K-Mod Deity Quick Writeup !

[plastiqe]

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

Here is the K-Mod section of the forums where you can get K-Mod:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=470
Mod and patch notes are in the OP of the big thread.

K-Mod comes built in with most BUG features and also has many UI improvements that Karadoc (K-Mod programmer) has made himself. So you run it as a mod on it's own and not with another copy of BUG/BULL. If you have any other questions I'm happy to answer but I'd say first give it a try yourself. If you try it and like it you're eligible to join the fan club. We have cake. : )

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For displaying enemy units you can use F5 Military instructor, click on the leader you want, and then even click on individual units if you want more detail. It will show you everything visible to you so if you have Espionage vision on Babylon you'll get a lot of information. Demographic charts are another good indicator.

I'm sure you're right on the Curr rush, I guess I wasn't thinking on Quick/Deity terms there. I agree with kossin that Mali were the perfect choice for this map but I don't see anything wrong with using the strongest team to play the strongest A.I. And it seems like you've really leveraged your Mali advantages well so good job on that. : )

Another thing you could do to get that Horse tile back is run Spread Culture spy missions against Hannibal's city. If he has a lot of culture the 5% you add each mission will be significant and you'll end up with discounts on everything else you spy in that city. Remember it is not just the border cities so for example Djenne's culture could help on the front lines. This is why the Culture redesign is better in K-Mod, you can really fight over key tiles like this.

For the barb galleys, if you can build a workboat in Gao you can lure them into Carthaginian territory and then hide in one of his cites. He deals with the barbs and you sail back and build a fishing net. If you keep everything fogbusted from then on you won't have a problem.

 

[drewisfat]

Just another reason why putting the gspy in Babylon was a mistake. Im not really running a spy economy btw just hoping to steal a few techs. But it brings up the point of espionage in kmod. I heard kmod AI "has better espionage" in that it will spam different missions on you. But I also noticed in this game that even though I did settle a gspy, I was getting insight into not only passive demographics but tech researches by several of the AI. Is this because the AI is spending all of its esp points??

If so this seems like a silly mistake by kmod. Espionage is broken and dumb because virtually all of the missions aren't worth it, especially in a FFA game. If you want to knock out my granary thereby letting me see what you're teching... go right ahead. It seems like if the AI is more espionage focused then kmod nerfed the AI while simultaneously making it more annoying for the player.

I really think culture in kmod is a disastrous change, but I don't want to spoils what happens in the game yet.

Also there's going to be a slight delay til the next update. My roommate is a delinquent and decided to see what would happen if he didn't pay his half of the Internet bill.

Internet is back!

 

[pomthom]

Hey dude, very nice read so far. Thought I'd mention I think most of your #19 post screenies got lost in an internet black hole...

 

[drewisfat]

Nice catch, fortunately the information was still conserved, but I had to go digging for it in parallel universes. Pics should work now

 

[drewisfat]

New Update!

So as we were approaching MT and gunpowder, I was getting awfully nervous about the lack of horses in gao's territory. Then something really good happened.

Spoiler :

I only felt bad for the sheep.

Spoiler :

And the cuir build-up begins! I was going to power the build-up with back-to-back golden ages and max out workshops to the point of starvation for cities. This also meant chemistry was the next tech on the line.

Spoiler :

Meanwhile Monty capitulated to Toku, and Hammurabi was being hammered by the japanese, aztecs, and carthaginians. I was glad Carthage was distracted, but I didn't know how long hammurabi could hold out. I didn't want to border a super blob Toku, and plus Hammurabi was my horse supplier!

Spoiler :

So I wasn't too surprise when Hammurabi came begging for a rescue
Ideally I could get two vassals here and stop Japan from wiping off Hammurabi. But this was dangerous, I might be biting off more than I can chew, and if I fail to conquer Carthage I've lost the game. I had about 45 cuirs at this time I think, which is a lot but not A LOT. I was going to declare in 2-3 turns, so I was more than willing to accept Babylon into the fold. High risk high reward. Let's see what I inherited.

