C2C - UEM - Ultimate-Earth-Map 100% MOD and SVN update compatible by Pit2015

[Somebody613]

In my opinion, a first time C2C player is going to be overwhelmed and can easily have a hard time on noble, let alone end up dead to barbarians in the first 100 turns if playing with extra difficulty options.

More importantly, play on normal or long. Long gives you a little more time to digest what's happening around you. If playing on normal, I'd use the upscale research times option for that same purpose.

I know the mod pretty well and still mostly play on noble and only increment the difficulty later on in game if I'm ahead - which is not always a guarantee. I don't want to stress too much while playing a game, I'm not going to micromanage my cities every turn and whatnot to stay ahead of a cheating AI.

Back in Civ III when the difficulty settings only changed how the AI played, without giving it any cheats, I'd happily play on the harder difficulties, but fighting cheaters AIs is not much fun personally.

Am I missing something?
How do AI cheat with higher difficulty?
They become angry morons that don't want to talk to you, yes, but how are they cheating?
And if you mean the difference in research/income scaling between the player and the AI civs, then that's also hardly cheating.
Real cheating would be to get free units out of nowhere via some AI-only event or something, but I doubt anything like that happens (excluding the actual in-game events, probably).

 

[Maltazard]

Cheating as in ignoring game rules and getting free stuff. For starters, at higher difficulty levels the AI starts with extra settlers. They bypass units' buildings requirements. They get free units, free unit upkeep and lower unit production cost. Lower upkeep costs for cities if not outright free upkeep, can't remember which. Insanely faster research, on top of starting with a bunch of free techs. Plus at least half a dozen more things I can't remember. I honestly don't know how do you guys put up with that stuff.

I lost my patience with cheating AIs when they introduced forts with zone of control in EU IV but they made the AI able to ignore the zones of control, so you could find yourself with AI troops happily strolling past your forts while you had to reroute around 40 provinces just to chase after them. That was the last straw, now I only play on equal grounds, equal rules. If the AI is stupid, well, I can just play more casual myself instead. I can see if you play to challenge yourself rather than to relax that these things help though.

 

[Somebody613]

Cheating as in ignoring game rules and getting free stuff. For starters, at higher difficulty levels the AI starts with extra settlers. They bypass units' buildings requirements. They get free units, free unit upkeep and lower unit production cost. Lower upkeep costs for cities if not outright free upkeep, can't remember which. Insanely faster research, on top of starting with a bunch of free techs. Plus at least half a dozen more things I can't remember. I honestly don't know how do you guys put up with that stuff.

I lost my patience with cheating AIs when they introduced forts with zone of control in EU IV but they made the AI able to ignore the zones of control, so you could find yourself with AI troops happily strolling past your forts while you had to reroute around 40 provinces just to chase after them. That was the last straw, now I only play on equal grounds, equal rules. If the AI is stupid, well, I can just play more casual myself instead. I can see if you play to challenge yourself rather than to relax that these things help though.

Is this on "PLAY" (top line game menu option) games?
Or maybe on Random games as well?
Because I'm playing a Nightmare (aka highest difficulty) game SCENARIO - and I haven't seen any "free units" (let alone settlers) popping up in any neighboring civs, ever.
Not on Pit's Earth, not on Space map, really.
Now, costs and other "income" stuff could be viewed as a means OF difficulty in the first place - that's not cheating, it's making your game harder in comparison.
And I play without zones of control (for some reason which I don't recall), so I have no idea about units ignoring it.
Not to mention that I'm immeasurably more pissed off by the "official" ignorers (criminals and the likes), who tend to annoy me to no end with their behavior WITHOUT "cheating".
And I still more or less beat the game even with all this "cheating" anyways, so that's not the end of the game, lol.

 

[Maltazard]

Based off of what I remember where the difficulty bonuses for AI in vanilla Civ, admittedly I've never figured out if they're the same in C2C though. I'd expect them to be somewhat similar though.
What really pisses me off is the super fast AI research and bypassing building requirements - which applies for wonders too iirc.

 

[raxo2222]

Based off of what I remember where the difficulty bonuses for AI in vanilla Civ, admittedly I've never figured out if they're the same in C2C though. I'd expect them to be somewhat similar though.
What really pisses me off is the super fast AI research and bypassing building requirements - which applies for wonders too iirc.

