[Beyond the Sword] History In The Making

[LetMyPeopleGo]

Hi Grave,

I usually check the Aggressive AI option, and indeed they get aggressive, usually by switching to Theocracy when available and building up a decent army.

Now I don't get so much aggression from the AI, before the last patch the AI used to switche state religion several time ( maybe to form alliances or enemies, like me) and during that time some of the AI's cities assimilated several religions.

Now, maybe because of the non state religions penalty the AI doesn't switch to Theocracy so easily, thus not building his stronger units and as a result less declerations of war.

It's only a thought, but if you can show my how to get Theocracy back to it's previous state as before the last patch, I would like to see if the AI's aggressiveness is affected by it or not.


Now about "Who the frik is responsible for these insane barbarians?", I second it, I don't know what kind of research is conducted by the barbarians, but very early, before any civ discoverd Bronze or Iron the Barbs produse swarms of axemen and swordsmen without any bronze or iron resources, and as DrewBledsoe mentioned, horsemen and chariots with no horses.


Thanks

 

[Grave]

I didn't modify Barbarian activity at all... must be a result of Better AI/Unofficial Patch v0.80. Or was it also happening before that?

 

[Arian]

I didn't modify Barbarian activity at all... must be a result of Better AI/Unofficial Patch v0.80. Or was it also happening before that?

I think you're right about Better AI/Unofficial Patch v0.80. IIRC there were some tweaks/additions/changes/whatever to barbarian behavior in it

 

[DrewBledsoe]

I didn't modify Barbarian activity at all... must be a result of Better AI/Unofficial Patch v0.80. Or was it also happening before that?

I think you're right about Better AI/Unofficial Patch v0.80. IIRC there were some tweaks/additions/changes/whatever to barbarian behavior in it

Thanks guys, I might just tone them down via the gamespeed xml (simplest way I can thing of)...

Have either of you tried Emporish lvl on a huge map? Most of the time, it's barb galore. On some rare occasions, they don't come with much force in a game as general. Its the chariots especially, that are killers. You have to guard every pair of workers with a spear, because of the chariots double move (which is a pain in the ass to keep having to move all the time). And then you need another spear for the city, and then often another for the other side of the city! (and the little SOB's team up, so they get mini combined arms stacks...they had 2 axes, a sword, a chariot and a spear in a stack! That's untouchable, and means any improvements in their way are gone)

I used to think A pretty sensible average city guarding force, was 2 axes, and a chariot. Now you can add another axe (at least) and 2 or 3 spears, and be prepared to build more....4 cities at the start (a minimum build imo) now need dependant on land shape, somewhere between 16-25 troops!. You just can't afford that many that early on, without killing your research, the game isn't designed for it.

They are absolutely destroying the ai Civs too. Viewing replays at the end of a game, you can see the amount of ai cities that get built, then almost instantly trashed.

I think the better ai guys went a little OTT with the barbs, they might need to look at it, especially as it's crippling the ai nations.

 

[Grave]

That's partly why I made it a little easier to get the Great Wall a little earlier on. I like to play with Raging Barbarians alot, because while the barbs rarely ever capture one of my cities, my archers get tons of XP defending them! But it makes expanding with settlers and workers dangerous.

There's not much you can do about the Barbarians getting Chariots, Swordsman, etc. I don't think I have them with those starting techs, they just spawn those units anyway. Kinda lame, I think, but I don't know how to fix that. I could understand them having those units in the Medieval Era, but not in the Ancient. Ancient should have maybe Axeman/Warriors/Archers to start off with... Classical should have Spearmen/Chariots/Axemen/Horsemen, etc. You get my drift.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

That's partly why I made it a little easier to get the Great Wall a little earlier on. I like to play with Raging Barbarians alot, because while the barbs rarely ever capture one of my cities, my archers get tons of XP defending them! But it makes expanding with settlers and workers dangerous.

There's not much you can do about the Barbarians getting Chariots, Swordsman, etc. I don't think I have them with those starting techs, they just spawn those units anyway. Kinda lame, I think, but I don't know how to fix that. I could understand them having those units in the Medieval Era, but not in the Ancient. Ancient should have maybe Axeman/Warriors/Archers to start off with... Classical should have Spearmen/Chariots/Axemen/Horsemen, etc. You get my drift.

