K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

[Lenowill]

Just as a heads up, I'm back from my Civ IV rage leave of absence and am again working on mod-modding when my free time permits (which isn't that often) and when I have the urge.

I'm still using K-Mod as a base because it's the best mod ever to the core gameplay, and I'm still trying to work out what I want to do for a combat/military overhaul for my own play.

I'm very happy to see this mod going strong still and am glad to see people like PieceOfMind showing up.

PoM, I was very interested in your Civ IV HEX Mod idea before you scrapped it... what was the viability of that project looking like? (I seem to remember reading that the prospect of coding it to really work properly was nightmarish, but I'm wondering what your thoughts are on it at this point. I don't have anywhere near the expertise to do it myself, but I'm curious about it anyway.)

 

[Daisuki]

Thanks for the mod. It's pretty good. I'd like to suggest a few additions, though. The ability to destroy buildings (even if you were to get no gold for doing so) with CTRL-A (if this is really abusable then you could make it so you have to hold a city for even say 20 consecutive held-city--anarchy-free turns (on normal game speed) before the option is allowed), multiple production[/research], and the ability to train both workers and settlers without being forced to use food. On this last one I mean that you'd add in foodless worker and foodless settler options without removing the current "options" (they're only really options if you add in the foodless options).

The reason I want this is because later in the game you can have cities you really want to keep growing, that have even say +8 food (but the problem is far, far worse if you have under +4 food or especially almost none) but 20-100 or more production. There's tons of production already for the units, but they force you to lose all growth while you train them, which means you can't make many of them without stifling the city you make them in, and it can take quite a while to grow at say +3 food (let alone less, and of course the less you have the more you don't want to lose it, while simultaneously turning the food into production barely quickens the training at all; which can be rather irritating to me!) when the city has a large population, and this already absolutely assumes a granary. I really don't think this change would be a bad one, but it's up to you of course.

 

[Charles555nc]

Karadoc is real pro. Only reason I still play civ4. I get excited to read the patch notes, every time they come out.

I fully expect Karadoc's ai to become self aware and start taking over the internet

 

[PieceOfMind]

I do like the idea of putting hexes in civ4 but at this stage I just don't have the free time nor the knowledge of the game's code to be able to continue that mod.

As for its viability, conceptually it's not too difficult and it wouldn't exactly be a massive mod, but I don't know if there might be some stuff locked up in the exe that would ruin the mod's chances. For me it was just amusing to realise one could slap hex rules onto civ4's gameboard.

Back to K-Mod,

One more thing about culture that I think is worth mentioning: in the unmodded game, using your culture slider basically means you get a bit of happiness and not much else. But in K-Mod, because of the changes in how culture works, using your culture slider basically means that your neighbours are going to need to use theirs as well - otherwise they'll be culture-crushed. So that makes the culture slider a bit more viable - which might help you get a cultural victory later.

I like the sound of this ^. However did you clarify a bit more anywhere? In my game I still don't feel compelled to use the culture slider, though I must admit I no longer have any culture-pressured borders thanks to some successful warring.
Can it increase the amount of culture generated in rival cities via the new trade route culture? Do you mean the culture slider is stronger now because other sources of culture are harder to come by / weaker? Or is it something more involved, like the effect of the larger radius at which culture is dumped onto plots around cities?

In other news, I think I may have found a way to fix the unreliableness in the shift, alt, and ctrl keys. You may have noticed that if you use these keys, and if you play pretty fast, then sometimes it doesn't work properly. ie. sometimes the key doesn't register as being pressed when it should, or visa-versa. (TheMeInTeam constantly complains about this problem.) Anyway... I'm pretty sure this problem will be gone in the next version. I'm going to use native Windows functions to get the key-state, rather than using the keystate that the game itself reports.

Also sounds good.

I'm enjoying fast unit cycling in my current game, however I've noticed one very minor issue (and it may be that this has nothing to do with the unit cycling option), but when you found a city the camera jumps to the next unit before the name-city prompt comes up. Doesn't affect anything serious obviously but it does seem weird compared to the base game.

 

[Lenowill]

PoM, regarding culture, Karadoc can probably go into better detail than I can, but for a preliminary response I'll say that in the games I've played, the Culture Slider is awesome mostly because of the increased reach of city culture (it placing culture points into every space up to 3 plots away from the city's radius, I think it is) and also because (if I recall correctly) "Free" plot culture from just having your city radius leveled up is weaker compared to vanilla.

But yeah. Culture slider pressure is very nice in K-Mod, and there's far more depth to its use than before.

 

[damerell]

The reason I want this is because later in the game you can have cities you really want to keep growing, that have even say +8 food (but the problem is far, far worse if you have under +4 food or especially almost none) but 20-100 or more production. There's tons of production already for the units, but they force you to lose all growth while you train them

Which takes a turn or less with 100 or more production.

I think you are mistaken in believing that the game puts food into settlers/workers in a misguided effort to be helpful early. I think it does so to represent the previous-Civ way that building one shrunk the city population without the awkward edge cases.

I also observe that being able to build your first worker with hammers alone would really dramatically alter the very early game.

