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

[adcarrymaokai]

DESERT FOLKLORE: +1 Faith from Desert tiles (except floodplain).

JUST NO.

You realize that without Desert Folklore desert is the worst terrain in the game? It's always either food-poor or hammer-poor. You can only work flood plains for 2 or hills for 2 . Flat desert has 0 yield. Occasionally, there is marble or incense, but who wants to work an empty 3 tile without food or production? Let's compare.

Grassland can have stone, so it's already a 2 1 tile. With a quarry and stone circles, you are looking at a 2 2 2 tile. Grassland has cows, which is a 3 tile right away, and it gets better with a pasture, stables, and fertilizer into a 4 2 tile endgame. Grasslands have horses, ivory, marble, wine, truffels, deer in the forest... and forest itself gives immense production boost when you chop it.

Plains give 1 1 They have wheat, horses, salt. They also have forests to be chopped.

Jungle gives 2 . It also gives 2 with universities, and people just people trading posts to get more and more gold out those tiles. Jungle also gives defensive terrain bonuses and delays enemy army advancement by a lot until artillery and bombers.

Hell, even tundra gives at least 1 . Besides, there are always deer on tundra tiles, furs, iron, stone, even cooper or silver. And Dance of the Aurora gives faith off the 1 tiles.

Meanwhile, flat desert has NOTHING. Flat desert has 0 yield. The only two reasons why people play desert starts are: a) desert folklore IF you get it b) Petra IF you get it. The faith from desert folklore exists to salvage otherwise terrible start and facilitate growth/production/gold with religion. There are no defensive bonuses on flat desert, and there is never forest to chop.

Desert by itself is already the weakest terrain, and you are suggesting to nerf it even further?

@Acken, I hope you don't kill desert folklore, and if you do, please tell where the doc is, so I can change it back after I download the new version.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Religious Art will be boosted to match culture changes too.

Speaking of which... do you think you will change Sacred Sites? Currently, it is only used for ICS strategies and nothing else. Small empires simply cannot get any use of it.

What if Sacred Sites also gave half the faith output of Holy Sites as tourism? Then small empires built on Piety could invest into great prophets and generate tourism that way. That's only 3 tourism before New Deal or Historical landmarks, and unlike landmarks, Holy Sites don't generate more faith the longer the game goes.

That also wouldn't make wide empires broken because people would have to choose between faith buildings and prophets who go higher in price with each subsequent one, while faith-bought buildings steadily rise in costs by era.

 

[Acken]

@Acken, I hope you don't kill desert folklore, and if you do, please tell where the doc is, so I can change it back after I download the new version.

I probably won't do it that way. My current idea, if I change it at all, was to make it floodplains only and + 2 for oasis. I think what makes DF a bit too good is the combination of Hills and flood plains.

Anyway... you can simply just check the OP at the end. It's always up to date as to what changes are currently in my version

Speaking of which... do you think you will change Sacred Sites? Currently, it is only used for ICS strategies and nothing else. Small empires simply cannot get any use of it.

What if Sacred Sites also gave half the faith output of Holy Sites as tourism? Then small empires built on Piety could invest into great prophets and generate tourism that way. That's only 3 tourism before New Deal or Historical landmarks, and unlike landmarks, Holy Sites don't generate more faith the longer the game goes.

That also wouldn't make wide empires broken because people would have to choose between faith buildings and prophets who go higher in price with each subsequent one, while faith-bought buildings steadily rise in costs by era.

Could be also a good idea for a new reformation belief.

 

[chumchu]

I missed your proposals =(

I'm all for focused pantheons. Your god of protections fills a certain niche so it is ok. I do not think that players will take it except in the direst of circumstances.

When the NQ-group tested god of craftsmen with 2 hammers/city it was the best pantheon in the game, as early hammers are that important. 1 hammer, 2 gold is slightly worse than that but other pantheons are not buffed as much as they were in the NQ mod. It will probably be a dominating choice for wide empires. Further, I already think that there is too much gold in the mod. Keeping it at 1 hammer also make it more focused =p

I removed Earth mother since Salt tiles are already the best tiles in the game, Iron is not bad either.

I would not have a pantheon for cocoa either, or for that matter banana, citrus and wheat.

If you add copper to religious idols, nerf the culture to gold as the mining luxuries are the best except for those give extra food.

