[BTS] Beating AdvCiv Diety: screenshots + discussion

[omnimirage]

I've discovered the wonderful mod called AdvCiv, it has made the game more fun than ever for me. I'm attempting to beat it on Diety, and it's proving immensely challenging. I used to beat Diety using Mansa Musa, doing a simple Skirmisher + Cottage rush but I found it doesn't work as well on AdvCiv largely due to Financial being nerfed to an incredible degree ( I dislike this change on the mod).

So I'm playing Egypt now. At first I was trying with Hatshepsut, I was able to conquer a lot of civilizations, cities and land with early War Chariot rushes. This was a losing strategy, as there's been gross changes to city maintenance in the mod that doesn't produce a cap on city maintenance costs, so basically, I would conquer a huge amount of land, and then I wouldn't be able to advance my technology and keep up with the race due to the majority of commerce going to city maintenance.

So now I've been trying as Ramesses II and it's been going better than my other attempts. My strategy is the following:

Research:

Mining > Masonry > Bronze Working > Hunting > Archery > Mysticism > Polytheism > Monotheism, trade when I can for Pottery, Writing and Animal Husbandry.

Build order:

1st city: Worker, Settler, Pyramids, Wall, Great Wall,

2nd city: Worker, Wall, Archer, Settler

There's been changes to Great Wall. It now provides an extra trade route in all cities, it also produces great merchant points rather than great spy. The Great Wall also requires the technology of Archery, and it requires two Walls to be built.

I've been researching Mysticism, Polytheism, Monotheism, because the AI has differing technology research priorities now and I found that I can take that research path and consistently trade them for Pottery, Writing and Animal Husbandry.

When my third settler is built, I send it out to wherever the best Horse resource location is present, to allow me to spam War Chariots.

I basically have been spending a good amount of time regenerating maps to find a good start that has stone, food, plenty of forests to chop and maybe a few extra bonuses. When I do this, I estimate about 40% of the time I'm able to complete both Pyramids and Great Wall in time. It seems to make a noticeable difference in success rate if I settle the capital on top of a Hill Stone Plains, rather than just a Stone Plains.

A reasonable amount of the time, I get screwed by either barbarians (which I can defend with by whipping an emergency warrior/archer) or an early rush attack by a neighboring civilization, they tend to rush with Archers and Chariots this early stage of the game. The AI is inclined to attack if my power is incredibly weak, so it's important that I get War Chariots built quickly to persuade invaders to not invade.

I then use the great person points to generate either a Great Engineer, or Great Merchant, to then bulb Metal Casting, which I can then use to trade for other technologies. It seems possible that I might even be able to build Parthenon if I have marble and trade for Aesthetics with Metal Casting.

At this point, I'm unsure how to proceed. Since I'm going for a Farm + Specialists Economy, Banking is appealing, upgrading veteran War Chariots to Knights is appealing as well, as is beelining to Gunpowder to keep up with the aggressive AIs. This is the strategy I've been implementing but I've never survived long enough to get to Gunpowder.

I seem to constantly get stuck in perpetual states of war. Usually, I either start going aggressive on a neighbour because they don't have access to metals/spearmen and so I rush War Chariots to conquer them, that or someone starts declaring war on me. Because a War Chariot costs 80 hammers, and Granaries cost 195, I often don't find I have the time to build Granaries. I'm constantly needing new military units. When I defeat one Civilization, it often doesn't take long at all before I'm brought into a second war, where it becomes clear that they're going to keep declaring war on me until I conquer them. If I do conquer them, by this time Free Religion might come into play or other factors, that might lead other Civilizations to invade, requiring me to build more military units. I'm often whipping my cities down to 1 pop in order to produce military units to win wars: if I know a conflict between myself and my neighbour will only end when one of us is conquered, and that they're spending their hammers building more military units, then I often reason it's a better usage of hammers to simply rush War Chariots and conquer their cities. If I do conquer a city, I tend to be able to use it's population to whip out more War Chariots, to enable myself to conquer the next city. All this becomes an issue though when I notice that I'm 400 turns in and yet some of my earliest foundation cities still haven't had time to build a Granary, let alone other infrastructure. Since I'm whipping often down to such low population, I often don't have the extra population available to be able to hire Specialists, since the first few population tends to go to food, when I get to 4 Population I often whip it back down again meaning I'm not benefiting from Represenation as much as I should. However, I often conquer cities with Great Generals and sometimes Great People in them, which all give an extra three science beakers which seems to help quite a lot.

I haven't just about ever had the time to build a Barracks, because simply more military units seems often better. I tend to rarely build Libraries, because they cost so much hammers and Obelisks cost much less and also provide culture and specialists.

