Best AI difficulty mod?

[Galvatron]

ARS - Improved Movement v2.1
and any other unit stacking mod does wonders for the AI military

It has my endorsement as well. It's less of a headache for you too, but the AI significantly is improved.

You mean "heroes"?

Hey, I'm not judging. If that's what sparks your joy let fly!

 

[Aristos]

Hey, I'm not judging. If that's what sparks your joy let fly!

I think you did not catch the

 

[uhu]

You mean "heroes"?

Yep! Heroes like Hercules or Sinbad are the sort of exciting thing that should be happening all the time. Being able to trivialize the rest of the game is an ugly myth.

Surprise yourself and seize the occasion to upgrade your meh heroes even further: give them the rainbow unicorn ultra promotion for only 99cents!

Or make one more step and break through to the other side with the one and only: Gnampf, master of the universe - available now for only $3.95 ...

 

[ThunderLizard2]

Vox Populi.

Or Civ 4 BTS.

Agreed. Why is Firaris refusing to release the dll code?

 

[Aristos]

Agreed. Why is Firaris refusing to release the dll code?

1. Canibalizing: they know now for a fact that someone out there will take the dll and make a much better final product IN THEIR SPARE TIME than they are ever able to make... and that such product will put a huge dent in their next iteration for a long time. Example: Vox Populi.

2. Shame: if you look into their code when the dll source is released, the amount of crap you find is appalling considering it comes from paid "professionals".

I said it many years ago, and it has become true: they will NEVER release dll code again, no matter how many lies about moddability they throw at us. For exactly those two reasons.

I’m getting a PC to play Civ4 again, but I already have Civ6 so I mean I might as well see if mods can help that game

You don't need one, that's the beauty of Soren's gem... for a game that has so much more depth and strategical challenge than the current iterations, you can run it in a Cylon.

 

[Alaindor]

Agreed. Why is Firaris refusing to release the dll code?

1. Canibalizing: they know now for a fact that someone out there will take the dll and make a much better final product IN THEIR SPARE TIME than they are ever able to make... and that such product will put a huge dent in their next iteration for a long time. Example: Vox Populi.

2. Shame: if you look into their code when the dll source is released, the amount of crap you find is appalling considering it comes from paid "professionals".

I said it many years ago, and it has become true: they will NEVER release dll code again, no matter how many lies about moddability they throw at us. For exactly those two reasons.



You don't need one, that's the beauty of Soren's gem... for a game that has so much more depth and strategical challenge than the current iterations, you can run it in a Cylon.

Could also be: intellectual property. You don't always want to make your source code available to the world which includes the competition (whatever you might think of the coding quality itself)

 

[glider1]

Could also be: intellectual property. You don't always want to make your source code available to the world which includes the competition (whatever you might think of the coding quality itself)

There is nothing special in their DLL code they need to keep private it is old tech and all other 4X companies know how to code and will probably do better not looking at Firaxis code. The only tech they need to keep private is the graphics engine but that would always be locked away in any case. No the reasons are what Aristos said.

 

[Aristos]

There is nothing special in their DLL code they need to keep private it is old tech and all other 4X companies know how to code and will probably do better not looking at Firaxis code. The only tech they need to keep private is the graphics engine but that would always be locked away in any case. No the reasons are what Aristos said.

Haha, exactly. If anything, they should share their code with their competition to bring them down if the competing company dares to copy it.

That would be suicode.

 

[glider1]

Haha, exactly. If anything, they should share their code with their competition to bring them down if the competing company dares to copy it.

That would be suicode.

What they should have done is release the DLL code as soon as the game was launched. They would have created even more revenue and kept the modders loyal. Instead they lied about it being the most moddable game ever (which I fell for hook line and sinker) and like all lies they got trapped and now can never release the code for the damage it will do to civ7.

I think like all deception it is about them wanting to hide some underlying insecurity. Probably the civ6 code was so bad they didn't want to risk negative publicity that would take the gloss off the marketing hype at the time. As we said before the DLL is old tech nobody could make money on anyway.

