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

[Phukit]

I had a game this weekend like that.

I rolled standard/random and I initially thought I was on a continent with Indonesia to my west, Ottomans northwest and Arabia north. I think I was 25 turns in, and a wild Shaka appeared, turns out Shaka was inhabiting a small break in the mountains that were a complete ridgeline seperating east from west, it was a pangaea and everyone was on it.

Shaka and Ottomans DoW'd me on like T30. Shaka wasn't in a position to even get to me, and the Ottoman's paid the price for it, he was gone by T60.

I don't have the problems that everyone else seems to have with Endless DoW's. I dunno what the difference is. Bad diplomacy? I pretty much go to war when I want to, outside of the initial forward settling map volatility. Maybe you guys need more military. Just because you want to play peaceful doesn't mean you're going to get away with a couple of archers. I'm pretty sure I could finish a peaceful game on a lot of the maps I've played, I just find that incredibly boring, so I either take the wonder whore's capital, or I hit the culture/tech leader to speed up the game.

Currently playing a fun map with the Mongols,1st expo GBR second expo krakatoa.

There was not a single DoW against me or any other civ until i launched keshiks t110,which is odd considering i didnt even start pumping out units till around t60.

The AI is simply more aggressive,much better at gauging its chances.And i can only surmise far more willing to bribe other civs to DoW you.And I really think the AI knows its better if that makes sense.

Part of my real problem is still not fully appreciating melee units in this mod.but i guess 1400hrs of the base game teaches you that.

Legion spam with Alex ( god i hate this man)is very very effective (and fun) early game.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Part of my real problem is still not fully appreciating melee units in this mod.but i guess 1400hrs of the base game teaches you that.

As awesome as double-shotting gatling guns are with range, I'm finally beginning to realize that you can probably do almost everything you need to city-conquering-wise with just melee units.

I've been goofing with Isabella and Tercios are amazingly strong. Only problem is that I really don't have the concentration necessary to *always* be worrying about the 30-unit-Carpet-Of-Doom, you need to micromanage and plot and plan as much or more on Acken-Immortal as you do on standard Deity. At least on Pangea.

And if you don't like always being at war, not the mod+difficulty for you!

 

[Chum]

Currently playing a fun map with the Mongols,1st expo GBR second expo krakatoa.

There was not a single DoW against me or any other civ until i launched keshiks t110,which is odd considering i didnt even start pumping out units till around t60.

The AI is simply more aggressive,much better at gauging its chances.And i can only surmise far more willing to bribe other civs to DoW you.And I really think the AI knows its better if that makes sense.

Your conclusion contradicts your anecdote.

I would also like to see some evidence of AI's bribing other AI's.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I just finished my England game. The turf was even more amazing than in my Korea game, I don't even want to go into detail about this.

Just so you get an idea just about how ridiculous this game was, I built (not conquered!) the following wonders in the following cities:

London- Oracle, Hanging Gardens, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Globe Theatre, Sistine Chapel, Angkor Wat, Macchu Picchu, Porcellain Tower, Eiffel Tower, Prora

York: Petra, Alhambra, Chichen Itza, Brandenburg Gate, Big Ben

had Broadway in my expo with the Musician's Guild. Really happy I built for Guilds even though I went for DomV, I had so many cities Futurism + Eiffel + a few Musicians really helped keeping the smiles up.

I finished this game T226, but this map could have easily been cleared with Longbows and SotL around T180 or T190, sadly I allowed Gaja to take three capital and it took quite some time to get them back considering he had Battleships and Bombers (!!) at around T215.

~

I feel like I am really starting to get the hang out of this DemiGod business, so here is what I'll do next:

Since this was not much of a challenge I wanted to take this one step further. I looked at the bottom of the two prominent Deity tier lists on this board to get three contenders for "worst Civilization in the game" for my next try.

The civs I chose were the Iroquis, Marocco and Byzantium. Note that I have never even played those civs once. A dice roll was to decide who I should run with, it got my Byzantium. Really appreciate that, I think they're the best out of those three, though the Iroquis UU could be o.k., too.

I will reroll until I get a mediocre start, since for example Byzantium with salt and pastures is essentially like playing a strong civ.

Legion spam with Alex ( god i hate this man)is very very effective (and fun) early game.

Hoplites are indeed very strong, I like them even though they're just a stronger Spearman.

As awesome as double-shotting gatling guns are with range, I'm finally beginning to realize that you can probably do almost everything you need to city-conquering-wise with just melee units.