Here's my current game:

https://postimg.cc/gallery/LP7T2Jc

I'm in a dicey situation. I have three cities but I'm crammed between India, Inca, Ethiopia and the warmonger Zulus are close by as well. The Barbarian city to the left is populated by a Spearmen, Axeman and two Archers. India to the right is spreading it's dominating religion, and Bombay is right up against my capital and is a Holy City with the Shrine developed for it. I've started to build Granaries, because I haven't connected the road up to building War Chariots yet and I figure if I don't start spamming them very soon, someone will invade me and it'll be game over.

One big thing I'm unsure about is, should I try to build a Library, to be able to create science specialists, to then attempt to bulb Machinery? With Metal Casting, I can likely trade it for Aesthetics, and Alphabet. If I then don't trade for Fishing, this will allow a Great Scientist to contribute a large amount of beakers towards Metal Casting, to then help me advance quicker with that beeline helping me to keep up with technology and giving me early techs to trade for other things. The only problem with the Library is, that it costs an absolutely huge amount of hammers. I can build one Library, or one Obelisk and 2.5 War Chariots for the same price. I want Specialists early, the city of Memphis has a high food output potential, I settled it on rice, and then there's 4 Flood Plains nearby. It's also squished between other civilizations and needs some culture to spread. If I build an Obelisk, I can get Specialists earlier and War Chariots, which will help me not get invaded and might me declare war and conquer a nearby neighbour, that Bombay holy city is appealing. But if I build the Obelisk, I won't have a great person point pool that is pure and instead of getting a great scientist to bulb Machinery, I'll get a Great Priest, who I probably can only settle, which is still decent with Representation but not amazing. But if I wait to build Library, I'm not sure how long it'll take to get there considering I only have three cities and only 3 Archers: I imagine I'll need to spam War Chariots to get out of this position.

Another thing is I got lucky with receiving the quest for building War Chariots. If I build 17 War Chariots, War Chariots will get Combat I promotion for free, and my state religion will also spread to 5 other of my cities for free too.

Any feedback on my position, thought process is appreciated. I'm finding it difficult to know how to balance military production, and infrastructure, and the development of Specialists.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Here's my current game:

https://postimg.cc/gallery/LP7T2Jc

I'm in a dicey situation. I have three cities but I'm crammed between India, Inca, Ethiopia and the warmonger Zulus are close by as well. The Barbarian city to the left is populated by a Spearmen, Axeman and two Archers. India to the right is spreading it's dominating religion, and Bombay is right up against my capital and is a Holy City with the Shrine developed for it. I've started to build Granaries, because I haven't connected the road up to building War Chariots yet and I figure if I don't start spamming them very soon, someone will invade me and it'll be game over.

One big thing I'm unsure about is, should I try to build a Library, to be able to create science specialists, to then attempt to bulb Machinery? With Metal Casting, I can likely trade it for Aesthetics, and Alphabet. If I then don't trade for Fishing, this will allow a Great Scientist to contribute a large amount of beakers towards Metal Casting, to then help me advance quicker with that beeline helping me to keep up with technology and giving me early techs to trade for other things. The only problem with the Library is, that it costs an absolutely huge amount of hammers. I can build one Library, or one Obelisk and 2.5 War Chariots for the same price. I want Specialists early, the city of Memphis has a high food output potential, I settled it on rice, and then there's 4 Flood Plains nearby. It's also squished between other civilizations and needs some culture to spread. If I build an Obelisk, I can get Specialists earlier and War Chariots, which will help me not get invaded and might me declare war and conquer a nearby neighbour, that Bombay holy city is appealing. But if I build the Obelisk, I won't have a great person point pool that is pure and instead of getting a great scientist to bulb Machinery, I'll get a Great Priest, who I probably can only settle, which is still decent with Representation but not amazing. But if I wait to build Library, I'm not sure how long it'll take to get there considering I only have three cities and only 3 Archers: I imagine I'll need to spam War Chariots to get out of this position.

Another thing is I got lucky with receiving the quest for building War Chariots. If I build 17 War Chariots, War Chariots will get Combat I promotion for free, and my state religion will also spread to 5 other of my cities for free too.

Any feedback on my position, thought process is appreciated. I'm finding it difficult to know how to balance military production, and infrastructure, and the development of Specialists.

I'm not sure anyone can give you long-term specific advice to help you in your current game because of the mod AdvCiv.
It is practically a whole different game than Civ 4 - Beyond the Sword 3.19?

Looking at your screenshots, you are teching Monarchy even though you have Pyramids?
I don't see any wine and Representation is usually better than Hereditary Rule.

Hmm, I'd say you are still in the expansion part of the game?
If it were me, I'd try to find a new city on top of the bronze because it has a lot of good chops and bronze/silver is very useful.

I'd also try to stash a War Chariot or two 2 west and 1 north of the barb city and try to conquer it after an AI attacks it. (Full hp barb spears are a pain!)
The two lakes should give good vision to tiles surrounding the barb city.

Maybe upload the game itself? There is an Upload a File button at the bottom right next to post button.

