K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

[Yin Cognito]

I'm sorry if I "hijack" the thread a little bit, but I have a question, which might be or might be not related to either Civilization 4 as a whole or K-Mod (don't know which one of them yet, although I kind of suspect it might be the former - but that's the purpose of this question, after all).

First of all, here is my savegame, in the year 1830 BC, playing the BTS 3.19 with K-Mod on a slightly modified scenario based on Laskaris' Gigantic Accurate Earth Map (232 x 112 plots): View attachment Qin Shi Huang BC-1830.CivBeyondSwordSave. The game on in Noble and Marathon speed.

As it can be seen, I play as the Chinese and I'm one turn away from being the first to discover Alphabet (so it's before any techs are available to trade) - therefore, at this point in time, all the techs possessed by any civilization are their own. Despite that, I was a little annoyed by the fact that even later in the game (790 BC) I still haven't managed to get REALLY ahead in techs compared to the other civilizations (I mean, I'm surely ahead, but not as much as I SHOULD be).

So I decided to make this little test, to see if it's something "wrong" (read: cheat) on behalf of the AIs:

Step 1: in this year's save (aka before Alphabet is discovered), I'm going to WorldBuilder and count the total amount of beakers "spent" by discovering mine's and Ramesses II's techs (I don't think there is anyone not knowing how to do that, but if there is, it's simple, you just change the player in WorldBuilder and look at the Technologies tab on the left - the "glowing" techs are the techs discovered by the respective player, and hovering on them show you their cost in beakers). I chose Ramesses II for that, since he's among the first in score, after me and Suleiman of the Ottomans, but really, you can do this thing with any player anyway. What I noticed is that even though I was the most advanced, populous, and had both a gold and a silver mine worked in my capital with the science slider at 90% (so my beaker "production" was way ahead of the other players), the total amount of beakers corresponding to the discovered techs of Ramesses II was STILL (!!!) bigger than mine: he had a sum of 3690 "spent" beakers, and I was having ... "only" 3510 "spent" beakers. So I decided that, in order to eliminate all doubt about why something so ... odd (read: blatantly cheating) would happen, I had to see how my beaker "production" compared to Ramesses II - maybe he was better than me at that? maybe he had a valid reason to be able to spend more beakers than me in the same timeframe (4000 BC to 1830 BC)? So I proceeded to ...

Step 2: while in WorldBuilder, I saved the "game" (as a .CivBeyondSwordWBSave file), so that I could load the said file as a scenario afterwards and choose Ramesses II to play with, in order to see how many beakers he was producing (on average, of course, since there is a little difference in how the tiles are worked in the "real" saved game and the WorldBuilder one). Well, guess what: the "science master" Ramesses II had a production of around 26 beakers per turn at 100% science rate (and a possible 30 beakers per turn at 100% science rate if further tweaked by me), compared to my ("huge", compared to the others) 44 beakers per turn at 90% science rate (without specialists!).

Now, sure, he also had a gold mine worked near his capital, and he might have possibly got it "finalized" before I "finalized" mine's (as I had to first chop the forests), but still, it's totally wrong:
- he had no libraries, while I had them very early (since after discovering Bronze Working to chop the forests, I chose the shortest path to Writing, in order to fully take advantage of the gold + silver + mines + libraries to boost my science "production - and yes, I had those mines worked even before discovering Writing)
- he had only one gold mine, I had both a gold and a silver mine
- neither him or me had leader traits that would give us some bonuses in beakers
- he had only one Worker, while I had 4 of them (so teoretically, this would somewhat compensate the fact that I had to first chop the forests to take advantage of the gold and silver, considering that I always put all 4 Workers to finish a single improvement - so the mine would have been completed in around 5 turns, compared to his 15)
- I founded my second city pretty early, in 2260 BC, so the additional beakers from his second city couldn't possibly influence his beaker production significantly compared to mine's
- except the time I built those 4 Workers (by chop rushing the last 3 with the Workers already produced), I emphasized growth in my capital, so I could take advantage very early of the extra worked tiles (and commerce!) and the reduced settler building times
- he couldn't employ scientist specialists, since he didn't discovered Writing or built any Libraries, while I could (I didn't however, since I wanted to maximize growth first)
- and so on

So, in the end, this "more spent beakers" of the AIs compared to mine's COULD NOT happen ... if not for the blatant cheating by the AI.

