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

Acken · Sep 12, 2015

Can you also post the save ?
I'll get on it when I am back. My current guess is that there is problem with the AI escort operation not aborting. You can probably continue your game without killing either.

I'm pretty sure I fixed this issue in the experimental version by the way.

consentient · Sep 12, 2015

On the Mac version at least, early war is much, much more difficult on Demigod than BNW Deity. In a game as Isabella I found an early NW, forward settled towards Monty, founded DF, founded a religion T20ish, Enhanced soon after, built lots of Warriors, went Honor-Piety mix and was picking up a ton of XP by lurking outside his borders. Then T60 about 20 units walk out of the FOW. I had been building almost all units, had a great start by normal standards, barb quests, gold, 600gold from NW, etc. and there was NO way I could do anything about the amount of units he had built.

Either the people playing Demigod are much better players than I am, or the Mac version is somehow harder than Windoze!

I'm gonna go down to Level 5 and try to work my way up, if that's even possible!

Nigel_Tufnel2 · Sep 12, 2015

Acken - attached save. I can't leave the Impi alone because he just pillages all my tiles!

consentient - "Immortal" (5) is still quite the slog against AI units. I never did see 20 units appear on Demi-God though! For some reason I always had Assyria next door on Demi-God, and so victory for me was staying alive.

Acken · Sep 12, 2015

The log indeed send me a notification about the escort bug I have fixed in the experimental. It's a rare bug that I didn't know where it came from. Now I know.

You can either try the current experimental or simply use the save below where I have played turn 164

Legen · Sep 13, 2015

I tried your mod and was quite pleased; the combat felt more balanced, melee units were actually surviving and ranged units didn't felt irrelevant, at all. The remodeled social policies are also well thought, with more relevant benefits outside Tradition and Liberty for varied gameplay. These two trees don't fell mandatory due to how you can get more economic benefits in the other trees.

My first game was a King difficulty just to see the changes: Japan Honor-Aesthetics for a mix of Domination and cultural victory. Won by culture too fast, at turn 291, no Sacred Sites or anything similar, just a few turns after getting Hotels. Bushido performed much better with melee units staying alive longer under archer/city ranged attacks and, therefore, being much safer fighting at lower health. And cheaper work boats are amazing for an solid start.

The Aesthetics tree seems overtuned for cultural victory. The amount of tourism you get from Artistic Genius is too much for the AI to handle even before you have hotels, and skyrockets once you have. It's probably better to make this policy add +1 culture and +1 tourism for GW, rather than +2 tourism, so the AI isn't overwhelmed too early.

The Honor tree is amazing in the first eras of the game and has two logic paths, but ends dealing with two long-term annoyances: you're paying for the maintainance of multiple Great Generals you don't need, and can't deal with global unhappiness problems as well as other starting trees do. I suggest Warrior Code also making Great Generals maintainance-free and consider Military Caste providing global happiness instead of local happiness.

Acken · Sep 15, 2015

Legen said:
I tried your mod and was quite pleased; the combat felt more balanced, melee units were actually surviving and ranged units didn't felt irrelevant, at all. The remodeled social policies are also well thought, with more relevant benefits outside Tradition and Liberty for varied gameplay. These two trees don't fell mandatory due to how you can get more economic benefits in the other trees.

My first game was a King difficulty just to see the changes: Japan Honor-Aesthetics for a mix of Domination and cultural victory. Won by culture too fast, at turn 291, no Sacred Sites or anything similar, just a few turns after getting Hotels. Bushido performed much better with melee units staying alive longer under archer/city ranged attacks and, therefore, being much safer fighting at lower health. And cheaper work boats are amazing for an solid start.

The Aesthetics tree seems overtuned for cultural victory. The amount of tourism you get from Artistic Genius is too much for the AI to handle even before you have hotels, and skyrockets once you have. It's probably better to make this policy add +1 culture and +1 tourism for GW, rather than +2 tourism, so the AI isn't overwhelmed too early.

The Honor tree is amazing in the first eras of the game and has two logic paths, but ends dealing with two long-term annoyances: you're paying for the maintainance of multiple Great Generals you don't need, and can't deal with global unhappiness problems as well as other starting trees do. I suggest Warrior Code also making Great Generals maintainance-free and consider Military Caste providing global happiness instead of local happiness.

