K-Mod Deity Quick Writeup !

[drewisfat]

Greetings folks, I had a fun ole time taking a crack at kmod recently and I figured I'd share. I played this game throughout the past week (so it's not "live"), but hopefully it will still be worth reading. Tachy seemed to be doom and gloom about forums dying, so I figured my worthless lurker self would try making my own topic!


I've never played kmod before, but there's enough people on here that are passionate about it, so I figured I'd give it a try. Kmod deity is pretty indomitable (the only person I've seen say they won was shaka under "flukey" conditions), so I decided to jump into the deep end.

*Disclaimer*: I reloaded numerous times. It was my first time on kmod and most of them were on testing tangents. I kept the main load file pretty guilt free, and didn't reload to dodge DOWs, bad battle luck, etc.

Settings: Deity, Quick, Standard, Pangaea, no huts/events, kmod ofc.

Quick might seem a weird setting, especially on the already super challenging kmod. I've played almost solely quick for a year though, so I've started to dig it. Quick speed makes attacking much more difficult, and any rush techniques (whip/chop/bulb) less effective. Overall this hurts the human a lot more than the AI, but on kmod given the noted aggressiveness of the ai early, I figured quick would actually help in the early game a bit. It would also hopefully reduce the risk of getting DOWd while building the first worker


Leader - I didn't think Incans were the best leader for this game. I know, blasphemy. But kmod increased their price a little bit, and since the AI is going to be building massive amounts of units at the start, I didn't think a Q rush could work. Qs would only be good as defense, and only as long as they were pumping archers. I thought skirms would be much more useful and could serve as a solid defender for the early and middle part of the game, so ManSa MuSa it is. (Spiritual is also a little better on Quick speed).

The Start: Ok, so like, when I started this game, I had just recently been all and really didn't think I'd be sharing the game. So I didn't save. And now apparently since it's a mod? the game didn't autosave the start? The earliest save I had was T29, which is where things started happening anyways.

Spoiler :

A nice HOF starting spot eh? lol. But actually it has a couple things going for it. I was already going to go archery first, so I am picking up hunting for the deer anyways. Then early stone means I can get the GW. So I built a couple workers, some skirms, then the GW, and as you can see in the pic im now building my first settler.

IMO GW might be the only wonder worth getting in kmod, lol. No, I'm being serious. The other good wonders = are all in effect nerfed. With the prospect of very immediate warfare you can't really afford to build GLH, the mids or even the oracle. What's worse is even if you did the trade value wouldn't be nearly as good, since everyone is all at this point. GW on the other hand is super cheap with stone, and actually gets better. I figured I would be behind in techs this game, and there wouldn't be that much trading, so espionage = better. Also the extra GG points in own territory might actually matter.

The surrounding area also seemed very food poor, but there were two gold mines and a river to the east. Also the geography was very favorable, it looked like I was only going to border carthage to the south and babylon to the west. Also I could hopefully block Carthage off and secure the rest of my peninsula to the east for later settling.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Look what we have here I thought kmod ais were supposed to avoid dropping workers? Well I came all this way, is it time to poke the beehive?

 

[plastiqe]

Nice. drewisfat, as the founder of the K-Mod Fan Club I'd like to personally extend you an invitation to join.

We have cake.

 

[drewisfat]

Oooh. Well I do like cake, and I am a fan of Dylan in your avatar. Problem is I wouldn't exactly call myself a kmod fan yet This game rly pushed the limits of my sanity.

 

[plastiqe]

Well it's up to you. I started the group this week. Before that I didn't know there was such a thing as groups. You've played K-Mod at least once and perhaps there is the possibility that you'll play it again so you're qualified to be in the group. All it does is show up on your profile and it's not like you have other groups there that would be offended. Don't forget the cake.

If all that and my courteous offer doesn't convince I have my own reasons. I just want more members than the C2C's mod group. : )




Anyways, you've already played this right - what's the holdup on the next update? : P

 

[MarigoldRan]

Oh god. Hannibal, Hammurabi, AND Tokugawa. Two of them are virtually impossible to kill in the early game and Hannibal becomes a beast.

 

[drewisfat]

I have to wait and lure people in with that hook... does he attack hammurabi !?!!