My question is: why does this happen - is it the Civilization engine or the K-Mod at fault for this? As far as I know, the K-Mod doesn't have things like Tech Transfer, Tech Diffusion, as other mods do (that would allow the AIs to "steal" beakers from you, even if not yet trading techs), plus, it is "advertized" that the mod "actually reduce cheating" (unless the "AI civilizations will research faster, fight smarter, and place cities more thoughtfully" statement in its description actually refer to the AI cheating?)...

As I said at the beginning, I suspect it's the Civilization engine which does this. I'm a LONG time Civilization player and this "issue" has been present in every Civilization version ... it's just that now you can actually PROVE the cheating, as I showed above. But even so, can K-Mod change this (so that the AI doesn't cheat, at least in Techs)? I know Karadoc kind of abandoned the project, but I see there are some folks willing to take over from where he left it...

If K-Mod past or present developers aren't willing to do this, what do I need to do (edit, change, etc) to make a FAIR game between the human and the AI possible (at least on the Tech aspect)? As far as I know, the Noble difficulty is the "fairest" one, giving no significant bonuses to either the AI or the human, but ... it's turns out it is a hoax anyway...

P.S. I just noticed that others seem to have noticed the cheat issue, and apparently, it is also K-Mod based (see this), as much as it is Civilization 4 engine based (see this). Such a shame! Isn't there any mod like AI Equalizer, which removes the cheat bonuses for both the AI and the player, but for Civilization 4?

 

[f1rpo]

There are a few AI bonuses on Noble difficulty (some of which would be easy to disable), but I don't think they have a significant impact on early-game research, neither in K-Mod nor in BtS.

I couldn't download the savegame ("invalid Attachment specified"), but I doubt I'd find out much anyway. Tribal villages come to mind, though perhaps your scenario disables them.
There is a tech diffusion mechanism in Civ 4 (already in Vanilla) that makes research up to 30% faster. Civs also research faster if they know more than the necessary number of prereq. techs, e.g. FishingPottery and Priesthood for Writing.
(These modifiers are applied in CvGameCoreDLL\CvPlayer.cpp, function calculateResearchModifier.)

If it still doesn't add up, you could try the debug mode:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=279903
This allows you to spy on everything the AI does without having to go through WorldBuilder. Alt+Z can be used to take control of an AI civ and Ctrl+Shift+X for AI Auto Play (to fast-forward the game).
(Or maybe someone else has a better explanation for Ramesses's research speed.)

 

[DarkLunaPhantom]

Step 1: in this year's save (aka before Alphabet is discovered), I'm going to WorldBuilder and count the total amount of beakers "spent" by discovering mine's and Ramesses II's techs (I don't think there is anyone not knowing how to do that, but if there is, it's simple, you just change the player in WorldBuilder and look at the Technologies tab on the left - the "glowing" techs are the techs discovered by the respective player, and hovering on them show you their cost in beakers). I chose Ramesses II for that, since he's among the first in score, after me and Suleiman of the Ottomans, but really, you can do this thing with any player anyway. What I noticed is that even though I was the most advanced, populous, and had both a gold and a silver mine worked in my capital with the science slider at 90% (so my beaker "production" was way ahead of the other players), the total amount of beakers corresponding to the discovered techs of Ramesses II was STILL (!!!) bigger than mine: he had a sum of 3690 "spent" beakers, and I was having ... "only" 3510 "spent" beakers. So I decided that, in order to eliminate all doubt about why something so ... odd (read: blatantly cheating) would happen, I had to see how my beaker "production" compared to Ramesses II - maybe he was better than me at that? maybe he had a valid reason to be able to spend more beakers than me in the same timeframe (4000 BC to 1830 BC)? So I proceeded to ...

Egypt starts with more expensive techs than the Chinese but that difference is minimal. Did you consider that Egypt just got lucky and got some techs from tribal villages?

Step 2: while in WorldBuilder, I saved the "game" (as a .CivBeyondSwordWBSave file), so that I could load the said file as a scenario afterwards and choose Ramesses II to play with, in order to see how many beakers he was producing (on average, of course, since there is a little difference in how the tiles are worked in the "real" saved game and the WorldBuilder one). Well, guess what: the "science master" Ramesses II had a production of around 26 beakers per turn at 100% science rate (and a possible 30 beakers per turn at 100% science rate if further tweaked by me), compared to my ("huge", compared to the others) 44 beakers per turn at 90% science rate (without specialists!).

