K-Mod Deity Quick Writeup !

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I am not sure, but I think the 3 turns chop was implemented for MP because quick speed is best for MP.

I am sure. The 3t chop on Quick speed is a rounding up issue plus a quality control miss. Worker turns are measured to hundreths of a turn. The computational result for a chop on Quick speed is 201 hundreths, which rounds up to 3 turns. If the computation had been done correctly, it would have been 200 hundreths or 2 turns.

I will allow that the developers were possibly aware of this bug and may have decided to not fix it due to Multiplayer concerns. However, I rather doubt that any such dialog occured; MP players were probably fine with 3t chops on Quick, since they rarely play MP on slower speeds and wouldn't notice a game speed balance issue; that's only important to those of us that would like such game speed balance issues fixed. For example, a Peace Treaty is always 10 turns regardless of game speed. Or Open Borders grants +1 diplomacy for 25t on all game speeds. There are dozens of other turn thresholds that are identical on all game speeds, whereas they should have been scaled to game speed.

In my opinion, BtW needs another major bug fix release, but it will never get one from the original developer. That's where K-Mod and other projects like it might be able to help.

Seraiel, you don't seriously think I would abandon CFC Civ IV Hall of Fame competitions? I would be more enthusistatic about HoF, if some of the more basic things wrong with it were fixed (like lifting the prohibition of the Balanced Resources option; Standard Resources has always been required).

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[soundjata]

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.

I live in Vietnam. Farmland do turn into coastal tiles.

Great write-up by the way

 

[drewisfat]

@Timsup: What does burning their cities to the ground accomplish? It's the nearby cities that culturally pressure a city once you capture it, destroying it not isn't going to solve anything.

The main difficulty in kmod from what I saw is that each AI built 2-3x as many units and is willing to attack you immediately. (AIs start with a lot of archers, so this is game over if it happens).

But yeah I stuck with the tried and trued cuir rush and equalizing nukes.

 

[plastiqe]

Well, to keep a good city in the middle of another empire you can raze the ones around it that are pressing culturally. That's one option and I think what Timsup2nothin was getting at.

Karadoc mentioned something about early rushes on high levels a little while ago:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12646248&postcount=10
TLDR = BTS code fubar, he might change it for next K-Mod release.

 

[drewisfat]

They can just resettle and culturally pressure you in a few turns. Keeping the cities at least prevents them from resettling there. And after all, I don't want to hurt my vassals, they're vassals.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I was thinking about your horses. A razing trip to Carthage would have certainly solved that problem. So there's a decision to be made there. Burn Carthage to the ground early (short term benefit; horses) or wait until you can vassal them (long term benefit; stronger vassal). Whether burning them to the ground is possible or not would factor into that decision of course.

I don't remember what version of Civ it was, or even for sure if it was Civ or another strategy game, but I've played games where 'pruning wars' were a nearly critical strategy. A pruning war generally didn't gain you much of anything, it just trimmed back the neighbor and slowed their progress. I don't do it in Civ 4 myself much because once a war starts it's almost always best to press it to conclusion...but in K-Mod maybe the culture situation improves the value of a pruning war approach.

 

[Seraiel]

@ Tu2n: On Deity you cannot simply make "razing-trips" , even less on K-mod Deity.

What drewisfat said was, that AI was building too many units to conquer the Horses, also, conquering someone without strategics again is near impossible on that difficulty.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

@ Tu2n: On Deity you cannot simply make "razing-trips" , even less on K-mod Deity.

What drewisfat said was, that AI was building too many units to conquer the Horses, also, conquering someone without strategics again is near impossible on that difficulty.

Yeah. Diety doesn't allow for much beyond 'this way is the best way and in fact pretty much the only way'. Guess K-Mod doesn't really change that...just makes the one way harder.

 

[drewisfat]

So you were suggesting attacking Carthaginians before cuirs/horses to get the horses? I assume you meant raising Utica, not Carthage, as that was the city that stole the horses. I'm not sure if it's even possible for me to have led a successful offense, but it certainly would have made a cuir rush later impossible, so the resource wouldn't have mattered.

In hindsight the right move to get the horses would have been what Plastiqe suggested, but I am still pretty unfamiliar with all the espionage options (as they're almost all very bad), and what's worse I wasted my gspy on Babylon. Fogbusting and running a couple of espionage missions would have gotten the horses in a less risky way then a last second trade. (Although TBH, the odds are pretty good that you will be able to trade horses from at least one AI, if you're being nice in diplo).

Still this doesn't solve the main problem I was complaining about, which was captured cities having too high a revolt risk. I actually never lost Carthage, even though it revolted like 6 times, but that made the city near useless. I did lose Dur-kurigalzu and Sippur to the Babylonians almost immediately after that first war.
In all I had 8 cities in revolt trouble that game: Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Sippur, Dur-Kurigalzu, Babylon, Carthage, and Utica. And those were all the cities I conquered (except Akkad). It's kinda demoralizing, and the damage can be severe to non-existent, depending on dice rolls.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I was mostly just looking for some alternative approach, but in all probability you took the only possible line.

So it looks like...

The rush to conquer is still the optimum strategy, it's just made a lot harder because of the massive AI unit production and the reduced value of captured cities.

 

[Angst]

Great read. Great game man...