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

[Acken]

Yes...

I have one tradition video and ycj won one game recently with it. Turtle defenseless tradition is dead though.

 

[Asterix Rage]

Trying v6 (Immortal / Marathon / Huge Map) with Sukritacts E&D v3, Condensed Promotion v14 and Really Adv. Setup v15x to make some personnal adjutments at the beginning.
At turn 421, indus. area, all is fine so far.
Still, the Mod make the game much harder. And that's nice. AI seems better than before.

Cyclopedia says Windmill can't be built on hill but il can.
I believe cyclopedia not updated on most of Mods make Mods hard to play for most of new players.

 

[Acken]

Its very likely i have not updated most of the civipedia

 

[noto2]

Uh.. is it just me or has this mod gotten easier in the most recent version? Maybe my last game was just an outlier but the AI's were being really pathetic (immortal).

Also, a weird thing happened - city states went on a rampage. There were something like 10 AI cities that had been captured by city states. I found it really funny. Half of a continent was nothing but black cities on the map.

I dunno, I'll play some more and see if this happens again. I do like that city states are not push-overs and can defend themsevles, and prefer this to being defenseless.

 

[Acken]

Well i didnt change so much that the ai would act really differently. Ill run some tests of my own.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Just uninstall/reinstall, should fix itself up right.

I finally got it to work! Reinstalling took 6 hours and did nothing, goddamn!

The problem was caused by an old version of EUI sitting not even in the DLC folder, but somewhere else where I put it for storage. It was interfering with my normal UI with me realizing it. Took me forever to find this out since the problem was not in my installation, neither in my Civ folder..

Is it possible to win an Immortal and above game with Tradition anymore..?

I would even go as far and say that with the current version you can actually win a Deity game with a 4 city Tradition setup. Of course your playstyle will have to be wholly different, you will need a huge standing army for the entire game because once you get DOWed it will never end. You simply cannot pump enough units with 4 cities to beat the AIs production bonuses.

If you really want to win Tradition then try 5 city Tradition on a coastal start, preferably even coastal grassland. Both Hanging Gardens and Temple of Artemis are easy to get on Immortal to Deity, I tested it multiple times. Won a Tradition game on DemiGod just a week ago with Tradition, a CV. It's still very much possible.

Uh.. is it just me or has this mod gotten easier in the most recent version? Maybe my last game was just an outlier but the AI's were being really pathetic (immortal).

Also, a weird thing happened - city states went on a rampage. There were something like 10 AI cities that had been captured by city states. I found it really funny. Half of a continent was nothing but black cities on the map.

I dunno, I'll play some more and see if this happens again. I do like that city states are not push-overs and can defend themsevles, and prefer this to being defenseless.

I actually love this "City States go on rampage" thing, we should keep it. I'd like to see that in one of my games! As for your post, I feel the same. I cannot explain it at all - If I had to pinpoint it I'd say the AI is less likely to DOW now and generally grows slower/has worse science. Maybe something to do with specialists? This could just be me seeing things. Lately I always keep a high military score in all of my peaceful games so this could be the reason why I don't get DOWed as much!

 

[Chum]

Agree. Game is easier now. Not sure why either. AI doesn't seem to grow as well or something.

I play with a guy who is quite a bit below my skill level. He's good if he gets a lot of advantages handed to him (such as me gifting him units). He's been doing REALLY well in V6, and I can't put my finger on why, because if he gets DoW'd early on V1-V5, I have to intervene or there's a good chance he'll get destroyed.

Yeah, I suppose he could be getting better, but it still doesn't seem right.

 

[Acken]

Weird. Maybe i broke something but i cannot pinpoint what it would be and my ai simulations seemed to be the same as usual. Can you guys make a screenshot if you see something abnormal or give me benchmarks ? Like: ai capital at 8 pop turn 100. Ai behind in tech turn 120 etc

 

[SirWhale]

I would even go as far and say that with the current version you can actually win a Deity game with a 4 city Tradition setup. Of course your playstyle will have to be wholly different, you will need a huge standing army for the entire game because once you get DOWed it will never end. You simply cannot pump enough units with 4 cities to beat the AIs production bonuses.

