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

[Phukit]

Are they? I think it depends on how you play the game. Tradition was always better for peaceful games and almost useless for early warmongers. I don't think this mod changes enough to make things different so if you tend to be aggressive, you will get better results with Liberty or Honor. I've often been a peaceful or late warmonger so Tradition was often better for me. Will try it again next time and see if it's really worse now

EDIT : @ Acken : yep, seeing how Harun has expanded like crazy in my last failed game while he opened tradition, you can safely give it some expansion flavor

You wont be turtleing to a peaceful VC in this mod....you also wont be turtleing 4 city tradition until arties then going to war.(unless you are playing archepielago,small continents)Peaceful games just dont exist in this mod.The AI will force you into multiple wars long before that happens.And if you just try to turtle you are going to get dogpiled.

Thats not to say you cant win any other VC but DomV,you certainly can....but they are all going to be DomV assited.

 

[Acken]

EDIT : @ Acken : yep, seeing how Harun has expanded like crazy in my last failed game while he opened tradition, you can safely give it some expansion flavor

Well you don't have to worry about this. Giving more expansion flavor to tradition wouldn't make the AI more likely to expand, that's not how it works. It's the otherway around, depending on how high the flavors are due to its economic strategies the AI will chose a policy.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

You wont be turtleing to a peaceful VC in this mod....you also wont be turtleing 4 city tradition until arties then going to war.(unless you are playing archepielago,small continents)Peaceful games just dont exist in this mod.The AI will force you into multiple wars long before that happens.And if you just try to turtle you are going to get dogpiled.

Maybe you and i don't have the same definition of "turtling". Back to the crazy days of G&K (or was it the day1 BNW release) where AIs would come for you T30 with 5 chariots, 5 bows, 6 warriors and 3 spears, i was way more comfortable "turtling" some defensive wars with tradition than expanding or going on the offense. I haven't really had time to test it in this mod, but i plan to. Turtling doesn't mean keeping your pants down

Well you don't have to worry about this. Giving more expansion flavor to tradition wouldn't make the AI more likely to expand, that's not how it works. It's the otherway around, depending on how high the flavors are due to its economic strategies the AI will chose a policy.

I think you misunderstood my post. In my last game, Harun expanded like crazy (and became biggest empire) after opening tradition so i told you it was safe to add expansion flavor to the tradition tree as obviously it does not hurt AI expansion.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Maybe you and i don't have the same definition of "turtling". Back to the crazy days of G&K (or was it the day1 BNW release) where AIs would come for you T30 with 5 chariots, 5 bows, 6 warriors and 3 spears, i was way more comfortable "turtling" some defensive wars with tradition than expanding or going on the offense. I haven't really had time to test it in this mod, but i plan to. Turtling doesn't mean keeping your pants down

I believe his point is that on the higher difficulty levels (I would say Acken-Emperor and higher) it is exceedingly tough, perhaps impossible, to keep up with the AI turtling with only your initial expansion of (probably) 4 cities, while such a thing is conceivable on, say, base game Immortal. One of the reasons being that the penalty received for extra cities has decreased, such that on Acken-Emperor the leading AIs will have 300-500 bpt by turn 200, and on Immortal, quite possibly 1000+. Very difficult to match that when just turtling w/4 cities + maintaining a solid defensive army. Grabbing AI cities is really the only way to keep up (again, on the non-small-islandy maps).

 

[chumchu]

I have done some test with Poland. Winged hussars are an very dominating unit now. They beat everything in the renaissance and stack up well against the industrial units. I beat rifles with honor and himeji bonus through superior promotions, movement and heavy charge (charge with only a barrack and polish stable). I'm okay with them being strong, it is fun with lancers that are actually good, but I do think that the polish unique ability needs a drastic nerf.

Regarding liberty. The big problem is when there is runaway doing tradition on the other side of the map, with as many cities as you but rocking twice your population. It is very hard to catch up in science on demigod without growth bonii and tradition is the only tree with those. You are forced towards domination which is hard when you have a tech disadvantage.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I believe his point is that on the higher difficulty levels (I would say Acken-Emperor and higher) it is exceedingly tough, perhaps impossible, to keep up with the AI turtling with only your initial expansion of (probably) 4 cities, while such a thing is conceivable on, say, base game Immortal. One of the reasons being that the penalty received for extra cities has decreased, such that on Acken-Emperor the leading AIs will have 300-500 bpt by turn 200, and on Immortal, quite possibly 1000+. Very difficult to match that when just turtling w/4 cities + maintaining a solid defensive army. Grabbing AI cities is really the only way to keep up (again, on the non-small-islandy maps).

The problem isn't Science - unless you regularily need more than 260 turns for a spaceship victory on unmodded Deity. The problem is that even if you have one unit on every single hex of your four cities an AI with 30+ (did an AckenDeity game, Germany had surpassed 55 cities at one point) can easily outspam you and will DoW no matter what the unit score is.

That game I had three Citadels next to a city, fortified Infantry against Panzers and they still died every single turn, airplanes not even needed.

 

[Phukit]

@Bob Morane

The problem isn't Science - unless you regularily need more than 260 turns for a spaceship victory on unmodded Deity. The problem is that even if you have one unit on every single hex of your four cities an AI with 30+ (did an AckenDeity game, Germany had surpassed 55 cities at one point) can easily outspam you and will DoW no matter what the unit score is.

That game I had three Citadels next to a city, fortified Infantry against Panzers and they still died every single turn, airplanes not even needed.

^^^Exactly this ^^^

The object is to stop the AI from expanding
There are two ways to do this...

1.You can expand rapidly and extensively yourself, which will lead to multi front wars.
2.You can conquer the cities the AI has built "for you",which of course leads to war.

