K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

[Charles555nc]

Yeah I was coming back here to delete my last post. Because even with organized promotion, then axemen that are promoted will still have an extra +10% strength.

I did give the warrior +50% vs melee, so they dont die so hard vs spears but you are totally right, that maybe a buff in the city defense area would make them hold their own until you can connect resources.

Quecha itself is tough to balance, too good and you can break the early game, too bad and the uniqueness feel goes away. I gave the Quecha march and +25% defense vs archers. So they can camp forests well or whatnot but cannot conquer any harder than before.

 

[Zholef]

Karadoc, have you looked into teaching the AI how to use tactical nukes and submarines? Is that a possibility or would it be too difficult to implement?

 

[Robo-Star]

Great to see another K-Mod update! Thank you for all your hard work, Karadoc.

Two minor issues - which probably have as much to do with Sevopedia than K-Mod per se:

1) Right-clicking on the research bar directs to a blank Sevopedia page - is it possible to link to the technology currently being researched instead?

2) Sevopedia entries for Corporation Great Wonders include the line (using Creative Constructions as the example) "Incorporates Creative Constructions", but clicking on that underlined part doesn't redirect to the appropriate Corporation entry - it merely stays on the Great Wonder entry. So in order to recall what that corporation does, one must manually navigate to the corporations sections.

Like I said, pretty minor stuff, but counter-intuitive enough that I run into them at least once every play session.

Having said that, I can't even get Sevopedia working in the latest version - it's set to enabled, and I've restarted several times. Ah...I did get it working when I started a new game via "Play Now!", but it's reverted now I've restarted.

 

[Robo-Star]

Welp, I did a clean install of BTS and K-Mod - still no luck getting Sevopedia enabled. Is anyone else having this problem?

 

[Windsor]

Got the same problem. Seems like the sevopedia is disabled in 1.44b.

 

[Robo-Star]

Got the same problem. Seems like the sevopedia is disabled in 1.44b.

Thanks for the feedback. It seems to work if I start a game without checking the Civilopedia from the main menu (I recall there was an issue with how mods load that meant the default 'pedia over-rides Sevopedia until a game is loaded, but I thought Karadoc had fixed that).

 

[Windsor]

Thanks for the feedback. It seems to work if I start a game without checking the Civilopedia from the main menu (I recall there was an issue with how mods load that meant the default 'pedia over-rides Sevopedia until a game is loaded, but I thought Karadoc had fixed that).

Just checked. Works just like you described.

 

[Zacar]

It has been like that for years.

 

[Zholef]

Karadoc, have you looked into teaching the AI how to use tactical nukes and submarines? Is that a possibility or would it be too difficult to implement?

Okay, when I wrote that I assumed the AI didn't know at all what to do with missile carriers and tactical nukes, but after some world builder tests and code browsing, it seems to me that the problem lies elsewhere. If I give an AI that's at war 3+ tactical nukes set to UNITAI_ICBM and a submarine set to UNITAI_MISSILE_CARRIER_SEA, it will load those nukes onto the sub and use them on enemy lands, just as one would expect. So it would seem that the unit AIs work fine. However, in my games at least, the AI never creates this unit combo, but only ever ICBMs. Might this perhaps be a bug in K-Mod? For I vaguely recall having seen more tactical nukes in stock BtS.

Suppose this is a bug and you can fix it, perhaps you could also make the AI not, during times of peace, return its nuclear missile carriers to port, where they become sitting ducks, but instead have them spread out across the seas. This (hopefully) simple change would turn those units from mere first strike weapons into an actual nuclear deterrent. It would be, you know, "far beyond the sword".

Update: Well, never mind. Apparently it's not a bug, but a feature. After running more tests, which proved that the AI occasionally does build tactical nukes and missile carriers after all, I returned to browsing the source code, which I'm slowly beginning to understand, and noticed that you've changed a lot about how the AI decides when to build nukes. I'm a little bit surprised though. In general, you've made the AI so much more smart and ruthless, but it seems to me that, in regard to nukes, you've made them, if anything, dumber than the AI of stock BtS. Tactical nukes are the ultimate weapons in BtS. A truly smart AI would, given the chance, build lots of them, whether it wants war or peace, but especially if it feels threatened.

