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

Grendeldef · Sep 1, 2015

Acken said:
I will push an experimental version soon for some of these. You can also suggest changes that you think would be worth doing

Make the food caravans out of thin air only available from a larger city to a smaller city and even better if they'd scale based on population difference between the cities. Feeding a larger city should consume the surplus in the sending city - same logic should apply to hammers as well. Yeah, I deeply dislike the current internal caravan model...

Nigel_Tufnel2 · Sep 1, 2015

T243 Demi-God (7) on a "Pangea" (strangest shape I have ever played) and finally the DOW comes from my long-time neighbor, Darius. He still has a 5% tech lead, 2/3 of the wonders, 1.5x my population, etc. I have every modifier available (except Landmark, which just now got within his borders). I have almost 1700 bpt and will peak around 2200. I doubt he can take me out, he might not even get a city, but he will clearly take every single CS ally of mine within armchair distance (11 - I am Alex

). Rather than get the next 4 Rat policies I will have to waste a long time in Order (I already have 5).

The majority of CS units are Pikes (some are my gifts, I assume). There are several Warriors, WTH? Each CS has a MG, some have 2 - none in the city, of course, and there are 2 Infantry total. Their navies are Galleases and Caravels, with 2 Privateers. Darius has had Infantry, Battleships, and GWB for a while.

Something is clearly broken when the player can lose their CS advantage this easily. I don't even think it's worth it to play this out. I rolled two neighbors in the early game, but I have had no chance to attack being so far behind in tech, and his terrain is very rough. I lost the GW a while ago to Dynamite...

I realize I will need to drop down at least one level, but this game was going so great, so it is very frustrating. My only hope is really stupid AI military movement. :lol:

Erneiz Hyde · Sep 1, 2015

Btw something minor I noticed, it seems most pantheons have the thumbnail pic of the specified lux/strat in their tooltip, except for Goddess of Festivals and Sun God. Doesn't really matter, just mentioning it.

Acken · Sep 2, 2015

@Nigel
Hmm it's surprising the CSs don't upgrade their stuff. On a side note CS will get a bit more units next version.

@Erneiz
Yes it's actually that way in the normal game (no icons). The icons are my addition but I have been lazy to also do it for the pantheons I haven't modified.

Phukit · Sep 2, 2015

@Acken

Do you plan on adjusting naval melee/ranged units in the future?

Acken · Sep 2, 2015

Yes it's in my todo list. But I can't make the AI suddenly good at naval warfare :/

But if you mean by that to make melee ships a bit better then yes.

Phukit · Sep 2, 2015

Acken said:
Yes it's in my todo list. But I can't make the AI suddenly good at naval warfare :/

But if you mean by that to make melee ships a bit better then yes.

do you think the gap between naval melee/rage units is as great as he gap between land units?

chumchu · Sep 2, 2015

Technology and unit changes

The goals are to make more tech paths viable, move units away from the optimal peaceful tech path, make comparable units arrive at the same time, make the units that do not cost strategic resources less important and achieve better unit balance. The changes also make historical/thematical sense, but that is of secondary importance.

Classic/medieval:

Remove Theology as a pre-requisite for Compass. Makes a compass beeline expensive but possible for naval civs. Avoids the philosophy-civil service-education line being a pre-requisite for too many other things

Pikemen moved to chivalry. The current position of Pikemen upsets the balance in three ways: 1) Civil service is already a very desirable tech and on the path to education. This means that pikemen often come out only slightly later than most classical units and they counter every one of them except swords, who they are roughly even with. This means that you can potentially ignore these units and go straight for civil service. 2) This diminishes the usefulness of many classical units, especially horsemen, and is a reason you gave for making them stronger. The design goal of the mod is to make the game balanced with as few changes as possible. If you move back pikemen to chivalry, you can take off 1 strength from spears, swords and horsemen and revert the cost decrease on ranged units to end up with fewer changes in total. 3) Pikemen also make Knight beelines nearly useless as the counter unit is available 20 turns before and all your opponents will have them.

Renaissance/Industrial:

Remove Economics as a pre-requisite for rifling. Gatlings moved to rifling. Now there is military tech to beeline for except, dynamite.
Cannons at metallurgy. Both of these move units from the optimal tech path to less useful technologies that make historical sense.