There is a much easier way to do this. Enable cheats by editing CivilizationIV.ini file and change CheatCode = 0 to CheatCode = chipotle, and then you can change your current player slot by alt+z or alt+shift+z. This way you can quickly go to any civ in the game you want and you can check everything faster.

Also, I cannot download your file, it just says attachment invalid so I cannot check anything you said here, can you try to attach it to your post?

My question is: why does this happen - is it the Civilization engine or the K-Mod at fault for this? As far as I know, the K-Mod doesn't have things like Tech Transfer, Tech Diffusion, as other mods do (that would allow the AIs to "steal" beakers from you, even if not yet trading techs), plus, it is "advertized" that the mod "actually reduce cheating" (unless the "AI civilizations will research faster, fight smarter, and place cities more thoughtfully" statement in its description actually refer to the AI cheating?)...

As I said at the beginning, I suspect it's the Civilization engine which does this. I'm a LONG time Civilization player and this "issue" has been present in every Civilization version ... it's just that now you can actually PROVE the cheating, as I showed above. But even so, can K-Mod change this (so that the AI doesn't cheat, at least in Techs)? I know Karadoc kind of abandoned the project, but I see there are some folks willing to take over from where he left it...

If K-Mod past or present developers aren't willing to do this, what do I need to do (edit, change, etc) to make a FAIR game between the human and the AI possible (at least on the Tech aspect)? As far as I know, the Noble difficulty is the "fairest" one, giving no significant bonuses to either the AI or the human, but ... it's turns out it is a hoax anyway...

I don't think that there are AI bonuses for tech speed in K-Mod on Noble, or I just didn't notice them. (Most significant AI bonus on Noble that I know of is that they pay only 25% of cost for upgrading units or something like that and I think that disabling this would really cripple AI's ability to wage war successfully vs player in later eras.) There is tech diffusion in K-Mod, but it is weak (In BBAI it depends on OB, but not in K-Mod). Also each extra requirement tech gets you +20% speed for that tech, e.g. researching Writing while you know just Pottery will be normal, but if you know Pottery and Animal Husbandry it will be 20% faster and if you know Pottery, Animal Husbandry and Priesthood it will be 40% faster. Actually even just Pottery would give you +20%, I think, but we call this normal. (This is why just counting beakers won't give you accurate result for total beakers produced.) Your current research rate displayed in the upper left corner by the research slider doesn't include such bonuses.

There are some subtle AI "cheats" when picking which tech to research that I noticed and I intend to remove them (in my fork of K-Mod), but nothing that gives them any kind of significant advantage you're talking about. Also this post you linked talks about monarch/emperor if I understood it correctly.

Also it is hard to find all these cheats, e.g. knowing how many civs can research liberalism even when you haven't met them would be a cheat, but it is really hard to realize that if it is in a part of the code which only deals with AI, so it is very easy to miss something like that.

EDIT: I previously wrote that research rate displayed by the research slider includes various bonuses I mentioned but that is not true.
EDIT 2: I described BBAI diffusion instead of K-Mod one.

 

[Yin Cognito]

First of all, thank you for your quick answer to my question - much appreciated.

I couldn't download the savegame ("invalid Attachment specified"), but I doubt I'd find out much anyway. Tribal villages come to mind, though perhaps your scenario disables them.

I fixed the attachement, now it's downloadable (it probably got "invalid" due to the many previews I clicked for my message, etc). And yes, the scenario didn't seem to have ANY tribal villages whatsoever, so yeah, that's out of the question, as you said.