If you really want to win Tradition then try 5 city Tradition on a coastal start, preferably even coastal grassland. Both Hanging Gardens and Temple of Artemis are easy to get on Immortal to Deity, I tested it multiple times. Won a Tradition game on DemiGod just a week ago with Tradition, a CV. It's still very much possible.

Interesting. How many cities did you have when you won?

To ask in a different way: Is it possible to win a game on Immortal and higher with just your starting 4-5 cities?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Settings were Standard Map/Quick Speed/Pangea. Difficulty was DemiGod. I settled three cities, then one more after NC if I recall correctly. No cities conquered or given in a peace deal, I finished with those 5 cities.

I think really what is holding tall back is that your bulbs are often smaller. Tall is only acceptable if you have terrain with enormous growth potential and at the very least most of your cities next to a river and on a mountain. Tall games can probably still achieve competitive victory times with wide empires to be honest. Its just that you can't be sitting on four mediocre cities and easily win anymore.

 

[Acken]

Uploaded a new version. no balance change only tweaks. I did not find a problem in the mod but I've done some clean up and tweaks. Seems to have had positive effects.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vf8miza21uw1cb9/Acken's Minimalistic Balance (v 6).civ5mod?dl=0

 

[SirWhale]

Settings were Standard Map/Quick Speed/Pangea. Difficulty was DemiGod. I settled three cities, then one more after NC if I recall correctly. No cities conquered or given in a peace deal, I finished with those 5 cities.

I think really what is holding tall back is that your bulbs are often smaller. Tall is only acceptable if you have terrain with enormous growth potential and at the very least most of your cities next to a river and on a mountain. Tall games can probably still achieve competitive victory times with wide empires to be honest. Its just that you can't be sitting on four mediocre cities and easily win anymore.

Hm ok. I frequently lose to culture victory, but that could still be the effect of smaller bulbs.

 

[Chum]

Uploaded a new version. no balance change only tweaks. I did not find a problem in the mod but I've done some clean up and tweaks. Seems to have had positive effects.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vf8miza21uw1cb9/Acken's Minimalistic Balance (v 6).civ5mod?dl=0

Giving it a go.

 

[noto2]

The city-state rampage game was entertaining in a way, the entire Persian empire was conquered by about 4 city states, each CS had 3-4 cities, good for a laugh... but yeah, it was way too easy. It was just one game, though, so I wasn't going to draw conclusions.

Anyway, I'll play a game with the new experimental and see how it goes.

Also, Acken, why did you change the way nuke plants work? Now it's just really luck based. If uranium is near your capital, you get a free fluke luck hammer bonus, otherwise you don't. It's removed the nuke plant as an infrastructure option and just introduced a random luck element to the game.

 

[Chum]

Not a fan of the nuke change either, especially with how rare uranium is now. I frequently finish games with 10-12 cities and have 1 uranium mine.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Uploaded a new version. no balance change only tweaks. I did not find a problem in the mod but I've done some clean up and tweaks. Seems to have had positive effects.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vf8miza21uw1cb9/Acken's Minimalistic Balance (v 6).civ5mod?dl=0

Where should I put this file?

Anyway, I played some Dom/CV on difficulty 6, and I think I won't win. Cathy is almost done with her spaceship ( ), and I pissed her off enough to launch an invasion on me. My army is chilling down South, where it took Wilie's juicy capital with wonders.

In this game, I warred from the get-go: started with CB's to liberate Kiev from Mongolia and continued through eras to get down to Netherlands. I am bad and lost a lot of units, but it was surely fun. I think I would have won a CV no problem, if Cathy did not eliminate 2 civs and run away with science. Well, it was surely fun.

 

[Acken]

You can remove the previous version 6 from the civ5 mods folder if you already have one then put this file ine the mod folder. Civ5 should unpack it by itself. Or you can open the file with winrar and copy its content to the mod folder yourself.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Ok.

I do like that now custom houses and manufacturies are so awesome you want to think twice to either hurry production/get gold or plant them for a better long-term output.

 

[Acken]

Regarding nuclear plant it was more a change to stop the AI from wasting all its uranium in plants. But I could always lower the nuke plant flavor instead.

 

[Dahebbie]

Is it compatible with v5 saves?