sophia (enhanced religion), Hanging Gardens, Statue of Zeus & an expo city built the Colossus.

Now I'm just working to get the Heroic Epic in place so I can start building super legions. I noticed that relative to other units the legion is a tad weaker (swordsmen & horsemen have higher combat strength) so the moral promotion and now going down the right-side of Honor for the unit bonuses.
All in all a fun mod. but yeah it does seem like I expanded a lot faster than normal.

Persia my neighbor who I declared war on early to steal workers and disrupt their expansion got the Parthenon - now that they are conquered by Spain I'm hoping to get their capital soon. It should be interesting to have a city with Parthenon, Garden, National Epic, Forum in for a +100% Great Person Bonus (I can see that being a culture city)
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Regarding Civ 6 - I won't be buying it as Vanilla. Maybe once 1 or 2 expansions are out though.
I feel like I've played too much Civ in the last few years & to be honest a lot of Civ 6 looks pretty similar to Civ 5.

Sure there's some improvements and I'm willing to be they are building a solid foundation for what will be a great game but really districts are just an extension of city management (I'm not overfond of the strict building limitation in a district) - I mean Come-on a single tile on a civ map is probably over 10,000Km2 - are you seriously telling me you can only build 3-4 ancient era buildings in one....
And most of the religious mechanics look the same. Governments & Culture tree looks interesting but it's still very heavily based on Civ 5s social policies - just more mix and match.

The tech tree looks very scaled down and still has problems with continuity (how can gunpowder (musketmen) not need the machinery technology). I'm not a fan of the graphics style either (the leaders all look like the products of 100 generations of inbreeding, not exactly threatening) but I'm willing to overlook that if its a decent game
 
I was so excited about every single thing they announced, I thought they were going in a good direction and 'twas all sunshine and rainbows, but sadly so far every single Civilization released has got me thinking: "Christ, how boring..". Now there are some more interesting than others: India, the Aztec, Brazil I will probably end up playing and Greece and Rome look solid, but not really promising.
 
Is there an easy way to change futurisms output from the current 400 to whatever I want?

(Trying out some no-science industrial games, with WWI units, but all the autocrats win by tourism in 30-40 turns...)

Thx
 
Yes just go to the ideology.sql file and look for lines relating to futurism. Just make a text search for it.

Change the number and you may also want to change the tooltip entries in the same file. It also has futurism in their names. Otherwise you wont see the tooltip updated.

@Redaxe its possible I went overboard in the update for ruin probability 😉
 
I was so excited about every single thing they announced, I thought they were going in a good direction and 'twas all sunshine and rainbows, but sadly so far every single Civilization released has got me thinking: "Christ, how boring..". Now there are some more interesting than others: India, the Aztec, Brazil I will probably end up playing and Greece and Rome look solid, but not really promising.

I won't derail the thread any further but (since we are talking about civ 5 and Rome) the new Rome for Civ 6 looks interesting. I mean the bonuses aren't exactly the most exciting things but it seems like it handle a lot of the boring predictable tasks you need to do for expanding - and that free's the player up to do what they want to do.

For instance everyone hates building monuments - its basically non-negotiable. But the new Rome handles that for you so you can immediately start building eg. military for war or shrines for religion...
Also every city starts with roads and trading posts so you are going to have a pretty solid early economy to support you.

Again not the most exciting bonuses but it does seem like it helps you out of that boring predictable stage in the ancient era where you forced to build roads and monuments everywhere...
 
Did you by any chance change the script that almost guarantees that the player spawns in a corner in the NQ map scripts? I'm 99% sure this is a thing. I've started dozens of games using these scipts and I almost always spawn in a corner (not necessarily coastal if the civ doesn't have that bias, but less than ~8 tiles away from the coast). This makes for potentially very good maps for wide Lib (as you suggested me) if you pick Low Seas but, if you are going for Dom and you want to have close-ish neighbors, it is somewhat hard to find decent maps.
 
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