I had already split up my cuirs in Gao and Ligurian, about 20 each. The ones in Ligurian would wipe up this Carthaginian stack shown here after recently conquering Sippa. The cuirs in Gao would push into Carthaginian territory.

Utica wasn't that heavily defended, as his troops were on the offensive in Babylon, and on the new defensive front vs Spain who had just DOWed him. Perfect

Spoiler :

Reinforcements were pouring in on the eastern front as I pushed towards Carthage itself. It was better defended, and Hannibal had reached musketmen. That spy is just there for scouting, not city revolting btw It was going to be a tough battle, and the game hinged on it!

Spoiler :

Took it with only two units!! I was worried he would reconquer it on his turn and I'd have another tough second battle coming up. But he actually accepted the loss and backed off.

Spoiler :

Meanwhile in the western front things were tight as well. I had liberated Akkad back to the Babylonians, after all I owed my amigos for the horses

Japan's main stack was on the outskirts of Babylon itself. He had recently fought a battle with babylon's stack, and so I had sent in cuirs to reinforce. He had a really nasty stack though, it's always a bad sign when you literally don't know how big it is. So I was more than happy that he would accept peace this turn.

 

[drewisfat]

A couple turns later Hannibal was ready for the pain to end, and he was willing to pay handsomely

Spoiler :

Now I've got a choice to make.

1. I can attack Japan, who has spammed an unimaginable amount of units at this point, but they're still obsolete to cuirs, nonetheless cavalry that I have atm.

2. I can attack the dutch. Granted I can't conquer the dutch, I have no tech advantage at all and I'd be facing rifleman and cavalry. But the problem was the dutch were really running away with the game tech-wise. I figured if I attacked Toku they would probably roll over Spain, and I wouldn't be able to touch them until I got nukes, assuming I got nukes in time. And if they attacked me before I had nukes they would roll over me as well.

3. I can attack Spain and attempt to vassal him before the dutch do. Hopefully I could then bribe the dutch and conquer toku/monty. Ideally I could let the dutch run away towards a space victory, but sneak in a dom victory by conquering the rest, (probably conquering toku and monty vs vassaling). By my rough estimation that would give me the dom, even with the rest vassaled and the dutch free.

4. I can attack no one and try to tech my way til nukes. Maybe Toku and Dutch will fight each other and cancel each other out, or something

Some important screenshots to consider:

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Also notice, I've taken first place! Ofc this will be very short lived at the current rate of the Dutch teching. My economy has virtually collapsed since I've been pumping all cuirs/cavs. It's going to be heavily powered by tech trade manipulation with my two vassals, although it's so weak I'm at risk falling behind them!


Also here comes the culture gripe.

Spoiler :

For the record, that's with 20 cuirs in the city. Here's Carthage:

And that's with 30 cuirs.

And for the record I went on a testing tangent and saw that with 50 cuirs, the city was still over 4% revolt. This kind of insane. I'm not imagining this am I? This is much worse than stock BTS right? It's not like they have 10 world wonders in those cities either or something.

Telling me it costs over 60 units to squash a revolt is ridiculous. It's not an option. I would have to park my entire military force in the city for it to not revolt. If it cost somewhere around the 15 unit range, it would be a decision for me to make, do I want the extra offense, or do I want to keep the city, or do I want to compromise? Instead the decision is quite simple: I'm not going to keep the city. I'm going to build wealth in it until it inevitably flips. And this is how I feel culture is playing out in kmod on the high levels. There's not really room to manipulate it. It's just simply a "you are screwed" constraint. Sure it increases the difficulty, but it doesn't increase the decision making. Parking my entire military and tanking my economy to keep one city isn't a choice. Neither is running artists in every city and building 8 world wonders and a whole bunch of temples and monasteries just to make my outer cities keep all their tiles. No, instead the answer is you are just going to lose tiles that are anywhere near the enemy's capital, and that is that. Even when the tile was IN the basic square and was ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to the success of the game (horses in gao) I couldn't win the fight. Now much of this was my fault for the whole spawn busting fiasco, but even if I had done that I think I would have lost, or at least been late. And so essentially even if I tanked this entire city's development to getting the horses, I couldn't do it in time. And this was the ideal situation where I would care enough to fight for tiles. Any other resource or tile, I wouldn't have tried to begin with. And so I think that's the overwhelming thing about culture tile fights: You're going to lose. Before if I cared a lot my outer city could run a couple artists and whip a theater. Now it's not even worth that. Sure the game got "harder" but it did so by eliminating choices.

