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

[Grendeldef]

I don't know how this bug appears to begin with. I assume you mean the units without their icons.
Unlikely to be a consequence of the mod though. Didn't notice anything strange on that part.

Yes, that bug with invisible units - I used my own terminology without thinking or explaining, sorry.
It's a very consistent bug with remarkable inconsistency so I was surprised that almost all cities I was sieging had such units and few cities even several of them in consecutive turns. Only things that have changed since I last played where this mod & EUI version so I was just wondering if anyone else had similar experiences for a reason or another. Most likely it's a graphics driver issue refusing to draw x after y has happened or whatever, no biggie either way and good news if it's not related to the mod.

Played few more turns up to Atomic and the AI could still tech a bit faster. After getting Plastics the ones that are left dropped off from the pace within 20 turns while catching them took longer and this was done without mass bulbing though they really weren't taking Ratio by numbers.

One thing came to mind while fiddling with the CAs that I'd like to change is the stupid way of getting massive xp with obsolete units especially when attacking CSs. All ranged units with 3(+) range are capable of it and with logistics it's 8xp per turn making single digit dmg. There should be diminishing returns per era so ancient, otherwise (almost) obsolete units can't be used for farming GGs.
Come to think of it I'd like to lower the xp for any units attacking CS/CS units especially if there's not a simultaneous war with it's ally.

Unlike others I haven't had a single crash with the mod, release or experimental version.

---

Another thing that I just remembered - is there an easy way to prevent CSs gifting units that require resources if one doesn't have that resource or make those particular units resource free altogether?

 

[consentient]

Oh, I didn't doubt that It's just that for me a city here represents a number of citizens of various professions that are willing & able to defend their permanent preference of location against some ragtag mob hence taking anything that qualifies as a city shouldn't be a total walkover for ancient units.
Having a garrisoned unit there should increase the quite a lot compared to a military-free city. Once again it's a matter of taste within the game.

There are almost no examples in history of the 'citizens' of a city whose army was defeated trying very hard to fend off a properly trained bunch of killers, though. The main reason, probably is that to live in cities and consider oneself a 'citizen' at all signifies a significant departure from the 'my life is my own' philosophy that some pre-civilised communities had. And really, most citizens are just robots following the whim of their 'rulers', just on different scales.

Anyway, it's no big deal. I like the battle to be fought on the battlefield and the city mostly the prize. It's one of my favourite things about the mod.

Another curious thing I noticed which might have not anything to do with the mod but the frequency of ghost units seem to have increased drastically since I last played few months ago.

Yes, I noticed this too, but it's nothing to do with the mod. I actually think it happens significantly less on the mod than in the standard BNW game. This bug has gotten quite out of control, tbh.

 

[Grendeldef]

There are almost no examples in history of the 'citizens' of a city whose army was defeated trying very hard to fend off a properly trained bunch of killers, though. The main reason, probably is that to live in cities and consider oneself a 'citizen' at all signifies a significant departure from the 'my life is my own' philosophy that some pre-civilised communities had. And really, most citizens are just robots following the whim of their 'rulers', just on different scales.

Oh, I can foresee this easily escalating into extremely interesting conversation about history but it's probably best not to dive too deep into that anyway there have been quite a number of cities without a proper military presence that were not conquered by every legally challenged individual or a pack of them.

To keep this in the perspective of the game & mod I still think that settlements in the very early stages should survive an attack by a few foreign units otherwise early settling is once again highly discouraged. Around T50 or so onwards it's reasonable to expect that risk element in risk/reward gamble of settling is increased.

 

[consentient]

Do you mean that as a human player, you are worried about sending out a settler T35 and having Oda take it with a single hit when he DoWs on T40?

 

[civawesome]

This problem is usually due to either:
-Trying to load a game of a different version but all v2+ versions should currently be compatible.
-Me having made an error in the load/save logic... but I can't remember me changing any of it lately.

Infoaddict is not supposed to do that either.

Can't really see why right now. Try without Infoaddict, try to make a new game, save it then load it.