There is a tech diffusion mechanism in Civ 4 (already in Vanilla) that makes research up to 30% faste

Yep, I noticed that while wondering through the K-Mod files - it had a file saying just that. The thing is I did this just after posting the original message, thus my assumption that bare CIV 4 (Vanilla or BtS) doesn't have this - I only saw explicit mentions of the tech diffusion system in other mods. But here's the funny thing, you see: I have installed one of those mods (Legends of Revolution) which has the tech diffusion system ENABLED (but the AI works through Better AI instead of K-Mod) and I made the same test. The results are excatly the reverse you would expect of: with similar improvements and all, Ramesses has "only" 3840 spent beakers, while I have 4680! So that's a much more fair result compared to K-Mod (didn't test bare BtS though) - and with Tech Diffusion specifically enabled in LoR! Add that to the fact that Bronze Working takes MUCH more time to discover at Marathon speed in LoR (720 beakers in LoR/Marathon compared to 540 in K-Mod/Marathon), so I can take advantage of my (forested) mines much later in this second test using LoR ... but I'm STILL ahead in spent beakers compared to Ramesses ... and you see where I'm going with this...

From this comparison, it seems the reason for this "research boost" of the AIs is actually in K-Mod, and not in the "default" Vanilla / BtS tech diffusion system (which would have been otherwise a valid explanation).

Here is my 1820 BC saved game in LoR (same map, same civs, roughly the same improvements, at least for me and Ramesses, etc.): View attachment Qin Shi Huang BC-1820 (LoR).CivBeyondSwordSave

.............

Other than that, thank you VERY much for your suggestions, I will definitely follow some of them! But again, I still don't have a definitive explanation on why this happens (other that K-Mod seems to achieve "better AI" by cheating on techs?).

Hmm...

 

[DarkLunaPhantom]

thus my assumption that bare CIV 4 (Vanilla or BtS) doesn't have this - I only saw explicit mentions of the tech diffusion system in other mods.

Well, there definitely is a tech diffusion system in BTS when played with no mods and I think that K-Mod uses the same rules (i.e. BTS rules and not BBAI rules).

 

[Yin Cognito]

Egypt starts with more expensive techs than the Chinese but that difference is minimal. Did you consider that Egypt just got lucky and got some techs from tribal villages?

Yep, I considered both - I actually wanted to subtract the starting techs from both me and Egypt to make the comparision 100% accurate, but I gave up as I got lazy to verify their starting techs while handling everything else, plus, I realized that, as you said, the difference would have been minimal (so I was prepared to "let go" a 100-150 spent beakers by Egypt). And no, there aren't any tribal villages on this map - so as I replied to fr1po, this possibility is out of the question.

There is a much easier way to do this. Enable cheats by editing CivilizationIV.ini file and change CheatCode = 0 to CheatCode = chipotle, and then you can change your current player slot by alt+z or alt+shift+z. This way you can quickly go to any civ in the game you want and you can check everything faster.

Yes, I know, but avoided this as I don't want to be somehow "flagged" by the game as cheating - in Hall of Fame or something (if this happens, that is). It's just a precaution - if it doesn't add such a flag, I could probably try this way, thank you for your suggestion.

Also, I cannot download your file, it just says attachment invalid so I cannot check anything you said here, can you try to attach it to your post?

Yep, that's fixed now. Also check my reply to fr1po, for another save game test, this time involving LoR - where the results are significantly different, DESPITE the bigger Bronze Working tech cost for me at Marathon speed! How can you explain that?

Also each extra requirement tech gets you +20% speed for that tech, e.g. researching Writing while you know just Pottery will be normal, but if you know Pottery and Animal Husbandry it will be 20% faster and if you know Pottery, Animal Husbandry and Priesthood it will be 40% faster.

HA!! Now THAT might be a valid way to explain SOME of the AI advances in techs. I suspected something like that might be present, ever since Civ 3 - thank you for confirming it. But then again, this might work for 1-2 techs max, but can't explain the whole thing, now can it? Plus, at that point in time (aka 1830 BC), very few of those techs have "prerequisites", since most of them are basic techs anyway (aka the lowest level techs). Plus, those additional techs required to boost research for another tech must STILL be researched, so the reduced cost of the final tech is somewhat "compensated" by the much greater amount of beakers spent on additional "helping" techs. In other words, you'll probably get roughly at the same conclusion, more or less ... at least in my view.

Bottom line, yeah, I know about the fact that CIV AIs cheat, I just want to find a way to make the competition "fair". The Noble difficulty should be just that, but as I showed, with K-Mod it isn't - and this is not made only by improving the AI's behavior, but also by boosting the techs somehow (since the results for LoR are completely different).