Frigates should probably be nerfed (to 23/27) rather than melée ships buffed as cities are weaker in the mod.

Modern/atomic/info:

The tech tree is all over the place here. My preferred solution is to split the atomic era into two larger modern and information eras. The atomic era as it is now is quickly bypassed and mostly a build up to the information era (manhattan and apollo projects). Having one less era makes the things that scales per era less crazy late game (Poland bonus, internal trade routes, city states, too many spies). It makes little historical sense to talk of an atomic era apart from the cold war, which will not happen in a civ game. But that might require too much work, and it does not change the points below.

There are a lot units/techs that are not often used. Bomber line, battleships, rocket artillery, nukes and ICBM dominates. I have not had enough games with late warfare to test out the new machine gun/bazookas so I will refrain from commenting on them.

I envision three tiers of units, one at the start of each era. Counter units to a tier are one tech later, as are some strong units.

Remove railroad tech and move combustion tech to where railroad is now. Put rail road improvement at steam power(now it is actually useful for something. Kremlin and Neuschwanstein at combustion. Extra trade route at combustion. It of course makes historical sense to have railroads in the industrial era.

Remove lasers and move mobile tactics to lasers place.

The tiers read from the top of the tech tree (with changes in parenthesis)
Tier 1: Submarines, GWI (300 hammers), Triplane, GWB (down to 45 strength), Destroyers, Landships (down to 55 strength, 325 hammers)
Tier 1,5: Battleships, Carriers, AA-guns, AT Guns, Machine Guns (at Ballistics)
Tier 2: Marine (350 hammers), Bomber (60 strength), Fighter, Paratrooper, Tanks(75 strength), Infantry (350 hammers, at Combined Arms)
Tier 2,5: Atomic bomb, Bazooka (at computers), Mobile Sam, Rocket artillery, Helicopter (65 strength)
Tier 3: Nuclear missile, Mechanized infantry, Modern armour (at mobile tactics), Jet Fighter (at robotics)
Tier 3,5: GDR, X-Com, Stealth bomber

This is a lot. The most needed change is moving infantry needs to combined arms. The problem here is similar as pikemen. Infantry is atomic strength but comes early in modern, as it is on the optimal tech path (the new research labs are even more of a priority) and obsoletes cavalry, artillery, GWI and even Landships. If you move them you can lower their cost to 350 as a compensation.

chumchu · Sep 2, 2015

Buildings:

- Research labs are much better than any other building in the game. Suggestion:
Either move one specialist slot from research lab to library (it is very hard to get early scientist for academies with one slot at universities, with their value fixed at creation a higher potential for early scientists might be an interesting trade-off as it means fewer late-game scientists) or nerf the science bonus form research labs. (Make university, observatory and research lab 33% each)

- Recycling Centers and Stadiums cost ridiculously much for what they give. Suggestion: Make them both 300 hammers.

- Medical labs and aqueducts are out of proportion. You want to build aqueducts as soon as possible and medical labs almost never. Suggestion: make them 35/30 instead of 40/25.

- Windmills are expensive for what they give. Late game buildings are generally very expensive Suggestion: Up the building production bonus from windmills to 15%.

- Seaports are also overcosted and coastal cities are at a disadvantage in general. Suggestion: Make seaports give 1 hammer on all sea tiles but no extra gold on sea resources. With it, sea tiles are 2 food, 1 hammer. If you add 1 gold on all sea tiles on Merchant Navy, instead of boosting the East India company, then you have workable sea tiles that are not over powered. I think that it is a more interesting way to balance it than super-powering the naval trade routes.

Internal trade routes

- It is probably better to nerf internal trade routes than to buff external trade routes to avoid giving too much free food/prod/gold to cities as this diminishes the importance of other decisions (e.g. city placement). Suggestion: Make internal trade routes cost 1 resource in the sending city. It is the most elegant change that can satisfy both the thematic and balance issues. Sending trade routes to your cap from new cites is now a trade-off.