Spoiler :

I did in fact poke the beehive

I was mostly still playing only half-serious at this point, and I wanted to see what would happen. I think I could justify this move though. It was only 30 turns in, and since I had skirms and he had bowmen, I had a very significant advantage. By fighting him now I could weaken him and then make peace when he might be more of a threat. And I mean, free worker

Spoiler :

He wasn't too happy about things though, and I high-tailed it out of there. I retreat my skirm to the forest hill as sort of a forward lookout. It wasn't long before about 8 bowmen came to seek revenge.

Spoiler :

I grouped up the rest of my skirms on the hill near the capital. I even paved an inviting road for him to take to his doom

Spoiler :

He was all like bro, I don't need yo roads. I'm takin yo sheep. And I was all like man... I ain't even working those sheep

Spoiler :

But eventually I felt pity over the sheep I couldn't work. They were innocent and didn't deserve the vile abuse the babylonians were committing. So I countered attacked with my skirms and he ran away.

This happened a few times in a row actually. He would start moving towards my capital, lose a couple bowmen and then turn around, pick up a few bowmen and repeat. I saw in a thread before that kmod ai will not suicide against a city in a fight it knows it will lose, but from my perspective this behavior looked very silly and ultimately self-defeating.

With the GW and fighting in my own territory I quickly got a GG, and was feeling all and decided medics were for wimps, I was going to settle him on a super-skirm!

Tech-wise I was going to push for AH and then HR. I didn't need agriculture or pottery quite yet. I hoped to get some trade out of HR and possibly use it to make peace with Hammurabi if things got scary.

Spoiler :

Meanwhile I had been settling to the east, unprotected thanks to the GW. I grabbed the gold and silver to push my economy along. Then I managed to nab Gao by one turn over Carthage (you can see I actually pushed his settler out by settling). While this city doesn't look that strong, it did have two seafoods and secured horses. It also served as an obvious attack point for carthage that I could focus my defense on, and it was hilled. Most importantly though it blocked carthage from expanding eastward

Spoiler :

Or did it.... RLY carthage? You're going to settle through me, already?

Spoiler :

He did end up turning back. But that random delay cost him this city spot. What was going on here I wasn't too stoked about that spot, but hey a city is a city, although it meant choking off a dangerous ai.

 

[plastiqe]

Re: K-Mod Deity Quick Writeup !

I'm expecting the writeup to be done quickly.
ba-dum-ch!


I guess the fact that nothing I type will change the outcome and that you're two difficulty levels up on me diminishes my willingness to provide comments on strategy. How has this compared to your regular deity quick experience so far?

 

[drewisfat]

Sorry, I'm doing some work atm. I'll post another update when I get done. And feel free to post comments, especially since you've played kmod a bunch before! It will get lonely if I'm talking to myself

As for strategy differences, usually if as mansa I would choke out the AI with skirms, especially if I got a worker steal opp. I've also been roading a lot heavier than usual, although this is in part due to having an excess of workers and not much to improve. You can also see me put walls up in Gao already, which is definitely abnormal. I would never do that in a normal game opting to wait until I got warred and whip them at the last second. But since I was afraid of the AI and had stone and low food, I was puttin walls up early in all the border towns.

I also usually wouldn't get HR early without planning on an HA rush, but with a war going on already I wanted the war tech just in case. Also i wanted something to bribe Hammurabi with in case he wasn't willing to make peace.

 

[plastiqe]

I asked what the 'holdup' was the first time in order to set up the 'quick' joke the second time. Making these wise cracks is not as easy as it looks, yknow.
(take your time, I'm just kidding around)



K-Mod culture is much improved because it logically spreads further than your borders show from city tiles. So a high culture city in the middle of your empire can affect a border war on the edge of your empire. Not good news for you, with Hannibal's Capital and 2nd city so close I don't think you're getting that horse tile back any time soon. Spread culture missions can help, and Carthage will be your best stealing target should you eliminate or cripple Babylon. I'd assign all espionage there now.

Mansa is the best K-Mod leader for improved Serfdom. Your riverside farms are 3 3 tiles under it.

Not K-Mod specific, I wonder why you do kinda random levels of research 50%, 60%, 80%, etc. Due to rounding you waste 1 per turn that you aren't at 100%, 0% or a perfect divisible percentage.
You can check totals in K-Mod F2.
Example: if you have 14 from 2 city empire with -1 in maintenance.
100% = 14 -1
80% = 11 +1
I play epic speed and I use binary research (which is also for other reasons) but I would think on quick speed it's an even bigger deal to be losing 1 per turn in the beginning.

