Ideas for the future of K-Mod

[plastiqe]

I play K-Mod exclusively now, got the shortcut to load right into the mod from my desktop. I like to play hemisphere type maps which increase the drama late game since it's not just a win your continent pangea. I really liked a few of the subtle little buffs from the last patches especially the +1xp to Duns. Anyways, a little balance ideas wish list:

Lumber Mills unlocked at Guilds instead of Replaceable Parts. They just come so late and I think it would help the AI too since they often leave forests unchopped in their cities.

Customs House/Fetoria cost reduced, say around the level of Markets.

Native American starting tech hunting instead of fishing. Opens up some avoid fishing bulb strategies for them, in the players hands at least.

Terrace nerfed to 1 culture instead of 2.

Chichen Itza switched from Great Prophet to Great Engineer. Then it is at least worth building if you're stacking it with Pyramids/Hanging Gardens for GEs.

The Hagia Sophia switched from Great Engineer to Great Prophets to compensate (it was a church/mosque). Then I'd change the obsoleting tech from Steam Power to Combustion, so there would at least be some use for it when there is that industrial age rush to get all those railroads built.

 

[Cruel]

lower instant-healing when using promotions, and so on, I tend to think "well, that sounds like a good idea

Yes, it's a very good idea. And I also very interesting to finalize the k-mod, whose work influenced all mods Civ4 still active, and get another Karadoc-mod with these steps forward. Thank you Karadoc and I hope you continue releasing new versions of your gorgeous mod (I'm sure that any path that you follow will be very good).

 

[Chronis]

Having played legends of revolutions extensively I would recommend the balance modifications they have implemented to the ancient era.

Differences in Ancient Era

1) Axemen cost reduced from 35 to 30 strength reduced to 4
2) Swordsmen cost increased from 40 to 45 requires barracks to build
3) Units that require a barracks to build don't get the typical 3 free experience points
4) Swordsmen can be built with both copper or iron (gives window to capture an iron source)
5) Chariot cost increased from 30 to 40
6) Chariot 100% bonus vs axemen replaced with +50% bonus vs melee and -20% city strength.
7) Horse Archer Cost increased from 50 to 60 added 10% bonus versus swordsmen and axemen
8) Longbowmen also require the tech construction to build
9) Pikemen cost increased from 60 to 70 added 100% bonus vs melee units
10) Macemen can only be built with iron and also require a forge to build

The Legends of Revolutions tries to do a lot of things some work better then other, but in my opinion its single greatest accomplishment is the balance changes it makes to the early game they just work and work very well.

 

[Marguerite Ming]

I play K-Mod exclusively now, got the shortcut to load right into the mod from my desktop. I like to play hemisphere type maps which increase the drama late game since it's not just a win your continent pangea. I really liked a few of the subtle little buffs from the last patches especially the +1xp to Duns. Anyways, a little balance ideas wish list:

Lumber Mills unlocked at Guilds instead of Replaceable Parts. They just come so late and I think it would help the AI too since they often leave forests unchopped in their cities.

I'd like to see lumbermills come available at Machinery.

Customs House/Fetoria cost reduced, say around the level of Markets.

Native American starting tech hunting instead of fishing. Opens up some avoid fishing bulb strategies for them, in the players hands at least.

Why don't Portuguese start with fishing???

Terrace nerfed to 1 culture instead of 2.

Chichen Itza switched from Great Prophet to Great Engineer. Then it is at least worth building if you're stacking it with Pyramids/Hanging Gardens for GEs.

The Hagia Sophia switched from Great Engineer to Great Prophets to compensate (it was a church/mosque). Then I'd change the obsoleting tech from Steam Power to Combustion, so there would at least be some use for it when there is that industrial age rush to get all those railroads built.

I think Great Lighthouse should go obsolete with electricity. It's advantage was it could be seen from a great distance, this ability wasn't really duplicated until electric lights.


Other things I really, really want:

1) the ability to plant a forest, starts at 0 chop, and gains chop value as city works it.

2) the ability to irrigate/replant desert, and upgrade plains to grassland with proper technology.

3) separate commerce sliders in each city, so we can really specialize our cities. It can have a global/local button for control. I hate losing money/research when I need to build culture on the borders. I hate robbing Wall Street in one city to favor Oxford in another, it is nonsense.

4) fix inflation mechanics to a currency supply/demand type system. Inflation is caused by coinage devaluation, but increasing the money supply to levels beyond what the economy needs to operate. It should be possible to play the game to any year in the future and maintain playability.


I dream of a game that lets us assemble arcologies and factories in space and on other planets, to really take Civ to the next level.

 

[Sidder]

some good ideas in this post tbh

Anyway maybe a small alteration for machine gun? replacing the melee% upgrade with the one v horses/or gunpowder maybe?