Grendeldef · Sep 2, 2015

chumchu said:
Pikemen moved to chivalry. The current position of Pikemen upsets the balance...<snip>

I haven't given much thought what could/should be changed but I wholeheartedly support this - or something similar which postpones the entry of Pikes to early 80s rather than early 60s.
A welcomed side effect is that it hampers Shaka's early unopposed walkovers a bit and to a lesser degree Persia. Also it makes Swordsmen even more tempting and more room for Classical units warfare.

arkham4269 · Sep 2, 2015

One thing about the tech tree I don't understand is how often you get certain techs before others which leads to things like having Gatling guns before you'd get the infantry they historically supported. Given how the Gatling Gun came out after rifles, it makes no sense.

Likewise, pikes should come AFTER Knights given they were mostly developed to deal with them. Perhaps an intermediate Halberdier could be inserted to allow for an upgrade to the spearman similar to the warrior, swordsmen, longswordsmen line.

Ever consider having slingers added from the beginning to allow a ranged unit at the very beginning and thus keeping the pressure to force you to rush towards archery and thus composite archery?

Also, canons come way to late. There really needs to be a bombard to replace trebuchets given how if you go by the 3D model, the canon is a Napoleonic/ACW type. So going from Trebuchets right to that doesn't make sense given how bombards had been in service a long time. If anything, I'd move trebuchets up a bit since they had been in use a long time by then.

In fact it seems like you'd expect early pallisides force the invention of catapults, city walls, trebuchets, castles the bombard and so on.

Any chance of fiddling with the scouts? I'd like to use JFD's exploration mods but the DLL components negate a lot of the mods I want to use. I also believe that to make scouts more useful, they should promote to explorers and then into artillery spotters/LRSU units where if they are next to an artillery unit, that unit would get an attack bonus. That or make the LRSU unit hard to kill (not tough/just hard to damage) so that it could use a "ignore ZOC" ability to run around in the AI's back-field to allow you to use artillery/air units in what would normally be Fog of War zones.

Plus, can we get a Civ III function back of citadels and forts can base aircraft? Fighting on Pangea maps away from the ocean makes airplanes a boon for the defenders in a city but just makes the attackers not be able to move fighters up like they would historically.

Acken · Sep 2, 2015

Regarding techs:
Removing the prereqs of Economics <> Rifling and Scientific Theory <> SteamPower were already in.
For Theology <> Compass I don't think I want to remove it completely. It makes compass come really early with a huge tech gap between the two. Most likely helping the human player in these galleas rushs than the AI considering its logic in picking techs. Switching the Prereq around sounds like a better solution and make philo the prereq rather than theology for example.
Removing Atomic is a bit out of the question because of how it upsets a lot of things that go pretty well right now. The science pace is rather smooth and I'd have to put a lot of work in it without really seeing what cannot be done otherwise.

Units:
-I'll look into Pikemen. Civil Service still takes a lot of time compared to iron working. Swords rush often cannot wait for you to get pikemen for defense and swords are also a good chunk cheaper. But I get the point about knights coming after their countrer and CS already being a central tech. I kinda like the current ancient/classical era balance of units with cities etc though. Only the archer may be a bit crappy.
-I currently have swapped replaceable parts and Railroad. One being mostly army stuff and the other economic stuff I kept the logic there and it makes GWI a bit harder to get. Also diminish freedom strength a bit.
-Agree with Infantry coming too soon. I had moved it to Ballistics first but atomic era seems more appropriate so it may go to combined arms yes.
-Regarding late game warfare we do not have enough experience really... not spending much time there. If anything the truly out of place unit is the Marine that gets never used.
-Don't really see why canons need moving. Also the siege units come regularly. Adding one for thematic reason wouldn't really improve the gameplay.