And honestly I feel like this this change was made to make it more interesting for players on like Prince level to culture-pwn enemies, or because it "makes more intuitive sense" to have culture not as much city-focused as empire-focused. I don't buy this. It's a game, the entire concept of culture dictating national borders is shaky at best, but ultimately I care about how it effects my game and whether it makes it more interesting or not. Here it looks to be a decision-killer. And what's the whole deal with trade routes and culture??? It seems like they contribute a very small amount of culture, and it's not like I control my trade routes? DO I??? Like short of closing borders with someone. Seriously what is the point of finding out my capital is 1.6% dutch or whatever. I'm perfectly ok with many balance fixes, things like buffing serfdom or buffing protective trait. But it seems really bizarre to completely rework a complicated feature, that wasn't broken to begin with, while still leaving in place nonsense like 4x barb galley spawns and peacevassals.


Whew got that off my chest. Don't take it personally though, I still love all you kmod fans

 

[MarigoldRan]

Reading this with interest. Glad you're having fun! Much harder to swarm over AIs with K-mod. It's more realistic that way.

 

[pomthom]

I only felt bad for the sheep.

Were they also abused by K-mod culture?

I guess if you do decide to go for the orange guy, you should bribe in Izzy with you. It's expensive now but will be less once you DoW. I would be more inclined to attack an easier target such as Toku, but going for Bill von Runaway now will probably save you a lot of pain and effort later on.

Problem with attacking tech leaders is that it's difficult to prevent them from bribing others against you...

 

[JSS]

Were they also abused by K-mod culture?

Maybe they were abused by Hammurabi, if you know what I mean.

 

[pomthom]

Maybe they were abused by Hammurabi, if you know what I mean.

Well that was a given (poor things)

 

[drewisfat]

Listen I won't tolerate this libel that the babylonians committed some sort of bestiality act. That was part of a propaganda piece from millennia long past. Hammurabi is a stand up guy who furnished us with horses and then peacevassaled to us. He's a great guy; I have no closer friend!


I was really worried if I attacked the dutch he would either bring toku into the war or toku would just enter the war b.c he's toku. I knew when I attacked the dutch I couldn't wipe him out anyways, he was much stronger than I. I was just hoping to sack amsterdam and maybe another city and then make peace, just to slow him down. But if Toku entered the war, my allies and I would start losing cities quickly and it would probably be a game over.

Idk if I mentioned it before, but based on scattered intel, my best estimate was that Toku had nearly 200 units plus w.e Monty had. They may be backwards medieval still, but he was a true unit spammer.

 

[Nexlev]

I vote "go big or go home". It's a shame that you probably can't bribe Toku against Willy. Bribe Izzy against the dutch and then attack him. Between Izzy and the babs he won't reach your empire. If you merge with Izzy's stack you might be able to let her bombard and then raze his cities before she has a chance to take them. There is a chance that if you can cap the dutch, he'll also give you good techs in return. Of course, you might just get your butt kicked but it's just a game right?

 

[drewisfat]

I decided to attack Toku. I figured it had the best risk/reward, since Toku was still in medieval units and I had about 70 cuirs/cavs in the game now. Amazingly though his power was still higher than mine -- and the dutch were double mine.

Spoiler :

This was the troop situation in Kagoshima.

Spoiler :

And here are the troops in Osaka. Charge!!!!!

Meanwhile the Dutch invaded Spain, which didn't surprise me much. The Spanish didn't have a chance, and it wouldn't be long til they capitulated.

