Idk what I'm going to play next, this was my proudest game and I'm going to take a break for a while
The biggest impetus to me playing kmod again are the culture changes, which I've already explained why I dislike at length. I think it's also important to look at the keys to victory. In most games getting a strong start is important, but here I had a very weak start and a terrible capital, seriously sheep, deer, stone and a one tile river? But the geography of my position was really good, I only bordered two ais, and I was able to cut off some land and secure that I can get to 9 cities.
Normally I would greatly prefer Babylon's starting position, but if I was Babylon here in KMOD I don't think a win would be possible. I would have faced four ais possibly DOWing on me, and could never have secured enough cities for a breakout.
The other important thing is not getting DOWed on. I had only one early war, which I started on my terms, and I actually think helped my victory. If Carthage had attacked me instead of dogpiling Hammurabi, this would have been a much different game. On one hand, this makes diplomacy important, trying to get AIs to pleased and begging is crucial, but on the other hand it's still very luck dependent, and the AIs are willing to go to war immediately, before you can really take diplomatic actions.
And then there's a question of building a defense or not. I ran a large amount of skirms this game early, and it did slow my economy down quite a bit. I was preparing for a possible Carthaginian invasion, but I suspect I would have still lost the game if he attacked me. Even if I survived my economy would have been too far behind. So it begs the question, is it even worth building an early defense or just rolling the dice?? If you think you can win the game 80% of the time, you're likely to play a lot more cautiously, but if you suspect 3/4 of the games are going to be unwinnable, you might just gamble and try for the best economy possible and hope for the best.
I'm also not even sure if it's possible to win offensive wars early on (except through dogpiling luck, and sneaking a city after an AI softens them). On one hand this nerfs some of the OP UUs like war chariots and praets, and takes them from being instant winning units to good early defenders. On the other hand, what do you do if you're stuck to < 6 cities? It looks to me like the answer is you lose.
Still I really did relish the challenge in this game, and it added a lot of excitement that I haven't had since I first beat deity in BTS. I'm just worried that it didn't only improve the AI and buff super weak things, but also buffed things that didn't need buffing. (I made a point in kmod forums about how silly it is to think Musketeers need a buff, when they're definitely one of the best UUs in kmod already.)
I'm also not sure about espionage. The AI using espionage in the way it does actually makes the game easier for the human, because you can more easily get demographics/tech view. But since it's much harder in other ways, I can live with this because it gives me more espionage play and strategic moves than I would have in BTS.
I didn't mention it in the write-up but every turn for a while a bunch of messages came up about global warming striking. Since most of my cities were in the northern region this was actually a good thing, as it turned tundra to grasslands. Global warming was also changed to reflect pollution not nuclear wars, which I don't really like. For starters, the game started talking about global warming in the 18th century I think, when only the Dutch had the ability to build even basic factories. And even with global warming, it's not like I'm not going to build factories. It also hurts the real world application when you tie it this way. Not that I deny climate change lol, but I think it's hard to argue that even now in 2013, which would be a few turns into future tech, it has had such a significant impact already as to turning tundras into farmlands and farmlands into deserts. But when global warming was tied to nuke wars, it made sense, because a nuclear winter really would be a world changing event, although the title global warming maybe doesn't make quite as much sense.
I think though I will definitely give KMOD some more tries in the future, with some different civs or maybe on fractal (although I really much prefer pangaea to all the other scripts). Who knows, maybe if I build enough confidence I'll try to play a "live" game instead of a write-up after the fact
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I also played this game in quick speed. I might be the only person who plays quick speed regularly, so I'll try to advocate for it
It nerfs many of the things that the human is much, much better at then the AI, like whipping, chopping, and overall attacking. In this game for the record, I never ran slavery civic.
I said this in another post and people looked at me weird, as if I didn't know that growth rates and unhappiness from whipping were scaled for the game speed. Still by no means is slavery just as effective. Any type of rushing is less impacting when the total turns it would take to get it normally is decreased. The difference here is smaller between quick and normal, but if you try playing marathon a few times you will definitely see what I'm talking about.
Also on quick it becomes harder to whip units efficiently. On normal it's usually not difficult to put one turn of a few hammers into a unit, and then do a 2-pop whip to get it the next turn. On quick, if you're building the unit in 2-3 turns, you're often faced with the consequence that building the unit for one turn might finish 30% of it, and it would be a one pop whip. Microing it to put in only a couple hammers usually means working much more inefficient tiles, that would offset the gains whipping could make in general. Also attacking is much harder, so the benefits of whipping units into the ground are much less. It's still the best way to get infrastructure if you have enough food.
Lastly there's the point that switching to slavery will still take one full turn of revolt, and it comes early enough that you usually can't couple this with another civic change. With fewer turns in quick, a full turn of revolt is a much bigger penalty to pay to unlock it.
Chopping is also the victim of the worst rounding error in history, and it takes as many turns to chop in normal as it does on quick
Another difference in quick speed is even pangaea games are much more likely to end in modern wars. I've had a decent amount of experience starting nuke fights, so I was pretty confident I could pull it off if I had enough time to prepare. The AI doesn't handle naval invasions well on pangaea script -- it underbuilds its navy and rarely tries its own naval invasion. In many ways this is a good thing, as usually you can ignore the navy and just push through the mainland, and you wouldn't want the computer wasting precious resources on a useless navy. However, when most of your cities are coastal, and I've got nukes, you can really make the computer look stupid.
I don't know what I'm talking about anymore. Anyways I would suggest giving both quick speed and kmod a try. They may have faults, but if you're getting bored of BTS they will mix the game up a little bit and give you a different challenge.
(no seriously I need to learn how to use these 'cause obviously in some cases you don't have any other choice...)
but the backup sub had been taken out. I had three nukes left, and I had to make at least two of them count. Meanwhile let's see what's left of the world after the first turn of nuclear warfare:
There are no survivors!
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
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