K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

[karadoc]

Version 1.17 is up. The main features is that I've completely rewritten the way the AI handles whipping. I've heard it said that most player bump themselves up a difficulty level just by learning how to use slavery properly, so I'm hoping that the new version will be noticeably more challenging. The old AI wasn't too bad - but I think there was significant room for improvement, and I hope that I've filled some of that room! The new AI will probably need some more fine tuning, but I think it should be pretty good. The main thing is that the new version actually tries to do a cost-benefit analysis when deciding whether or not to whip - whereas the old version just had a bunch of arbitrary rules. The new version also takes the AI's personality into account a little bit. The personality stuff isn't huge, because I want all AIs to be as good as possible, but I think it's kind of cool that not all the AIs are exactly the same.
.. Even aside from personality, there is one leader who I expect to benefit a lot from this change...

Spoiler :

anyway, I'll be interested to hear what people think when they see this in action. (If it fails horribly; please don't be shy about telling me!)

By the way, if you put a city on auto-production, the city governor is allowed to slave whip for you. It uses the same rules as the AI players do, but it is a bit more conservative. -- If this turns out to be really annoying, or just bad, then I'll turn it off in some later version.

I'm still undecided on the gems/silver thing, so I haven't acted on that yet.

@Axios v1.17 fixes the bugs which caused the worker problem and the poor defence problem that you described. Also, I've given the AI a few tips for how to climb out of financial collapse a bit more easily.

@Roamty Ranged bombardment would have a large impact on the way the game is played. I think it's outside of the scope of this mod. -- As for sea animals, that might be nice for a bit of flavour, but I don't think I'll add that either. Generally speaking, I don't intend to add any new techs, units, civics, terrain, or anything like that. I'm just trying to refine the original game rather than add new content.

@keldath to make that particular error go away, you can just put the function under "public:" instead of "protected:". It's kind of more like a warning than an error. It's like the compiler is saying "I can't let you use the function here, because you told me not to." - There might be some good reason why the function is "protected", but there probably isn't.

@Keindorfer & TheOnlyDJCat I've attached a 48 civ version of the 1.17 dll to this post. -- just like last time, the 48 civ version is not compatible with the normal version; and it will run a bit slower, and it is untested.

 

[Keindorfer]

Awesome, thx.

I'm going to test it right now

 

[En_Dotter]

I have to say one more thing about gems. Gems are found on grasslands as u said, but more often in deep jungles. Sometimes you can find 2-4 gem deposits in a potential city radius. But mostly those areas are covered in jungles. It is a large worker and time investment early game. Also the unhealthiness from jungles is rly strong. After so many turns of chopping/mining/road building it is a good reward for those brave enough to "waste" so much time clearing out the jungles. For those few situations on pure grasslands it is same as if u had a city with any other multiple commerce resource around - several times i had cities with 5 gold mines or 4 elephants or spices or what ever else.
If you guys think im wrong i would like to hear you out.
Im still against silver boost for the reasons i wrote before. Ofc, correct me if im wrong.

 

[Charles555nc]

I guess I freaked out for nothing that last emperor game...the guy with 2000gnp when I had 750 gnp and most of the wonders ended up getting slowly crunched over a series of wars and, to think about it, maybe the demographics advisor is off....tho I guess I really caught up around rifling...

I invaded their 3rd largest cultural city via a sea route and burned their only hope for a cultural win to the ground. They were insanely close to a culture win.

I would say they used plenty of artillery vs my stack, but often failed to use units that could finish off what the artillery did. Aztec took about about 5 turns to kill the remainder of that invading stack.

I invaded the incas and burned their capital (they are the points leader now) and they used like 12 artillery against me, and lost about 75% of them but only used one or two units that could kill units. That stack, which was knocked down about an average of 8 health per unit is now fully healed inside their borders on a gold hill (stack consisted of paratroopers, infantry, and artillery so 8 is really low).

Now Im building armies to sack other ai capitals if/when they get too close to a space race win. I was going to go for a domination win but on a continents map the corruption costs are killer for colonial poesssions. Like 35-40 gold corruption without a courhouse.