The Japanese had several doomstacks walking around, and even one Monty stack. I tried to ignore those and pushed towards Kyoto, but kept Osaka well defended. Hannibal, Hammurabi and Toku were engaged in a bloodbath in and around Kagoshima.

Spoiler :

Then something really bad happened.

Spoiler :

What a sheep-******

The peacevassal lord giveth, he can taketh away. Apparently I had taken first place again, and it's part of the code for him to revolt and say I'm too weak to protect him, and then not revassal because I'm too powerful Ironically I lose first place as soon as he revolts.

This also wasn't the only vassal nonsense going on.

Back in Toku world, Monty had broken from Toku, something about him getting demolished. Once he did this Monty was ready to capitulate to me, except that I had powerful enemies! (TOKU). Now that Toku's lost his two most powerful cities he's ready to surrender. But he won't capitulate to me, because I have powerful enemies! (MONTY).

This made me quite upset and I stopped playing for the rest of the day. I considered the opportunity to not vassal any of them and try to conquer them all outright and maybe go for Dom that way. Eventually I shot this down. I wasn't quite sure it would get me to dom, and I wasn't quite sure I could win. And if it failed I would be too far behind to fight the dutch. And if the dutch attacked any of them, or attacked me, or someone vassaled to the dutch, etc., all losing propositions.

So I made an even peace with Monty, capitulated Toku, and a couple turns later attacked Hammurabi. I went straight for Babylon, and had enough EPs to revolt the city.

Spoiler :

Hammurabi was in over his head and this was was pretty one-sided.

Spoiler :

I considered wiping him the from the map, but I needed him for a couple techs, and wiping his culture would mean huge culture gains for the Dutch and Spanish (who had now capitulated) they would probably build another city each. So I waited until he was talking to me again.

Spoiler :

I now had three vassals teching for me. I was debating whether or not I should bring Monty into the fold. I had always intended to, but I was starting to hesitate. He had rifling now, and was pretty strong for how small he was. I couldn't get the dom win without beating up the dutch anyways, and he probably wouldn't be useful research-wise for me.

Fortunately I didn't waste too long debating this, because:

Spoiler :

Monty is insane

Spoiler :

He had taken Tokyo, which Toku had given me in the peace deal. Fortunately I was able to get my horsies to Kyoto before he could take that too. So he altered course and threatened the Japanese city of Satsuma that you see here. Japan had only a skeleton crew defending the city. Fortunately my cavalry force could take him out before he took the city.

Although.... Satsuma IS culture pressuring Kyoto, and Kyoto's kind of a nice city.
Hold on Toku, two of our cuirs have to heal. We've got complete faith you can hold out for one more turn

 

[georgjorge]

A Deity AI without Rifling in 1650 AD? Wasn't K-mod supposed to make the game more difficult...?

(Not trying to belittle your play which seems very solid so far, just questioning...)

 

[drewisfat]

Keep in mind this is quick speed so the dates are going to be a little behind what you'd see in normal. Also kmod makes them build more units and be more aggressive. More units, more wars (less trading) and it is Toku who loves to be backwards anyways. So with that said I wasn't surprised Toku didn't have rifling yet.


It is definitely still harder lol. What's relevant is tech rate compared to everyone else. After all I'm running slower too because of all the extra unit maintenance and less trade.

 

[Manco Capac]

Losing vassals is already a huge drawback implemented in K-mod. It is personally a despicable re-implementation.

 

[Fluffy_Rabbit]

@drewisfat thank you very much for this write-up - very entertaining and informative. Please keep going

I have played K-Mod a lot on Noble, sometimes Prince, almost always Quick Speed, Random Personalities, No Vassals, WB off, which I consider to be pretty tough - occasional wins mainly losses. As you say, Quick Speed makes the game quite a bit more difficult in itself. Higher than Prince I do not have a chance.

I also generally play small tectonic map with 8 players including me, 30% water, because I find water rather meh and like quick games with lots of action.