Buildings:
-My current implemented change is to remove 2 science from the Lab and add 2 to the Library. Makes Libraries more interesting early and diminish Labs a bit. It's not much but it's a start. I'm okay with you guys not having as many academies as you used to. Remember LToP and Liberty now can give you a totally free Scientist and I may change all wonders to act this way (so another one at PT). A possible additional change I'd consider could be to put 2 slots on schools instead and remove the base 3 science (and put labs back at 4 base).
-Medical labs are better than aqueducts actually. Aqueducts are a 40% decrease while Medical Labs are 25% of the remaining 60%. That is a 41% decrease. So nerfing aqueducts would not make sense if the purpose is to help labs. Labs issue are its cost and placement though. I currently don't really have a solution beyond moving hospital and labs but that would nerf penicilin a lot and diminish the theme. Diminishing the cost of these 2 is a possibility.
-Agree on stadium, recycling stuff and seaport.
-Windmill current change is a decrease to 200 hammers so a 20% decrease.
-I currently moved caravansary to animal husbandry and made it a 60hammer +3gold/caravan building. It's basicly an early option to get a good amount of gold "similar" to what you'd get from a granary.

Comments:
-I'm not convinced internal routes need nerfing right now. It's the current way for small empires to catch up more easily to wide ones. The current caravansary change can also help external routes especially for wide empires that have to deal with limited happiness. Also diminishing the source food is a bit more complicated than it sounds so I'd need real convincing to do that. Wouldn't a simple -1 food to the food yield simply achieve an equivalent purpose ? Note also that a change to Hospital/MedicLab could make me more likely to diminish caravan food.
-JFD civ mod use a custom DLL ? I thought it was mostly lua scripts which are compatible.
-Yes maybe I'll make a explorer unit in renaissance. If you want unit spotters though for your artilleries the common tactic is to use a cavalry with +1 sight.
-If I can find a mod already doing "improvement rebasing" I may consider it but it'd have to also teach the AI to use the new mechanic.

List of current changes (not yet uploaded):

Spoiler :

chumchu · Sep 2, 2015

- Switching the pre-req for compass is better than nothing.

- Removing the atomic age does not affect the pacing. All the techs would still be there but modern and information era would be longer by as much as the atomic age.

- I see a role for pikemen as a special anti-horse unit rather than as a more expensive sword replacement that comes later, in better tech path, does not require iron with a purchase discount

- That can work game-wise, but it might make the science beeline too strong. As it is now production and military units are placed towards the bottom of the tree while science and culture are placed towards the top with economy in the middle. It is also a little strange from a perspective what technology leads to what perspective. It is a lesser change though, which is easier on the players.

- There is little experience with the mod, but much without it. Has the mod really changed late game military so much as to invalidate that? I do not know. I feel that the late game military was not well thought out in the original design and needs some structure. But your limited time for coding might be better spent elsewhere.

- I would move the cannons to metallurgy to get a choice between better units and more production. Chemistry is a tech with strong immediate bonii that you aim to get asap whereas metallurgy is just the opposite. They are the best and worst tech in the era.

- The choice either to make medical labs stronger or cheaper as we do not want to move them. I want them stronger, but I do not want higher population growth so I take it from the aqueducts.

- Diminishing the yield of internal trade routes by 1 achieves many of the same gameplay goals but loses out on theme. It is definately a positive change.

I like all the changes except making Stonehenge the piety wonder. Stonehenge and Piety are the only ways to get a religion without a faith pantheon for all but 3 civs and faith pantheons are too prominent anyway. I would not remove one of these options.

Phukit · Sep 2, 2015

the problem with med labs is that they just come way too late to be of any real use.
I dont even see a point in buffing them either,they are still never getting built....how much extra growth do you really need at that point in the game.?

hospitals on the other hand could use a tweak,drop them to 3-4 food and add a 10-15% modifier on them.slightly increase their cost.

Nigel_Tufnel2 · Sep 2, 2015

Phukit said:
the problem with med labs is that they just come way too late to be of any real use.
I dont even see a point in buffing them either,they are still never getting built....how much extra growth do you really need at that point in the game.?.

Being as I just got my cap nuked 2-3x it is going to be very handy right now!

Acken · Sep 2, 2015

The worker AI seem to be underperforming in my version. Could someone confirm it's also the case in 2.1 with very little improved tiles in the AI cities (outside of capital). And is it different than the base AI ?

I've been spending hours to tweak growth flavors for the AI but I just noticed the AI just doesn't make enough improvements despite a ton of workers

I'll try disabling AuI part for workers and see if at least the AI builds everywhere.