 

[Snowbird]

The mod is what? K-mod+ or smthing like that?

 

[omnimirage]

I posted two saved games. Teching Monarchy may have been a mistake and if so I'm happy to reload 30 or so turns when I decided to start teching it. I was attempting to beeline to Feudalism: Longbows are a strong unit to compliment War Chariots, and I'll need Feudalism to get Guilds, and Vassalage is a strong civic especially considering it's been buffed in the mod to also reduce city maintenance costs by 25%. I could also set research to 0%, and wait until I bulb Metal Casting and then put research to 100% on Machinery, to get Crossbows.

I suppose I feel I need to rush out a military unit, since the majority of my production is going to go to military units. War Chariots are powerful, but they're vulnerable to Spearmen/Warchariots/Pikemen, and they can't fortify. Axeman and Macemen are also very vulnerable to Crossbowmen. Crossbowmen themselves are really powerful if I can tech them out fast enough so that opponents still have melee units, but Longbowmen get higher city defense and more importantly cost less hammers to produce. 6 strength is rather low though which is why Knights, and Musketmen seems powerful to beeline to.Maybe I should be going for War Elephants and Catapults instead with Construction? Though it is really appealing being able to have a powerful unit to fortify in and defend cities, I've observed that the AI is really stupid at suiciding stacks against well fortified cities and it's something I've been able to exploit, by allowing them to attack, defeating their main army, then counterattacking myself afterwards.

Why would you place the city on top of the bronze? I would have thought on the desert inbetween the bronze and silver would have been best. Maybe it would have been correct to build another Settler: my concern with that however, is I only see one city spot location that looks quite good, that Copper/Silver spot. It however has no food, and it's not on a hill, and it could invite a war from the Inca due to being quite close to their border. There's also a pretty decent chance that another civilization, maybe Inca, India or Ethiopia, might settle that location before I do, since it'll take a number of turns to settle there. There is some unexplored land west that might have a decent place to settle, but there also might not be, and then even if there is a decent spot, it'll be harder to defend being further away and it'll cost higher distance to palace upkeep, there's also a chance that I'll run into barbarians down there such as an Axeman that could kill an Archer or Settler, and the military is thin as is. I could also instead invest the hammers into building War Chariots instead: the opportunity cost of building a Settler, is over four War Chariots (not exactly clean conversion due to Food being used as Hammers when producing Settler), and four War Chariots could potentially take a city, maybe even Bombay, especially if they attack early enough.


-------------------

Yes Snowbird, AdvCiv is built upon K-Mod, though it has it's own AI that could maybe be described as being a blend between K-Mod AI, and vanilla AI, in the sense that it plays competitively and strongly, it's quite a bit more aggressive, but it also still has that more roleplay flavour personality of vanilla and not every leader is a warmongering degenerate, though Gandhi still might invade you if it's calculated to be a profitable move. I'm really loving the mod it's great, AI is so much more intelligent it's made the game feel so much more immersive, challenging and real. I tried K-Mod and I found the hyper crazy aggressive nature of it to be too much.

 

[Major Tom]

The mod is well described in the Modpacks section in C&C department. It come with a comprehensive manual in a link in opening post. Especially the starting point handicap looks sensible. There is also a rise and fall element in it. Both things optional.

 

[omnimirage]

I lost the posted game. Basically, Inca invaded me with a big stack, I defended the middle city with my stack, but then they moved their stack to attack the less defended city and I couldn't defend it so I lost. I don't think that game had any chance of winning.

I've played a few more games since, and I'm close to giving up on defeating Diety using this mod, it's feeling impossibly difficult, the AI is just so incredibly far ahead with everything at every moment.

A previous game I played, I got up four solid cities and ran a strong specialist economy. I was getting attacked, but since I don't have cottages to defend, I didn't care that they pillaged my land, and I simply let them suicide attack my cities and I was defeating them that way. However, I was never strong enough to attack myself, and by the time I was getting there, the other factions had advanced in tech, they were using Longbows, Crossbows, Pikeman, War Elephants and Horse Archers: even when I got Crossbowman, I realised it just wasn't enough, Crossbowman cost a lot of hammers for only 6 power.

From that game, I realised that I really need to be able to spam War Chariots to have a fighting chance. 80 hammers for 5 power immune to first strike with withdrawal chance is a favourable hammer to power ratio that can enable conquering of cities, but it only works if the AI don't have sufficient Spearmen/Pikemen/WarElephants.

Here's my current game:

https://postimg.cc/gallery/2DZgWD1

I'm in a dicey situation that I doubt I can win from. Kubai Klan of Mongolia will probably attack me, I settled a city right up against him in order to grab horses for War Chariots: this may have been a mistake since it's inviting a war. All of my neighbors have Spearmen and metals, making War Chariots dubious. War Chariots being dubious, makes my ability to conquer cities questionable. I could try to research Construction for Catapults, which will provide offense weapons to conquer cities, but the weakness with that is that I have no strong defending units to fortify and protect my cities against the hordes of suicide stacks that are bound to come. If I am to wage war against any of my neighbours, the other AIs will be quite inclined to attack me, since I'm at low power compared to them and when I'm at war, they're more inclined to attack me as well.