I got Civil Service from Oracle in a recent game and even that did not help that much :/

So anyway, massive kudos for playing K-Mod on Deity - pretty sick

The Crush Algorithm Karadoc has written into the code can be incredibly strong - AI rolls up with 50+ unit SoD, rifles and cannons normally - very tough. Also AI very capable of transporting SoD by water and turning up anywhere. Pretty terrifying late game to see 4-5 AI destroyers escorting 8-10 transports - uh oh, I'm dead!

The early crushes the AI attempts (say 8 or 10 axemen) are normally not a problem provided one has HAs. But for sure one needs a massive army in K-Mod and I do recommend Random Personalities for extra difficulty.

On the point of the unknowable huge SoD, in fact you can see all enemy units if you have a spy on the same tile.

I cannot comment on the vassal points because I find the whole thing annoying and always turn it off

I see the criticisms about AI espionage however on any view it is much better than vanilla. I find in long games I end up with at least one, normally two+ defensive spies in every city and try to park spies in as many AI cities as possible.

Particularly awesome is the way AI goes for your bank if you build Wall Street. In many games I have had 4, 5 or even more spies in Wall Street and the bank gets destroyed as soon as I rebuild it. Very effective - particularly where Wall Street is stacked with shrine/corp. Also AI very good at taking out lighthouses where one really needs them. AI also often provokes city revolt as part of its war tactics - again very effective. In contrast, vanilla AI espionage barely exists.

If I can get Internet (of course for experts like you the game does not last that long) I set research to zero and max espionage spending - necessary to ensure eg. space win, even then often not enough.

And of course massive kudos to Karadoc for revitalizing the game with his incredible coding skills (minor gripes aside!).

I agree the cultural thing is a pain where one has captured cities - fwiw I think that would be remedied if K-Mod included IDW - I love IDW and I'd love to see it combined with K-Mod. However Karadoc has said he does not want to change the basics of the game, so somebody else would have to do that I guess.

People may think this eccentric but I often attack with a GA in my SoD - which is possible if one gets up SoZ and Parthenon in same city and/or runs artists with Caste System. In fact popping GAs in strategic cities is a big part of my anti-K-Mod method and can be very effective - in one game I dropped 3-4 artists in a city and culture-flipped most of a continent peacefully. So human should abuse the cultural changes like the AI does, only better!

btw I always play with cultural victory off because late game the AI (or several AIs) can put everything on culture and it is impossible to stop, so my cultural play is purely tactical and/or strategic.

Anyway, I very much look forward to seeing how your game turns out

 

[drewisfat]

I don't have a lot of screenies from the Aztec war, sorry about that.

From where we left off I "accidentally" let Monty take that japanese city, which he sacked I wiped up the troops and then retook my city of Tokyo (which he didn't sack). I didn't have that big of an army any more, and I was only building a few cannons for support. This meant I would have to wait for vassal reinforcements, and they were slacking:

Spoiler :

I was extremely worried about how fast the dutch were running away tech-wise. They were ahead of me by like 10 techs and were starting to build spaceship parts. I begged them for peace twice, and they seemed content to coast to a space race win.

Because of this I was trying hard to get to Fission. I was using a lot of vassal micro with toku/hammb/hannibal to maximize trades.

Meanwhile my cities were building wealth, and then building the factories, so besides a few cannons I was fighting the aztecs with what I already had.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Congrats to Ivan on reaching that combat VI bonus

Meanwhile that stack from Carthage had arrived. It would continue moving to Tlatelolco, where after a close battle they are able to take and sack the city before the rest of its units were wiped out.

The thing that made this war difficult was the fact that despite having such a small amount of lands, the Aztecs probably had something like 150 units, which I didn't even realize at first. This was because the Aztecs seemed to have the genius fighting strategy of making like 5 stacks of doom and placing them randomly in their territory, not necessarily even in cities. The result was instead of having a very dangerous attacking force, it was quickly wiped out, and then he lost a city despite having more than enough defenders in his territory.
A few turns later Toku's SoD arrived, and I decided to follow it with a small stack of my own, thinking we could take the capital and capitulate Monty. Then I noticed Monty's, "strategy" . Toku noticed it too, and decided to withdraw his entire attacking force to rendezvous with 7 knights, leaving my smaller stack out to dry

I'm not that impressed with the tactical level of kmod AI. Probably the number one thing people talked about was how much it blew the vanilla AI out of the water, but I'm still seeing dumb stuff everywhere, albeit a somewhat different flavor of dumb.