I frankly don't care if the AIs cheat on some battles and some units, but I get really pissed off if they cheat me on the technology thing ... when I SPECIFICALLY choose a difficulty level where this kind of things shouldn't happen. All my efforts to optimize my science strategy (a key part of my overall strategy, sinnce I'm more of a "builder" type of player) are renedered futile by these kind of "exploits" / "cheats" by the AI...

 

[Yin Cognito]

Well, there definitely is a tech diffusion system in BTS when played with no mods and I think that K-Mod uses the same rules (i.e. BTS rules and not BBAI rules).

Yes, you're absolutely correct that K-Mod uses the system in BTS with no mods (as I said, I saw the confirmation after I wrote my original post), but then, in LoR, you SPECIFICALLY have a tech diffusion system which I let enabled, despite the inclusion of BBAI in that mod. It just doesn't make sense that LoR's tech diffusion system is so less "powerful" than in both K-Mod ... AND standard BTS. Right?

By the way, I have a couple of intermediate saves (from 4000 BC to 1830 BC) for both the K-Mod and the LoR tests, if that helps in ... solving the "mistery". Believe me, I did EVERYTHING possible to get to Writing (and Alphabet) as soon as possible. I mean, I improved my strategy with around 15 turns, since I started playing CIV 4 with K-Mod - and it's still not enough to have a realistic beaker spending...

 

[f1rpo]

I've loaded the savegame now. Is it possible that your beaker tally didn't include those spent on Alphabet? You practically have Alphabet, and you have Math, while he doesn't even have Writing. I don't trust my own count, but my impression is that you're ahead. Another thing is that the K-Mod AI uses Slavery a lot, which tends to lead to fluctuating yields. The graph I've attached shows that Egypt's "gold" (it's really commerce afaik) did take some dives. That said, 1830 BC is rather a peak, and you've been ahead of him for a thousand years; so that couldn't explain him having more beakers.

Edit: I've confused Egypt with Zulu. 1830 isn't a peak.

 

[Yin Cognito]

Is it possible that your beaker tally didn't include those spent on Alphabet? You practically have Alphabet

Ah, yes! Good catch! I indeed didn't count the "almost done" Alphabet in my computations ... but then I didn't count his completed beakers into Priesthood either. That brings my total to 3510 (previously counted in my first post) + 1342 (my "completed" beakers for Alphabet) = 4852 spent beakers. For him, it's 3690 (previously counted in my first post) + 168 (his "completed" beakers for Priesthood) = 3858 spent beakers. That is actually pretty close to the result in my other test case (the LoR one), where Ramesses had 3840 spent beakers, while I had 4680 (as counted in one of my other posts). That kind of explains the whole thing...

The Slavery thing is disadvantageous for Egypt actually (in terms of beakers), so if anything, that should work in my favor, by making Egypt even more behind in terms of spent beakers, if they actually whipped things up. So this argument doesn't hold up - but then again, your first one is excellent: I failed to take the spent beakers on Alphabet into account.

I was now trying to calculate the cost in beakers that you and DarkLunaPhantom mentioned when the AI first researches an additional "helping tech" to boost his research for a "final" one (that +20% boost for every "helping" tech you both talked about). So I looked for the techs that Egypt researched or IS researching which could be boosted by an additional tech. In "ideal" circumstances (aka Egypt ALWAYS helps his research by using those "additional" / "helping" techs), we have - compared to my situation:

- Mining and Mysticism help researching Masonry (a max of 20% gain for the final 360 beakers)
- Hunting and Agriculture help researching Animal Husbandry (a max of 20% for the final 450 beakers)
- The Wheel, Agriculture and Fishing help researching Pottery (a max of 40% for the final 360 beakers)
- the rest of the techs were either basic ones (aka no prerequisite tech for them), or techs with only one prerequisite (which wouldn't change the situation compared to mine), so they were discarded from this computation

This would make up for 0.2 x 360 + 0.2 x 450 + 0.4 x 360 = 72+90+144 = 306 beakers. That would be the gain of Egypt if they would take the "ideal" path in discovering techs so that they could benefit from those 20% and 40% boosts. Not so small, haha - it looks like there are some advantages in going for the primary techs first ... but, of course, the disadvantages FAR surpass the advantages (for example, if we only consider Writing/Libraries, they give a 25% boost - compared to civs without Writing/Libraries - for ANY tech you might research, at least until they build their libraries as well ... and I'm not even mentioning other critical techs which provide big advantages even if researched the "normal" way, aka using only one prerequisite tech).