Im still a little concerned over the city manager slaving when it wants to...but Im impressed as always that Karadoc is now making the ai even more diabolical via slavery rewrites.

I will try out 1.17 after I try and finish this game.

 

[keldath]

thank you karadoc,

ur awesome, i just had to move the problematic code to "public" and remove a few of ur // tags.

now i got advanced diplomacy in ass well

 

[Charles555nc]

1.17

Dear god the ai stacks!

New game I attack egypt who was clearly about to invade me with 20 guys with axes cats and horse archers...I hit first with cats and wiped them out with some losses.

I take one city and boom a entirely new stack of 18 guys forces me to retreat from the city and regroup.

 

[Roamty]

Version 1.17 For me there is a little problem it does not fulling end the turns. Waiting for the little circle to turn red at times does not happen. What I got to do is press when its green or keep 1 unit free play with that unit to end its turn, after that the little circle will turn red. Is anyone else having the same problem.

 

[karadoc]

Version 1.17 For me there is a little problem it does not fulling end the turns. Waiting for the little circle to turn red at times does not happen. What I got to do is press when its green or keep 1 unit free play with that unit to end its turn, after that the little circle will turn red. Is anyone else having the same problem.

Next time you see that problem, if you save it and upload the save here, I'll try to work out what's causing the problem, and hopefully fix it for the next version.

Im still a little concerned over the city manager slaving when it wants to...but Im impressed as always that Karadoc is now making the ai even more diabolical via slavery rewrites.

I was also a bit unsure as to whether the city governor should do that. On the one hand, I really don't want them to whip something when I'm trying to grow the city, or when I'm saving the whip for something important. But on the other hand, the reason I put cities on automated production in the first place is so that I don't have to keep checking on them. If the city governor doesn't handle slavery, then I still have to keep checking on the city all the time to see when is the best time to whip something. If the governor can whip for me then the original purpose is better fulfilled. Basically I want the governor to slave-whip when it is smart to do so; but not to do it if it will stuff things up...
I decided that if I really believe that my new slavery AI is smart, then I should eat my own dog food.

All that said, there is still some tuning to do. I've already started making minor changes to the new slavery stuff since uploading v1.17. So we'll just see how it goes.

 

[En_Dotter]

Any chance u can add a whip/no whip button? Maybe that would make it easier for ppl.
(I dont know how hard it is to be programmed ofc)

 

[Roamty]

Next time you see that problem, if you save it and upload the save here, I'll try to work out what's causing the problem, and hopefully fix it for the next version.

I was also a bit unsure as to whether the city governor should do that. On the one hand, I really don't want them to whip something when I'm trying to grow the city, or when I'm saving the whip for something important. But on the other hand, the reason I put cities on automated production in the first place is so that I don't have to keep checking on them. If the city governor doesn't handle slavery, then I still have to keep checking on the city all the time to see when is the best time to whip something. If the governor can whip for me then the original purpose is better fulfilled. Basically I want the governor to slave-whip when it is smart to do so; but not to do it if it will stuff things up...
I decided that if I really believe that my new slavery AI is smart, then I should eat my own dog food.

All that said, there is still some tuning to do. I've already started making minor changes to the new slavery stuff since uploading v1.17. So we'll just see how it goes.

Here my save files and Thankyou

 

[gps]

Any chance u can add a whip/no whip button? Maybe that would make it easier for ppl.

Or how about a pop up window:
"City Gouvernor in City XY suggests whipping for completion of building XY. Yes / No / Show me the big picture."

 

[karadoc]

Version 1.17 For me there is a little problem it does not fulling end the turns. Waiting for the little circle to turn red at times does not happen. What I got to do is press when its green or keep 1 unit free play with that unit to end its turn, after that the little circle will turn red. Is anyone else having the same problem.

Judging by the example that you uploaded, it appears to only happen when you don't actually need to move any of your units at the start of the turn. In your case, you had one unit fortified, and one automated - so you didn't need to give orders to either of them. The problem is that the game doesn't check for "automoves" until you move a unit; and so your automated unit wasn't being activated. -- Anyway, I'll fix it for the next version.

