Hard to play without the InfoAddict Mod

[civ5er]

A while back I downloaded the InfoAddict mod, which gives you a lot of data on other players and helps you figure out their victory strategy. For example, it shows you graphs about military strength, culture per turn, policies signed, techs researched, science per turn etc... and a nice graph of relationships and attitude with each other. I find that this has helped me a lot in my game to determine who's strong militarily, who to ally with, who to pay off to go to war with, etc...

So I'm wondering, how does one do without that mod? How do you know which civ is going for a military vic, culture, etc... (the Demographics page gives you your rank and the top and bottom civ in each category, but doesn't tell you who's the second strongest military for example).

Also, does steam achievements count when playing in a mod?

 

[Tokira]

I've been using the same mod myself. For me the graphs don't work for some reason though and I have no idea why it is so. However, I can use the "world factbook" to check the military sizes and science outputs etc, but I mainly do it for fun and I could play without all the information too.

When you press F8, you can see who has opened the most policy trees. There you can see who is going for a cultural victory. On F9 you can see who has discovered the most techs and you should be worried in any case if you're much behind the number one civ. Same goes for armies unless you're playing some OCC game or a game with just a few cities.

Also as for global relations, the F4 thing tells you the same info as info addict but the way it gives information is much more frustrating in my opinion.

 

[ifinnem]

Try Civwillard and you will feel the same way about managing trade and CS relations without it...

 

[nokmirt]

I use the mod it is very handy. Its the closest thing to espionage we have.

 

[Scarpa]

Mods like those just seem like a god-mode cheat to me. The AI is terrible enough as is, at least with them being somewhat opaque in their behavior there is an element of surprise to games.

 

[civ5er]

Steam is not counting my achievements, is it because I'm using mods?

 

[Scarpa]

Yep. Yessir. That is correct.

 

[Horizons]

You used to get all this kind of info in previous civ games through various espionage mechanisms i.e. you could get it but had to pay for it. In Civ5 you just have to go in blind and hope for the best.

 

[Camikaze]

In Civ5 you just have to go in blind and hope for the best.

Not really. The advisors give you some info (such as relative strength of AI militaries). And you still get the best, worst and average, from which you can often deduce useful information.

 

[Aldor]

A while back I downloaded the InfoAddict mod, which gives you a lot of data on other players and helps you figure out their victory strategy. For example, it shows you graphs about military strength, culture per turn, policies signed, techs researched, science per turn etc... and a nice graph of relationships and attitude with each other. I find that this has helped me a lot in my game to determine who's strong militarily, who to ally with, who to pay off to go to war with, etc...

So I'm wondering, how does one do without that mod? How do you know which civ is going for a military vic, culture, etc... (the Demographics page gives you your rank and the top and bottom civ in each category, but doesn't tell you who's the second strongest military for example).

Also, does steam achievements count when playing in a mod?

Does that mod show you what kind of victory any AI is pursuing?? THAT would be kind of cheating IMO, as the normal game doesn't offer that info to you.

Personally, I play without mods. You can get enough data from the normal info screens IMO.

What kind of extra information does InfoAddict give you that's not available in the regular game? So far I've only heard about relative military strengths of all AIs, anything else?

 

[anandus]

Not really. The advisors give you some info (such as relative strength of AI militaries). And you still get the best, worst and average, from which you can often deduce useful information.

Actually I kind of like that.

Mostly, when playing singleplayer I also use mods, but when I play multiplayer I can't (of course) and I notice I like it that I have to make educated guesses about everyone's strenghts, economy's, etc. Even with the default data (the aforementioned F4/F8/F9 and the points) one can actually find out quite a lot.

 

[gozpel]

Not really. The advisors give you some info (such as relative strength of AI militaries). And you still get the best, worst and average, from which you can often deduce useful information.

The advisors are pretty good, but who should you listen to at any certain time?

After a while they a just like rhubarbs, telling you nothing you didn't know before.

 

[Camikaze]

The military advisor is the most useful, due to it telling you the relative strength of other militaries, as mentioned. The others aren't great for the most part.

 

[Tokira]

Does that mod show you what kind of victory any AI is pursuing?? THAT would be kind of cheating IMO, as the normal game doesn't offer that info to you.