It doesn't bypass any building requirements

 

[Somebody613]

It doesn't bypass any building requirements

I haven't seen any, for sure.
C2C has very varied requirements in the first place, though, some of which are rather obscure as well, so it might seem sometimes that AI is cheating when it's really isn't.

 

[Maltazard]

Yeah, I must've got confused with FfH2, played a bit of that recently and they have that specific option. I wonder how accurate this is for C2C then: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ4). Anything above prince is starting to give bonus modifiers to the AI and maluses to the player. According to that, noble is almost perfectly neutral, just barely in favor of the player.

 

[Somebody613]

Yeah, I must've got confused with FfH2, played a bit of that recently and they have that specific option. I wonder how accurate this is for C2C then: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ4). Anything above prince is starting to give bonus modifiers to the AI and maluses to the player. According to that, noble is almost perfectly neutral, just barely in favor of the player.

Modifiers aren't cheating, though, that's what makes it a higher difficulty to begin with.
Civ4 is incapable of subtlety and/or "real politics" in the first place - the best it can provide is just "worse/better opinion, period".
Well, I did see some modifiers for AI behavior, but I doubt those are "smart" enough to enable the AI to "pretend being your friend", for example.
If a Civ has a "high opinion" of you, it's very much unlikely (though not impossible) for it to "lash back" at you "behind the scene".
Not to mention that AI is seemingly (and predictably) ignorant of how to "befriend" someone in the first place.
I'm talking about "weird" decisions like gifting techs/resources in order to gain a "trading" opinion bonus (+4 can be a game changer in some cases).
Conversely, AI is absolutely too stupid to realize that you gifting it "100 gold" is meaningless when you have 100k gold on hand, yet it will think that you gave them the Moon itself.
This is a matter of unrefined scaling, I guess, since C2C has the capability of scaling in astronomical proportions, unlike Vanilla and most other mods.
I'm also very much unsure it knows how to "set a goal" that extends beyond single-step actions.
Like, trading for a resource (1), that will let you build a building (2), that then will let you build a culture (3), that then will provide you with a very good cultural unit (4).
Not sure whether (2) applies much, though, but it's still at least THREE "unrelated" steps, and I doubt AI can be efficiently taught to PLAN those out, instead of randomly bumping into them.
A player CAN plan like this, though.

 

[Maltazard]

I think of the current AI like a monkey in a buttons room: it's going to try anything until something works. Sometimes it turns out great, sometimes it looks like, well, a monkey.
Either way though, at the start of the game when we have the same population and commerce output, plus or minus one or two points, there is absolutely no good reason why techs for the AI should be 60% cheaper and units 50% cheaper and so on. These discounts coupled with aggressive AI can easily get you killed unless you prioritize warfare right away and go aggressive yourself.
Later on, when the gap becomes more noticeable, then sure, help it a little. Increasing difficulty is a great option in this regard. I just feel it's a little bit buggy.

 

[tmv]

If this was implemented, it would make an Earth scenario very one-sided. But it can explain quite a lot:

 

[Somebody613]

I think of the current AI like a monkey in a buttons room: it's going to try anything until something works. Sometimes it turns out great, sometimes it looks like, well, a monkey.
Either way though, at the start of the game when we have the same population and commerce output, plus or minus one or two points, there is absolutely no good reason why techs for the AI should be 60% cheaper and units 50% cheaper and so on. These discounts coupled with aggressive AI can easily get you killed unless you prioritize warfare right away and go aggressive yourself.
Later on, when the gap becomes more noticeable, then sure, help it a little. Increasing difficulty is a great option in this regard. I just feel it's a little bit buggy.

Actually, no (to the point about "get killed easily", whereas I fully agree with the "monkey buttons" point).
Tribal Guardians are a pain to kill until you get at least 3 tiers of units up, aka Spiked Clubmen (or sacrifice 10 units during a single turn to do so, which is what the AI will never do anyways).
And the AI isn't out there to raze your city just on principle, either.
The same can't be said about a human player, lol.
Anyways, at least the way it is now, you CITY is relatively safe for a good part of Prehistory.
Your UNITS, though, aren't - and so you can get constantly harassed by aggressive AIs almost to the point of unplayability, true that.
But fully losing to the AI onslaught shouldn't happen for a good while now, since they wouldn't even have good enough units to go through with such an intention to begin with.