By the way; you probably don't want to end turn with the green button in this particular case, because then your unit on autoexplore wouldn't get to make its move. So in the mean time, I suggest that you just click any of your units, and press 'w'.
'w' tells the game to cycle to the next unit without issuing any order; if there are no more units to give orders to, it will trigger automoves... and so your automated explorer will move, and the red end-turn button will come up.
[edit] -- better still: press 'ctrl+a' to trigger automoves directly.[/edit]

Any chance u can add a whip/no whip button? Maybe that would make it easier for ppl.
(I dont know how hard it is to be programmed ofc)

It's a little bit tricky to make it an option, because in multiplayer games the state of the option for each player would need to be known and kept up-to-date to prevent OOS errors. (otherwise a city might whip on one computer, and not whip on another computer - and thus the game is out of sync.)

 

[Charles555nc]

I didnt realize how much easier I had it before the slavery ai boost Still playing on emperor...

Some positive side effects beyond a more fun challenging game...

Ai techs a bit slower it seems, losing pop to slavery and having a higher army size to maintain.
Cant switch to serfdom in high warlike times, which also slows down teching for everyone (only points leader usually can get away with serfdom in my current game)
Tech heavy ai can now defend themselves a little better than getting way ahead in tech and then getting crunched by a warlike ai.

And the wars between me and the ai are really hard. 2nd in points guy Pacal declares war on me and has sent probably 50 units against so far in the axeman/cats/horsearcher time period, even retreating his units when he cant win...

Great work Karadoc...Im learning so much...rushing early expansion as quick as humanly possible, rushing to get copper or iron is NECESSARY, getting construction for catapults early on is NECESSARY, getting horses and horsearchers vs mass cats is NECESSARY.

Just one war and I have gotten 3 great generals...and its not over yet.

3 things I wanted to mentition:

--Can you make it so, if you give tribute, that the deal is canceled automatically after the 10 turns?

--Can you reduce the diplomacy penalty for refusing to join a war, if you are already in a war? Seems unfair to ruin relations because you cant handle 2 wars at the same time.

--"Worst enemy" status with an ai can often be pretty random. I declared war on the mongols because 4 other people declared war on him, because I wanted the positive relations from a mutual war effort. I make peace like 20 turns later and Im his "worst enemy", I havent killed a unit of his...

 

[Axios]

-CUT-
@Axios v1.17 fixes the bugs which caused the worker problem and the poor defence problem that you described. Also, I've given the AI a few tips for how to climb out of financial collapse a bit more easily.

-CUT-

I replayed the game with 117. Now cities are well defended and reinforcements arrive in time. Good work! And always thanks!

 

[Charles555nc]

Now that the wars are just insanely epic...wouldnt it be cool for like a grand total of global casualities on the defeat or victory screen? (obviously mega low priority).

I know there is a stat page for the player in the advisors, but knowing the global losses would just be so epic to see. Seeing 800 pikemen lost for example....would be so crazy.


So Fredrick got the pyramids a long time ago and he was only a 600 points civ when I was 700 points. I thought he was doomed to be eventually killed off, took him off my espionage points list...little did I know, he had switched to police state, vassalage, theocracy civics. Over the next 80 turns he builds up a MASSIVE professional army and, with my help, totally destroys the 1350 points leader-across the map from him- who had 6 wonders in his capital (lucky i got the cap, because good ol' fredrick is burning every inca city he can, including the apostolic palace.

In fact, I have to mark down city sites with an "x" because he is buring them so fast. For points of reference.

Now its 4 top dog civs, me the english, Joao the portugese, Surya the Khmer (points leader), and Conquering Fredrick.

Not enough to burn the Inca points leader civ with me, Fredrick completely killed Justinian off, vassaled Babylon and the Mongols, and is now working on burning down the vikings who had been at peace most of the game.

Update

Joao's vassal Hannibal got destroyed in about 4 or 5 turns by the Khmer.
Khmer apparently launched a massive invasion of Joao by building roads through the artic, to get him around my borders
Khmer has a huge number of cavalry but I got redcoats I mass upgraded from pikemen
The turn after I upgraded them from pikemen, Khmer instantly declares war on me through a two sided invasion (could be accidental attacking from two fronts because he was killing Joao)
I suicide my poor barely effective trebs and one cat against his 30 units+ stack of calvary and then use my 22 redcoats against it, i get some luck in the exchange.