 

[drewisfat]

Yeah the culture changes.... I will rant about that in a little bit. It's safe to say I'm not a fan.

I wanted to try to incorporate serfdom into this game, and I think I might have for a little bit because I was spiritual. The problem is I just didn't think it was that good. I was financial and I had more faith in fin cottages for the long term than farms. I feel the problem with improved serfdom is if I build a lot of farms I'm probably thinking slavery. And in a game where slavery isn't going to work (like this) i try to cottage hard. Also by the time in at vassalage I'm usually wanting caste system to push lib.

I usually slack in the early games and just run it at max until libraries or tech trading come into play. I didn't realize the rounding errors were so significant at the start though. I will definitely keep that in mind.

 

[Fierabras]

But eventually I felt pity over the sheep I couldn't work. They were innocent and didn't deserve the vile abuse the babylonians were committing.

 

[drewisfat]

One important thing I forgot to note happened at the end of the last round.

Spoiler :

Toku DOWed on Hammurabi! Yay yay, fight fight! Oh also Izzy exists, and was willing to trade pottery and writing for HR. At that point I started to save gold contemplating a push to aesthetics.

I was becoming increasingly worried about Hannibal though. I had been producing skirms pretty passionately and I was up to 20. I kept most of them in Gao, Ivan (my hero skirm) was doing a good job of dealing with the babylonian menace.

Then one of the most fortunate and important things all game happened:

Spoiler :

Hannibal declares on Hammurabi. A sick dogpile!!

This made my situation much less worrisome. Although I know the AI can declare multiple targets, it should still be less likely, and if it does he will be mostly distracted. This cleared the way for me to tech to aesthetics safely. It also made me look for something to do with all the skirms I had:

Spoiler :

Aww look at that, the barbs went through the trouble of founding a city for me

Spoiler :

I wasn't completely sold on its location though, but didn't think it was worth risking trying to resettle it. Also it might work that copper and pigs one day. My position was much harder to defend now though. There were now three potential targets for Carthage should he attack, and two for Hammurabi. I built walls in all of them.

Spoiler :

I got my GSpy out and started scouting. Apparently Hammurabi was beating up Toki
He didn't even have siege yet. He took a city from Toku the insane warmonger, with nothing but bowmen and chariots??

Look at all those units. Dozens of bowmen and chariot were spread out all over his empire. I was beginning to worry, even with two war allies. He didn't want an even peace, apparently he wasn't perturbed by losing units in a ratio of something like 15-2. He would accept HR to make peace though.

Spoiler :

That was enough to scare me to give him HR for peace. I could have probably defended the stack, but if he started to pillage? Or just attacked and I lost a lot of units? Better to make peace with him now and secure those units wind up going Carthage's way.

Spoiler :

As plastiq had predicted, Hannibal was pwning me with culture. 95% his horses? It was in my basic 9-tile culture square. Sure it was in his second city's BFC, but that wasn't exactly a cultural mecca. I expected to lose the horses briefly, but not like this.... And he even had the square to the right of it by over 90% What's going on here I still wasn't able to get mysticism, but I started panicking and building libraries in a bunch of cities (much earlier than I would have).

In other news: I had founded Niani in the northwest and tasked the kind villagers there with recuperating the sheep. While the city looks like it's in the middle of a wasteland, it actually has sheep, wheat, fish, a lot of water tiles including a couple lakes. With access to stone and being financial, it would be a really good Moai city.

I had been cottaging the eastern cities to try to carry my weak economy and weak capital. These cities were still pretty food poor. I gave them a couple farms, but they would never become giant metropolises.

The final civs are the Dutch, who are the early tech leaders and seem to be involved in a stalemate war with the Spanish. Monty is the last civ, and I haven't even found his location yet. He's by far in last place, almost below me! I assume he's got a pretty pathetic piece of land.

I settled the GSpy in babylon. This was probably a mistake. At the time I was at war, and wanted full sight of his units. He was also second in the score board and seemingly winning his dogpile. I overrated his long-term success though, and he seemed to be more peaceful/culture tech oriented.