Monument to the gods can give a bonus to medieval wonders and still not be too strong as there are definitely limits to what you can get out of it. As a throw away pantheon, you want it replaced with another religion by the medieval era anyway.

Feed the world is still not that much better than a pantheon though. Mid to late game you will have more like 20-50 food surplus when growing your cities.The ramped up AI aggression might be a hindrance. In my Maya game I made good use of it which might cloud my judgment. Probably worse on Deity than immortal and below.

Desert faith is simply a level better than the other pantheons when you have a decent desert start. You are almost guaranteed first religion and it grows as your city grows and you settle more cities. It is not an interesting choice in most cases: you simply rush for it as soon as you see your start and hope that it is not taken by an AI. The only way to preserve it and keep it balanced that I see is to split the desert from the flood plains. It is still good if you can get 5-10 Petra tiles, which happens from time to time. It is now a niche strategy and not a dominating one.

 

[Ravellion]

Played two games (emperor, as I normally play immortal), loved them both (2nd game crashed, but that might be because one of the many custom civs I use). Aggression, both for the AI and the player, seems to be rewarded more, with melee units being the dominant force, and rightfully so. The good thing is that the AI has less trouble with managing melee troops than ranged as well, adding a bit to the difficulty.

The casus belli mechanic was nice, though a bit untransparent at times. I had casus belli against the germans, according to the diplomacy tooltip, but I had no idea why.

I hope you don't change the beliefs too much, as though I saw some good suggestions in the posts above, some seemed more like changes for change's sake. I like the minimalist character of the mod.

 

[Ravellion]

As an added note, I saw that a few people thought of the mod as being too gold rich. I must admit I had... sufficient gold in both games. Not gamebreakingly much though, as a wave of upgrading my army costs thousands.

Tithe helped but definitely wasn't the major reason. I suspect the reduced upkeep of buildings might be the major culprit. Whether this needs to be fixed I don't know. You could add a single gold upkeep to hospitals, hydro plants and research labs to slightly reduce the amount. It is not like people are not going to build those because of upkeep costs.

 

[Acken]

Actually the surge in gold is most likely due to reduced early maintenance and +1gold from lux tiles. You're easily making 4/5 more gold per cities.

But the next version will also nerf gold trades with the AI. So I won't nerf it just yet.

Played two games (emperor, as I normally play immortal), loved them both (2nd game crashed, but that might be because one of the many custom civs I use). Aggression, both for the AI and the player, seems to be rewarded more, with melee units being the dominant force, and rightfully so. The good thing is that the AI has less trouble with managing melee troops than ranged as well, adding a bit to the difficulty.

The casus belli mechanic was nice, though a bit untransparent at times. I had casus belli against the germans, according to the diplomacy tooltip, but I had no idea why.

I hope you don't change the beliefs too much, as though I saw some good suggestions in the posts above, some seemed more like changes for change's sake. I like the minimalist character of the mod.

Thanks for the feedback ! The CB mechanic may be a bit bug sadly, I need to spend time retesting it further. The normal causes for a CB are:
-a civ declare war on you
-a civ declare war on a civ you have a dof with
Don't hesitate to participate in the discussion about belief if you have a particular concern.

 

[Acken]

What do you guys think:

Considering how big of a step up there is between Immortal and Deity. I have had the idea of adding an intermediary difficulty. Currently called DemiGod (due to a discussion some time ago).

1. Do you like the idea ?

However currently I have some hard limitations over how I can mod the menu UI. I am currently trying to see if there is a way to fix the problem but in case I cannot do it there is a choice to make.
Option1
I don't change the names and descriptions and the new Emperor difficulty becomes the old Immortal difficulty (and King become emperor etc). The names are unchanged, but the values are changed.

Option2
I do a partial name change. To be more precise all difficulty options name would be changed at the exception of the scroll list. See the following screen. The left description is changed, the advanced setup options are changed but not this right scroll list (the game doesn't update it when loading a mod).

If you like the idea what option do you think is the best. Note that neither option has an influenced over the bonuses. Both option level 7 would use the same numbers, just different names.

Spoiler :

There is a third option, to make a 9th difficulty but this one would be visible only in the custom menu and this would create some issues where the DLL uses the number of the difficulty for some functions. In other words for a few stuff this extra difficulty would be considered above deity

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

DemiGod - I love the idea. I would be unlikely to play your mod at Deity. You could probably get rid of the first 3 levels as I can't imagine anyone playing below Prince or King would use a mod that makes the game harder (because they won't try Emperor, for goodness sake!). So you actually could create a bunch of 1/2 step difficulty increments, whether you relabel them or not.