 

[karadoc]

Alright. I've just finished adding the "actual building effects" BUG feature - and I wish I hadn't. It took ages to do; the code is a bloated mess; and the UI feature itself is ugly and only marginally useful. (I'm certainly not going to use it!)

Anyway it's done now and, regretably, it will be included in the next version. I hope you're happy.

In other news, I've also fixed another annoying UI bug. Usually, you can chain commands by holding shift - but this bug (which I've now fixed) would prevent this from working if you were standing near an enemy unit. It would just cancel all the commands as soon as you release the shift key -- pretty annoying.. and now it's fixed. (stay tuned for reports of horrible side-effects from the 'fix'.)

I've also been making some changes to the new whipping AI...

I would say [the AI] used plenty of artillery vs my stack, but often failed to use units that could finish off what the artillery did. Aztec took about about 5 turns to kill the remainder of that invading stack.

I agree that the AI often fail to properly follow-through after they use their collateral units for defence. I've made some changes to try to address this. I'm just hoping that I don't accidentally turn their defences into a suicidal mob...

--Can you make it so, if you give tribute, that the deal is canceled automatically after the 10 turns?

That's kind of tricky, because tribute deals are currently indistinguishable from gifts. So there would need to be some additional information added to the deal somewhere so that the game doesn't also cancel gift deals every 10 turns.

--Can you reduce the diplomacy penalty for refusing to join a war, if you are already in a war? Seems unfair to ruin relations because you cant handle 2 wars at the same time.

I've got an idea in mind for dealing with this, which I may implement in some future version. The idea is that the if the AI likes you, and if it can see that you are currently losing in an existing war, then it will not ask you to join their war. If the AI dislikes you, or if you are winning your wars (or not fighting at all) the system would be the same as it is now - which is to say, random and arbitrary.

 

[Cruel]

Alright. I've just finished adding the "actual building effects" BUG feature - and I wish I hadn't. It took ages to do; the code is a bloated mess; and the UI feature itself is ugly and only marginally useful. (I'm certainly not going to use it!)

Anyway it's done now and, regretably, it will be included in the next version. I hope you're happy.

In other news, I've also fixed another annoying UI bug. Usually, you can chain commands by holding shift - but this bug (which I've now fixed) would prevent this from working if you were standing near an enemy unit. It would just cancel all the commands as soon as you release the shift key -- pretty annoying.. and now it's fixed. (stay tuned for reports of horrible side-effects from the 'fix'.)

Where can I find other Karadoc for RI?

 

[Charles555nc]

My one warrior on the forest hill has stopped Isabella from expanding or even using her workboat on the clams for 10-15turns so far. I stole her worker really early.

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

I'm a big fan of this mod, thanks! I have a request and I'm sorry if you've already addressed it.

Basically, would it be possible to better rationalize air units? I guess what I mean is I'm sick of having stealth bombers intercepted by machine guns and anti-tank units. This is ALL because of airships. Could you change it so airships have no attack so that those units don't need an intecept chance? It might make them useless for the AI (I'm not sure), but they would still be useful scouts (and can still detect subs). This is something that has bothered me forever.

Anyway, thanks for the mod! It's great!

 

[MilesBeyond]

Just downloaded and played this for the first time last night.

I love a lot of the changes. The game does seem to run significantly faster, and the AI definitely seems sharper. I'm glad I decided to start my trial run on Noble because I wasn't prepared for the new intelligence (especially on barbs) and with no copper, iron or horse near me I would've been sent packing on a higher level. And I absolutely love the way the weaker corps are available earlier. That was a great move, and I feel as though it will add a lot more depth and viability to the corporations.

I do have a question, though. Has anyone managed a cultural victory in a decent amount of time with this mod? With cathedrals slightly nerfed, and culture bombs and FS hugely nerfed, it seems almost impossible to achieve it before Modern without wonder-spamming (which isn't always my favourite way to play). I understand that with the culture system changed the way it is, it's important to keep it from getting out of hand, but it does seem to have prevented cultural victories from being a viable option. Maybe lower the amount of culture needed to achieve Legendary?