After hours and hours of AckenMod ™ I have to disagree. I always loved melee units, was really sad that they were so underwhelming in the base game. Even though they are now exceptionally strong and melee-rushes are a viable tactic, I still think Archer line units are by far the most important. I've tried so many melee strategies, but I still end up with a better win time if I beeline Crossbows into Artillery. If anything Archer-line (support) units are even more important now that melees have become stronger, because you won't be able to stop carpets without them.

As you already mentioned Gatling Guns are essentially viable until atomic, they're that good now- just like they're supposed to be when they have all promotions (in my opinion).

 

[Phukit]

Your conclusion contradicts your anecdote.

I would also like to see some evidence of AI's bribing other AI's.

This game for me is atypical for me.To not have been DoWd at least 2-3 times by T100 is uncommon for me.

I dont see how AIs bribing each other to go to war would seem anymore unrealistic than AIs trading resources amongst each other.

 

[Acken]

Your conclusion contradicts your anecdote.

I would also like to see some evidence of AI's bribing other AI's.

The AI doesn't bribe but it makes Coop wars. Like when they ask a player if they want to go to war against someone the AI will do that between themselves.

 

[Chum]

The AI doesn't bribe but it makes Coop wars. Like when they ask a player if they want to go to war against someone the AI will do that between themselves.

That's what I've been looking for.

I've seen the "AI bribes other AI's into wars" thing bandied about on the forums several times, and I've asked about it, but no one can seem to provide any evidence for their claim. I think it's very likely poor diplomacy, and people not understanding why people would want to go to war with them.

Once you become better at the diplomacy system, you very rarely have surprise backstabs and such. You know who your friends and enemies are, and those stay pretty static as long as you maintain relations.

 

[Phukit]

The AI doesn't bribe but it makes Coop wars. Like when they ask a player if they want to go to war against someone the AI will do that between themselves.

The AI is definitely more apt to team up against you in this mod,wether it be via a coup or just seeing a good opportunity to jump on the dog pile.Seems much better at co-ordinating attacks between Civs.

 

[Acken]

The main reason why there are more Coop wars in the mod is simply because the AI is more willing to go to war. I almost didn't change the way they work.
The way Coop wars work is that the AI will ask every 25 turns every AI and human if they want to go to war against a target they want to go to war with. It's likely the other civ will accept if it also want to go to war.

Since the mod makes it more likely for the AI to chose a war approach, more coop wars are therefore more likely.

Also one of the factor for accepting and chosing a war approach is military strength so the player is often the victim at higher levels.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

I feel like I am really starting to get the hang out of this DemiGod business, so here is what I'll do next:

Since this was not much of a challenge I wanted to take this one step further. I looked at the bottom of the two prominent Deity tier lists on this board to get three contenders for "worst Civilization in the game" for my next try.

The civs I chose were the Iroquis, Marocco and Byzantium. Note that I have never even played those civs once. A dice roll was to decide who I should run with, it got my Byzantium. Really appreciate that, I think they're the best out of those three, though the Iroquis UU could be o.k., too.

I will reroll until I get a mediocre start, since for example Byzantium with salt and pastures is essentially like playing a strong civ.

Are you just going solely on the bottom techs -- I take it you don't even bother with Public Schools?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Are you just going solely on the bottom techs -- I take it you don't even bother with Public Schools?

There's essentially two ways to win domination for me - If I have turf with good to great growth potential I will go Tradition or Liberty, settle two or three expands and go for National College into either Crossbows, which I prefer to build instead of upgrade, or Education into Scientific Theory. This is useful to get into key technologies like Artillery or Biology in tandem with Flight earlier for a timed push - your crossbows can gather exp, maybe even take a few problematic cities out along the way, but most of the warring will be done with Artilleries or Bombers. I usually go Commerce or Piety second.

Since the AI has an insane tech rate now you pretty much cannot ignore growth and science, you absolutely have to keep up in one way or another. In this regard AckenMod differs a lot from regular Deity where you can just pump out units and completely ignore science.

The other way to win is by warring really early, usually accompanied by Honor or Liberty with two expands and a fast National College and/or Academy from the finisher. After that I go straight for Crossbows and then Artillery, sometimes I pick up Education before Arties. If you cannot realistically get Crossbows around T90 - T110 don't even try. For this strategy I almost always upgrade Crossbows from Compbows for a timed push. I almost always go Commerce second, it's just too good.