I have multiple decisions here:

1) What do I research? Machinery or something else?

2) What should I devote my hammers to? Is right now a good time to be building infrastructure, should I be building Granaries and Forges, or should I be going all in with military units?

3) Should I accept peace with Greece?


I don't think I can win this game. I could take out Greece, but that comes at a risk of then another civilization, Mongolia in particular, to then attack me when I'm weak and vulnerable. If I don't take out Greece now, then I might have difficulty expanding my cities due to opponents building more Spearmen, and eventually Longbowman. I also am not in a position to keep up with tech, the AI modifiers are just so huge that they're going to out pace me and I'll get in a dangerous situation with it soon. I think I need to not be invaded, and for my neighbours to go to war with each other, and then maybe I can join in a war and take a city or two, or take them off military resources such as metals and they dominate them with War Chariots. The more likely outcome seems however that I'm the Civilization who will be invaded, since these neighbours all largely like each other, and my power is significantly weaker than them.

One thing I could do, is accept peace with Greece, and hope Shaka distracts them. Then, knowing a Monogalian suicide stack is likely coming, I could build up a defense stack in the city close to them, scout out their land hope I can station War Chariots near their key military resources, let them invade and suicide stack attack my city, then try and take them off their metals with War Chariots, and hope to beat them militarily, expand and take their cities whilst hoping Greece or some other Civilization doesn't attack me whilst doing so. The distance to capital penalty for taking their land will be very steep and I might need to raze cities, but it's possible that Mongolia won't stop declaring war on me until I deal with them anyway so this might be the best approach.

Any feedback is appreciated, I'm finding this mod on diety to be the hardest challenge I've ever faced and starting to feel it's impossible to beat it.

 

[Major Tom]

Doesn’t AI only start with 1 settler in this mod? What do you find easier with the BtS deity AI?

 

[omnimirage]

The AI does indeed start with just one settler in this mod: nonetheless, the difficulty level feels maybe about 1.5 times greater than regular Diety.

I've never actually played against BtS Diety AI, but I have played against Better BAT Diety AI quite a bit, which seems similar enough.

I've found only two things easier with BtS Deity AI:

1) Suicide city stack attacks. I found Better BAT AI to do the same when defending hill cities with Skirmishers, but it's much more pronounced in this mod. AdvCIV AI is vastly more aggressive, they build up large stacks quickly and send them to conquer cities and will attack with a dozen units even if it has a small chance of winning. An example of the flawed city attack it does, is it might send it's dozen stack army to take a city, it'll then at first attack with cavalry, even if the defending city has Spearmen, and it'll do this before the rest of the single movement units can attack. Then, it's pretty inconsistent with it's artillery, sometimes it bombards first and then suicide attacks on the same turn, where if it attacked with the Catapults first, or even just bombard then attack with everything next turn, it'll do a lot more. Sometimes, it'll attack with a few units into first strike archers, and then it'll attack with Catapults, and then attack with the rest. Sometimes, instead of a Swordsman joining the suicide attack, it'll pillage a tile, when the rest of the units suicide attack the city that time. It's truly quite flawed and much weaker than even just vanilla city attacking AI.

2) The AI is a lot more aggressive, it sends stacks of armies to attack and apply pressure. It's quite effective at using much of it's military units at it's disposable, to attack. By doing so, it's not uncommon for it to leave cities with only a few units defending it, often enough only a single Archer defending a city. It won't lightly defend it's front line cities, those it'll fortify with units, the cities that it deems low risk to being attacked, behind it's frontlines, is what it defends lightly. This makes it vulnerable to fast attacking War Chariots. I had a game, where I had an very powerful Roman neighbour with a strong metal based military force. I sent my 11 unit War Chariot army hrough my neighbours land via Open Borders, to position my War Chariots at the back of the Roman cities, behind them. It took 17 turns for them to get in position. They were building up a military force near my border and the border to their north, as the AI deemed myself and my neighbour to be the threat, not it's Chinese friend behind them. I then declared war, and during that same turn of declaring war, my War Chariots were able to attack three of it's lightly defended cities that had no more than a few units in them: their front line cities had closer to a dozen units. I conquered three of their cities, and razed them: these cities were all that they had for producing metals, so in that first turn of declaring war, I prevented Roman from building further metal units. This led me to eventually winning that war and conquering them since they had no metals. I might be able to do this again in this game, against Mongolia, I'll have to scout out there land to see. Another thing that can be done, it can be risky but simply sending in War Chariots deep into their lands, eventually usually a city will be found that they only have 1-3 units defending it, which can be pretty easy to attack and raze. These tactics wouldn't work as well in regular vanilla Diety AI, due to that AI likes to accumulate large numbers of defenders in almost all cities, even ones that are right at the back of their frontline doing nothing, resulting in Catapults often being required to successfully conquer cities in vanilla Deity.