I prefer Option 1 if you only add one new level, it should be pretty clear that your mod increases the difficulty of each level. Keep it simple! (Also, to fold the increased gpt discussion in here, keeping the gpt flowing as the current version does sort of feels like it makes each game 1/4 to 1/2 level easier. At least for my play-style, in which I usually only sell spare lux and buy all spare copies around. If you do ever create an actual Level 7.5 difficulty, throw us a bone and keep the 2 gpt trades and such, LOL.)

 

[adcarrymaokai]

I probably won't do it that way. My current idea, if I change it at all, was to make it floodplains only and + 2 for oasis. I think what makes DF a bit too good is the combination of Hills and flood plains.

But floodplains and hills are the only workable tiles in the desert. I forgot about oases -- they are really good for the first 70-90 turns of the game, and then fall off once you have Civil Service. If DF is not too good, then why would anyone play in the desert? It has no other yields, and religion alone can hardly make up for the lack of other resources.

 

[khaciv]

I just finished a game on emperor with arabia on epic speed.
I'm used to playing on deity so i can't compare the difficulty.
I started with full piety, (desert folklore, tithe, mosques, heathen conversion (why not?, it gave me 13 units), religious center, religious texts).
and went a few policies in patronage before i won a dom game.

Ofcourse, take it with a grain of salt; this is all based on the experience of 1 game. But some thoughts:

Piety:
- Adopter policy: getting 1f for adopting is awesome for securing a pantheon (might even try byzantium now)
- Organised Religion: yes Piety needed to get some culture in the early game.
- Mandate of Heaven: well placed outside the tree.
- Theology: came way to soon; before i got philosophy or a religion. Not sure if it's in the right place, or if it's the right policy for a starting tree atm.
- Relegious Fervour: a small happiness boost. Good to be rewarded for spreading a religion.
- The finisher: random, but was very strong in this game ( thanks Bouddica and Suleiman for all the religious buildings).
- Reformation: yells Persia!

Patronage:
- Consulates: interesting change.
- Scholaticism: dont know how much that is for each era, or how it compares to the old policy.
- Merchant confederacy: not sure if it's better then sending a caravan or cargo ship to another civ but i like the small influence boost and it fits the theme.

Honor:
- Adopter policy: Periodically reveal barbarian camps. Is that the same as the old policy? Montezuma's UA; great, but maybe a bit to much. Not sure how the numbers add up for a dom game.
- Warrior code: awesome! I really like it.

Exploration:
- Naval tradition: to late for it to be usefull. I suggest changing it.
- Merchant navy: weak, who even builds the East India Company?
- Treasure fleets: sure.
- Finisher: ai is already weak against naval units. Not sure if buffing naval units is the way to go.

Rationalism:
- to the industrial era: a good change to let it compete with ideologies.


- Combat units: yes! Buffed up melee and nerfed ranged units.
- Casus Belli system: i like the idea but i'm not sure if it works atm. Gajah Mada somehow got a Casus Belli against me before i did anything to anger him/anyone.
- More culture acquisition throughout the game: definitely nice, it just means more options since it takes a bit longer before you can addopt Rationalism.
- The tech progression: played on epic speed and razed the world with camel archers so can't tell the difference.

What i would like to see:
- AI not settling into your face and claiming you are to close to their borders. Maybe a distance valuation?
- Telling the AI not sending missionaries to your territory actually working.
- Telling the AI not spying on you actually working.
- Not being able to sell recources 1 for 2g. It's tedious and i can't believe it was intended.
- AI not buying recources that are useless to them, or selling recources that are usefull to them.
- A rebalancing of the NW's.
- A rebalancing the UU's.
- Pikeman not upgrading to lancers (although they are much better now).
- Ranged horse units not upgrading to melee units.

Anyways, i really like the changes sofar and will definitely play a few more games.

 

[Acken]

Hey thanks khaciv for the feedback I will look at your suggestions. Regarding questions:

- Theology: came way to soon; before i got philosophy or a religion. Not sure if it's in the right place, or if it's the right policy for a starting tree atm.