Option 2 however affords you the luxury of choosing not only when and where to war but to bribe other AI to help with your war.

The mod is exceptional no doubt Acken has done some fine work here and we all have a great time with his mod.But you are going to find that many of the tried and true strategies from the base game just wont fly here.

 

[Phukit]

The problem isn't Science - unless you regularily need more than 260 turns for a spaceship victory on unmodded Deity. The problem is that even if you have one unit on every single hex of your four cities an AI with 30+ (did an AckenDeity game, Germany had surpassed 55 cities at one point) can easily outspam you and will DoW no matter what the unit score is.

That game I had three Citadels next to a city, fortified Infantry against Panzers and they still died every single turn, airplanes not even needed.

I recently tried a 4 city tradition peaceful SV with the shoshone on acken immortal.

I took defenders of the faith figuring a 40% combat boost between the shoshone UA and DotF would enough to let me tackle the AI unit spam.

By industrial it was clear that i was not going to be able to continue defending,having to continually produce sacrificial units meant less time spent on growth and infrastructure.And the AIs had a seemingly endless supply of units to toss into the meat grinder.

I was behind in tech, there werent enough CS left for DipV and I was not going to hurdle the culture output of The Iroquois or Arabia the two biggest civs by industrial.

I cant even imagine how insane it would be on Acken deity

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

The problem isn't Science - unless you regularily need more than 260 turns for a spaceship victory on unmodded Deity. The problem is that even if you have one unit on every single hex of your four cities an AI with 30+ (did an AckenDeity game, Germany had surpassed 55 cities at one point) can easily outspam you and will DoW no matter what the unit score is.

That game I had three Citadels next to a city, fortified Infantry against Panzers and they still died every single turn, airplanes not even needed.

Well, without playing, say, Korea, I did regularly need more than 260 turns for a spaceship victory on unmodded Deity after they made parts more expensive, so I guess I'm a schlub. I still stand by my claim that it's almost impossible to get to 1000 bpt by turn 200 doing a 4-city Tradition -- even if the AI goes on an extended vacation -- which means that even if you settle into a space where you can turtle (and I've done it, denouncing the folks my jerky neighbor is attacking, etc.) you might lose a CV or SV by by turn 260'ish anyway.

 

[noto2]

I'm really impressed with the AI's economic management in this mod. In the unmodded game, I would be the tech leader without even trying. I NEVER traded with other civs, only city states, so as to not give them any beakers. I would also use my spies defensively most of the time.

Now, in this mod, I have to really struggle to keep up in tech, and find myself trading with tech leaders and spying on them all the time.

I've also seen, in many games, an AI will have its 4th city around turn 30...which is just astounding, and I only play on Emperor!!

 

[Acken]

Glad the improvements of v3 on the civ economy are working

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Been trying out Deity lately, without much success.

Check this out, T120 and Theodora has a 30+ pop capital. That's completely insane-

On T176 it's 40 pop. If you don't believe me here's a screenshot. Standard speed of course.

In this game I swalled the entirety of India, was sitting on 9 cities, just reached Industrial and upgraded all my Range Chu Ko Nu, was getting ready to take Theo down ~T190, only to find out Theo had about six Great War Bombers in every city---

I don't want to overdo it with the profanity, but Deity is f--king hard

Spoiler :

 

[Erneiz Hyde]

That's not Theo, that's Dido

 

[Acken]

Hehe yes I know

For now it stays as is... if down the road nobody can report wins on that difficulty it will be toned down a bit.

PS: could you put the screenshot in spoiler tags to save space ?

 

[chumchu]

@yung.carl.jung I feel you man, my games feel a difficulty level harder in v.3 because of the AI high population growth and tech rate. I was falling behind in science on demi-god with 8 cities, jesuit education and early rationalism. I had some wins at demi-god before but now I'm going to move down to immortal =).

 

[Acken]

I should make a prize for a standard deity win.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

That's not Theo, that's Dido

most definitely is, I messed up

@yung.carl.jung I feel you man, my games feel a difficulty level harder in v.3 because of the AI high population growth and tech rate. I was falling behind in science on demi-god with 8 cities, jesuit education and early rationalism. I had some wins at demi-god before but now I'm going to move down to immortal =).

Often times I don't catch up in science until Research Labs. sometimes I don't catch up at all

I feel like DemiGod is honestly perfect, it's so hard you want to move down yet leaves you with a glimmer of hope you might actually win.

Deity on the other hand is just brutal. I have the feeling that players like Manpanzee and IronfighterXXX would beat DemiGod without any troubles and probably do really well against Deity, though, I'm pretty mediocre at this game after all and still managed to win a fair amount of DemiGod games. It's certainly not impossible, infact I think I came pretty close in my China game, just couldn't beat GWB and wasn't anywhere near Flight.

 

[chumchu]

My problem in that game was that Brazil was the tech leader, had most of the wonders, would have a culture victory way before I went to space and on the other side of 20 city Germany who hated me. Had I planned for a domination game I would have gone honor instead of piety and pushed into Germany after finishing France around turn 90 but I consolidated to build up my empire as I was low on happiness and science. Lesson learned.

I might try demi-god on small instead of standard as it would be easier to contain potential runaways

 

[Acken]

On a side note the only thing I did that resulted in the current massive growth of the AI is to make it value food more and build aqueducts. In my tests on the base game there were situations where the AI would ignore food buildings for the whole game and sometimes work unemployed citizens instead of tiles...

 

[chumchu]

On a side note the only thing I did that resulted in the current massive growth of the AI is to make it value food more and build aqueducts. In my tests on the base game there were situations where the AI would ignore food buildings for the whole game and sometimes work unemployed citizens instead of tiles...