In the end, I lost the war with Monty. Well not lost, but I couldn't vassalize him, so I eventually just made peace. He was offering me a weak city, but it was infested with Dutch culture, and taking that would have only helped the orange.

Spoiler :

Osaka had actually quickly emerged as my biggest production city and completed the Manhattan project in only 5 turns I think.

Nukes for everyone!! It's not shown here but like the next turn I was able to squeeze out three GP so I could power this nuclear build up with a golden age!!!

The last tech I needed was radio for subs. After that I just stockpiled gold.

There is a big problem with the planned nuclear war. The dutch are very water-based, and all but one of their cities borders the coast, which makes them a very good target for being completely obliterated by nukes. The problem is, I only have three coastal cities, plus Kyoto, which is weak and loves to revolt. And the only one of these cities with a good amount of production is Gao, meaning I'm going to have underbuilt transports/subs relative to all the nukes I had.

Spoiler :

Meanwhile, the Aztecs decided to peacevassal to the Dutch, who were heavily in the lead at this point. Annoying vassal crap plagues this game. Remember how I lost Hammurabi "cuz i was too powerful?" And now Monty, a warlord civ, has decided to capitulate to the Dutch, despite the fact that they are running away with the game. Monty isn't playing to win; he's now playing for the Dutch to win, which makes no sense at all. Given how close this is turning out to be, everything counts. Monty isn't that big, but if I have to waste a dozen nukes and a few ships on him....

Spoiler :

No no no!!! I'm not ready! I have 5 turns to wipe out Amsterdam. I need more time!!

And look at all the units he's got in Amsterdam!?

Spoiler :

You're looking at all the units in Amsterdam atm. I scrolled over through a few times, and you can see the last of the helicopters are near the top of the list. There's almost two full unit screens of units in the city -- so there's about 160 advanced military units, in just the capital The dutch are CRAZY strong and are on future tech.

 

[drewisfat]

@ Fluffy_Rabbit: I think much of getting better is about learning what the most efficient way to build is in the game. And (somewhat unfortunately) it's usually best to NOT build most things. So for example, while I could have built 10 spies and ran counter espionage missions, etc., this is going to tax my civilization MUCH more than just dealing with the occasional destroyed granary. And similarly banks/wall street are going to build my economy much slower than things like bulbs and failgold. And ofc if I have no Wall Street/banks, there's no super destructive espionage move for the AI to make So yeah as you move up higher levels a lot of the units/infrastructure/wonders become completely useless. Don't get me wrong, getting better is still good, and civ is still a really great game. It's remarkable just how many decisions there still are to make in civ iv, and virtually every other game similar to it (Total War / Paradoxes / civ V) are just really easy to master in comparison.

I can understand that Kmod might be more enjoyable for people in the middle levels of difficulty. You can still keep up with their economy with a wider range of tactics, and unlike the noble AI in BTS, you can't walk over the AI with 10 unit armies or whatever.

But I'm pretty competitive and don't like to move down in difficulty levels And from my perspective things like culture changes in kmod act as constraints. While yes I could have have dropped a couple of great artists to try to lower the revolution chance in Carthage, using GP like that would have meant no golden age, which would have meant no army to beat Carthage in the first place Similarly building a bunch of wonders, theaters, temples could have made my culture stronger to begin with. But it would have meant also losing the game even on emperor because of just how inefficient those buildings are. Can't really justify getting a few extra tiles at the cheap low cost of eliminating any window of attack for cuirs

Having an empire high in culture = unacceptably inefficient for play on higher levels (unless you're going for culture ofc). So I would never be willing to fight an empire wide culture battle. However, in localized cases I could be willing to fight for culture. If one city can add 2-3 important tiles by fighting culture, I might see myself running artists, and building more culture buildings -- in that city. They could in the foreseeable future pay off by gaining critical tiles. But it's never going to be worth tanking my entire civ to boost culture. So it feels like a punitive constraint, because the AI (by its nature of building random buildings) is always going to overwhelm you with culture.