 

[Major Tom]

Thanks for the information. I like to try this mod before saying something sensible. In the introduction creator says AI aggression is something between AI and Kmod, but perhaps more focused as you indicate.

Is it still possible to use those BtS tricks like begging and city gifting?
You mentioned you build world wonders. This is generally not a good investment in the early game in BtS. Focusing on expansion is better. I suggest a proper play through is in place where you post screenshot of start before any moves and then very small turn sets.

 

[omnimirage]

In terms of aggression, I agree that the AI feels somewhere between vanilla, and KMod, leaning perhaps more towards KMod. The AI attacks when it senses vulnerability: in the game I showed above, Greece was first attacked by Hannibal, who invited me into war, and since they were at war with two other factions, Zulu joined in as well. I quite like it, aggressive vanilla AI is way too passive for my liking, and KMod is way too aggressive for my liking.


Could you explain to me the strategy behind begging and city gifting? These concepts I'm not entirely familiar with. I have gifted a city before that, by doing so, I was "liberating it", which provided a rather huge diplomatic positive modifier. I've also tried begging Civilizations who I thought might attack me, when I was at pleased relations with them, but it hasn't helped so far. I wonder if I can ask Civilizations who I'm at Cautious or less relations with, for a single gold, whether that could stop DOW and also not result in negative diplomatic modifiers for demanding of them, I'll have to test it.

The wonder building is something I've been trying more recently, after other attempts were failing me. My problem is being able to keep up with the AI teching: in vanilla BtS, I simply played as Mansa Musa all the time, and simply ran a cottage economy, trying to settle cities near rivers and then placing cottages on them, which was enough for me to keep up with the teching. Financial has been nerfed to an incredibly high degree, even when going full on with cottage spamming, it doesn't provide much more commerce than Organised does. Furthermore, the AI is much more inclined to pillage now, and there's less abundance of river tiles due to balances made in map generation, making a Cottage economy not particularly good. I tried it a bunch, and a cottage economy just doesn't seem enough anymore.

I was also playing expansion strategies, using Hatshepsut. I found that with some luck, it wasn't that difficult to conquer multiple opponents and expand quite rapidly. Simply by researching Animal Husbandry first, and then building Worker then Settler, then settling the first found Horse, then declaring war on nearest victim, making sure to deny them of metals and then simply whipping War Chariots out until they were defeated. The problem I found with doing this, is it led to such a huge amount of land being conquered quite early on, that the city maintenance cost was vastly too much: I'd still be running ancient era military units by the time the AI were getting Gunpowered units. Maybe I needed to be more selective about which cities to settle and not try to take all the resources. Since then, I've been trying to build Great Pyramids and Great Wall, so that I can run a Specialist Economy, to try and keep up that way.

Since Great Wall no longer provides Great Spy points, running a Espionage Economy isn't viable in the early game anymore. I did try a Ghandi bulbing strategy, but that isn't something I'm particulary good at and I wasn't able to make much use of Philosophy, since I was constantly whipping out Axeman to conquer my neighbour. By the time I did conquer them, my other neighbours had Crossbowmen, and I was still far from medieval military units myself. Maybe when playing Philosophy character, I need to have one dedicated great person city, that I never whip from? It seems a lot of the time I just need a few more military units to be successful so I ended up whipping every city aggressively.

I'm not sure what other economy types that can be used to keep up with the very fast pace of AI teching. When I was playing as Hatshepsut, I did find that sometimes, I was able to get good techs through peace treaties. The AI has a much different algorithm than vanilla when it comes to peace treaties and it's possible this could be exploited to somehow keep up with the AI.

 

[drewisfat]

Deity any version is going to require that much of your economy come from tech trades, bulbs, and resources for GPT. The main bulbs are from great scientists, one for Philo and two for Education on the way to liberalism. There are also ways to bulb paper/liberalism that you can sometimes take advantage of. Or 2 bulbs into Astro is important on non-pangaea maps.

The main difficulty increase in deity is from 2 settlers. 1 settler + standard deity bonuses is nicknamed demigod. It's a midway point between IMM and DEI, and a little closer to IMM imo. I'm not certain, but AdvCiv deity might be on par with BTS deity because of all the indirect increases in difficulty.
- Lack of familiarity with game changes.
- OP things are nerfed (TGL nerfed in most conditions, TGW nerfed into oblivion, Qs nerfed, praets nerfed, etc.)
- Worker actions decay (This limits tactics like building a road in between to maximize worker actions and prechopping forests).
- Can't chop neutral forests. (I don't think you can pillage neutral tiles either, but not sure).
- No subsidizing GPT.
- AIs can't be guaranteed peaceful based on diplomatic relations (unless he undid this kmod change).
- No failgold from multi-queuing. (This is a bigger nerf to IND than the nerf to FIN. When we add to it no prechopping/neutral chopping, IND is devastated).
- No worker stealing.