 

[plastiqe]

Many times I've seen Karadoc write that he has ideas in mind but chooses not to implement them because the theme of K-mod is to remain true to the flavour of the game. I briefly mentioned this in the main thread but I'll expand a bit here. Back in Civ III, Rhye's Mod had two components; the Basic Version and the Expansion Pack. I think there is room in the future of K-Mod for an Expansion Pack which would be developed alongside K-Mod and would include more drastic improvements to the game. I'm sure Karadoc would have ideas of his own but I know from reading the main thread there would be a few willing volunteers to help out, myself included. Here's a few thoughts I had that would be too much for K-Mod but might fit in an Expansion Pack.

• I would like to see something reminiscent of the Dark Ages with more challenging Barbarians later in the game when you have options for defense. Rather than gift wrapped cities the Barbarians could spawn little stacks of melee units Vedic Aryans style (but not super early) and later on advanced stuff like Horse Archers near the end of the classical era.
  
  
• The early horse unit from HBR should be changed to a Rider as opposed to a Horse Archer. HA could be buffed and moved (with Elephants) under a new dead end tech called Mounted Combat (like Military Science) after Code of Laws to represent their true dominance under the likes of the Huns or the Mongols.
  
  
• I would remove the immune to first strikes ability almost categorically across the board. It's unfair to the Drill line; nobody is immune to Combat and there is an oft forgotten promotion called Flanking II that you can use if you want it. The only units that keep immunity would be a select few uniques.
  
  
• I agree with noto2's sentiment about siege warfare and the ease of early conquest. I agree that Civ III did it much better with Catapults bombarding from one tile away so that's what I'd revert to. Wouldn't it work just like Airships and planes, which the AI knows how to bomb with? You could add better bombardment from high ground promos. Bombardment could use a full movement point so there would be no zipping up to attack with roads. Archers could get a small bombardment ability if they are in a city with Walls. Ships in the Age of Sail could bombard units on the shoreline.
  
  
• I like the reduce the insta-healing from promotions and I'd add reducing the bonus healed for free each turn by not moving in a city. Maybe something like the first promotion stays the same but each level after that heals progressively less. You could make a new ancient Hospital city improvement for healing or tie it into Temples or city health.
  
  
• City cultural defense is replaced with population based defense. Size 1-5 is nothing, size 6-10 is 25%, 11-15 is 50%, etc... Pillaging and starving a population is a valid tactic when you're laying siege to a city. You could add a Great General only promotion that allows radius 1 Privateer-like blockading on land.
  
  
• Other tile improvements grow like cottages. A mine could start as +1 and after 20 turns improve to +2. Resources like Gold Mines could start out as +1 and grow over time. Some resources like the Calendar ones could be hidden until you research the tech.
  
  
• Early wars are less about capturing territory and more gaining an economic advantage through pillaging and securing tribute. It would be like you take the difficulty of war in the Medieval era and bring that to the Ancient and Classical eras. Cities would be harder to capture with early units and the battles would take place in the field.
  
  
• Building wonders not to finish them is silly; failgold should be a consolation prize not a strategy. You could change wealth and research back to vanilla style of being affected by multipliers such as Libraries or Markets so they'd get better as the game goes along and you can really specialize cities. Or you could just nerf failgold from wonders to 75% of the hammers invested become and you get a bit of .
  
  
• I would add a Celestial Navigation ability to a tech after Sailing but before Optics. It enables ships to enter ocean tiles and gives a 25% chance for ships to survive if they end their turn in the ocean.

 

[plastiqe]

Oil based Naval Combat

I predominantly use only two ships. Destroyers and Aircraft Carriers are both great; Battleships and Submarines on the other hand are ineffective so here's how I'd buff them:

• Battleships +25% against Destroyers and +1 movement so they can keep up with Navigation II Transports.
  
  
• Submarine gets the Ballista Elephant ability to target Carriers and Transports first in a stack. Both subs are nerfed in strength but gain an attack bonus, so Submarine becomes 20 with +50% on attack. Submarine and Attack Submarine switch abilities to carry spies or nukes. Attack Submarine is renamed Nuclear Submarine to differentiate between it and U-Boat type WWII subs.
  
  
• Destroyers lose the ability to see subs. All Air units can see Submarines on Recon missions.
  
  
• Ship of the Line and Ironclad (which needs their own buffs still) can be upgraded into Battleships. Caravel can be upgraded into regular Submarine.

This way there is a bit of rock/paper/scissors in WWII era naval combat. Battleships are countered by Fighters launched from Carriers. Destroyers intercept Fighters but lose badly to Battleships. Subs bypass Battleships and Destroyers and go straight for the Carriers and Transports but they're weak on defense when spotted by planes.

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Civics

Government

• Castles give an extra +1 per unit stationed in the city under Monarchy.
  
  
• Police State gives +50% defense against espionage and Forts +8.

Buffing Castles is good for PRO. Buffing Castles with Monarchy allows it to compete a little longer because it would be the best Gov civic for happiness, instead Rep always being the superior choice.

Police State buff allows use outside of pure wartime situations, in defending against espionage and generating it working Forts in the BFC.