One change I've considered is to split the bonus between shrines and temples

- Adopter policy: Periodically reveal barbarian camps. Is that the same as the old policy? Montezuma's UA; great, but maybe a bit to much. Not sure how the numbers add up for a dom game.

Yes it used to also reveal camps.

- Merchant navy: weak, who even builds the East India Company?

The EIC will get some love during the wonder pass

- Casus Belli system: i like the idea but i'm not sure if it works atm. Gajah Mada somehow got a Casus Belli against me before i did anything to anger him/anyone.

Considering multiple person saying it doesn't work it probably doesn't.

What i would like to see:

- AI not settling into your face and claiming you are to close to their borders. Maybe a distance valuation?
- Telling the AI not sending missionaries to your territory actually working.
- Telling the AI not spying on you actually working.

A bit outside my reach right now, will see in the future or if AuI fixes it.

- Not being able to sell recources 1 for 2g. It's tedious and i can't believe it was intended

.
v2

- A rebalancing of the NW's.

v3

- A rebalancing the UU's.

v4

- Pikeman not upgrading to lancers (although they are much better now).
- Ranged horse units not upgrading to melee units.

Maybe but not urgent

 

[Acken]

Version 2 has almost all the major changes done.
It will be released next Friday 21/08/2015. I mostly need to debug the current casus belli system and make adjustments to already existing stuff based on feedback and suggestions.

###############################
VERSION 2 WILL BREAK SAVEGAMES
###############################

Here is the current change list:

Spoiler :

13.Changes since last version (in no particular order):
-Fixed some bugs discovered in v1
-Piety's Mandate of Heaven is now a Prerequisite of Reformation
-Theocracy no longer give a gold bonus for the grand temple. The temple bonus has been reduced to 20% but shrines now provide +1 gold.
-Sovereignty now gives +1 hammer to science buildings instead of +20% toward their construction
-Engineer, Scientist and Merchants increase their cost by 100 and the others cost by 50 (if 3GS, 1GE and 3GM have been born the cost of the next GE is = 100 + 3*50 + 100 + 3*50 = 500 instead of 800)
-Changed the deal mechanic surrounding gold. The AI now apply an interest rate to humans of 15% while the Humans apply a rate of 0%.
This mean that you can now give 30G for 1GPT but you will only get 26G if you give 1GPT.
This has repercursions on the deal values and with additional tweak we get: Luxuries are now worth 8gpt while Strategics are worth 1gpt.
There should be no way to trick the AI into giving you a favorable deal
-Settler difficulty has been removed, a new difficulty has been introduced between Immortal and Deity called DemiGod, level 7. All difficulties but Deity have been moved by 1. So Immortal is now level 6 etc.
Note that the scroll list in the main menu currently doesn't show this change, only when selecting a difficulty or in the Advanced Setup !
-Great Writers value is now also fixed
-Updated pantheons:
God of Craftmen no longer need 3 population
God of War now gives more faith (100% victim strength) and at 6 tiles away
Ancestor Worship now gives 2 culture
God King now also gives +1 food and +1 happiness
Religious Settlement now reduce border culture cost by 25% and boosts settler production by 20%
Dance of Aurora is no longer restricted to non-forest tundra
Goddess of Protection now gives +5 strength to all cities
Monuments of the gods now gives 20% production and up to Medieval wonders
Goddess of Love now needs only 4 population
Oral Tradition gives faith rather than culture
Earth Mother no longer gives faith for Copper
Religious Idol now give gold instead of culture and includes Copper
-NewPantheons:
Ceremonial robes gives 2 culture for dyes, cotton and silk
Offerings to the Gods gives 1 food and 1 faith for Truffles, Sugar and Spices
Nature's Blessing gives 1 faith to forests
Gift of wisdom gives 1 faith and 1 science to Cocoas
-Updated Follower beliefs:
Feed the world now give 2 food to temple instead of 1
Liturgical drama now gives 2 faith for amphitheaters and opera houses
Pagoda culture has been reduced to 1
Cathedral culture has been increased to 3
Ascetism no longer has a population requirement
Choral music no longer has a population requirement and boosts both temples and opera houses with +2 culture
Religious art gives +8 culture and +8 tourism to the hermitage (instead of +5)
-Updated Founder beliefs:
Tithe is now 1 gold per 5 population
Peace loving is now 1 happiness per 6 foreign population
-Updated Enhancer beliefs
Reliquary is now 75 faith per great people expended
Missionary zeal increases missionary strength by 40% instead of 25%
-NewReformation:
Religious Influence allows the purchase of Operas, Museums and Broadcast towers with faith
-Granary now also gives +1 food to bisons
-Ranged units have now a reduced cost of approximately 12% (-5 for archer up to -45 for bazooka)
-Full integration of AuI v9 (although not everything is activated)
-Other AI adjustments
-CityStates should make less units long term and take less space to diminish clogging.
-Siege unit city damage promotion has been reduced to 150% (from 200%)