I think there is exciting new new tech going around from another company that allows modders to have unique DLL code that doesn't conflict with the main DLL code or with other mods DLL at least that is what I heard.

 

[Aristos]

And without dll, there is no AI modding. Period.

Especially this "AI".

 

[glider1]

It can be modded but because the AI can't be worked on by modders the type of mods that are produced can never reach their true potential.

 

[ashendashin]

Instead they lied about it being the most moddable game ever

Just gonna chip in here because I still don't feel right over that; they probably never said that. Looked it up once and only found an article stating that claim being in the advertisements of older Civs in comparison to VI.

 

[glider1]

Just gonna chip in here because I still don't feel right over that; they probably never said that. Looked it up once and only found an article stating that claim being in the advertisements of older Civs in comparison to VI.

It might have become a meme that took on a life of it's own you could have a point there. Somehow that meme took hold in my mind where ever I heard it from all those years ago.

 

[dagriggstar]

I did have a go at making one and when I have time I do play with mine on. Basically I didn't like the AI getting stuff for free with straight % bonuses, so instead I increased things that will scale with game era like adjacency bonuses, building yields etc.
Unfortunately I don't really have the time to work more on it so it's not nearly as polished as it should be. I suspect there might be some stuff not working but it's hard to playtest (and find time for playtesting).

 

[Gedemon]

What they should have done is release the DLL code as soon as the game was launched. They would have created even more revenue and kept the modders loyal. Instead they lied about it being the most moddable game ever (which I fell for hook line and sinker) and like all lies they got trapped and now can never release the code for the damage it will do to civ7.

I think like all deception it is about them wanting to hide some underlying insecurity. Probably the civ6 code was so bad they didn't want to risk negative publicity that would take the gloss off the marketing hype at the time. As we said before the DLL is old tech nobody could make money on anyway.

I think there is exciting new new tech going around from another company that allows modders to have unique DLL code that doesn't conflict with the main DLL code or with other mods DLL at least that is what I heard.

The modifiers framework or the exposed AI behavior tree may be things they wanted to protect from copy. They also use Havok Script for Lua, which is not open source as is the base Lua version, could be another reason.

There is Rimworld that allows multiple DLL loading thanks to the Harmony library.

Old World also use Harmony to allows multiple DLL loading, and the gameplay/AI source code is already available.

There is also City Skyline that allows multiple DLL loading, but I don't know how much of the source code is exposed, maybe it's similar to what we can do with civ6 Lua.

All those games use Unity and C#, I've no idea if a multiple DLL loading framework is possible with the civ6 engine (based on C++ IIRC)

edit: note that Humankind also use Unity, and if they release the source code for the AI as they announced, every gameplay methods should also be exposed and could potentially be patched using something similar to Harmony. Multiple DLL mods could be then possible, depending on how the modding community evolve.

It might have become a meme that took on a life of it's own you could have a point there. Somehow that meme took hold in my mind where ever I heard it from all those years ago.

Yep, AFAIK they never said civ6 would be the "most moddable ever", just something more like "as usual a strong emphasis on modding", which is true, I mean if they had exposed a few more methods to Lua (and documented them), the modding capabilities even without access to the DLL would have been truly impressive.

Of course it wouldn't beat modding capabilities with access to the DLL, but we're really just short of a few things to allow some AI or diplomacy overhaul.

 

[Alaindor]

There is nothing special in their DLL code they need to keep private it is old tech and all other 4X companies know how to code and will probably do better not looking at Firaxis code. The only tech they need to keep private is the graphics engine but that would always be locked away in any case. No the reasons are what Aristos said.

I find this statement very bold, if you don't know the source code how do you know there is nothing special and it is old tech? And if it's so bland why do you need the source code anyway and why don't you "simply" rewrite your own dll's?

 

[glider1]

I find this statement very bold, if you don't know the source code how do you know there is nothing special and it is old tech? And if it's so bland why do you need the source code anyway and why don't you "simply" rewrite your own dll's?