Hey I knew it wasn't your doing

I actually had to put the GW back to Mathematics, because I'd just go Masonry, Bronze Working, chop 3 cities out, chop walls out, chop GW done. Hardly any barbs to face that way.

The main problem, is that either way, lots of ais seem stuck on a couple or 3 cities for ages (and I don't really blame them)..

 

[mechaerik]

You could use the UU system to keep barbs from getting chariots at all.

 

[Arian]

Another idea:

In EraInfos.xml change this:

			<bNoBarbUnits>0</bNoBarbUnits>
			<bNoBarbCities>0</bNoBarbCities>

to

			<bNoBarbUnits>1/bNoBarbUnits>
			<bNoBarbCities>1/bNoBarbCities>

for ERA_ANCIENT

I guess barbarians start spawning when a civ reaches the Classical Age, not 100% sure though...

 

[zeggy]

Hi like the mod a lot, would like to know if its possible to change a unique unit for a civ?

More specific..making the guerrilla unit a unique unit for a civ.

 

[greg_godwin]

can't get the chipotle cheat to work with History in the Making... the cheatcode line has disappeared from CivilizationIV.ini... Tilde wont open console either... any ideas?

 

[gazius]

Why not upload this on filefront where the download is painless, rather than make you wait 3 minutes for nothing?

 

[Arian]

Why not upload this on filefront where the download is painless, rather than make you wait 3 minutes for nothing?

Filefront sucks

 

[Grave]

Why not upload this on filefront where the download is painless, rather than make you wait 3 minutes for nothing?

Filefront sucks

AtomicGamer is the parent site of CivFanatics. And I support CFC.

 

[randomScrubX]

This is one of the best mods I have ever played. The slight changes to the gameplay really improve the whole experience. It adds so much to the experience without unbalancing any aspect of it (some mods add in additional buildings without tweaking the numbers so everything is ramped up too early). You have fixed the traits excellently (creative is actually quite good now).

The only big problem that I have noticed is that the University of Sankore and the Spiral Minaret require Islam. This is a big problem I feel because if someone can found Divine Right and found Islam (I rushed it twice so far using the Oracle only one time) they are assured of these two high powered wonders. All you have to do is found Divine Right and you are assured of it because all you have to do is have Islam (if they don't build missionaries the only way to get Islam is to take the founding city). They can more or less squat on it while they go about their business until they're ready to build them. The two wonders together will more or less win the game for the person who builds them because they bring in so much science and commerce.

Other than that, this is one of the best mods I have ever played! Good work!

 

[DrewBledsoe]

This is one of the best mods I have ever played. The slight changes to the gameplay really improve the whole experience. It adds so much to the experience without unbalancing any aspect of it (some mods add in additional buildings without tweaking the numbers so everything is ramped up too early). You have fixed the traits excellently (creative is actually quite good now).

The only big problem that I have noticed is that the University of Sankore and the Spiral Minaret require Islam. This is a big problem I feel because if someone can found Divine Right and found Islam (I rushed it twice so far using the Oracle only one time) they are assured of these two high powered wonders. All you have to do is found Divine Right and you are assured of it because all you have to do is have Islam (if they don't build missionaries the only way to get Islam is to take the founding city). They can more or less squat on it while they go about their business until they're ready to build them. The two wonders together will more or less win the game for the person who builds them because they bring in so much science and commerce.

Other than that, this is one of the best mods I have ever played! Good work!

Simple solution, play "choose religions" option. Most of the time someone else founds Islam. They aren't completely game breaking wonders, as they rely on a massive empire to really make them work (I only play Marathon /huge maps too). The constant +1 through the ages for either Jew or Christian, I find to be stronger in the long run. But then the religions, and even the can really work too...

It's 90% Grave's work, others and myself have added tweaks here and there. Only version of Civ IV I could ever play now. ROM is just ridiculously unbalanced (but fun for a while), others leave a lot of the (imo) fatal flaws in the original Civ (for example, financial giving +1 from ALL sea tiles-highly broken, make it all tiles earning 3 or more, and you just delay the bonus to later "cottage" developments" as it should be)...