The whole thing actually makes Egypt spend 306 beakers less than they would "normally" have, so the final total is:
- for Ramesses, 3858 (computed in the 1st paragraph) - 306 = 3552 spent beakers
- for me, it stays as computed earlier in the 1st paragraph: 4852 spent beakers
Note: the difference between me and him is 4852 - 3552 = 1300 spent beakers. Adding the 45 beakers from my cheaper starting techs would make it 1345 spent beakers.

That's much better (and realistic). Considering that, based on the intermediate saved games I have on my computer, until somewhere between 2800 and 2460 BC I had roughly the same beaker production as Egypt, jumping to +10 beakers per turn compared to them from ~ 2460 BC onwards, then to +15 bpt after 2180 BC and finally to +20 beakers per turn compared to them after 1950 BC ... and that between 2460 BC and 2180 BC are (132-104) = 28 turns, between 2180 BC and 1950 BC are (155-132) = 23 turns, and between 1950 BC and 1830 BC are (167-155) = 12 turns, that would make the difference in total beakers spent between me and them somewhere around 28 x 10 bpt + 23 x 15 bpt + 12 x 20 bpt = 280 + 345 + 240 = 865 beakers. If I take the "earliest" +10 bpt jump in 2690 BC (turn 87) - as "recreated" by me based on the 2800 BC saved game to approximate better, that would add (104-87) = (turn of year 2460 BC - turn of year 2690 BC) = 17 turns of +10 bpt, aka 170 beakers to those 865 beakers above, so in the "best case" for me, I should have 865 + 170 = 1035 beakers spent ahead of Ramesses.

Now that's interesting, because it turns out that I now should have had LESS beakers spent (aka 1035) than in reality (aka 1345) compared to Ramesses. I'm not sure this 310 beakers difference between the real case and what "should" have been can be explained only by Egypt's whipping of his population (which would have reduced his commerce too). The reason I say this is because he should have been smart enough not to kill the population working his mine (aka the 2nd population point, corresponding to size 2) - and in that case, the loss of commerce from his whipping would have been insignificant, since it would "only" waste 1, 2 or maximum 3 commerce, instead of 8 commerce by whipping the city population working the mine. But then again, if Ramesses DIDN'T take the "ideal" path in discovering techs, he would have spent 306 beakers more on techs (as explained before), and that is almost exactly as the 310 beakers "missing" from my comparative, haha!

All in all, that's almost a perfect match at this moment between what "should" have been and what actually happened, so probably my "complaint" is largely irrelevant by now. Thank you all for your help in this - much appreciated!

 

[Yin Cognito]

Yep, me again ... with one more question: is it suppose to happen in K-Mod that a city "forgets" its previous religion when a new religion has been spread by an own missionary? Or that the game also forgets that previous religion's holy city? Or is it a bug? Has anyone else playing BTS 3.19 + K-mod experienced this?

In my game, I had all my cities practicing Confucianism (being the first to discover Code of Laws, thus having also the holy city of Confucianism - Shanghai) and then discovered Philosophy, founded Taoism and used the free missionary to spread Taoism in my capital too. What happened is that my capital became 100% Taoist, like it never knew Confucianism before! Afterwards, I noticed that the game also "forgot" that Shanghai was my holy Confucianist city (but checking the saved games, I found out that this happened much earlier, therefore being unrelated to the recent spread of Taoism)!

I know K-Mod applies a "new religion system" in which new religions are favoured over the old ones, but is this radical thing suppose to happen? In the end, I had to correct this thing in World Builder, but to my experience, this shouldn't have happened...

If you did experience this too, what do you think it might be the cause of it?

 

[Zholef]

Yes, based on several factors, there's a chance that a newly spread religion displaces an old one, but holy city status should never be lost. Did you perhaps load a wrong savestate at some point and let someone else found that religion? That would seem to be the most likely explanation for this.

 

[Yin Cognito]

Yes, based on several factors, there's a chance that a newly spread religion displaces an old one, but holy city status should never be lost. Did you perhaps load a wrong savestate at some point and let someone else found that religion? That would seem to be the most likely explanation for this.

