Alternative Difficulty Mod

[Milae]

v14 is here so you can get rekd on patch 3.2!
Download New Version:
CivFanatic Link: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/alternative-difficulty-for-vp.28828/
MegaShare Link: https://mega.nz/folder/AksEwJ7C#2Zc7ev3-oy724wd_icrD8g

Mod to change the way difficulty is done in VP.
A/B/C changed to be a 10 turn trigger giving mostly gold.
Rest of the AI bonuses are done as cost reductions to science/policy etc costs and larger cost reductions to units/buildings. Full changes are explained in the readme.

Compared to current Deity, AIs should have a much smoother power increase based on their strengths and a much better lategame than current VP. Overall difficulty on all levels should be increased but let me know how you guys get on!

Extract the zipped folder and then place the extracted folder into your MODS folder.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Enjoying the mod thus far, it seems the AI is a bit stronger overall, so that's cool to see! Thanks for making this!

 

[Stalker0]

I want to try this one but I'm also not wanting to regress back in version. What about the changes requires the custom dll?

 

[azum4roll]

I want to try this one but I'm also not wanting to regress back in version. What about the changes requires the custom dll?

Everything about the mod, it seems.

 

[Milae]

I want to try this one but I'm also not wanting to regress back in version. What about the changes requires the custom dll?

I had to alter the dll to give the AIs the cost reductions for tech, policies, etc.

The dll I modified was from after 3-2 anyways so it's up to date.

 

[Stalker0]

I had to alter the dll to give the AIs the cost reductions for tech, policies, etc.

The dll I modified was from after 3-2 anyways so it's up to date.

Oh great I’ll look into it. Your read me btw says it was the feb version I believe

 

[randomnub]

Deity AI is abusing me, just when I thought I could handle that difficulty level in base VP. Fair enough, I'll keep trying What bothers me is that I'm having a very hard time in Medieval-Renaissance already, by then the game is lost and I can't report about difficulty in late game because I simply give up :/ I'll try to endure or play easier starts I guess.

I reported a bug about barbarians hordes failing to sack CS, something that never happened in VP to me yet, so give a look maybe it's related to your dll https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/7619

 

[Rean]

Deity AI is abusing me, just when I thought I could handle that difficulty level in base VP. Fair enough, I'll keep trying What bothers me is that I'm having a very hard time in Medieval-Renaissance already, by then the game is lost and I can't report about difficulty in late game because I simply give up :/ I'll try to endure or play easier starts I guess.

I reported a bug about barbarians hordes failing to sack CS, something that never happened in VP to me yet, so give a look maybe it's related to your dll https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/7619

I've seen this happen aswell and haven't used this mod, doubt it's related.

 

[Milae]

Deity AI is abusing me, just when I thought I could handle that difficulty level in base VP. Fair enough, I'll keep trying What bothers me is that I'm having a very hard time in Medieval-Renaissance already, by then the game is lost and I can't report about difficulty in late game because I simply give up :/ I'll try to endure or play easier starts I guess.

I reported a bug about barbarians hordes failing to sack CS, something that never happened in VP to me yet, so give a look maybe it's related to your dll https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/7619

Yea I don't think bug is from my changes.

Difficulty seems to be a step up. Not sure how difficult people would like Deity to be but obvs could make it easier. I'm hoping the current immortal gives a reasonably challenging game as well though.

 

[randomnub]

Yea I don't think bug is from my changes.

good to know

Difficulty seems to be a step up. Not sure how difficult people would like Deity to be but obvs could make it easier. I'm hoping the current immortal gives a reasonably challenging game as well though.

I'll try to roll the likes of a perfect start with the perfect civ and see if stars allign properly. Should I fail at deity even then, I might call it too hard. Or play with 34UC mod and ruins, tbh if in the end the added challenge balances the easier but funnier gameplay I'll be happy with it. So stick with these numbers I'd say.

 

[Stalker0]

So after trying several Immortal Authority starts, AI is definately closer to what I'm used to on deity in terms of units. By the time I managed to get 4 immortals and 2 archers, China had gotten:

1) A settler
2) Pyramids (aka another settler)
3) about 5 warriors and 4 archers

 

[stii]

Giving this a try now.

It is certainly harder, the AI makes more stuff earlier. Pyramids/Stonehenge are no longer safe and I think they expand a bit faster in general. They also seem to have more units later on, full carpets of them

 

[Milae]

Okay v2 is out and you can now download it from Civ fanatics so then you will get a notification when there is a new version.

Quite small changes:
- Deity slightly easier early and harder later
- Lower difficulties slightly harder

Main difference is I actually included my changes to World Congress AI which will be out in the next VP patch. I have tested it so there shouldn't be any bugs but I could really use some feedback to adjust the values to make sure AIs are prioritising the right things in congress. It should still be an improvement though since the logic was basically random before.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

Hello "Prince", my old friend...

Seriously though, the massive significance of AI competency in the WC cannot be understated. Thank you so much for attempting to address this, and hopefully everything performs well. The new version can't get here soon enough!

 

[looorg]

The AI seems to be pushing out a lot more units the normal, A LOT more. How does this scale with game-speed? I only tried it on standard once and then went back to Marathon and while most things do seem fine and ok they are pushing our hordes of units compared to before or without this mod. It's not that they are doing much better vs the player since strategy wise they are still just as bad as before but the tactic instead becomes to just swarm everything.

 

[stii]

Playing it on standard I found they had swarms of units.

 

[Milae]

The AI seems to be pushing out a lot more units the normal, A LOT more. How does this scale with game-speed? I only tried it on standard once and then went back to Marathon and while most things do seem fine and ok they are pushing our hordes of units compared to before or without this mod. It's not that they are doing much better vs the player since strategy wise they are still just as bad as before but the tactic instead becomes to just swarm everything.

Yea they have a bigger cost reduction for units at the start than normal deity. Should be the same on all gamespeeds man.

 

[Milae]

Sorry guys I made a bug, if you are using v2 you need to update to hotfixed v2 otherwise your game will probably crash when world congress starts.

Savegames are compatible with hotfix though.

 

[DeAnno]

The Deity AI that regularly founds in the 70s that went away a few patches ago is back in this mod. I felt lucky to get my Religion on T88.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

The AI is just ludicrous on Deity with this mod, Ethiopia habitually enters the Renaissance era around T120, Russia usually gets writing around T45, the warmongers (Songhai, Sweden, Mongolia,...) have crazy swarms of units. Maybe the problem is I'm playing against very strong AIs with fairly weak civs (such as Indonesia) on a Pangea/Oval map, but just staying alive is very hard. I usually can only found if I get a terrain-based pantheon (Purity, Stars&Sky, Desert...), because the AI is quicker to found than usual, and even if I get a great game going, there will usually be a runaway AI. In my recent Iroqouis game, I managed to remain competitive with all the AIs except Ethiopia that had over 12 techs advantage over strong tradition empires of Poland and Babylon as well as a huge Mongolian empire of 17 cities and entered the Atomic era when most of us were in the middle of the Industrial era.

Still, the challenge is very interesting

I've decide to switch to stronger civs to play with, so I'll be able to focus more on what's happening in the World Congress and I'll give feedback on that.