Balanced Game Playthrough, Strategy & Analysis

One thing I'm curious about: which version of Emigration were you using? The 10*gamespeed turn queue size I went with in my personal version I feel is more lenient than the 3-turn size (the size determines how many turns back a running average of happiness is calculated). For me, the goal is specifically to counter the ignore-happiness exploit, not severely penalize unhappiness in general. A lenient size delay fulfills this goal while leaving normal gameplay relatively unchanged.
 
Thal,

Unfortunately, I don't remember. Is yours v1 modded, as opposed to v2?

It hasn't been an issue in my current game because I've been very happy. And the free tech at the start of a new era now works. Unfortunately there have been real problems as well as some anomalies.

I've already mentioned that all units have one of that inverted-triangle-with-horizontal-line under their designation.

I have also been periodically gifted units that appear near my capital, rather than in the gifting country.

Perhaps due to Tech Diffusion, I have received Archery, Animal Husbandry, Trapping and Sailing for free while playing the Romans. This seems to be because I eventually beelined for Iron Working and then Theology - not huge leaps. Nice as it was, this seems OP to me.

What stopped the game, though, is taking a capital. I was asked if I was sure I wanted to annex the previous city I'd taken, without a way to click and get back to the game. I reloaded, tried it again, and got "Blah blah."

This is a list of the mods I'm using, some for the fist time. Some may be superfluous, and perhaps causing at least the first problem:

All Promotions v7
Attila's mods v9
City Dev v9
Combat v16
Diplomacy v4
Leaders v8
Policies v7
Research v5
Terrain v13
Capital railroad Boost v1
CityWillard v2
Copasetic v2
Culture Mod v2
DiploWillard v6
Emigration v2
FlagPromos v1
Harder Free Tech v1
Kirneh Worldview v1
Liberation boost v1
Specialized Barbs v2
Tech Diffusion v2
That's Utilities v1
Unofficial Patch v28
 
Yeah, those bugs should be fixed in v1.0.7dev. It was a problem with the unfinished doCityCapture function I was working on in the development test versions. If you want to fix it while using v1.0.2dev, open the .lua file in the Balance - Combat (v 16) folder. Look for the line:

Events.SerialEventCityCaptured.Add( doCityCapture );

Comment it out like this:

--Events.SerialEventCityCaptured.Add( doCityCapture );

That should prevent it from running, and solve the issue.
 
Thal,

No problem. I'm confusing myself as to where I'm posting regarding the new mods. My last one on my current game with 1.0.7 is somewhere else - I mention not liking pikes to lances (for reference).

I wanted to add that getting more policies without going for a Culture win makes the game more fun, and benefits the AI approximately as much.

I have noticed that Greece is still whacking the CS.

And is the granary replaced altogether by the smokehouse? If so, what do you use in a city that has no meat except horses, or fish?
 
2:c5food: and +1:c5food: on each Cow, Deer, Sheep, and Fish worked by the city. Renamed to Smokehouse.

The meat bonuses are added on to the granary's normal 2:c5food: bonus. It's not a new building, the Smokehouse name was chosen due to it being more appropriate (and other reasons detailed in the readme).

Alexander's priorities were shifted to befriend CSs, but there's still other factors involved. The AIs don't always act in exactly the same manner. In general, however, he should befriend them more.
 
By the way, the switch of lancer to AT gun is a lot of fun. The lancer period between pike and AT gun is relatively short. So I can live with it!
 
I've been posting on my France game with the latest mods here and in the Balance thread, so I won't reprise my earlier comments. Basically I played France, built six cities, targeted a science victory, and went with a pop-leads-to-specialists strategy. It was undermined in this game by my having forgotten that smokehouses work for all cities until late in the game. I also didn't have fertile land for three of my cities. As a result I wound up with 22m people, my lowest total, and launched in 1912. That would have been much later if I hadn't made maximal use of specialists from the late stage on. Next time I will aim for specialists as soon as possible within this same approach.

Of interest is that with France and the new SP rules I wound up with 18 SPs. At the end I was getting 576 culture points each turn. Science wound up close to 1300. And happiness finished at 73 - all rather crazy high totals for a smallish-civ game.
 
More mod-related game observations:

1. Playing as the Aztecs to take advantage of their buffed abilities - increased culture kills and the woodsman promo for the Jaguar - I built a second warrior instead of a scout. In my circumstances, the Jaguar worked out just as well as a scout, and inevitably led to an extension of the same plan: a Jaguar rush on my nearest neighbor, with three Jags and two archers. This beat out walls going up, and is an option to be considered.

2. I preset an Emperor game with Egypt (average) for a space victory with three cities and no TPs, using the Harder Free Tech mod as well. The map could have been designed for me: Thebes on two rivers, allowing me to build my two other cities at the and of each river, forming a triangle. This cut off Persia on a peninsula, and we were at war most of the game. I held them off at the choke point with the eventual use of the buffed citadel. (Fun!) My army stayed small - a scout/archer, swordsman and two war chariots promoted over time, with a musket added later. Rome was huge to my north, and Siam also big to their east. I promoted bad vibes between them, and had no problems with Rome the entire game, although he grew to 15 cities.

Of interest, Rome and Siam fought on one choke point front the entire game. On the other continent, the three civs also stayed even throughout. (The eighth had his own continent.

My strategy was to build wonders and take advantage of the modded GAs. This worked out perfectly, even though I lost a lot of wonders by a turn or two. I got Chichen Itza and Taj Mahal. Combined with two happy GA's I was in enhanced mode long enough to crank up a farm-and-specialist based economy that allowed me to crank out GS's (bulbing), GE's (wonders), GM's (gold) and GA's (Golden Ages). In this regard I wonder if the game itself is too GA-centered, and whether Great Artists have been buffed enough to make it worth using them otherwise (with Chichen Itza, granted).