Simple deduction beyond reasonable doubt. The graphics code is locked away and not for discussion by anyone and could be very high tech (for all we know). But there is nothing radical about how the DLL code performs in civ6 and the way that code behaves is obviously just an iteration on what already existed with Civ5. This is especially noticeable in the AI code which is the code that in theory would contain the "hi tech" code Firaxis would like to keep private. Even the performance of the DLL code is not that radically better than Civ5. The only real tech improvement in Civ6 is 64 bit but all companies already knew how to code 64 bit anyway.

We do know about the civ5 DLL code though. It is highly likely civ6 used it a lot as you can see that all the infrastructure around the DLL is all basically similar and the structure of the game around the DLL is very similar too. The Civ5 code was already old tech in 2010 (nothing special in it) and was not even proper object oriented style. It also was poorly written in sections (spaghetti code and bird nest code) as has been confirmed by many coders better than me. There is nothing to suggest that Civ6 would have been so much better DLL code that other companies would have liked to pinch it.

To answer your other question to reverse engineer a DLL without source is immensely time consuming and problematic.

 

[Vandlys]

Infixo's Real Strategy (AI):

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/real-strategy-ai.640452/

It hasn't been updated since the Ethiopia DLC, but even that "outdated" version works technically flawless with the current civ version and the AI plays a lot better.

Haha genius. I'm not going to try it, but it's genius.

 

[Damirith]

At this point I am leaning towards Jam's Difficulty Mod.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1656782378

However, I think I want to edit it as I am fine with the AI getting a combat boost and extra gold from clearing barbarian camps. Looking at the code, I am guessing to achieve this I would have to cut out the lines of barbarian_camp_gold_scaling, high_difficulty_comabt_scaling, and high_difficulty_unit_xp_scaling so their values don't get set to 0?

I also am fine with the AI getting more warriors at the start but not extra settlers. I am guessing I would have to also remove the part where it deletes MajorStartingUnits when aiOnly =1. However, I don't know how to make it so it will allow for extra warriors but not any extra settlers.

Anyone able to help me with this?

 

[Taefin]

You may have some fun increasing AI damage vs walls/cities. This can be done with Radiant Cities, but requires changing parameters in the mod code. A +25 strength bonus works well, they can wear down walls with a handful of units without siege, one shot walls with siege, and they can take an in walled city in two hits. I most often lose a city early-mid game this way.

I find that ARS and buffing AI combat strength (I use Smoother Difficulty for this, extra bonus each era above vanilla) creates a challenge of taking AI territory quickly enough benefit from the war. It’s still very challenging for the AI to make headway against the player, since stacking is so strong for defense, but at least stacking units causes you to take losses and makes it harder to hold the line when fighting in enemy territory. I usually end of fighting on a front of two AI cities that constantly loyalty flip down to 1 pop until I either succeed at taking that key city, or sue for peace so my army can fight another day.

You could also try boosting Pseudoyield_city_base (in game file or Real Strategy) to something like 1500 to get the AI to play more aggressively. This can make them a bit too aggressive, and prone to wearing each other down, but as often as not the player is their preferred target if you adequately buff AI economy. I’ve seen the best results with this using a variation of dramatic ages (in game files) that causes AI to lose 40% of cities but free cities to lose a base 20 loyalty per turn. It seems that giving the more aggressive AI an opening to pick up a few cities can actually lead to snowballing, but it’s a bit rare still. Also, I noticed a few games post April that AI attacks free cities, this was a real problem with dramatic ages before. However I haven’t tried it, been exploring Endless, Stellaris and Humankind instead.

I’m certainly hopeful about Humankind. If anything it should be easy to mod, even with basic parameter changes, to make the AI formidable. Currently winning wars is too easy, being able to tank their war support by picking off a few easy targets before their new/upgraded units can reach you. But the AI techs fast and it’s legitimately difficult to do much against an AI force that is 50% stronger than you, so if the AI were allowed to fight the war out, I suspect they could be quite challenging and fun to play against.