This is only really doable if there are juicy capitals near you providing the science for you. If it isn't likely for you to get at least one or two capitals with Crossbows this strategy will not work out, you will fall behind and most definitely lose. This strategy is far more risk, since often your army will be fighting somewhere else and you will be unprotected. You will also permanently be at war with at least one AI so you can expect the entire world to hate you at roundabout T150.

Case 1) is usually relevant when you have really strong river systems or really bad early game production, for example a jungle or coastal start. A mountain next to the capital or a mountain line protecting your capital are also strong indicators of what type of domination I'll attempt.

Case 2) is usually relevant when you have mining luxuries and/or tons of pastures. It really helps when your opponents are on flatland.

~

I have tried Composite Bow rushes with both Liberty and Honor and they've failed miserably every time, but that might just be because I'm terrible at it.

Even melee rushes have had more success than Comp Bow rushes did, they're a viable strategy for Rome, Zulu, Denmark and others if you can transition into a peaceful victory from there.

 

[Phukit]

I have tried Composite Bow rushes with both Liberty and Honor and they've failed miserably every time, but that might just be because I'm terrible at it.

Even melee rushes have had more success than Comp Bow rushes did, they're a viable strategy for Rome, Zulu, Denmark and others if you can transition into a peaceful victory from there.

Agreed,though it would be nice to see Impis get some love,having them pushed back to Chivalry is pretty big,Swordmen have equal strength and come much sooner and can still make use of Ikanda promotions

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

I'm curious as to what others BPT and tech times are re getting to, say, Machinery/Education. It's certainly different from the base game where you don't automatically beeline to Education, I'll give it that!

So BPT may be a better benchmark.

 

[Legen]

The AI seems to pick Cover promotions quite often, the player's ranged units tend to deal half or less damage than an equivalent melee unit of the same era once the AI can build Armories. This is partially why the AI has an easy time capturing cities from players with a small melee backbone.

The AI still train quite a lot of ranged units relative to their melee units, so Cover promotions are just as important for the player as it is for the AI. And the AI still bad at protecting their archers, even if you neglect mounted units, so melee rushes tend to be very cost-effective.

I don't think ranged units are in bad shape, seeing how they help weakening the damage of the enemy's melee units and how easily melee units end clamped, waiting for someone in the frontlines to give room to them. They also help controlling dangerous positions and support your navy. They just require a solid melee backbone to protect them, as a weak backbone now crumbles quickly and let melee units rush your archers, with devastating effect.

 

[Phenril]

Started a game with your mod, i love the policies changes, i'm an immortal lvl player that has troubles winning deity games.
picked difficulty 6 (your immortal right?) didnt switch game to English, V3 translations are missing but i red the changes so it's fine.
It's incredible how hard AI punish you for fast expansion compared to normal game.
playing mayas, i settled 4 expos by turn 57 foward settling rome like a man(well protected city but still).

from what i've seen, see resources are way too abondant, maybe it's just luck but having 5 to 7 see ressource seems a bit exessive.
got denounced by my neighbours but still no war (only the worker steal + settler kill from closest neighbour), probably cause i built a good amount of slingers.

another question, is it still possible to trade lux to lux? i think it's my diplo that make it impossible but i'm not sure.

i'll give your more feedbacks after finishing this game and prob after playing few ones.


Thanks for the mod, it changes the way games are going and that's what i needed, got bored of immortal and i'm still too bad for deity.

 

[Acken]

Right now the AI may ask for some gold on top of the lux. But this is a change that may be removed.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Right now the AI may ask for some gold on top of the lux. But this is a change that may be removed.

I dunno, that seems reasonable to me. Jerky AI almost always getting 2 extra gpt from me, especially early on ...

Finally am at the bring of a victory on Pangea Immortal! Decent dirt start with Isabella -- some salt but no sea resources in coastal cap, no first-discovery of a wonder but the Great Barrier Reef found for city #3.

Focused a lot more on war this time, and only expanded to 4 cities before building up to smack down Indonesia, and then the AI I figured would try to runaway with it, Poland. (HATE HATE HATE the hussars.) Liberty as first tree, Piety as second, and damn, Piety is good for generating the happiness/gold you need to support a 8-10 city empire and huge army ...

I think I got lucky that Sweden/England have fought each other to a standstill, and Korea somehow is at the bottom in tech (!!), still, after I Retired yesterday at turn 230'ish (hey, it was 4AM), I peeked at the tech graphs. Both Poland and England did hit about 1000bpt around turn 200. I was only at 600 or so, but am now at 1400 with a bunch of Jesuit-purchased Research Labs ... ah, I love generating 140 faith a turn!

