Demi-God: Modding Civ 5 BNW to a difficulty level between Immortal and Deity

[consentient]

Long story short: I find Immortal play too easy and Deity play too formulaic and frustrating (though I can beat it if I really try), so I'm keen to explore a difficulty level between the two.

The attachment is my proposal for the level of Demi-God.

Here is my reasoning:

Settlers

It's good that the AI should have 2 settlers, so as to put pressure on the human player to choose their expo slots more carefully, and in good time. It also means that on Standard maps early trades are possible, which helps diplo and science. Without early caravans, it is much more difficult to catch up on tech with a mediocre civ.

Workers

On the other hand, having 2 workers means it is just easy-peasy to steal them from the AI, and the AI doesn't use them optimally any way. The programming is so bad that I frequently capture cities after T100 and find unimproved lux. So taking a worker from the AI should actually make the game harder as well as more balanced.

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Everything else should be fairly self-explanatory. I've set the numbers closer to Deity on the attributes where the numbers are not too problematic, and closer to Immortal on a couple where I think it is a bit too much of an advantage for the AI. I've gone straight down the middle on the rest.

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I'd be really interested to know what people think, and in particular, whether there is any demand for a regular game, similar to DCL/ICL/ECL, where people would want to play Demi-God maps.

Since this would involve a mod, I would also like to play with Fixed Prophets and Historical Religions as they make the religion side of things a lot more fun.

 

[AnonymousSpeed]

Hey, I think it sounds fine. Diety is always a bit...ludicrous to me with the bonuses the AI gets but Immortal really isn't challenging once you play a bit of deity. I think a better name is i order though, but heck if I have any ideas.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

I have been looking into modifying Deity starts to make them in-between... Basically deleting the extra Settler the AI gets. Even with an Immortal start it appears the AI gets a Settler, 3 Warriors, Scout, and Worker. I was able to add units to Player 1 (human), but I'm not sure if I can easily delete the other players units with Firetuner. It's a fun part of the SDK, and I've used it before to let the same game run many times and see if there are variations in outcomes (to test maps I've built). But it seems buggy in that you can't stop Auto-Play as The Observer which seems the most useful part of it! And you can't seem to just go "Next Player" - it has to run an entire full turn to stop on the next player you select.

I will keep trying, but the most likely outcome is to just give the human an extra unit or two. I would lean towards a Worker, as I believe near-forced Worker stealing upsets the play balance too much, and I personally dislike that this has become such a standard move. Adding a Settler instead would likely be OP... It would screw up finish times a lot for comparison - and you will be forced to settle a lux and research the appropriate tech ASAP, I assume. Just adding an extra Warrior or a Scout might be too weak.

The benefits to this kind of approach are that it requires no mods and IMO bridges the gap between Immortal and Deity in a fairly subtle way. You still get the AI game generated starting locations, which in theory are balanced. You still keep Deity happiness constraints. I will likely post a test game soon.

Other ideas I had were to spawn some games, save the maps, note (in Firetuner) where the AI's were placed, then go into World Builder and clean up the maps (especially removing some of the BS ice jams from the poles), and place starting units. This is one way in which, I believe, I could get around the issue of 2 starting Settlers for the AI. Unfortunately, I believe you then have to load the game with some extra settings, and those may be through the Mod panel, ugh.

FWIW, I used to love loading the giant Earth map (might have been Civ 4), and tweaking CS names/locations, etc., and making myself start on Australia or Japan, and just create a big naval empire. This may be part of why I never went past Industrial, as exploration would be ending and having like 18-24 civs killed my machine in later turns.

 

[consentient]

OK Nige, I'd love to see how your idea works. But I fear that apart from a modified start, eventually there will still be problems in how the AI bonuses translate to boring play in the Modern era. I really dread getting there because on Deity it just doesn't feel like a normal game. You were the one that faced down a 112-city Oda, right? That's never gonna happen on another difficulty level, ever. Likewise, in my Maya game (which I think you quit?) Pocatello launched before T230. That just plain sucks when there's nothing you can do about it. There are maybe 10 players on these forums that can reliably win before T230

So I don't mind the idea of an unmodded start, but will a worker really allow the human to balance out the crazy benefits the AI enjoys. The Deity AI worker work rate isn't too much of a problem because they have bad programming and often aren't optimal with their improvements, but the unit spam can be really exhausting, for example.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

Yeah, that game where Oda went nuts was whacked!

I have been testing some maps, but sadly, the way Firetuner works (as far as I can figure) limits the changes you can make. Sure, you can add/remove units, features, etc, but there are some hardcoded things like "Handicap" that seem fixed. I would assume this includes things like base happiness and some of the attributes you had in your table.

So it seems the only way to get a good, even auto-play test is to start on King, where the "player" is 1:1 with the AI. But then you hose the random start location that you were wanting to test. Again, you can place starting locations, units, etc in World Builder, but then it is treated kind of like a Mod when you load.

FWIW, I found out on Deity the AI gets 2 Settlers, 2 Workers, 3 Warriors, and a Scout. I have been trying to roll maps for England, and the one that intrigued me the most starts you within about 15 tiles of a major warmonger, with a lot of non-optimal terrain for you and great stuff for them. In this game, to truly compete early, I would think you would need a huge buff, like a Worker AND Scout - maybe a lot more. I ended up facing LS before I even had CBs!

My goal would be to boost the player early, and hamper them late. The best way I would see is to have some sort of player penalty that kicks in with every era later. Happiness or Science perhaps. This can be somewhat effected in-game by not going Rationalism.

- I rolled what is may favorite map so far, and have run many test games on it. There are certainly better starting locations than others, which is always the case, I suppose. I don't want to give away any hints as I will likely post it in the strategy section, but it is very cool to me. I have been using random maps, which I think adds tremendously to the thrill of discovery, and definitely makes early game decisions more difficult (like 1 or 2 Scouts). I am going to play the first 100-some turns again adding a Settler, Worker, and Scout. So you are down only a Worker and 3 Warriors plus the happy penalty plus the other Deity AI stuff.

 

[consentient]

My current game is telling me that the unit spam has got to be dealt with in Demi-god. My opponent had 3 cities and was making 10 Nareusan's Elephants a turn. That's just daft. And boring. My XBs and Lancers kill them easily, but it just means that taking the city ends up taking about 20 turns and by the time I do, I'm behind in tech. Deity sucks.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

That is just crazy! With my main army I can maybe kill 3 units/turn max...

 

[consentient]

Yeah I had about 12 lancers, 15 XBs and a couple of cannons, but they were making so many units I couldn't get at the cities. I might make a whole thread just about this crazy unit spam.