Hm, interesting - I have to say it took a long time between the founding of Confucianism and the founding of Taoism in my game: 40 BC to 1420 BC (and I play on Marathon) ... maybe that could be the reason why one displaced the other completely? Just checked the log right now, and it seems like you're correct - it is supposed to happen, since I got a log message that says "Confucianism has died out in Xi'an", right before I spread the Taoism there. But nevertheless, I'm not exactly ok with it, because I want to have all the cities sharing a single religion (Confucianism, since I have the monasteries too) - although what happened might be somewhat realistic... so I guess I'm not going to spread Taoism anymore, haha!

On the holy city issue, no, I'm sure I was the first to found Confucianism (therefore having it holy city too), and I only have the saves of this game in the folder where I'm loading from - so there is no chance this could be the reason for the "bug". If you look at my previous posts, you'll see that I was ALWAYS ahead in the tech race.

EDIT: Looking at my saved games, it seems that's actually a World Builder bug. I, at one time, prevented Judaism (which is the religion of most of my opponents, and one of them is building the Apostolic Palace) from spreading in one of my cities, curiously, by making that city "pagan" again in World Builder, then, after the turn passed with no "incidents", re-connverted it back to Confucianism (also in World Builder). It seems that this somehow cleared the holy city status of Confucianism, ALTHOUGH that city was NOT the one I was editing in World Builder!

Anyway, thinking about it ... could a "new religion" like Taoism (or Islam, which will be next to be founded, probably also by me) be more "resistant" to the widespread Judaism (which will become "older" by comparison)? In other words, could I prevent an Apostolic Palace victory by one of my Judaist opponents by adopting a religion newer than theirs?...

 

[Zholef]

No, that's not how this works. Younger religions get more natural spread (i.e. spread without missionaries or events), but they don't get more resistance to being displaced. That is achieved by building that religion's city improvements in the cities where you don't want the religion displaced. Also larger cities can more easily retain more religions. So if you want to use this mechanic to keep the Jews out of your empire (which isn't really that mechanic's purpose, but whatever) then you'd be well advised to spread every other religion you have access to aggressively and keep your cities only as big as necessary. Alternatively you could make Judaism your state religion to get double AP voting rights, or declare war and go raze the AP city, or adopt Theocracy, all of which would probably be much less trouble.

 

[Yin Cognito]

No, that's not how this works...

Oh, I see - thank you very much for the explanation, it's helpful to find out how this actually works.

On the other issue (ways to stop other religions spreading), yeah, I know my options (I did some reasearch on this subject too, haha!), but I would prefer not to take most of them:
- I need and want my cities as big as possible, for multiple reasons (extra FPC, extra specialists - since I don't use them until really needed or after reaching the happy cap, I have plenty of happiness resources to allow them to grow, etc.)
- I play with Free Religion instead of Organized Religion (because of science benefits + overall tech strategy + personal opinion), so no state religion, thanks ... at least in this specific game I'm playing
- I won't adopt Teocracy (unless really needed) for pretty much the same reasons
- I play a peaceful game (I can do war if necessary, and I'm quite effective at it, but I'm mostly a "builder" type of player), and I intend to keep it that way as long as possible (until some random game computation breaks that up, that is)

... as for the rest of the options (spread my religions aggresively, build some religious buildings), I already took them - I have all my cities Confucianist, I have Conf. monasteries in nearly every city (not temples or cathedrals though, since I don't really need the happiness bonus, and they don't have that 10% science bonus of the monasteries ), I have closed borders with everyone, etc. That's why I asked the above, because I took all the necessary precautions (as much as my game strategy allowed) beforehand, and I apparently wasn't able to prevent one of my cities fell "ill" with Judaism, haha! But yeah, the good ol' Egyptians (it's them who founded Judaism, just fancy that!) have a shrine (I don't, yet), and all but 3-4 civs in the game are also very much Judaist, so that's probably to be expected (their religion's pressure)...