Tech-wise I was trading aesthetics around, and then similar story with Compass. I felt pretty secure military-wise. I still had a decent number of skirms and walls up that could last in a pinch until they had very heavy amounts of siege. I had a peace treaty with Babylon who was being dogpiled, and was also able to beg Carthage. I felt safe enough that I planned on going on a pretty traditional lib path without hampering my tech development in war techs.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Glad to see you're not trying to invade the AI early on.

The biggest change I think K-mod did for war was the whipping changes. Due to the fact that overflow isn't wasted, the AI with its bonuses at Diety can whip out multiple archers/spears per turn.

Personally I think you're building too many libraries. Hammers would be better spent on research. Especially with your mint, you should be focusing on a hammer econ with a start like yours.

 

[drewisfat]

Yeah the libraries were an overreaction, but I saw the culture by gao and got scared. I was worried Carthage would settle an aggressively at me and culturally destroy my other southern cities. Given how impossible warring early on kmod is, and those no ais were no pushovers either, I wanted to keep all the land I could. I didn't have mysticism, so I couldn't build monuments, and it was a tad late for them anyway. Religion was also really slow in getting over to me; all the religions were founded on western side of the continent.

Also I didn't really have anything else to build anyways. I was just spamming skirms, but the relatively safety meant I didn't need to anymore, and having so many skirms was wearing on my economy. I would have built mints (Although the +10% gold, especially in these cities, is really quite negligible), but I didn't have MC (figured I'd probably steal this with spy). My tech path was entirely dependent on maximizing what I could get for trades, as tech trades are so powerful maximizing beakers here usually trumps trying to get techs in a more optimal order.

Also non-kmod fans are allowed to post too ^^ I'm so slow at posting, I need encouragement! I know nothing I do in this game is that radical, but they still might find it interesting how the highest level plays out on kmod

 

[Manco Capac]

Also non-kmod fans are allowed to post too ^^ I'm so slow at posting, I need encouragement! I know nothing I do in this game is that radical, but they still might find it interesting how the highest level plays out on kmod

Aww come on! Be patient. You got twice half as much in views in 2 days than my own thread in over 2 weeks. Patience is a virtue.
I know it is gonna work since it combines two important key-words: Deity + !.

Now, it just needs shakabrade making a quick appearance to show this game was peanuts.

Will definitely look forward this game...up to your downfall.
But won't necessary comment. I'm not a grand commentator these times. Myself I lurk.

And the good aspect with K-mod being not so different than base BTS, people will then give a chance to it.

Sadly, the amount of comments just proved the forums are dying.

Out of curiosity, since you are not Drew (but Patrick), who is this fat person, lol?

 

[MarigoldRan]

[There's a hidden message in Tachxywon's comments regarding your future prospects]

 

[plastiqe]

Yeah the culture changes.... I will rant about that in a little bit. It's safe to say I'm not a fan.

Deity K-Mod and you think the A.I. is just gonna let you keep your tiles, lol.
: P

The problem with all these A.I. all fighting eachother is even if you're safe now they'll all have big stacks that get super-powered for free in Medieval. Right around then your leftover skirm army starts to look like easy pickings. What about a backstab on Hannibal with skirm/siege before it goes obsolete and you get your horses back.

I think the biggest change K-Mod did for war was naval invasions but you shouldn't have to deal with that on Pangea.

 

[kossin]

Now, it just needs shakabrade making a quick appearance to show this game was peanuts.

I'd like to have a word with him if he finds time to play this

~~

Mali seems like an important choice to tackle the extra early AI units. As with 'regular' Deity games, the biggest source of losses is the early game.

Without Mali this game would have gone quite differently on the early DoW... more archers and economy tanking.

 

[drewisfat]

@ Tachy: I figured most of those views were from me refreshing the page

@ plastiqe: I think the biggest change kmod did for war is tell the ai to build 2-3 times as many units Is there any way to have the game display how many guys are in a stack without your mouse hovering over them? Babylon has, literally, over a 100 bowmen/chariots running around. I assume Japan and Carthage have comparable amounts.

Skirms are already obsolete in attacking, and it would require dozens of catapults to really conquer someone. Also keep in mind this is quick speed, walking up to cities one tile at a time, bombarding them, takes a lot of time.
Also keep in mind this is on quick speed, so the tech rate is increasing quicker compared to how long the wars last. My goal is to try to get to get past the medieval era before their wars are done and they start eyeing me.