Personally, I play without mods. You can get enough data from the normal info screens IMO.

What kind of extra information does InfoAddict give you that's not available in the regular game? So far I've only heard about relative military strengths of all AIs, anything else?

It ranks all the civilizations in almost every thinkable way. For example if you have 10 civs in your game, you don't only get to know who is number one and who is the last but you also get to know the ranks in between too. You see the science outputs, cultural outputs, number of social policies, number of cities, military manpower and all the info that the F8 and F9 screens offer.

You don't know exactly which civ is going for which victory type but it is pretty easy to determine that considering the scientific and cultural outputs as well as the size of their empires.

Personally, I think that while it might be true that you get to know which civ is likely to go for a scientific victory much earlier than you would normally do; the info addict doesn't provide any other information that you couldn't figure without it. It is easy to detect whether somebody is going for a cultural or a domination victory at least. I use info addict only to have some fun with the statistics. It is fun to know that you cover three times the land as the second biggest civ, for example.

 

[RonMar]

As far as which AI is going for a culture victory and how close they are to attaining it, the best source of information I have found is from the Diplomatic report using the top tab at the right. It shows how many policies each civ has in each of the policy branches. That is more information than InfoAddict shows.

If you keep track of the notices appearing when a civ capital is taken, you will have some information about who is really trying to get a domination victory.

The era information and wonder information (same panel as who has how many policies in each branch) along with the military units you see give you good hints at what is happening in the technology area.

I use InfoAdict myself, but it is not the only source for much of the information it shows, and it does not show some information which you can get from the game itself.

 

[CaptainKapow]

InfoAddict is pretty nice but I could live without it. Most games I forget it's there and don't even check it.

The mod I can't live without is SmoothPack.

- see working city tiles with just a mouse over (HUGE time saver for the micro-manager)
- see turns until next golden age
- prominently displays turns until next social policy, tech, and great person (and type).
- shows turns until next border pop on city name bar
- shows # or lux resources and with a mouse over shows quantity and amount imported/exported
- automatically adjusts promotions when upgrading a unit from ranged to melee and vice versa so you don't end up with dead promos like +1 range on your riflemen. (this is the stupidest concept in the game still left over from launch imo)

Every time I play multiplayer with my friends I feel like I am hopping on one leg with all the extra clicks and menus I have to dredge through to get this information. It's like the BUG mod from Civ IV.

 

[civ5er]

As far as which AI is going for a culture victory and how close they are to attaining it, the best source of information I have found is from the Diplomatic report using the top tab at the right. It shows how many policies each civ has in each of the policy branches. That is more information than InfoAddict shows.

If you keep track of the notices appearing when a civ capital is taken, you will have some information about who is really trying to get a domination victory.

The era information and wonder information (same panel as who has how many policies in each branch) along with the military units you see give you good hints at what is happening in the technology area.

I use InfoAdict myself, but it is not the only source for much of the information it shows, and it does not show some information which you can get from the game itself.

It's not enough to know how many policies or techs each civ has, you need to know how fast they're signing new policies and researching tech. InfoAddict gives you the science and culture output per turn for each civ. So, if I'm going for science victory, I look at the charts to see how many techs other civs have and how their science output is. If I'm way ahead, I start investing in culture more, or military.
The standard info don't give you any of that. although every now and then you get a pop up that ranks all civs (e.g. civ with pointest sticks) but again doesn't say much on the speed of their progress.

 

[Ex.plode]

Eh, being able to determine exactly what the AI is doing and exactly how it operates isn't a mod in my mind, that's a cheat.

 

[Horizons]

I guess I'm vindicated because now we are getting espionage BACK (in the new expansion) which will provide info on enemy troop placement etc. It's only 'cheating' if the AI can't use espionage to its own advantage as well. Solution: improve the AI instead of removing features.

 

[civ5er]

Eh, being able to determine exactly what the AI is doing and exactly how it operates isn't a mod in my mind, that's a cheat.

Well, it depends what you decide the rule of the game to be. InfoAddicts reduces the challenge, that's for sure. I started playing without it to see if I can manage and won a cultural victory with Ghandi on Prince.

What annoys me is how other civs know that my army is weak without evening scouting me and without open borders. Probably from the ranking popups?