That explains a lot of the poor result and small cities it sometimes has... I feel stupid to not have checked that sooner.

Phukit · Sep 2, 2015

Acken said:
The worker AI seem to be underperforming in my version. Could someone confirm it's also the case in 2.1 with very little improved tiles in the AI cities (outside of capital). And is it different than the base AI ?

I've been spending hours to tweak growth flavors for the AI but I just noticed the AI just doesn't make enough improvements despite a ton of workers I'll try disabling AuI part for workers and see if at least the AI builds everywhere.

That explains a lot of the poor result and small cities it sometimes has... I feel stupid to not have checked that sooner.

I cant say i have noticed a real derth of improvements for the AI,however they dont seem keen on chopping forests and do tend to improve jungle tiles rather late if at all.

but they do connect luxes build farms (obv they love trading posts) roads ect in reasonably good time.

im more often than not simply repairing tiles after conquering than having to build improvements from scratch

playing windows version

kirbdog · Sep 3, 2015

Acken, please feel free to use code or concepts from my "Smarter AI" mod:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12417859&postcount=18

I haven't actually worked on it since G&K and that post there.

Also, please let me know if you find any of it interesting but aren't sure about my code.

I may be able to adapt some of the code to work in your mod (and with BNW) if I know what you're interested in.

Acken · Sep 3, 2015

chumchu said:
- Switching the pre-req for compass is better than nothing.

- Removing the atomic age does not affect the pacing. All the techs would still be there but modern and information era would be longer by as much as the atomic age.

- I see a role for pikemen as a special anti-horse unit rather than as a more expensive sword replacement that comes later, in better tech path, does not require iron with a purchase discount

- That can work game-wise, but it might make the science beeline too strong. As it is now production and military units are placed towards the bottom of the tree while science and culture are placed towards the top with economy in the middle. It is also a little strange from a perspective what technology leads to what perspective. It is a lesser change though, which is easier on the players.

- There is little experience with the mod, but much without it. Has the mod really changed late game military so much as to invalidate that? I do not know. I feel that the late game military was not well thought out in the original design and needs some structure. But your limited time for coding might be better spent elsewhere.

- I would move the cannons to metallurgy to get a choice between better units and more production. Chemistry is a tech with strong immediate bonii that you aim to get asap whereas metallurgy is just the opposite. They are the best and worst tech in the era.

- The choice either to make medical labs stronger or cheaper as we do not want to move them. I want them stronger, but I do not want higher population growth so I take it from the aqueducts.

- Diminishing the yield of internal trade routes by 1 achieves many of the same gameplay goals but loses out on theme. It is definately a positive change.

I like all the changes except making Stonehenge the piety wonder. Stonehenge and Piety are the only ways to get a religion without a faith pantheon for all but 3 civs and faith pantheons are too prominent anyway. I would not remove one of these options.

-Ok but I'm not really seeing the point appart for the theme if I have to move 6 columns of techs into 4 columns. Also I don't really want to checkproof every bugs that could result from a removal of an era :rolleyes:

Moving the techs inside the era if necessary is more simple.
-Ok maybe.
-Yes it's not thematically sound but I don't really see how to make it logical. Moving GWI down and putting something else there.
-Once players will be forced to deal with the first changes to Infantry and GWI and to deal with late game warfare in general we'll get more feedback. It's a bit too soon to start overhauling the whole stuff.
-Swap canon and arsenal yes ?
-Let's try cheaper lab/hospital. Note that if you now build windmills it will already cut the cost.
-I'll let you guys try the new caravansary, see how it goes and if you still like internal better.

Regarding Stonehenge my problem is more with the Mosque actually. Comes late, isn't that hot.

Acken · Sep 3, 2015

kirbdog said:
Acken, please feel free to use code or concepts from my "Smarter AI" mod:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12417859&postcount=18

I haven't actually worked on it since G&K and that post there.

Also, please let me know if you find any of it interesting but aren't sure about my code.

I may be able to adapt some of the code to work in your mod (and with BNW) if I know what you're interested in.

Interesting. I'll remember it the next time I need to do more band aid fixing of the stupid AI

Since I'm a lua noob it's appreciated.

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

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