Anyways, try choose religions...I play Emporish lvl (some bits harder than Emp, some easier-my own balance)...I'd never ever take Islam first. Oh unless I start as one of the Arab leaders

 

[Grave]

Bah!

What a game I just had! Normally I don't have such dramatic games, but I just had to tell the story about this one.

I'm playing as Rome, Julius Ceasar (as always), and I'm cruising right along, wiping out barbarians as they pop up, capturing their cities, etc. My neighbor to the East, David of Israel, is starting to occupy territory that I was planning to expand upon. So what do I do?

Go to war of course.

David's State Religion is Judaism (surprise!) and mine is Christianity. Anyway, I capture a couple of his border towns, which were the in my "rightful territory" to begin with! Suddenly, out of nowhere, Nebuchadrezzar declares war on me! He's my neighbor to the northwest, and a fellow Christian! He captures my city bordering his nation. So I declare peace with David and focused my energies on Nebu.

I capture my city back and decide to go after the nearest city of his. It was a small coastal town of about 4. So I capture it, he takes it back, and we go back and forth a couple more times before I say SCREW IT, pillage every developed tile around the city and burn the place to the ground! So then what happens?

My "friend" Hannibal decides to declare WAR on me! He is Jewish (he didn't like the fact I went to war with his ally, David). What gets me is I was feeding this guy free techs to help build our diplomatic relations (I was trying to convert him to Christianity) and we had a decent trade system going. So he sacks two of the cities that I took from David, which I didn't have have a chance to fortify very well before Nebu attacked. So I lose two cities.

After several turns, I managed to capture one or two of them back, only to lose them again. Then David decides to declare WAR on me and aid his buddy Hannibal! None of my allies would help me (possibly because they were Jewish, too?) and the other Christian nations were too weak, or didn't like me, like Nebu.

So Israel and Carthage are wrecking havoc on my civ. Too many units... I couldn't defend my cities and tile improvements fast enough. It was an onslaught!

Then to cap it all off... Boudica decides to declare war on me, too! For centuries, I was constantly demanding tribute from her, and she'd always pay... albiet reluctantly. I guess she figured she should capitalize on my strife and take a chunk out of the Roman Empire while we were weak!

So I had three Civs beating the crap out of me... I couldn't keep up, so I decided to let the AIAutoPlay take over for a few turns... just to see what happens.

Needless to say... things didn't turn out well!

Just thought I'd share that story... it was a pretty drama filled, game!

 

[randomScrubX]

Simple solution, play "choose religions" option. Most of the time someone else founds Islam. They aren't completely game breaking wonders, as they rely on a massive empire to really make them work (I only play Marathon /huge maps too). The constant +1 through the ages for either Jew or Christian, I find to be stronger in the long run. But then the religions, and even the can really work too...

It's 90% Grave's work, others and myself have added tweaks here and there. Only version of Civ IV I could ever play now. ROM is just ridiculously unbalanced (but fun for a while), others leave a lot of the (imo) fatal flaws in the original Civ (for example, financial giving +1 from ALL sea tiles-highly broken, make it all tiles earning 3 or more, and you just delay the bonus to later "cottage" developments" as it should be)...

Anyways, try choose religions...I play Emporish lvl (some bits harder than Emp, some easier-my own balance)...I'd never ever take Islam first. Oh unless I start as one of the Arab leaders

You don't need to have Islam as your state religion, you just need it in the city building the wonder. You don't even need to beeline it anyways. You can play up until it's available (medieval age) then snag it.

I think they're pretty broken anyways. They're like a super shrine/academy. On average they can bring in 6-10 gold and 12-20 science with a small empire (eg. temple and monastery combo in 3-5 cities) without bonuses. I'm not sure if it counts your enemies buidlings also. If so then it's beyond broken. At least that's my opinion .

 

[kaltorak]

So I had three Civs beating the crap out of me... I couldn't keep up, so I decided to let the AIAutoPlay take over for a few turns... just to see what happens.