Having only three cities and many CS being in secure locations allowed me to do well in culture without trying too hard I wound up with 21 SPs, filling tradition, patronage, rationalism and order (in that order) before moving on to something else at the very end. The GA gold, my cotton monopoly, and the policy benefits allowed me to occasionally rush buildings (research labs at the end, raising science from almost 800 beakers to over 1200), as well as buy tiles to fine tune my purposes. As a result I was well in the lead in pop with my size 20, 21 and 27 cities, despite being almost last in land (all the hex improvement mods are key), and bought enough adjacent hills and forests late to get each city between 127 and 137 hammers.

All in all, this approach targeted the advantages of the mod to growth and GA application. I wonder whether it's still too easy to be in a GA. But there's no doubt that it allowed me to play in an anti-expansive, no-TP way (zero happy buildings as well) that makes the terrain that much more rich.
 
Doesn't the game still heavily suffer from the terrible tactical AI showcased in RB3, giving the player the ability to kill 5-20 AI units for each unit he loses?

Without the C++ source code and a lot of work that seems unfixable without really drastic measures like removing all units except melee units, removing all combat bonuses/penalties (flatland, flanking, GG, etc.) and giving the ability to defend to embarked units of all civs.
 
Doesn't the game still heavily suffer from the terrible tactical AI showcased in RB3, giving the player the ability to kill 5-20 AI units for each unit he loses?

Without the C++ source code and a lot of work that seems unfixable without really drastic measures like removing all units except melee units, removing all combat bonuses/penalties (flatland, flanking, GG, etc.) and giving the ability to defend to embarked units of all civs.

The AI's performance in my game varies to a weirdly large degree. Take defenseless embarked units, for example. I've seen a major seaborne AI invasion a few times.
In one game the approach of my destroyer will scatter the embarked units (as it should). In another I'll have a caravel shelling land units, and some of the se units will launch into the water as a result (promptly getting rammed).

Siege units are used correctly no more than 25% of the time.

In my second-to-last game, they actually used a fighter plane to attack my marauding destroyer.

I have never seen a GG used outside a city.

All in all it's an odd disparity that makes me think efficiency could be tightened to some degree.
 
@Aoeu
Nothing we can do about that, so I focus on the things we can fix. :)

Well I finally finished a game! I usually end up restarting due to mod changes or other reasons... only completed 3 all the way so far. I ended it in the late modern era, left the final capital unconquered the last 50 turns or so to try out all the modern stuff in ways I hadn't fully explored before. On the topic of research, I ended with about 2650:c5science: at ~10 non-puppet cities, anyone know if that's high or low? You can see the map settings on the screenshot, 2nd one.

On a side note, I discovered some test scenarios where I retired instead of quit showed up on the high score list, how can I get rid of them? :lol:

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The hall of fame is stored in HallOfFameDatabase.db in the Replays subdirectory of Civ 5. But it's not a text file, so you'd need an editor to change it.
 
The Rationalism tree contributed a lot, with the +2 per specialist, +1 per tp, and +30% science when happy. I also had research labs in ~ten or so non-puppet cities. On epic the late-modern techs had about 6-turn times, the slower research seems to be at decent values. In vanilla I feel I breeze through the modern era way too fast at 4 turns apiece.
 
I just finished another game using the same Emperor strategy as in my Arab game, except I used Siam and built six cities instead of three. Again, it's focus on population to gain culture and specialists, build no TPs, and beeline for civil service, printing press, and fertilizer, then head for space (with detours if needed). I launched in 281 turns (1802), taking advantage of the mod's growth buffs and long, multiple GAs.
 
Doesn't the game still heavily suffer from the terrible tactical AI showcased in RB3, giving the player the ability to kill 5-20 AI units for each unit he loses?

Without the C++ source code and a lot of work that seems unfixable without really drastic measures like removing all units except melee units, removing all combat bonuses/penalties (flatland, flanking, GG, etc.) and giving the ability to defend to embarked units of all civs.

I removed healing from the game (insta heal promo,medics,fortify when healed only works in a city) and personally enjoyed it much more now that RB3 type problems no longer exist. However, you will find most people like the abuse XD There was so much of an outcry that I had to put it back in and leave no healing as a separate optional mod component :crazyeye:

Also perhaps you buffed rationalism too much thal? I mean, the fastest space ship rushes in vanilla use rationalism, so it really doesn't need a buff imo.
 
Well, the only buff was making the right side of the tree slightly more desirable. In playthroughs I've seen, people typically get only the left half of the tree. I first tried increasing the top policy from 1 to 2 happy per university, but that seemed to duplicate the purpose of the Piety tree too much (and benefited ICS). So I removed that and added a 13% increase in research speed on the second policy.

In the current dev version I also buffed the Piety tree substantially. I think one problem with Rationalism is Piety is so underwhelming and they're mutually exclusive, so Rationalism ends up being way more desirable than the alternative. Weirdest thing is I had NO IDEA you could switch from one to the other until a few days ago... very poor documentation in that regard.
 
Well you can switch, but you still lose all the policies in the other branch. It's never actually worth it unless you have some disaster, like extreme unit maintenance forcing you into autocracy.
 
Well you can switch, but you still lose all the policies in the other branch. It's never actually worth it unless you have some disaster, like extreme unit maintenance forcing you into autocracy.

I switched from piety to rationalism once and found myself -24 unhappy. But a friend playing on King switches out of Piety regularly and survives the unhappiness hit without any real problem. Switching out in terms of benefits loss seems like it's not worth it, but if you look at Piety as a very comfortable bridge to the later branches, then I wonder if an argument could be made for switching out of it?
 
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