By moving culture from city-based to empire-based, kmod essentially removed cultural decisions from high level games.


As far as displaying enemy troops, what I was trying to ask was is there any way such that every stack on the screen will simultaneously display the troops above it (like they do when you mouse hover). It would make for much more effective screenshots, and I'm new to sharing games so I was wondering if this was a common thing others had figured out.

On the Internet, I have actually always felt the Internet while very situational, can potentially be an extremely good wonder, and that it's even more likely to be great on high levels. I made a post on that like a year ago with most people disagreeing with me

As far as high level pros beating the games earlier, that's not just because they're so good that they win so early, after all they often lose early. It's that the major most efficient attack method as I said earlier is cuirs. Usually on normal speed pangaea you can conquer your neighbor with cuirs, which then gives you two empires and you upgrade to cavs, and then conquer another neighbor, which then makes you snowball out of control etc, ---- OR you fail your cuir rush and resign. It's not that they are wiping out AIs earlier because they're better, but because it's easier to wipe them out with cuirs than with infantry, usually. And when cuirs fail or win incompletely, like on non-pangea maps, or here with quick speed, nukes then completely obliterate everything the AI can do. In a close game (like this one) it's much easier and more efficient for me to win with nukes then by building a space ship. On high levels the AI often becomes impossible to keep up with technologically. Nukes, however, are the great equalizer, and so the Internet takes a back seat to beelining fission.


Also I would highly recommend playing with culture victories and vassals turned on It's good to give the computer more ways to threaten to win (and you can stop it just by leveling one of the 3 cities). And as much as I've griped about vassals in this game, I think vassals are still very important and add a lot to the game. Peacevassaling is just notoriously broken, annoying, and potentially game-ruining.

Also how are naval invasions different on KMOD than BTS? I've been under the impression the AI can do naval invasions in stock BTS. At least..... i dont know what else to call it when the AI from across the ocean takes my cities!!
Naval invasions by the AI are just generally ineffective because:
1. You can see them coming and intercept them, and they risk tremendous losses.
2. They have to face giant penalties attacking directly out of a boat.
3. Their reinforcements are a dozen turns away, and with all of your cities nearby you can usually quickly take back the city.

The only thing I see that would make kmod harder is having bigger stacks and being more likely to raze your city and not let you reconquer it. Idk why people would describe this as particularly being enhanced naval warfare. But then again this is a pangaea map, so I didn't get the opportunity to be navally invaded!

 

[drewisfat]

Time for de big war!! I'm going to fight this with only subs/transports/nukes leftover cuirs/cavs and a few drafted infantry! First some demographics/military pages:

Spoiler :

Man what a stellar economy I got
Obviously I only care about production at this point, and the Dutch are still beating me by 500 there


But the military score.... is just

I'm at 91 tat nukes and 6 ICBMS! If only I had enough ships to get those babies into position, I could wipe the map!

The plan of victory is going to be: First kill Amsterdam at all costs, second conquer and occupy Aztec/Spanish lands to push for Dom victory. Try to do as much damage destroying big Dutch stacks / razing cities where I can. Also use a bunch of nukes on the border between the Dutch and the rest of the continent, hopefully creating a no-mans-zone from the fallout, delaying any push, and then nuking any push that comes.

I played around with the tactical layer to hopefully make the presentation more interesting for you guys. Also for those of you who are inexperienced with nuclear war, or are still in the "build ICBM" phase of your civ career, hopefully this will be really interesting to you as well

The nukes in my cities are the ones I own, and the "nuke" over their cities are the cities I intend to nuke. I also label a couple of paths with 2 turns indicating it takes two turns. The sub/nukes labeled are mine and the dests are their destroyers (I don't have any). My transports are unlabeled, but are near relevant subs. Hopefully it's all clear!