Thanks for the feedback Legen. Concerns about too much tourism is noted. The problem is to find a good balance between say King and DemiGod/Deity in order for it to be possible to catch up to the AI culture. Note that winning at 291 on King doesn't really shock me

I kind of agree that Artistic Genius may be a bit too strong.
However I don't really have a problem right now that Aesthetics is so important for culture victory. CVs should swim in social policies by the end of the game so in the end they still have a lot of choices to make with policies.

Regarding honor I don't see the problem with general maintenance. The tree already gives a good amount of gold and if your general are useless you should make fortresses. I have noted somewhere that one of the weakness of honor may be happiness but you also have the possibility to get more diverse luxuries through conquest and fortress bombing. Capitals often have 2 luxs for example. Also the tree obviously work very well with autocracy because of happiness through barracks etc and courthouses.

Ravellion · Sep 16, 2015

I've either played 3 or 4 games with 2.1 (non experimental) now (1 immortal, 2 or 3 emperor - I don't know exactly because I might be mixing up games in my head with 2.0). All challenging, all fun. Played with all policy trees and they all seemed to work well. Piety might even be a bit too strong...

I agree with Legen that the Aesthetics' 2 extra tourism per great work is definitely too strong though, but on Emperor I couldn't replicate a turn 291 win like he did. At least, not without Sacred sites :mischief:

Sacred Sites is extra amazing with the Piety finisher in this mod. If you have one of your cities convert to a neighbor's religion, you can spread that as a secondary religion to all your own cities. Consequently, the player could easily get 3 faith-bought buildings per city even when not playing Byzantium. Still, that is luck based, because you need neighbors with the right beliefs.

For art slots, might I suggest the wonder route? Have Hagia Sophia and Notre Dame spawn a Cathedral (Hagia Sophia instead of the temple, Notre Dame by reducing the faith yield to 1). Forbidden Palace is a palace so logically should have an art slot anyway. Three extra art slots that require a bit of work, but might just be worth it, though probably not on Demi-God or Deity.

Your idea of 2 slots in the palace might also be a good idea, though the palace slots are always lost when conquered, so some great works are likely to be lost each game. I don't know how bad that really is. Another alternative might be to bring the hermitage forward a little to acoustics, and have it require amphitheaters instead. This will also make the AI more likely to build it, and its +50% culture might help with tourism defense. Maybe rename it as the national gallery to reduce the anachronism of it.

The tithe nerf makes church property (CP) pretty much an auto pick for me, especially if I get my religion really early and expect to spread it to low pop cities. I've always considered the two quite balanced, especially considering how quickly you can get extra money from CP during a part of the game that is quite cash poor. This is probably the one change that I disagree with because of the fact that I used to weigh two options and now I pretty much go for CP all the time.

PhatPimpP · Sep 16, 2015

So i download the file and extract it to my mods folder and then I try to enable it via the in-game mods menu and the game just halts on the "checking game data-please wait" screen. After a while the menu music stops playing and when I bring up the task manager, I see that Civ V has crashed. I have tried leaving it at the checking game data screen for 30 minutes with no positive results. I really want to try this mod so I would appreciate any help. Thanks

Acken · Sep 16, 2015

You mean it crashes just after enabling the mod ? Could you indicate if it's the official 2.1, the experimental or the mac/linux version ?
Finally what you can do to help is put the logging on by editing config.ini at the same path you have your mods file and changing LoggingEnabled = 0 to LoggingEnabled = 1.
Then try to load the mod and after the file game crashes go to the Logs directory and pack everything and either upload it or write a pm to me so that I can provide you an email for you to send it to.
You should also make sure you're using the latest version of the game 1.0.3.279. Most recent and legit version.
Try also with only this mod activated.
Finally you can also download the Community patch mod and tell me if your game also crashes when you try that.

Edit: Problem fixed, user had wrong civ5 game version.

Ravellion · Sep 18, 2015

After playing another game, I can confirm that Sacred Sites is broken in combination with the Piety finisher. I won despite a huge Alex on the other side of the continent (no trade routes possible, he didn't want open borders, and Ideology differed - he still lost around radar. The others were gone before I had built hotels. I suggest to change sacred sites to 1 tourism, maybe with 2 tourism for one of the buildings (cathedrals?).

Acken · Sep 18, 2015

Thats a possible problem. I'm starting to think the ability to buy extra buildings with the finisher may simply be over the top. I still want something good but not something that gets out of control.