It might be bland to cuir rush, but the excitement in this game is the challenging settings. I'm going for the tried and proven cuir breakout. For many, many reasons cuir breakouts are much, much better than the rest. Besides being fast, having a big window of attack and being gunpowder, the main reason cuir breakouts are so strong involves teching. Getting to lib, with the bonus tech, using your GS for efficient bulbs, and tech trading all peak in usefulness on the way to cuirs. And then you reach the WFYABTA limit, GP are more expensive and bulb less of a tech, etc.
I also had a good number of cities for cuirs, 7 already and at least 2 more to build on the right. If I was stuck at 4-5 cities I might have been forced into something earlier.

The main obstacle to cuirs as you pointed out though is definitely not having those horses yet. I was still pretty confident that once its borders popped gao could work the fish and clams, and then run a few great artists and get the horses back.

Update:

Not much exciting stuff happens in the next 40 turns and I don't have that many screenies to show . Izzy eventually spread buddhism to me, Hammurabi and Hannibal So we were all kinda happy buddhist buddies. Even though they were fighting for a while. Then Izzy went to Judaism. Then izzy went to Islam. ??? Mild spoilsies: All the civs keep switching religions 2-3 times this game. Was weird.

I was teching and trading on my way to Lib.

Spoiler :

Hannibal begged for philosophy, and I was more than happy to get that peace treaty.
Eventually the wars ended with Babylon, and I couldn't get peace treaty with him. But we were pleased buddhist buddies, and as I could tell because I saw him teching, he was going mostly cultural techs and not interested in picking a fight.

I think it was around this time that Toku and hambs made peace, and Monty attacked Toku, who had blocked him off to like four cities.

Spoiler :

I founded two more cities to the east (not the best pic of them sorry). They were ok cities, mostly tundra and desert, but did have iron, corn, deer and fish. You notice a problem in this screeny though?

Top right of the coast, theres a few fog coast tiles. I forgot to spawn bust them It really was a dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb mistake. I think I was planning on settling there (had fish/clam), but decided the tundra ball wasn't worth it. But still an insanely bad mistake, and I paid dearly for it. A couple of galleys worked there way down threatening the seafood by gao, and with no hammers in that city I couldn't really afford a trireme. I kept hoping Hannibal would be a champ and use one of his many ships to take them out, or that the barbs would go visit him. This never did happen As a result this update is plagued by this giant mistake of mine, which slowed down Gao, which desperately needed the food to pump artists to get the horsies back. This oversight could have lost me the game.

Spoiler :

I finally got MC by trading (Hammurabi was just uninterested in teching it for me) and spammed mints everywhere. That was about the only infrastructure those babies got, besides granaries and libraries. Niani (in the NW corner) got Moai, Timbuktu got the heroic epic, and everyone else was busy getting failgold, mostly from Shweddy, chickenpizza, UoS and Moai.

Spoiler :

I was pushing towards Lib, was trying to get a couple GS out. When I got paper I checked the tech trade screen:

Dutch were running away with it too heavily. They were most likely on Liberalism right now, and I hadn't started education yet. I didn't have my second GS yet, so I couldn't double bulb it, but that would have probably been futile too. I decided instead to change course and go for nationalism -> MT directly. I was glad I had saved my second GSpy. I planned on using my three great people for back-to-back GAs once I got cuirs. I took out my anger by stealing music from Hammurabi, about time my spy did something..

Fortunately it looks like I'm ahead enough of the rest of the AIs, but the Dutch are just running away with this game, and they are one of the most dangerous civs to be running away late game

The state of tech affairs at 1100AD:

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Come on gao..... you can do it

 

[blunderwonder]

Anyone mind posting the link to where I can get kmod Oo? also can it be used with bug/bull? i see that its not in your screenshots. And also is it fairly easy to set up..? cause if it takes an hour of noodling itll sorta piss me off

Its neat that it makes the game more challenging though. Im at a point where normal Imm difficulty NC type games are woefully easy, basically takes the fun out of it, but deity is too much of a micro pain for me to bother with, maybe kmod at emperor or imm will provide some in between Oo. I am curious about the changes, you noted serfdom has some usefulness now, and im curious about how much it is to bribe one civ on another when they have such ridiculous stacks. Neat that you're playing to an espionage type economy, but that sort of precludes going lib Oo at least a little bit. Good thing you didnt have any sweet cities or youd be pissed you missed an early academy