Without TGW espionage economy is gone, which makes me very sad. This was documented as removing early game EE. To me this shows a lack of familiarity with EE. There is no late game EE because the AI spams the modern espionage buildings ruining your espionage point advantage over them. It will spam spies revealing your spies. It will spam security bureaus destroying the efficiency advantage espionage has over beakers, and of course revealing more of your spies. There's no incentive to try transitioning to an EE in the middle or late game. You would only want to power through in these conditions if you've already amassed several Great Spies / Scotland Yards from TGW. Heck, if the dynamic religion spread from KMOD is in AdVCiv (where religions will randomly disappear from cities) that makes even the holy city bonus a headache to maintain.

 

[omnimirage]

I've played a decent amount of BTS Deity, and I find that it's a lot easier than AdvCiv Deity. I don't find BTS Deity to be particularly difficult when playing with a strong leader with a strong starting position. However I'm finding AdvCiv Deity to feel impossibly difficult. Granted, in BTS Deity I simply won by aggressively conquering a neighbour with Skirmishers, take a bunch of land and cottage spam alongside rivers, that strategy was sufficient and it worked well enough to beat Deity without too much problems. It doesn't work on AdvCiv, I've also tried a few other strategies that also haven't been working for me, it truly feels a level or two above regular BTS Deity in terms of difficulty. I read that a big reason for this is due to the AI being more intelligent with using it's workers and deciding which tiles to harvest in cities.

There are a few things that has buffs as well, like Serfdom.

At least on Marathon, the worker actions decay happens at a very slow rate, I still am able to prechop forests.

Neutral tiles can be pillaged just the same.

What do you mean by "subsidising GPT"?

I'm not too sure, I think peaceful AIs like Gandhi might not DOW if at friendly relations.

I'm not inclined to agree that the nerf to IND is greater than the nerf to FIN. Prechopping can still be done it works fine, multi-queuing has indeed been removed, but FIN has been dramatically nerfed to the point that it's quite a weak trait now. Usually, one can put a cottage on a river tile, and then FInancial would immediately provide an extra commerce. Then, when the cottage grows big enough on a river, it'll provide two commerce. Now, financial will never provide more than one commerce for a cottage, and it takes quite a bit of time to gain that extra commerce it's not immediate. Furthermore, the AIs are more inclined to pillage now, making Cottage Economy with Financial not as good. Quite a number of times I've been counting, wondering how much would I gain from having Financial, and I note that a decent amount of the time, Organized now provides more commerce than Financial: Financial seems to only provide more commerce than Organized, if going heavy into cottages, which seems like a weak losing strategy, or if lots of sea tiles are being harvested, which generally seems rather weak as well. Especially since the game is more war-orientated now, building cottages strikes me as weaker than ever. There's just not much tiles that have 2 natural commerce to gain that extra Financial provided commerce. It's pretty dumb but Organized is simply the stronger economical trait now.

That's good to know regarding spies. I've found that the AI is a lot more aggressive with using spies against me now: I often have wells poisoned, unhappiness spread, governments changing into anarchy (happens quite a bit early game, making Spiritual a little better), and also wealth and technologies are stolen from. I've been using espionage to try and protect myself from all these spies that the AI keeps sending against me.

I'm not sure if dynamic religion is present. I know that was one thing that frustrated me and put me off from playing KMod. I don't seem to recall cities losing religions so if that is still a thing, it's not as severe as it was in KMod.


Another thing that has made ADvCiv harder, is the AIs give more reasonable amounts of commerce for trading resources. In vanilla BTS, the AIs gave away vastly too much commerce for resources but this is no longer the case in AdvCiv. The increases to city maintenance costs when having many cities also makes it quite a bit harder, as extra city maintenance costs is more detrimental to the player compared to AI (it also makes Courthouses and Organized stronger).

 

[drewisfat]

Well I mean that's basically my point. You found a crutch strategy to beat deity on, and since the mod nerfed that specific strategy it's more difficult for you to win. That's not a good basis for judging overall difficulty.
Your experience is probably also because of your settings. On marathon speed attacking is much easier and more profitable, so even a modest buff to AI unit prob and tactics is going to be a bigger deal on marathon than normal speed. Also, I assume you're playing on Huge as that's usually paired with marathon. That's another big reason the mod is harder. Apparently the cap on 8 cities for maintenance's exponential growth is removed. This is, frankly, an insane change because it's going to essentially make conquest on large maps impossible, while barely being noticeable on pangaea. And since he apparently made it increase with vassals as well, you can't even like colony your way out of it. In general ORG is the most settings dependent trait and that ties into this. It's meaningless on pangaea, good on continents, and by far the best trait on giant maps.