 

[chumchu]

Niiice =)

Gonna try a religious game. I like the sound of Religous Influence. You might add amphitheaters as well to give it more to do early and make it somewhat comparable to the Jesuits.

 

[Acken]

Jesuits don't allow Libraries

 

[adcarrymaokai]

I am glad that DF didn't get shrecked. Now that EVERY resource gives faith together with huge Piety bonuses, DF isn't even that strong comparatively.

I am playing a Celts game, and despite my pantheon being Goddess of the Hunt, I founded the first religion on t38 with 3 forests, fast shrine, and the top two policies in Piety.

 

[Ravellion]

Well, I just had my second modern era crash during an AI turn (the Timurids, a modded civ, but it doesn't seem to do something all too difficult). I validated the game files through steam, didn't help. I turned on logging and I think this might be the problem, as this line is repeated loads of times in the "Database" log. Obvioulsy, I am not an expert:

[6676.234] no such table: Belief_YieldPerFollowingCity
[6676.234] In Query - select Yields.ID, Yield from Belief_YieldPerFollowingCity inner join Yields on YieldType = Yields.Type where BeliefType = ?
[6676.234] no such table: Belief_YieldPerXFollowers
[6676.234] In Query - select Yields.ID, PerXFollowers from Belief_YieldPerXFollowers inner join Yields on YieldType = Yields.Type where BeliefType = ?
[6676.234] no such table: Belief_YieldPerOtherReligionFollower
[6676.234] In Query - select Yields.ID, Yield from Belief_YieldPerOtherReligionFollower inner join Yields on YieldType = Yields.Type where BeliefType = ?
[6676.234] no such table: Belief_YieldPerFollowingCity

Is this something that might happen because of your mod?

 

[Acken]

Thanks for the notification. Yes these db errors are due to the mod but I doubt it's causing the crash. Crashs are usually a DLL problem. Sadly I cannot easily investigate because I made a mistake and lost the object database of version 1 for debugging and modified the c++ code since.

On the other hand I have fixed some rare crashs since v1 was released so maybe I already fixed the bug you're having... Been a while I haven't had a crash myself.

I can still look at it if you post your savefile and indicate any additional mod you are using. Also describe where it crashes and what I need to do with your savefile to make it crash. If I can easily fix it I will post a fixed dll for you, otherwise you'll have to wait for v2 and start a new game.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[ThorHammerz]

Thanks for the notification. Yes these db errors are due to the mod but I doubt it's causing the crash. Crashs are usually a DLL problem. Sadly I cannot easily investigate because I made a mistake and lost the object database of version 1 for debugging and modified the c++ code since.

Quick question Acken, how do you open/use the program debug database? I am able to directly open the crash dump file in VS (with what appears to be the source code & a brief trace of what crashed), but I get a "symbols are not loaded" error when debugging.

Edit: Nevermind, found it (I'm an idiot).

 

[Ravellion]

Thanks for the notification. Yes these db errors are due to the mod but I doubt it's causing the crash. Crashs are usually a DLL problem. Sadly I cannot easily investigate because I made a mistake and lost the object database of version 1 for debugging and modified the c++ code since.

On the other hand I have fixed some rare crashs since v1 was released so maybe I already fixed the bug you're having... Been a while I haven't had a crash myself.

I can still look at it if you post your savefile and indicate any additional mod you are using. Also describe where it crashes and what I need to do with your savefile to make it crash. If I can easily fix it I will post a fixed dll for you, otherwise you'll have to wait for v2 and start a new game.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Well, I run a lot of extra CIVs, so I will save you the trouble of finding and activating them all (pretty much all JFD's and quite a few of Tomatekh's and Sukritact's). I do have a save file that just needs a press of End turn to crash during the AI's turn, if you want it.

I'll start another, mostly vanilla, game today. If I run into anything with that game as well, I'll post it here.