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

[Acken]

@Acken do you plan to continue working on the mod? Civ6 doesn't compare so far...

Yes almost certainly. But at slow speed I'm afraid.

I don't plan to work on civ6 before at least an expansion in its current state. Been like 3 weeks I haven't even started the game anyway.

Anyway, Acken, thanks for making the AI much better. What games are you playing these days? Do you have any recommendations? Turn based is cool but I'm down for other genres too. Have you played any Galactic Civ3?

I'm playing some games I got cheap in a steam sales or another. Far cry games right now. I also play some remastered PS3 games on my PS4.

To be honest there's nothing strongly holding my attention right now I'm afraid. Especially in the strategy genre. I'm slowly going through Tyranny and it's a pretty good rpg (Pillars of Eternity is better if you haven't played that) but its mostly while waiting to see the new Torment game in February.

I'm also slowly playing more boardgames/cardgames and therefore less video games. Really enjoying Netrunner and Arkham Horror LCG right now.

I have played GC3 when it came out. Was rather disapointed. But I guess after so many updates it might be better so I can try it again.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

OMG.... I know you all probably have seen this before using the mod, but I had to share. Especially after seeing the utter futility of the Civ VI AI. Civ VI is the first Civ game where I didn't finish the first game. I've still yet to finish a game, and I'm the type to almost always finish games, however mundane.

So, I was Germany on a large Shuffle map (Immortal, because I like pain) with 12 other civs and 22 city states. Anyway, to make a long story short, there was a large island that only I had access to until Astronomy (there were two city states there as well). I had to deal with Napoleon and a 130 year war to my east. But to the west was the promised land.

Slowly I settled the large island and a couple small ones with 6 cities. I was going to go for a 7th when the Aztecs settled it. No big deal -- kinda weird the Aztecs went for Astronomy so early....

Finally Napoleon offers a straight up peace deal. I can now get to my infrastructure.

Aztecs declare war for some reason -- no big deal, I see no threat anywhere.

Suddenly, at the edge of my sight line come four frigates. Next turn four more. Next turn 3 more, for a total of ELEVEN. Well, I thought, just like the AI, all ranged and no threat of taking. Then three caravels appeared.

The Aztecs thrashed one city after another with razor-like precision. I had to fall all the way back to the first city I founded on the island and make a stand. I teched (stole) Navigation just in time and Privateered them back from where they came. It was seriously a point in time where it was 50/50 to die or to hold. I finally held the position and now have 5 Aztec cities of my own. The game is still going....

...but WHAT A RUSH!! I mean, the AI was almost better at sea warfare than land. Most of my shuffle games in the mod for some reason end up being one landmass or two, so this was a welcome change, and I had NO IDEA how efficient the sea warfare was now.

Long live the Acken mod!!

P.S. Acken, if you are into board games, I'm in the process of getting sets "manufactured" (long story) for Capablanca Chess on a 10x10 board (better than 10x8) -- two extra pawns and a Cardinal and Marshall piece that function as Knight+Bishop and Knight+Rook, respectively. I'm hoping that this will give chess at least a bit more life as the computers suck the life out of top level chess on the 8x8 board -- the last World Championship was a sorry disappointment for the game. <end random message>

 

[yung.carl.jung]

That game sounds particularly awesome. Really nice to hear that the naval AI got better!

 

[JJT]

Wow , what an improvement. Love this mod so much. Ughh , coming from CIV VI AI I thought I was done with Civ for good. This saved it.


BUG:: Small error that did cost me in game; --- Free walls from Tradition didn't actually give me walls , the Walls were listed but weren't actually there (visually or in city strength). This is from playing Aztecs.

 

[pinkywhiskers]

First off I want to say thanks Acken. I started playing on your mod somewhat recently & already love it. I hope you realize how many other players out there are loving it and who have just never made an account to say thanks.

Anyway, after being able to beat deity on BNW pretty consistently, this mod gave me so much trouble. I would win my deity games going tradition almost always, and killing usualy just 0-1 other civs and defending the rest of the time until I won whichever path I chose.

With this mod I moved down to immortal to try it out, and bam, lost my first 5 games in a row. After reading posts saying that its almost necessary to go out and take cities with this mod, I decided to try that out. I took 3 capitals and a few other strong cities. Ending with 13 cities and then building the spaceship first. I was behind a bit in tech the whole time but not as bad as my other games. My land, population, and production were all in 2nd/3rd place. It was the most fun game I've played in a long ass time.

My question is,
1) What exactly about the mod makes it so that taking cities is almost necessary?
2) What are the main overall changes that make this strategy so much more advantageous over the un-modded game?

I've read like all the changes and there are just so many small detailed changes that I don't have a good grasp on what the overall optimal strategy is/ what the big picture of the changes really do. As in I now know how to win, I just don't get exactly why it works. I hope that made sense. Thanks again, and thanks to anyone who can help answer.

 

[Acken]

Thanks for your feedback.