Lessons learned:

1) Machinery before Education is just fine.
2) Build up to 8-10 cities early. Don't wait around.
3) Get lucky w/r/t what the AI on the other side of the map do. If England had swallowed Korea and/or Sweden I wouldn't be tied for the tech lead, I'd be behind. (And though I'm tied, still have Rationalism finisher, Oxford, should build Hubble in time, and have tons of faith for GS, so I am sitting pretty. As long as my cities do pretty much nothing but build Mobile SAMs/Battleships for the rest of the game. Yeah, I could finish off Poland and then keep moving but I'm lazy ...)

 

[Chum]

from what i've seen, see resources are way too abondant, maybe it's just luck but having 5 to 7 see ressource seems a bit exessive.

You think that, until you can't get any luxes from AI's because they're swimming in happiness.

I've had several games where multiple AI's want 5-1 trades for luxes. That is no bueno. It really makes you think pretty hard about your policies, I'll tell you that much.

 

[Phukit]

Started a game with your mod, i love the policies changes, i'm an immortal lvl player that has troubles winning deity games.
picked difficulty 6 (your immortal right?) didnt switch game to English, V3 translations are missing but i red the changes so it's fine.
It's incredible how hard AI punish you for fast expansion compared to normal game.
playing mayas, i settled 4 expos by turn 57 foward settling rome like a man(well protected city but still).

from what i've seen, see resources are way too abondant, maybe it's just luck but having 5 to 7 see ressource seems a bit exessive.
got denounced by my neighbours but still no war (only the worker steal + settler kill from closest neighbour), probably cause i built a good amount of slingers.

another question, is it still possible to trade lux to lux? i think it's my diplo that make it impossible but i'm not sure.

i'll give your more feedbacks after finishing this game and prob after playing few ones.


Thanks for the mod, it changes the way games are going and that's what i needed, got bored of immortal and i'm still too bad for deity.

fish are much more abundant for sure,but getting the most out of sea resources is a big hammer investment,you have build each work boat,and you have to tech optics for lighthouse.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

As promised I'll do my write up. Before I go into detail a little bit about the game selection:

So I was keen on playing with Byzantium. I honestly like both UUs, even though their unique Horseman might just be worse than a normal horseman, who cares, I never use those anyway.

I was incredibly sick of playing Pangea every single game so I figured I'd go Continents, maybe get something out of my UU ranged Trireme. Oh boy.

I rolled ten (I'm actually serious here) different starts and in none of them did the AI have a coastal capital. What the f? All I wanted was some warmongering.. I guess that's what I get for trying to give me a small advantage.

Sick of rerolling I just ended up going with a map I considered pretty damn mediocre, turned out it was much, much worse than I though!

For some reason the game only saved half my Screenshots- Oh well, I hope it'll be sufficient.

So here we begin, this is my starting turf:

Spoiler :

As you can see my luxuries in the capital are Pearls. They are probably by far the weakest luxury of all the sea-based luxuries, maybe the worst luxury in the game. The only good thing about Pearls is the +2 Faith Pantheon, which is extremely strong. It works even with unimproved Pearls. Sadly, unimproved Pearl tiles are so bad that you'll cripple yourself when you work them, so I never did until Lighthouse in my capital. This of course means deviation from the ideal tech path of Philosophy into Civil Service into Education and slowed me down quite a bit since I got Lighthouses really early. The other luxury I had was Cotton by the way, which I settled on to get the river. I only had a single tile in my entire empire.

I also only have five hills in my capital, which means lategame production is going to be terrible. Coastal cities already suck in terms of production, in this case my capital sucks even more. I have a singular horse and one cow and one sheep, so not a lot of production from pastures either. I don't have any Iron besides one tile in my second expo. I had about four or five forests in my entire empire, would have really needed some chops or lumber mills

Luckily my capital had a pretty strong river system - that and its abundance of maritime resources are the only things it's got going for it. Its defensive position is good, I quite like it. If you look at my first expo you'll see it's essentially impossible to get to the capital without taking my first expo down. However I did place my second expo really bad in a way that will not allow me to send food Cargo Ships to my capital, a huge mistake. I could not settle it where I wanted to because I had a barb camp spawn literally on the exact tile I needed. Oh well. My first expo was also hard to reach so I figured I could turtle for about 100 turns without building any units.