IND is triple nerfed.
- There are fewer wonders worth building.
- Failgold is nerfed.
- Chopping is nerfed: though you're right, we'd need to know what the decay rate is to evaluate this.

FIN never provided +2 commerce. It still provides +1 growth after your riverside cottages grow once, or non-rivers grow twice. Most importantly though it still gives +1 for the tiles with 2gold naturally. This is a very big part of FIN as it instantly makes any water maps much easier, as well as still helping in the beginning if you can settle on, or even just work tiles with the boosted commerce. A lot of those tiles like wine/calendar resources are cottaged anyways if you have multiple, so FIN is working as normal there.
Pillaging is definitely an issue but it's probably a double issue for you because you liked to play with skirmishers, which can't fight back when the AI is no longer suiciding into your cities. Pillaging also should make those coastal tiles more attractive, and thus still make FIN attractive.
I've played a lot of KMOD and I still build cottages. Serfdom got buffed but I still didn't find much point in it outside of SPI civs. The problem is you build farms to get more food. You use that food to whip *slavery* or for great people *caste system* the two civics you can't run if you're in serfdom.

I would take issue with the idea that the AI gives you too much gold for resources. The amount it offers is dependent on how many cities it has. With AI bonuses on the higher levels it still more than pays off for the AI to buy resources from you. You are being jipped on average with resource trades just like you are with tech trades. It's just still worth it to do it in part because it's a FFA game. By tinkering with AI evaluation of resources (and only in one direction) it will grossly undervalue resource trades and that's not good. It's also not enjoyable to the player, as how much gold and what trades it will offer appear to just be a mystery. You can say this is more like trading with a human in multiplayer - except that a human is willing to make even exchanges with you. A human would also find inherent value in a resource, because resources are pretty fungible. Even if I have no happy concerns there's still inherent value to acquiring an additional happy resource, because I am now freed up to trade a different luxury resource away. So I would totally disagree with you here. BTS better models human behavior, is more enjoyable, and is more fair.

Subsidizing GPT is a trick used to make sure the AI always has the full GPT value it could have available to trade to you for a resource. Normally the AI will decrease its available gold based on poorly coded "financial hardship" that appears arbitrary to the player. It's frustrating when an AI is willing to trade 10g for a resource one turn, and the next turn it doesn't even have 1 gold available. It's not as if it just experienced a great depression, it moved its slider or changed civics or whatever. Since the point for the AI is to be able to grow bigger to make more money than it trades in GPT, the financial hardship thing doesn't even make logical sense. Subsidizing appears very gamey in execution, so unsurprisingly was removed. The philosophy of overreaction to "exploits" is what turns off a lot of players, myself included, to these mods, though certainly more people would take issue with subsidizing than chopping neutral forests, which is hilarious. They already give decreased yields based on distance...

The reason I'm a skeptic when it comes to AI improving mods isn't that I don't believe in the goal. I respect the mod makers and think they're doing the lord's work. The problem is improving AI is very hard... what you think improves it in one way can make it worse in an unforeseen way. For instance in kmod the AI won't suicide into cities. This is good. The AI wants to better clump up and protect its units so you can't easily pick off units. This is good too. But as a direct result of these changes, it can act indecisively and ineffectively by repeatedly retreating and regrouping. Sometimes you can inflict small losses and trigger this, sparing you from pillaging.

You've noticed similar things as well. Sure it seems really dumb for an AI to keep half of its army where it will never see any combat. But try to make it perform better in this area and suddenly you're able to cheese backline cities with a couple sneaky horse archers or ship drops.

 

[Fippy]

K-Mod Deity was actually easier for me, unless you start close to an AI which rushes you with 6 Archers on T30.
As Drew pointed out this shows why AI improving mods are questionable, why give them huuuge bonuses so they can randomly end your game early and you get no chance to react?
It's like being rushed by a Black Dragon in week 1 on Homm3

Why was K-Mod deity easier if that's not happening?
AIs teched slow. I mean..very slow, you can see similar effects with aggressive AI settings in regular games.
Logical if they build millions of units and constantly spend their time fighting each other, but more units still cannot beat human intelligence
It's just becoming more tedious if you use superior tactics on 150 units instead of 75 better ones.

In SP games you have to pick weak leaders and starts for the best challenges.
Or play against humans indirectly via HOF, GOTM etc.
Nerving stuff makes for an ultimately less exciting game. Mods are still all good as Drew wrote, great work.
All imo ofc.

 

[krikav]

The biggest exploit there is when it comes to get an advantage over AIs in civ4 is warfare.
Trumps all other tricks in the book.

How someone can object to trade subsidizing on the one hand, and be totally fine with you building a fort inside your culture where you know Mr Unitspammer will place his doomstack T1 of the war for your to just blaze down with cannons is beyond my understanding.