Sorry to go offtopic, but how do you do that AIAutoPlay thing?

 

[Arian]

Ctrl+Shft+x iirc, then you get a popup

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Bah!

What a game I just had! Normally I don't have such dramatic games, but I just had to tell the story about this one.

I'm playing as Rome, Julius Ceasar (as always), and I'm cruising right along, wiping out barbarians as they pop up, capturing their cities, etc. My neighbor to the East, David of Israel, is starting to occupy territory that I was planning to expand upon. So what do I do?

Go to war of course.

David's State Religion is Judaism (surprise!) and mine is Christianity. Anyway, I capture a couple of his border towns, which were the in my "rightful territory" to begin with! Suddenly, out of nowhere, Nebuchadrezzar declares war on me! He's my neighbor to the northwest, and a fellow Christian! He captures my city bordering his nation. So I declare peace with David and focused my energies on Nebu.

I capture my city back and decide to go after the nearest city of his. It was a small coastal town of about 4. So I capture it, he takes it back, and we go back and forth a couple more times before I say SCREW IT, pillage every developed tile around the city and burn the place to the ground! So then what happens?

My "friend" Hannibal decides to declare WAR on me! He is Jewish (he didn't like the fact I went to war with his ally, David). What gets me is I was feeding this guy free techs to help build our diplomatic relations (I was trying to convert him to Christianity) and we had a decent trade system going. So he sacks two of the cities that I took from David, which I didn't have have a chance to fortify very well before Nebu attacked. So I lose two cities.

After several turns, I managed to capture one or two of them back, only to lose them again. Then David decides to declare WAR on me and aid his buddy Hannibal! None of my allies would help me (possibly because they were Jewish, too?) and the other Christian nations were too weak, or didn't like me, like Nebu.

So Israel and Carthage are wrecking havoc on my civ. Too many units... I couldn't defend my cities and tile improvements fast enough. It was an onslaught!

Then to cap it all off... Boudica decides to declare war on me, too! For centuries, I was constantly demanding tribute from her, and she'd always pay... albiet reluctantly. I guess she figured she should capitalize on my strife and take a chunk out of the Roman Empire while we were weak!

So I had three Civs beating the crap out of me... I couldn't keep up, so I decided to let the AIAutoPlay take over for a few turns... just to see what happens.

Needless to say... things didn't turn out well!

Just thought I'd share that story... it was a pretty drama filled, game!

Sounds a crazy game....I had fun as the Vikings the other day, then had a strange bug where it refused to load the save when I went back to it...oh well..

I had the Southern tip of a great continent. Texas to the east, France, Poland, Celts and Russians to the Middle, west and north. Managed to sneak a very late Oracle (well 700BC is very late in my games), and got Civil Service from it. Still needed to go Pottery, Metal Casting and Machinery for guess what (I'm going Berserk is a clue)...bided my time, stayed with a compact 6 excellently placed city empire.

Meanwhile, France and Poland dow on Texas, and eventually wipe them out. Then when I saw a stack of EIGHT French workers, unescorted buildng roads through the Jungle couldn't resist, had to have them. A bloodless 4 turn war soon peace resumed. Eventually, I get to Machinery...made two stacks of 6 cats, 12 zerkers, couple of spears each, and off we went. France soon lost all the Texan cities to me, then when I raised one, because of pure idiotic ai placement, Greedy greedy Poland, who already had 18 cities (HTF can the ai manage to have 18 cities without COL some 25 tiles from its cap?)build one right before my very eyes almost on the remains.

Bu-HIG mistake (to quote Dr Cox).

So they join the war on France's side, whether they like it or not. The other ais start mumbling in my general direction, so heck why not. Let's have The Great General Xenophobia war. So I demanded tribute of each of them, they all refused, they all get dow on them the same turn.

And it all worked very nicely. Basically the whole continent became a blazing ruin (not the nicely orderly planned Viking bit of course). Razed everything north of Texas, probably about 40 cities. Nasty viscious Vikings.

So when the player demands tribute of you ai, what do you do in future? Baah, for Civ 5 they need to add some ai routines, that actually remember what a bloodthirsty marauder the player can be. Or maybe not