 

[Pit2015]

Hey Pit, thanks for this mod. I'm getting my fix in Civ V with a YnAEMP map now that I'm getting to the end of that playthrough, I was going to give C2C a try with your map/scenario. But you're making me very afraid with saying it should be played on Nightmare. Only have played Civ IV a couple of times and never competed a game, does this really make sense for me? I mean, I don't play Deity on Civ V on a huge map due to runaway civs. Still go Nightmare? <goes and hides in the corner in the cover of darkness...>

I recommend Nightmare because my mods should be hard and real challenging, you can select a lower difficulty lvl, but on nightmare you cant kill the AI easy and it will be very challenging if you dont change the UEM scenario and use it as it is set, you need to use your brain to survive, its not mainly about a playthrough, its about to survive as some of the AI will get ahead of you in tech. You will have to game very good and use your brain. Try to survive or go more easy like a lamer.

If you dont survive you are challenged to try again in your next life.

 

[mcshame]

I recommend Nightmare because my mods should be hard and real challenging, you can select a lower difficulty lvl, but on nightmare you cant kill the AI easy and it will be very challenging. Try to survive or go more easy like a lamer.

Lol...thanks Pit, will give it a go!

 

[Pit2015]

From here it came and from there to UEM.

 

[mcshame]

The C64, my first and favorite computer. And those hard drives....I can still hear those security features in my nightmares, knocking themselves senseless. The C64 components were quite expensive in the day but easy to see why from the video...

 

[Pit2015]

The C64, my first and favorite computer. And those hard drives....I can still hear those security features in my nightmares, knocking themselves senseless. The C64 components were quite expensive in the day but easy to see why from the video...

Yep first datasette and then the spzzzz..spzzzz bendable disk's:

File:Datasette 1530 C2N-B.jpg - C64-Wiki

www.c64-wiki.com

Tell that someone today, storing data on a casette.

And then i gamed "Kaiser".

Kaiser – C64-Wiki

www.c64-wiki.de

And later Empire and Empire Deluxe on Amiga 500, what i say it was the real first step to civ games...

Empire (Computerspiel) – Wikipedia

de.wikipedia.org

A cool there is a more far developed version to get on steam, never saw it and it still have the old sounds/music:

Empire Deluxe Combined Edition on Steam

Empire Deluxe Combined Edition is the latest in the classic Empire Series of games, which has spanned almost five decades. Empire Deluxe is a game about taking cities. Starting with just one, the city enables a commander to produce units. These units in turn can directly attack or support the...

store.steampowered.com

 

[mcshame]

Yep first datasette and then the spzzzz..spzzzz bendable disk's:

Ahhh, and punching a slit on the other side of the disk to make it double sided...Good times,,,,,

 

[Pit2015]

@Toffer90 Can you build in the option "Hard Conquest" now? I want to start a new long game soon and change the UEM scenario to "Hard Conquest". Will be a cool option, but we need to think about it a short time if it will work or not, will be a medium option between normal conquest and "Always raze cities" option, it will make the game harder and it will still very hard to get ahead of the AI.

So the "Hard Conquest" option should work like this: If a city is conquered it will drop down to population 3, because most ppl will flee the city, so world wonders will also survive and conquering cities is possible but you dont get a lot of population to fast.

But will it work for buildings that need 6 pops to be build? The building can stay in the conquered city, but they should only be buildable again if 6 pops are reached again, will that work with the current system?

Also it will make it more costly to conquer far away cities if they drop down in population because they cant produce much cash fast again until the population will grow again. Limiting the possiblity to conquer to much to fast.

Optional raze a city should be possible also on "Hard Conquest".

 

[Mr Smith]

So the "Hard Conquest" option should work like this: If a city is conquered it will drop down to population 3

Just turn on Emergency Draft in RevolutionDCM tab, then turn it off when city drops to 3. Not sure if limits of drafting per turn are already implemented or not.

 

[Pit2015]

Just turn on Emergency Draft in RevolutionDCM tab, then turn it off when city drops to 3. Not sure if limits of drafting per turn are already implemented or not.

We talk here about a new game option... that may be build in like other options, that will work for the gamer and the AI then. Means if you conquer a city then the population of this city will be reduced to 3 population. Like if you conquer a city with population 12 you will get only a city with population 3 if you take it and if you dont raze it. The rest will flee the city.