I just wanted to know if there was anything else I could do to help keep my cities 100% Confucianist, besides what I already done and what my overall strategy in this game allowed. That's why I said your explanations on new religions' system were helpful - at least I now now that it's pointless to try to spread Taoism aggresively instead of Confucianism, as both of them would have the same "resistance"

 

[Zholef]

I just wanted to know if there was anything else I could do to help keep my cities 100% Confucianist, besides what I already done and what my overall strategy in this game allowed. That's why I said your explanations on new religions' system were helpful - at least I now now that it's pointless to try to spread Taoism aggresively instead of Confucianism, as both of them would have the same "resistance"

Correct, spreading Taoism instead of Confucianism would be pointless. Spreading Taoism in addition to Confucianism would help though. An existing religion is only displaced when a new one arrives, and having more religions around makes new ones arriving less likely. That matters even if you close your borders to Jewish missionaries because K-Mod allows natural religion spread even to cities that already have religions.

 

[Yin Cognito]

Spreading Taoism in addition to Confucianism would help though.

That's what I thought too, but guess what? When I try to get Confucianism and Taoism live along each other, I get the "Confucianism has died in X city" as soon as I spread Taoism in it, LOL. That's what I pointed out in my previous posts. You think I wouldn't like another 10% science bonus from Taoist monasteries in my cities, in addition to the bonus from the Confucianism monasteries? Apparently though ... I can't have them both in the same city, unless I "hack" things up in World Builder, and I don't like to abuse that. Of course, it might be that what happened in my capital (where Confucianism "died" in favor of Taoism) was only an "accident" (and wasn't supposed to be the rule), but I'm really reluctant to try it again only to see Confucianism dieing out in another one of my cities...

That matters even if you close your borders to Jewish missionaries because K-Mod allows natural religion spread even to cities that already have religions.

Yep, I kind of figured it out that much already, haha! I hope that it's not too abusive with that however, since I want to have my chance and not being forced to play with a state religion (or a religious strategy)...

 

[Zholef]

Didn't read your earlier posts; they were too long. Just try spreading Toaism again. You won't regret it.

 

[Yin Cognito]

Didn't read your earlier posts; they were too long. Just try spreading Toaism again. You won't regret it.

Ok then, thanks for the advice

 

[Yin Cognito]

Can anyone explain how the Mongols got Constitution (a 9000 beakers tech) in these saves (View attachment Qin Shi Huang AD-1345.CivBeyondSwordSave and View attachment Qin Shi Huang AD-1350.CivBeyondSwordSave)?

It should be enough for you to load just the 1345 AD saved game, as I assume that with the same random seed (as per initial configuration), the same things happen after pressing the 'End Turn' button. Didn't test it on other computers though, so if the Khan doesn't get Constitution the next turn (aka in 1350 AD), then just load the 1350 AD saved game, as the result is the same.

Now I checked things with the 'chipotle' configuration file + Alt-Z, and the Khan, which is a capitulated vassal of Ramesses II, is having a +1 attitude element towards Ramesses because Egypt apparently shared some tech(s) with the Mongols. However, it's hard to believe that their Egyptian masters shared not only one (as I suppose it happened in 1350 AD), but MULTIPLE 9000 beakers techs with their capitulated vassals!

I mean, in 1364 AD (View attachment Qin Shi Huang AD-1364.CivBeyondSwordSave) the Mongols (which are a 4 tiny cities civ) ... got to research the d@mn Communism!!! Having already the Scientific Method and a bunch of other techs which they wouldn't been able to research until 2050 AD, by their current rate!

You can imagine that this way, the game is ... just f....d up. I don't know if it's the BTS or K-Mod at fault, but I'm starting to go back to that "WTF is this, cheating?" rhetoric, really. I mean, it's either that or some kind of horrible bug or something - this kind of things should NOT happen, period.

 

[Zholef]

You can imagine that this way, the game is ... just f....d up. I don't know if it's the BTS or K-Mod at fault, but I'm starting to go back to that "WTF is this, cheating?" rhetoric, really. I mean, it's either that or some kind of horrible bug or something - this kind of things should NOT happen, period.

Your analysis is correct. Genghis Khan is being given tech after tech by his master. Backward vassals are useless vassals. When I have backward vassals I gift them all the techs they need to build units strong enough to deter attacks or help win my wars, and I don't see why the AI should be prohibited from doing the same. You can express your frustration with foul language all day long as far as I care, but if you want to be taken seriously, you'll have to provide some reasoning.