Acken · Sep 19, 2015

New update of the experimental version. The V3 update is pretty big and will be released soon with the following list of changes. The only changes of v3 compared to this experimental would be minor (bugs, AI and imbalances due to the changes):

Spoiler :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n958kaj9y4s5vwb/Acken's Minimalistic Balance (v 2).rar?dl=0

Nigel_Tufnel2 · Sep 19, 2015

Acken said:
Thats a possible problem. I'm starting to think the ability to buy extra buildings with the finisher may simply be over the top. I still want something good but not something that gets out of control.

It may be over the top - but I see it as similar to Spain with NWs. If you get a competing religion with good buildings, it is probably OP, especially if you have Sacred Sites. But I've had more than one v 2.1 game where either the neighbors pantheon/follower beliefs are not very helpful, or my pressure is so high, that I barely get any outside pressure at all (Itinerant Preachers on Pangea with no strong religious civs in the game, and too much war for safe TRs).

I know you are trying to achieve balance, but I would sort of enjoy watching Piety become the new Tradition. :mischief:

Ravellion · Sep 19, 2015

Acken said:
Thats a possible problem. I'm starting to think the ability to buy extra buildings with the finisher may simply be over the top. I still want something good but not something that gets out of control.

Really, the only problem is that sacred sites can give a very early cultural victory. Piety finisher without sacred sites does not lead to significantly altered gameplay at all, so I'd suggest leaving the finisher alone and changing sacred sites. A few faith bought buildings more without extra tourism benefits won't break the game.

What if you gave sacred sites +1 tourism for all religious buildings? This is the same amount of tourism per city as if the religion owner had chosen two faith bought buildings (shrines +1 and temples +1), but 1 tourism per city less than if the player had three buildings to work with. This does start very early though, so I thought it might be a small problem. But thinking about it some more, I usually get the faith bought buildings before shrines and temples in the cities I build after city number 4 or 5, so maybe it isn't a problem.

An other alternative is +1 tourism for faith bought buildings, +10 for the holy temple. Still a strong policy, but it won't go ballistic anymore like it does now, and most of the tourism won't show up till after theology.

And the final alternative, but I don't know how difficult it would be to code, +1 tourism for faith bought buildings and +3 tourism for all wonders that give faith (ie. Stonehenge, Borobodur, Hagia Sophia, Great Mosque of Djenne, Machu Picchu, Notre Dame and the Holy Temple national wonder)

Looking at these three options, I think the first one is probably best, as it has the additional advantage that the AI is actually likely to use it properly too, and even a human player who only got too choose one faith bought building belief might be tempted to take it if he wants to pursue a cultural victory. A cautious approach would be +1 tourism for temples and faith bought buildings. That would leave out shrines and get rid of some possibly super early tourism.

Acken · Sep 21, 2015

Or simply give something else than tourism. Making it more useful in general.
Maybe +1T +1C for example.

Ravellion · Sep 21, 2015

Acken said:
Or simply give something else than tourism. Making it more useful in general.
Maybe +1T +1C for example.

That definitely will reduce the potential impact the human player can have with it, and it will also reduce the pain of not taking the tradition opener. Less specialized, more gnerally useful.

When does the AI choose sacred sites? Only when it already has two building beliefs? Or also when it only has one or none?

Acken · Sep 21, 2015

No... and this is the time where you laugh at Firaxis.

The AI put a fixed score on the belief regardless of the number of faith buildings it has. And then it picks one of the beliefs that has the highest score.

Not all beliefs are scored that stupidly though.

Ravellion · Sep 22, 2015

Acken said:
No... and this is the time where you laugh at Firaxis.

The AI put a fixed score on the belief regardless of the number of faith buildings it has. And then it picks one of the beliefs that has the highest score.

Not all beliefs are scored that stupidly though.

Ouch. Well, in that case, and considering the mod's goals, perhaps it is a good idea to expand the benefits to shrines and temples. The AI does quite often choose Sacred Sites, but it never really seems to do very much. Now I know why.

Acken · Sep 22, 2015

I've added a if condition to check for the number of buildings the AI can buy with its religion. So that the belief is scored 0 if it has no available buildings.

I've made SS 1T 1C 1G right now

Dahebbie · Sep 22, 2015

Seen a citystate produce a settler...

Something very crazy with the greatworks screen here. (I had several cities at this point in the game, only Beijing is shown..)

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

Deity

Domination!

King

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Deity

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Emperor

Deity

Prince

Chieftain

Deity

Prince

Deity

Deity

King

Prince

Deity

Prince

Deity

Prince

Deity

Warlord

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