 

[Zholef]

Hey, don't know if your mod would cover this or maybe Bug, but would it be possible to set automatic airship/plane scouting?

For out over the ocean. Ideally at the start of the turn, so one wouldn't have to keep doing it.

Don't your airships do that if you set them to "Explore (Automated)"?

 

[DarkLunaPhantom]

The game says that cities built by AIs during advanced start are founded in 3960BC and not in 4000BC like it should.

 

[Coldwake81]

I've searched and searched for anyone else having this issue... but in all the pages I didn't see this come up. I downloaded the K Mod and it ran fine, but when I tried to start a multiplayer game through LAN, the person I am playing with can not see any game I create (And vice versa). Did I miss an obvious step in setting up a multiplayer K Mod game?

 

[Gavagay]

I tried againg single-player civ (with K-mod, of course) after a long pause and have the following observation to share.
AI constantly undervalues food and overvalues hammers during the early game. My usual experience is to be among the top civs in food and among the lowest civs in hammers almost right from the start. City governors have the same pattern: they constantly choose mines over farms, etc. Is there any specific reason for this behavior? It is clearly suboptimal and I suppose that simply teaching AI to emphasize food would massively improve its performance.
Also, is it difficult to teach AI to chop forests ASAP? This is always the right thing to do.

 

[Zholef]

I tried againg single-player civ (with K-mod, of course) after a long pause and have the following observation to share.
AI constantly undervalues food and overvalues hammers during the early game. My usual experience is to be among the top civs in food and among the lowest civs in hammers almost right from the start. City governors have the same pattern: they constantly choose mines over farms, etc. Is there any specific reason for this behavior? It is clearly suboptimal and I suppose that simply teaching AI to emphasize food would massively improve its performance.
Also, is it difficult to teach AI to chop forests ASAP? This is always the right thing to do.

In a recent update there was a change to the city governors of both players and AIs which supposedly made them better. You could look it up in the changelog and compare the systems. Personally, I haven't noticed much of a difference.

As for chopping all forests ASAP, I don't see that happening in K-Mod. Forests in one's territory are like invitations for enemies to park their stacks in and the benefits of keeping them around are so insignificant that it's rarely, if ever, better not to chop, but K-Mod targets the general Civ4 player and tries to maintain the flavor of stock BtS. Clean chopping AIs, however smart a move that would be, don't fit in there.

 

[Blitzconfusion]

I've searched and searched for anyone else having this issue... but in all the pages I didn't see this come up. I downloaded the K Mod and it ran fine, but when I tried to start a multiplayer game through LAN, the person I am playing with can not see any game I create (And vice versa). Did I miss an obvious step in setting up a multiplayer K Mod game?

My problem could relate to this, or could not, so I'm going to spoiler my problem so that no one interested in answering a stupid question needs to waste their time.

Spoiler :

I have succesfully played multiple games of K-mod through LAN with others, so I suspect the answer is yes, but- Does K-mod support Hot Seat?

The reason I'm asking is because, for the first time ever, K-mod crashed repeatedly on Hot Seat game on turns 7-8, for no apparent reason.
The reason I think this a silly question is that I added 25 new leaders, 2 new units (Scout Archer and Chariot Archer) and TONS of new skins to my piece of K-mod, and I acknowledge ANY SINGLE ONE could be the reason for the crash. However, I have done tests on each skin and leader, and none seemed to kill the game anymore. Hypothesis time:
1: Does K-mod handle leaderinfos differently, has one a value that would be correct in the normal game, but out of bounds in K-mod, thus causing trouble when such a leader meets other civs, for example? To my knowledge, I copied the BBAI values to all the extras.
2: Does it cause trouble that Scout and Scout Archer share the same button image? I see no reason it would, but I have been wrong before.

 

[Windsor]

Also, is it difficult to teach AI to chop forests ASAP? This is always the right thing to do.

I tried to argue in favor of more aggressive chopping a few pages back, but didn't get much support. It would indeed help the AI a lot if they weren't so completely against chopping as they currently are.

Guess I should take a look at the chopping-code myself.