 

[omnimirage]

I agree that it's not a good basis for judging difficulty, I wonder if someone more experienced can beat this mod on Deity, I'd also be curious about their opinions on the difficulty changing aspects of the mod.

The 8 city cap for maintenance's exponential growth is indeed removed. I do have my concerns about this and wonder if the mod is broken on huge maps, which I like to play, when attempting a domination victory. The city maintenance costs is always what screwed me when I went for more aggressive, expansionist strategies, which then resulted in falling behind massively in tech & in me attempting to build Courthouses in every city to offset such, which then caused me to fall behind massively in military.

I've never read that before about Organised, but it makes sense. Is Civic costs tied to distance between cities as well, so Organised will provide greater benefits when having cities across different continents?

That's odd, I thought Financial provided two commerce for a fully developed cottage on a river tile.

That is indeed true, I couldn't really defend my cottages with the Skirmishers and had to hope the AI would just suicide attack into Skirmishers on a hill city. This worked for me in Better Bat AI Deity as well, just the AI tended to pillage less before they attacked into Skirmishers on a city hill. I'm not sure why the AI is bad at estimating it's chance of taking cities full of fortified Skirmishers.

I found in BTS AI, I could get around 10-20 commerce for a resource, whereas in AdvCiv it's more around 4-9(early-midgame at least). This does seem more reasonably proportionate to me. I just about trade off all my resources in BTS even if it resulted in some unhappiness/unhealth because of how much commerce I'd get for it, but in AdvCiv the numbers often feel more comparable in advantage. For example, I might have one city with one unhealth if I trade away a health resource: in BTS AI, I might get 12 commerce for it, clearly being worthwhile, whereas in AdvCiv I might get commerce, which isn't as obvious which is best. I felt when playing regular Civ, trading away resources for vasts amount of commerce was an easy way of accumulating larges amounts of commerce to keep up with teching.

I dislike the mod removing chopping of neutral forests, and removing stealing workers as well.

My personal perspective on it is if, overall the AI is improved and made stronger, then it's better by my preferences. I used to play Better BAT Aggressive AI, and quite dislike how it amasses huge amounts of military units without effectively using them just leaves them on stationary mode, it's rather terrible military tactics it's really quite pathetic at waging wars and using it's military units effectively, quite often it seems to just walk units back and fourth doing nothing until it finally decides to fortify on some random forest for the rest of the war doing absolutely nothing, it's also really bad at naval invasions though not sure if that's improved in Better BAT AI, it's workers also built way too many Workshops. In AdvCiv, it feels more like playing against other actual opponent Civilizations, rather than some incredibly dumb AI that has grossly huge modifiers to make up for it's stupidity.



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That is really surprising hearing about K-Mod Deity being overall easier to beat.


I never knew a fort could bait a stack, to then annihilate said stack with cannons, interesting!

 

[krikav]

@omnimirage

Spoiler :

Well, they are not drawn into forts, or at least I don't know if they are.
It's just that when you know where the enemy stack of doom is, it's very easy to predict where they will move it with a high degree of certainty.
Here I built forts just outside my cities, then I declared and he kindly placed all his units SE of Vienna for me to obliterate.
It's just taking advantage of the AIs stupidity.

Civ on higher difficulties have never been about being "fair". The AI gets ridiculus bonuses and the puzzle is how to defeat them in creative and ingenious plans, using whatever tools at your disposal.

 

[sampsa]

One idea, hardly out-of-the-box: BtS, deity, normal speed. It's actually pretty well balanced and people can help you on your way of mastering it. If that is too easy, you are really good at this game and should hand pick the hard maps.

 

[drewisfat]

I would say kmod deity is harder, but it should be more nuanced than that. As Fippy said, the AI's research rate is slower because it's building more units and going to war more. The AI no longer archer rushes you at T30, but it is much more likely to declare war on you, much more likely to dogpile you, and doesn't fall in line with absolute diplo rules like ___ won't declare at Pleased. And getting attacked is a much bigger issue than in BTS, because of more units and more pillaging. This leaves the player with a choice: do you build adequate defenses or do you stay barebones. If you build adequate defenses you won't lose outright to an attack, but you will tech slower. If you stay barebones and don't get attacked then yes the game is easier than BTS because the AI is like 25 turns behind. However, attacking the AI early is very difficult - you need to catch it at war with someone else. Otherwise you can't reliably break out with HAs or catapults if you get stuck to just a few cities.
So whether it's harder or not depends on what % of wins you're aiming for, and what maps you play. Pangaea is harder, isolation is easier.

 

[omnimirage]

Has anyone try beating this mod on a higher difficulty yet? I tried playing regular Better BAT AI with Aggressive AI option again on Diety, but got bored with it, AI was too stupid at warfare so I stopped playing, it hurts the sense of immersion, but then whenever I try it with this mod at Diety I get crushed.