1. It's mostly due to the fact that if you don't, an AI will either kill you or get too far ahead. It's harder than the base game to just turtle forever and eliminating competition both reduces other AI strength while boosting your own.
2. More cities allows more production and more yields overall. The mod usually is easier on social policies to get hapiness to sustain more cities. More cities have always been better in Civ5 in the long run but civilization5 has too low science costs making it hard for more cities to have time to matter and catch up to a well optimized 4 city game. Also basic civ5 is very peaceful, making the low production of 4 cities not an issue at all.

BUG:: Small error that did cost me in game; --- Free walls from Tradition didn't actually give me walls , the Walls were listed but weren't actually there (visually or in city strength). This is from playing Aztecs.

The visuals are buggy and wont appear until you reload the game. Normally the strength should be there after 1 turn has passed. If you still encounter the bug please send me a before/after screenshot.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

I really enjoyed this mod in the beginning, but it's become boring. There is only one play style that is viable in the mod: going Liberty-Commerce and expanding via conquest. You can't stay at 4 cities, and it is too difficult to go peaceful wide — it is much easier to take ready-to-go cities from the AI's. I have only been successful in games where I killed my entire continent asap, only to discover that there is pretty much only 1 AI on the other continent... at which point — and in every game — it becomes a duel map, and it doesn't even matter what victory condition you are going for because there is simply no competition at this point. You might as well play every game as domination because it is too boring clicking "next turn" and researching tech, when your own rival to science or culture is a Shaka, for example. I feel like all my games have become the same. I tried a peaceful game once, only to see Attila enter modern era at t160 on Emperor, and that's because he killed his half of Pangaea.

 

[Asterix Rage]

I really enjoyed this mod in the beginning, but it's become boring. There is only one play style that is viable in the mod: going Liberty-Commerce and expanding via conquest. You can't stay at 4 cities, and it is too difficult to go peaceful wide — it is much easier to take ready-to-go cities from the AI's. I have only been successful in games where I killed my entire continent asap, only to discover that there is pretty much only 1 AI on the other continent... at which point — and in every game — it becomes a duel map, and it doesn't even matter what victory condition you are going for because there is simply no competition at this point. You might as well play every game as domination because it is too boring clicking "next turn" and researching tech, when your own rival to science or culture is a Shaka, for example. I feel like all my games have become the same. I tried a peaceful game once, only to see Attila enter modern era at t160 on Emperor, and that's because he killed his half of Pangaea.

I have the same feeling well described above.
Recently, to reborn my interest for this impressive MOD, I added more than 80 wonders MODs picked from Steam. Many of them need to be adjusted by editing x_building.xml to change the cost or lessen effects. Too much Wonders in a game means everybody had the opportunity to build some. The result was a kind of Acken's maximalistic balance experience. I believe more than ever Acken's MOD needs an optional extention to make it everything but minimalistic

 

[Dahebbie]

Hi Acken and folks

Could someone tell me what line of code to put in, if I want to add a writer specialist slot to the amphietheater(and Romes ditto)
And : In which file in ackens mod would be apropriate to put that line in?
Thx

 

[CommieDog]

I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to modding, but I think this should work:

UPDATE Buildings SET SpecialistType='SPECIALIST_WRITER', SpecialistCount=1 WHERE BuildingClass='BUILDINGCLASS_AMPHITHEATER';

That should add a writer slot to both the generic Amphitheater and all of the civ-specific replacements (such as the Forum). I'd recommend adding it at the end of Miscelenaous/Misc.sql as it's loaded after the file that adds the Forum to the game's database.

 

[IronfighterXXX]

As recently I have more time and civ6 is still in very poor state imo, I tried first time civ5 game with this mod on deity.

I won but game was definitely harder (and better) than vanilla. In early game Siam gave me a lots of troubles, but eventually conquered him with immortals and Xbows. Another difficulty came after unhappiness from ideologies (overcame with universal suffrage freedom policy). I was third in tech almost till end (before 2 GS from Hubble and another 2 from religion), so RAs and spies were very powerful (even stole nanotechnology!).

My only dissatisfaction from this mod is fact, that two countries which leads in tech all game didn't actively pursued toward victory - haven't even finished Apollo (same as in vanilla game).

Anyway great mod and game -thx Acken!

 

[Acken]

As recently I have more time and civ6 is still in very poor state imo, I tried first time civ5 game with this mod on deity.

I won but game was definitely harder (and better) than vanilla. In early game Siam gave me a lots of troubles, but eventually conquered him with immortals and Xbows. Another difficulty came after unhappiness from ideologies (overcame with universal suffrage freedom policy). I was third in tech almost till end (before 2 GS from Hubble and another 2 from religion), so RAs and spies were very powerful (even stole nanotechnology!).

My only dissatisfaction from this mod is fact, that two countries which leads in tech all game didn't actively pursued toward victory - haven't even finished Apollo (same as in vanilla game).

Anyway great mod and game -thx Acken!

There are some stuff I wasn't able to really fix.
Sadly with the amount of work I have it's very difficult for me to go further with the mod :/

It's mostly the building part of the code that I find very confusing and when it comes to something like Apollo the AI often does non sensical stuff.