K-Mod targets the general Civ4 player and tries to maintain the flavor of stock BtS. Clean chopping AIs, however smart a move that would be, don't fit in there.

I find this to be a really weak defense for keeping suboptimal AI-play.

- Civ4 is 10 years old. The average player who still plays Civ4 and is willing to install a mod like K-mod is going to be somewhat skilled.
- Flavor? Why not keep stock AIs love for sending siege only naval invasions then?
- If new players look at what the AI does they should see decent play.
- If the AI learns to play better players can drop down to a level with less AI-handicaps. That's better for flavor.
- Imo it's much more fun to see well-developed empires.

The AI should at least clean-chop the first 2-3 cities.

 

[Zholef]

I find this to be a really weak defense for keeping suboptimal AI-play.

- Civ4 is 10 years old. The average player who still plays Civ4 and is willing to install a mod like K-mod is going to be somewhat skilled.
- Flavor? Why not keep stock AIs love for sending siege only naval invasions then?
- If new players look at what the AI does they should see decent play.
- If the AI learns to play better players can drop down to a level with less AI-handicaps. That's better for flavor.
- Imo it's much more fun to see well-developed empires.

The AI should at least clean-chop the first 2-3 cities.

I agree with you most of the way, but I don't think that making the AI play like a human who understands how underpowered keeping forests for health reasons, lumbermills and forest preserves really is, is the right solution to the problem. In fact, I don't think AI stupidity is the problem. Instead of adjusting the AI to imbalances in the game, we should rebalance the game.

That's what I tried to do here.

 

[Charles555nc]

For those wanting the AI to chop more. You can increase ai_initial_production in global defines, which can effectively give them a few free chops or whatever you would like, from there (I think when the city is founded). Without causing them to actually chop.

I personally went through the xml and set priorities higher for certain buildings (like forge and granary) to get the AIs to develop more consistent, established empires.

Also gave lumbermills -25% defense to make forests less of liability.

 

[karadoc]

I've searched and searched for anyone else having this issue... but in all the pages I didn't see this come up. I downloaded the K Mod and it ran fine, but when I tried to start a multiplayer game through LAN, the person I am playing with can not see any game I create (And vice versa). Did I miss an obvious step in setting up a multiplayer K Mod game?

I've seen this problem before, and I'm not really sure what causes it. The only 'normal' reason I know of for games not to appear on the LAN games list is if players have different mods loaded (or different versions of the same mod). But I also know that on some computers, multiplayer K-Mod games are not visible even when I'm certain that the versions are the same. I don't know what this happens. I haven't done extensive testing, but my guess is that it might happen when one computer has the Steam version and the other computer does not; or something like that.

If you or anyone else works out how to fix it, let me know. In the mean time, the only work-around I know of is to use Direct IP Connection instead of LAN. You can find out your local IP address by opening a Windows command prompt (run "cmd"), and typing "ipconfig". IPv4 Address is the one you want.

 

[f1rpo]

Reporting a small potential AI bug in BtS (not introduced by K-Mod):
When computing the hidden modifiers to relations, the rank difference is divided by the number of civs plus one:

if (iRankDifference > 0) {
  iAttitude += (  GC.getLeaderHeadInfo(getPersonalityType()).
   getWorseRankDifferenceAttitudeChange() * iRankDifference  ) /
   (GC.getGameINLINE().countCivPlayersEverAlive() [COLOR="Red"]+ 1[/COLOR]);
} (same for the 'else' branch)
in function CvPlayerAI::AI_updateAttitudeCache

The rank difference can be at most one less than the number of civs. Consequently, a WorseRankDifferenceAttitudeChange of -1 has no effect. This is probably unintended because about 20 leaders have that variable at -1 in the LeaderHead XML file, e.g. Augustus. Dividing by the number of civs minus one would still mean that the -1 from Augustus applies only when he's ranked last and the other civ is first. The quotient should therefore be rounded to the nearest integer.

It's a questionable mechanism anyway. The civs on the bottom of the leaderboard are in no position to stop those on top from winning. Being sulky mostly hurts themselves. It would make more sense for a civ to dislike its immediate predecessor in the ranking.