Since I knew mid and lategame growth in the capital was going to be really good I picked Tradition. I only got extremely few ruins, they gave me (1) Upgrade, (2) Culture, (3) Map, (4) Animal Husbandry and (5) Map in this order. Scouting I'd say is one of my strength, even in Continents games I tend to get at least between six and eight ruins in the early game, not this time. The last two map ruins were completely useless since I had already discovered that part of the continent. I went with the usual path and got Monarchy before Landed Elite since I built a Settler very early (at Pop 3) just after getting a Scout, a Worker and a Shrine.

Tech wise I started Pottery obviously, then went for Mining and popped Animal Husbandry. I went straight for Calendar since I had settled that Luxury, then Writing, Sailing and then went for Lighthouses. I opted to go for an early Philosophy and delayed Masonry, Bronze Working and Roads, which probably was a mistake.

My early game went rather smooth, aside from a few tactical mistakes. I met Dido first north of me, then met Montezuma west of me. Washington was north of me. I found a religious City State second, infact I found every City State with the exception of the one in the back second, which really sucked and lost me a lot of early gold. Could not do much about it since I was so cut-off from the rest of the continent.

I stole an early Worker from a CS around T20 and brought it back with my Spearman. Settled my first expo around T30. I was questing for CS and one turn before getting an encampment that would have gotten me allied with two CS a CS unit took it out of nowhere. Ugh. I ended up having way too many Workers since I managed to get one from Barbarians and built one in my first expo before Granary - big mistake.

Spoiler :

Since I was playing nice, never stole a worker and gave everyone good trades Dido befriended me and Monti took a liking to me. Since my production was really bad pissing them off would have been suicidal, as would have been a Domination attempt with all these jungle tiles around their borders.

Settled my third city at around T45, in a really suboptimal location. Basically, my first and second expos were pretty damn trashy. Both had no rivers whatsoever, very little production and I had no way at all of sending a food Cargo to my capital. Atleast I was surviving. I turtled for quite a long time without much happening aside from Monty and Dido declaring war on multiple CS, which I tried to block with my units as best as I could, it worked, none of them fell.

Dido made peace and I pumped 500 gold into La Venta, just for her to declare again ten turns later. Come on.. I didn't want to piss her off, so all that gold went down the drain.. Kamehameha found me and quite obviously he was doing extremely well, he has a big advantage on this map after all. Luckily I managed to befriend him, too, and soon I was swimming in gold from trading all my pearls away.

I got my religion at around T65 if I remember correctly. I got Tithe, Religious Community and Production from Fishing Boats in addition to my Pearls Pantheon. It jumped my capital from 20 production to 27, an insane boost. I finally got my National College at around T80, then instantly went for Oracle. At this point all my cities were growing nicely, though my first expo didn't really have all that much food, so I sent it a Cargo. The second one went to Dido, more to win her over than for the yields, because they were really poor, since her capital wasn't coastal

Spoiler :

My beakers are still very poor, I have no wonders built and no chance for a 4th expo whatsoever, there wasn't any defendable position in the north, especially not considering how much of a psycho Monty is and how much of a devious backstabber Dido is. She was already giving me low trades so I knew I'd have to build military soon. Both of them tried to kill Washington, he lost a few cities but managed to defend the ones that counted. As you can see I attempted Oracle in order to get through Piety fast, got it on T89.

I'm still completely unsure whether I'll go for a Frigate rush or a peaceful Cultural Victory, maybe even a Spaceship Victory, though I'm sure I'll lose to some tourism powerhouse before that seeing as I'm only sitting on three cities. I have poor centralized production, no wonders bar Oracle and a strong Religion, let's see where that'll carry me. Both Dido and Monty showed up at my borders every now and then, but my cities are all in really defensible positions (from the land atleast, from the sea not so much) so I ain't worried. Hope I can catch up via Spies. Faith and Gold per turn are pretty good, as you can see from my last Screenshot, 14 Pop in capital is actually really nice considering I did not get Cargo ships, in my opinion.

I played until T101 and will continue, maybe Thursday. One thing is for sure though - it really is a challenge this time. Pretty sure I'll lose this, but that's o.k., can't win 'em all.

Spoiler :

from what i've seen, see resources are way too abondant, maybe it's just luck but having 5 to 7 see ressource seems a bit exessive.

I's okay since Cargo ships have been nerfed severely. I still think coastal starts are rubbish, even more than in the base game. Also the AI actually builds Battle Ships and tons of U-Boats now, so Coastal Cities are way more threatened than land-based cities are.