Sorry might have been a false alarm it's working now. I downloaded and moved alot of files around so maybe I just needed to reboot my computer. I'll let you know if it happens again and test rebooting my computer to see if that fixes it again.

 

[Grendeldef]

^^That's pretty accurate description of the situation atm. Given that @T40 one can have half a dozen units defending it's still only a 2 turn event if the AI wants the city.

Ooops, this was meant to be a quick response Consentient.

 

[Acken]

Latest changes in experimental (soon to be 2.1 and pushed into the workshop + official link):

Spoiler :

-Removed the unit cap (the production penalty for too many units)
-Mint also gives 2 gold to copper
-The correct value of Cover 2 is applied to cities (was using 20% before instead of 50% due to a typo)
-Garrisoned range units get a multiplicative 20% damage boost
-Diminished slightly AI agressiveness against city states
-Improved the logic for defenseless AIs
-Removed the Wheel prerequisite for Construction, to make composite bowmen easier to field against or with spears/swords armies

-Fixed a bug where Siam wasn't getting any bonus from its UA
-Fixed a bug where Tithe was giving the effect of Peace Loving (happiness for followers).
-Fixed an issue with the Battering Ram change
-City states should no longer build settlers
-Bribe AI has been changed slightly to make modifiers multiplicative rather than additive (to avoid 100% reductions).
-AI units free XP has been reduced on level 7 and 8 to 20 instead of 30

 

[Grendeldef]

Testing the newest version and one thing strikes me as very odd from the beginning. While removing prerequisite Wheel from Construction you also effectively removed Archers as a prerequisite to CBs which is somewhat odd.

 

[civawesome]

Sorry might have been a false alarm it's working now. I downloaded and moved alot of files around so maybe I just needed to reboot my computer. I'll let you know if it happens again and test rebooting my computer to see if that fixes it again.

Nevermind it happened again and I kept reloading then it stopped, with infoaddict working too. Took me about an hour while I was doing something else though.

 

[Acken]

Testing the newest version and one thing strikes me as very odd from the beginning. While removing prerequisite Wheel from Construction you also effectively removed Archers as a prerequisite to CBs which is somewhat odd.

Didn't think about that

 

[Acken]

Nevermind it happened again and I kept reloading then it stopped, with infoaddict working too. Took me about an hour while I was doing something else though.

This sounds really weird, I cannot understand why something who load only sometimes. Are you trying to load a save without loading the mods first ?

If it happens again please post a save.

 

[Acken]

###############################
NEW VERSION 2.1

Changes

Spoiler :

-Removed the unit cap (the production penalty for too many units)
-Mint also gives 2 gold to copper
-Garrisoned range units get a multiplicative 20% damage boost
-Removed the Wheel prerequisite for Construction, to make composite bowmen easier to field against or with spears/swords armies
-Archery is a prerequisite to Constuction
-City states should no longer build settlers
-AI units free XP has been reduced on level 7 and 8 to 20 instead of 30
-Shrines maintenance is back to -1 (original)
-Salt no longer gives base gold
-City health is back at 200 (original)
-Base city strength is now 6 instead of 5(original = 8)
-City health capture is down to 60% (original = 50%)
-Garrisoned cities strength is increased by 25% of the unit strength instead of 20%
-Cities act as if they had Cover 2 (+50% strength against ranged attacks)
-Siege units are back to 200% bonus damage against cities
-City ranged attack is reduced by 20%
-God of Craftmen requires a minimum of 2 pop (original = 3)
-Gifts of wisdom pantheon now gives +1 science only
-God of offerings now gives +1culture +1faith instead of +1food +1faith
-Liturgical Drama now gives +1 faith to amphitheaters and +2 faith to opera houses instead of +2,+2
-Choral Music now gives +2 culture to temples and +1 culture to opera houses instead of +2,+2
-Battering rams are now considered catapults, have a base strength of 12 and no longer suffer a penalty on defense
-The culture from the honor opener is reduced to 50% of the target strength
-The culture cost exponent has been increased to 1.94 instead of 1.90 (original=2.01)
-Cathedrals now give +2 culture instead of +3

If you use the dropbox file you will have to manually update the mod after removing the previous version by downloading the mod below. (if you were already using the last experimental version there are only minor changes)
If you use the workshop version, steam should automatically install version 2.1 for you.