Labor

• Slavery gives Emancipation-like unhappiness starting as soon as another Civ you know is in a more advanced Labor Civic.

Gives an indirect buff to Serfdom and Caste because they aren't giving Slave unhappiness. Still flexible in that if you want to stay in Slavery you can just kill off the AI that is using another civic or you can force unhappiness on everyone else by taking another Labor civic yourself early on.

Economic

Late game Econ civics come down to two choices: Free Market or State Property. Even in K-Mod Environmentalism and Mercantilism are both only marginally useful so here's a couple ideas based on buffing them with their own improvement based economies.

• Mercantilism also adds +2 per specialist and +25% maintenance costs from Corporations.
  
  
• Environmentalism also gives a free specialist for each Forest Preserve like the National Park for your entire civ (the National Park city would get double free specialists).

This way you've got Free Market for cottages/corps/commerce, State Property for watermills/workshops/production, Mercantilism for farms/specialists/food and Environmentalism for specialists/corps/forests.

Religion

• Organized Religion gives double production to building Missionaries instead of being able to build them without a Monastery.

Monasteries are pretty good for the science boosts but they're obsolete even earlier than Sci Method because you can just skip them and use OR. OR incidentally makes building your religions Monastery easier... which you don't build because you're in OR. By giving +100% production on Missionaries they aren't such easy 2-pop whips which is fitting because I don't really think of using slaves to spread a religion.

 

[jmas]

• Mercantilism also adds +2 per specialist and +25% maintenance costs from Corporations.

I appreciate the ideas you've laid out in the last two posts. There's plenty more than I am really fit to comment on since I'm a pretty casual player

But to clarify: You talked about buffing mercantilism. Do you mean -25% Corporation maintenance costs under mercantilism?

 

[plastiqe]

I appreciate the ideas you've laid out in the last two posts. There's plenty more than I am really fit to comment on since I'm a pretty casual player

But to clarify: You talked about buffing mercantilism. Do you mean -25% Corporation maintenance costs under mercantilism?

I welcome the feedback so thanks for that. : )

I would buff Mercantilism to:

• No Foreign Trade Routes
• 1 Free Specialist per city
• 2 per Specialist
• Corporation costs are 25% more expensive

The reason I buff specialists 2 is so that a Specialist Economy can compete with a Cottage Economy in the late game. The reason I make corps so expensive (they aren't really useable here) is so you can't power specialists with a food corp (Sushi/Cereal) and still use improved Merc + Rep. The idea is that your economy would be based on Farms, and then Biology Farms to run specialists that would be similar to Towns under US, FS and EM. Since Merc/Rep Farms is earlier than US/FS/EM/Towns maybe it should only be 1.

Likewise Environmentalism is a huge buff. With it, your economy is supposed to be based on having many Forest Preserves everywhere which is hard because you either have to save them all game or grow them yourself. Environmentalism works with Rep and Corps because you can use the - (which is basically more health) to feed cities boosted by food corps.

Also just thinking about it now, I would remove Forest Preserves from Jungle because it would be too easy to just leave a big section of jungle to late game and have an instant super city. Jungle could still contribute to lower global warming (maybe even more than regular forests do) but because there is no advantage in chopping it (compared to forest chop hammers) there is no advantage for keeping them in the late game under buffed Enviro.

 

[jmas]

^^Thank you for clarifying.

 

[plastiqe]

Np. : )

I went back and reorganized/added a few more Civic thoughts that I'd posted elsewhere. I suppose it's obvious that I could just mod these changes myself but 1) I kinda just enjoy the theoretical game design and 2) I haven't bothered learning any Civ IV modding. Maybe if enough people are interested in a K-Mod Expansion Pack (and not just with my ideas here) we can get somebody to do it like a modmod of K-mod. I must have some influence as founder of the fan club, right? : P

 

[RyanTheGreat]

Is there anyone who is still working on this mod? there are many good suggestions here.

 

[Charles555nc]

I still play kmod alot, although Ive made 100s of my own changes by now. Almost every unique unit is changed, unique buildings too, increased difficulty discounts for the AI and reductions in straight cheats- like no free techs on emperor.

One thing I love, that I did, is to change forges from +25% hammers to, +3 hammers and +20% hammers. That way, there is a mini industrialism that happen around metal casting...and the player/AI is not completely dependent on slavery for getting things done. Also allows for more military in the older eras, which feels right.

And man, Im winning a game, and then boom someone hits assembly line before me and gets the +3 hammers and +25% hammers of factories, more with coal plants. All that production and AI production discounts means they can fight you with human like military levels.
Especially since I went in and set high priority levels for certain buildings in the xml. Temples or monateries didnt even have a culture tag on them in the xml...

I went in and changed the leaderhead infos values and made them to be more aggressive to neighbors and have a higher unit production trends.

I wish I could get, I think its, aicitydefense changed to be +1 defender per city, but I cant handle reorganizing the files using 5 or 6 programs...