Spoiler :

Here is the first, most important pic. If you notice the date is 1906 not 1908, the reason being?? It takes two turns for my transports to get through Dutch territory and reach Amsterdam

This is very bad. It's hard for a one turn strike to fail, and likewise it's hard for a two turn strike to succeed. I felt really embarrassed and upset at myself for not noticing this sooner. I kinda got used to transports just moving super far, maybe I won the circumnavigation bonus one too many times for my own good If I had seen this earlier I probably could have teched refrigeration or had a vassal tech it. Or I could have gimmicked some exp on one of the transport, with a GG or something.

Instead I'm in big trouble. Remember he has launched his space ship, I must level Amsterdam before 1910 or it's game over. I've got 6 nukes and several transports in this main stack. Unfortunately he has 6 destroyers "guarding" the oil well right off the coast, after I move my transports and subs into position they can just gobble up my force. Also I know Amsterdam has a bunch of battleships/transports garrisoned in the city, and there's several other Dutch cities nearby that likely have garrisoned navies as well.
A few things to consider tactically going forward:

- It takes roughly 2 nukes to level most or all military units in a city (sometimes more if they have shelters)
- I have no choice but to nuke Amsterdam on the first turn to kill off the massive army (~160 units) and naval garrison there.
- After the first turn they will almost certainly reinforce Amsterdam with more units, meaning I will need to nuke it twice on my second turn, at least, to have any chance of capturing the city.
- To kill off the destroyer stack will also take 2 nukes.
- He has SDI, meaning tactical nukes are only successful 62.5% of the time (I think).
- I have two subs, so 6 more nukes, not directly with the stack but that could move into range to nuke Amsterdam.
- I have 6 or 7 ICBMs as a last resort, which have a 25% chance of going off successfully.

So the main question is do I waste nukes killing the dest stack, or do i trust them to keep guarding the oil? Nukes on the destroyers can still miss, so nuking them risks me running out of nukes to hit amsterdam (which will take at least 4 nukes going off successfully), and pulls resources away from hurting the Dutch elsewhere.

Here's a look at the southern coast. I have enough subs on the east to pretty safely raze Cordoba, but I also want to kill Haarlem if at all possible, because it has a monster stack and four ICBMs headed my way if I leave it alone. Note 5 more dests guarding the oil.

Spain is going to get run over in the first turn pretty easily. I also have several nukes in the city north of Etruscan (not shown), so I won't have to use sub nukes on Estrucan. My goal is to occupy these cities. They should be safe from the Dutch and the Spanish capital will be a good staging area for nuking Dutch cities on the eastern coast.

I have two loaded subs that can get into the battle and I plan to nuke the Aztecs out of the game on the first turn. I don't have loaded transports near their coast, and the conquest invasion will have to come slower with cavalry from the mainland. But the Aztecs like the Spanish don't have SDI, and I plan on abusing that by nuking all of their units off the peninsula. I may also use ICBMs here to nuke the one city not in tat. nuke range.

Here's the border between us and the Dutch. I was unable to get all my nukes loaded into submarines in time, and I've stockpiled them in these cities. The goal is to nuke anything that comes at us, and hopefully slow down any invasion with fallout / vassal meatshields. Remember the Dutch have an insanely big army, and I essentially have no army, so I'm counting on a nuke shield to last me until I get dom.

If you notice I'm able to raze S-hertogenbosch on the first turn with my two movers. I have to be careful to nuke to the left of it though, so I don't block my owns troops with fallout.

Unfortunately Kyoto is just barely 2 transport turns away from Middelburg, so I can't level this city on turn 1, and moving transports out risks them being destroyed by the Dutch Navy.

So yeah that's the situation right before I start I declare war and all hell breaks loose. Usually the fact that every city except Toledo is coastal would make a nuclear war a simple one-turn affair, but unfortunately he was just too fast with his space shuttle, and I have very few naval units in position. But now it makes for a really exciting endgame!