(please reffer to the installation section if you need exact instructions)
Dropbox link:
Click
Workshop link:
Click

New video playlist with version 2 of the balance mod on the new difficulty level and a religious game:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13933357&postcount=91

NEW VERSION FOR MAC AND LINUX ONLY

This version removes the DLL and changes policies. It's a bit rough as I don't spend as much time on it.
It can be used by windows user but I suggest the better balanced, with more features, normal version with DLL changes.
Dropbox Link for Mac and linux version:
Link
List of missing/different features for Mac and Linux users (compared to main mod changes):

Spoiler :

-These are not implemented
Cities act as if they had Cover 2 (+50% strength against ranged attacks)
City ranged attack is reduced by 20%
AI minimum defense force has been buffed
Garrisoned range units get a multiplicative 20% damage boost-Artificial Unintelligence integration
The reckless expander overhaul
The warmonger overhaul
The tech penalty change (replaced by a flat 2% tech penalty)
No change to the deal AI
No partial counters for great persons
No change to CS borders/units
The fix of the white peace bug is not present
No change to the AI bribe mechanics
Other AI changes
Great scientists and writers are not fixe

-The following stuff are different (unchanged mean same as vanilla) :
Reformation -- Unchanged
Commerce finisher -- Unchanged
Religious tolerance -- Changed to Religious Fervour giving +1 happiness for temples and +3 for the grand temple
Mandate of heaven -- Unchanged
Piety finisher -- Has only the pantheon of second religion and free prophet
Consulates -- Unchanged
Scholasticism -- Unchanged
Patronage finisher -- Unchanged
Merchant confederacy -- Gives +2 Influence and +3 gold to trade routes
Artistic genius -- Gives +10% tourism to culture buildings and a free GA
Fine arts -- Gives 100% happiness in culture
Mercenary army (renamed Merchant dynasties) -- Gives +1 culture for gold buildings and allow Landskenechts
Treasure Fleets -- Gives +3 gold to sea routes and +25% gold to the EIC
Goddess of protection -- Also gives +1 faith for walls
Religious settlements -- Gives 30% cheaper culture border expansion.

 

[civawesome]

This sounds really weird, I cannot understand why something who load only sometimes. Are you trying to load a save without loading the mods first ?

If it happens again please post a save.

I found something out actually. For some reason if I load a save file of your mod that doesn't use infoaddict, then load the one I'm playing which does, it works. It also has infoaddict the first time I load it. On a usual game I have to load twice for infoaddict to show up. Anyway at least it has a work around. Also if you really want it I can post the save but the effects were the same whether it was the game I'm on or a newly made game.

 

[Acken]

I can't guess what could be the problem with infoaddict. And it was working fine before ?

 

[civawesome]

I can't guess what could be the problem with infoaddict. And it was working fine before ?

Yeah I used it on version 1 for half a game.

 

[Acken]

Yeah I used it on version 1 for half a game.

I installed infoaddict. After loading both:
-Creating a game works.
-Save/Load while in a modded game works
-Loading a game from the menu without preloading the mods works

Can't reproduce the issue.

 

[civawesome]

I installed infoaddict. After loading both:
-Creating a game works.
-Save/Load while in a modded game works
-Loading a game from the menu without preloading the mods works

Can't reproduce the issue.

Maybe I caused it somehow then idk. Now it's not working at all I guess I can't finish any of my games. Anyway as for a comment for what I've been playing, it seems like I can often still find reason to pick tithe and pagodas, though the choices were harder than before.

 

[Acken]

Try cleaning up your civ5. Delete mods, delete cache, unsubscribe, verify game cache, reinstall mods.

 

[Phukit]

great writers not giving 7 turns worth of culture.

currently i have 3 GWs i am producing 385 cpt ....all 3 writers provide different values for triesties...297 452 and 1093 respectively.

does their value depend on when they were spawned?

 

[Phukit]

citadels giving 2 science?