Right now I'm hoping for a good civ6 first expansion to renew with Civ. Or go to Civ4 who knows.

 

[pbobbert]

Hi Acken,

Can you tell me what aspects of this mod rely on the dll? I am trying to put together a mod pack for multiplayer games (using mpmpm) and a lot of the mods I have chosen require WHoward's various mod components dll. This causes a conflict with your mod as it also required its own dll.

So far I have tested simply deleting your dll and have played a game up till turn 80 ish. I have only found one bug, which is when you aquire an ancient ruin which gives you culture, it will display broken text saying "TXT_KEY_MISC_RECEIVED_CULTURE". It gives the culture though so this text error is minimal. I read on your page that the AI portion is based off of artificial uninteligence, which itself says it contains smart AI. Since smart AI is supported under WHoward's vmc dll I was hoping it will work.

Can you tell me what aspects of your mod rely on its dll and help me predict what will still work with WHoward's vmc dll?

Thanks

PS, I asked the same thing on your steam workshop page although with less information.

 

[Acken]

A ton of things will simply not work without the dll. AI changes and policies that have extra entries to the data base.

There is simply no way to use the mod properly without the dll. While some things will appear as if everything is fine youll end up with a lot of things that just dont work.

At best you can try to copy parts of the mod that do not insert new variables in the tables....

 

[pbobbert]

How much work would it be to merge the two dll files? Ive seen a lot of mods that say their dll incorporates the stuff from WHoward's vmc dll. He has the source code on github. Ive poked around in it for some time with Visual Studios trying to solve the broken culture message i refereed to previously but I could not see why it didnt work. That was what made me think something in your dll must be needed. Would you be willing to share your source code? Or perhaps update your mod to incorporate the vcm dll?

As of this weekend ive been merging your mod to make it compatible to the best of my abilities with my other mods, but im stuck on some issue with buildings. I have three mods that add buildings, yours, city state diplomacy, and manifest destiny improved. For some reason manifest destiny improved work with the other two, but your mod and csd dont play nice (Ive already solved the policy conflicts, I think).

All of the mods that ive been messing with either use no dll or use WHowards vcm dll except yours.

For reference here are the mods im working with: flagged with "+" means vmc dll needed, flagged with "-" means ive merged it with something else partially including yours.
Dll Various Mod Components
Ackens Militaristic Balance -
Multiplayer Diplomacy+
Civ IV Diplomacy+
City State Diplomacy+-
City States Evolved+
Classical Espionage
Convenient Start
Cultural Diffusion
Revolutions
Emigration-
Extended Eras
Fil3 Production Balance-
Global City Working Distance+
Global Raze Major Capitals+
Global Religious Settlers+
Manifest Destiny Improved-
Slavery Mod
UI Diary
UI Trade Opportunities

 

[Acken]

If you are really willing to try it yourself I can share through email the C++ files relative to my mod that were added or modified.

Or if I find the time I'll set up a github account although I have no experience with it.

 

[pbobbert]

Sure I'd like to take a look at it, ill pm you my email. Cant promise ill be successful though. I'm still not entirely sure how xml/lua/sql stuff interacts with the game. Is there a big list of commands and variable names somewhere? I could use a link to any available resources you might think useful if you know of any.

 

[Acken]

No there are no list. The way it works is that all updates in sql should be 100% compatible. What requires C++ modification is everything that is inserted through SQL. New tables and new variables. Some of the new variables are in policy etc and some are in Global (in global, a variable is actually a row (name + value) while in policies it's usually a column added to the database where every policy is a row that can have a value for each column/variable).

Lua allows hooks in game for scripts. XML and SQL is basically the same, it allows you to modify the database of the game where every numbers for the objects are stored.

 

[noto2]

There are some stuff I wasn't able to really fix.
Sadly with the amount of work I have it's very difficult for me to go further with the mod :/

It's mostly the building part of the code that I find very confusing and when it comes to something like Apollo the AI often does non sensical stuff.

Right now I'm hoping for a good civ6 first expansion to renew with Civ. Or go to Civ4 who knows.

Yeah, I just can't get into Civ6, it truly is the worst Civ I've ever played, even worse than 2 or 3. I don't understand how the same company can make very challenging games like Xcom, and then not understand that a challenging AI is imperative to the enjoyment of Civ.

I just dabbled in a game of Civ4, but honestly it's so difficult to go back, even the UI was frustrating. I just wish someone could make a game of Civ that combined the good from Civ4 with the good from Civ5.

Civ 4's maintenance system, cottages, super specialists, and stack warfare, combined with Civ 5's religion and city states, and trade routes.

 

[Acken]

Well 6 is somewhat better than 5 at release so there is that... But yes I cannot understand either why they had to remake the whole game and end up with such a mess.

Civ6 is a total bore with science victories in the 150 through city spam and inept AI.

I just want them to fix the damn AI so that modders can at least balance the game to be interesting. But that also requires a DLL source...