 

[Windsor]

Being able to build workers and settlers with only hammers would be very overpowered. Soren made this restriction for a reason. It creates a very nice tradeoff. It's not there to "speed things up".

Remember that the 1:1 ratio you get is a terrible trade. There's a reason why we work 13 grasshills and not those 4 plainshill. 1 is simply worth a lot more than 1

But this should be easy to create. Just two new units.

 

[Daisuki]

damerell, why did you cut off my quote and then respond to only part of what I said? "There's tons of production already for the units, but they force you to lose all growth while you train them, which means you can't make many of them without stifling the city you make them in"

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I'm not sure why it would be so overpowered (you're saying that they're cheap just because they rob you of food?), but the new units could cost 50% more or something if needed. Or 100% more; I admit that granaries make food worth far more than production (not that food doesn't already beat production without a granary), although 100% more is only good if you assume that food will be a significant part of the payment, which is not a good assumption for high production cities. Probably better would be to further increase the price of both pairs of units and then give more progress per food invested than per production invested.

 

[damerell]

damerell, why did you cut off my quote and then respond to only part of what I said? "There's tons of production already for the units, but they force you to lose all growth while you train them, which means you can't make many of them without stifling the city you make them in"

I don't see that it makes much difference. You'd have to want to make an awful lot of settlers and workers in a late-game city with 100 hammers (and one might ask why) for it to have a significant impact on the many turns it needs to grow anyway.

Probably better would be to further increase the price of both pairs of units and then give more progress per food invested than per production invested.

Better would be not to mess with the early game balance for the sake of an unlikely case in the late game.

 

[Charles555nc]

Anyone notice that one "super ai" vassals its neighbor super early? Like earlier than before.

And does the ai trade tech amongst itself more now?

Last 5 games have all been like that. Super ai vassals it neighbor still in the BC... and then further explodes in tech. And my neighbor that I have crushed/pillaged (but not conquered) all game is somehow getting tech faster than me...

New game started. Some turns later: Rival average is 36 gnp, and rival best is 66....how the heck....?

Edit:

-Had a revelation, are ais literally dying to build wonders? They lose alot of capital turns and give up potential expansion/military time. Perhaps make the ai less likely to build wonders if they are comparing poorly to their neighbors?

(I wouldnt be against the Ai getting a free archer or worker or something if they lose a wonder race, along with the gold).

 

[Daisuki]

If the map is huge or if you happened to be focusing on spreading corporations or building lots of military or whatever for a while instead of settling and improving tiles it seems quite possible to "suddenly" want dozens of workers or settlers. If you have at most few "fully" developed cities you're "stuck" using them to produce them all, which can mean no growth in them for a while. Anyway, I know it's not a normal situation, so whatever. I won't get my hopes up. ;p

 

[Windsor]

I only played 1 kmod game so far. In that Mehmed II completely killed Hatty, Sitting Bull, Justinian and Ragnar so no vassals at all.

But the tech rate in that game was horrible. Liberalism went 1470AD(immortal level) and for some crazy reason, Justinian got "world is round" bonus 1660AD.

 

[damerell]

(I wouldnt be against the Ai getting a free archer or worker or something if they lose a wonder race, along with the gold).

I think - and I confess I have no idea what the current behaviour in K-Mod is - it would be most important to make sure they spend that gold by running deficit research for a while.

 

[Gavagay]

New game started. Some turns later: Rival average is 36 gnp, and rival best is 66....how the heck....?

On high difficulty levels AI gets the wheel as a free tech at start. This usually allows them to go pottery super-early, even as their first tech sometimes. This means very very early cottages which would grow early and allow AI to have, on average, significantly higher GNP then human soon after the start of the game.

 

[Charles555nc]

Gavagay,

I think some civs get significantly better starting territory than others as well. But you are also right, although my early scouts rarely see early cottages on the ai...

 

[Gavagay]

I usually start conquering AIs at about 1000 - 700 BC. The most striking difference between their terrain and mine is that by this time I have mostly cottages-hamlets (besides a few villages in capital may be) and they already have lots of villages and even a few towns. I think that's where the difference in GNP comes from...
(That's immortal level, didn't really notice AIs to have a runaway GNP on the emperor. I don't remember - do AIs get The Wheel for free on Emperor? If not, it will fit into my theory...)

 

[Charles555nc]

Its not all the ais, its the top ai, from like 35 or 45 turns in (on epic game speed) has like double or more the average gnp...


And Gavagay, what happens if you start on your own continent alone, or you arent playing a civ with an early UU or the aggressive civ trait...

 

[PieceOfMind]

GNP, if I remember right, includes culture and espionage. I'd be curious if the top GNP civ was Creative and/or had completed one or more wonders.

 

[noto2]

yeah that's something I've always found annoying. MFG is quite a simple and accurate measurement but GNP doesn't really tell you much. I've had games where another civ has a GNP 2x that of mine and I'm still outpacing them in tech. The demographics graph already has a culture measurement too, and espionage...so why does GNP have to incorporate those? I wish there was a beaker output graph and gold graph.

 

[Gavagay]

And Gavagay, what happens if you start on your own continent alone, or you arent playing a civ with an early UU or the aggressive civ trait...

I actually didn't get isolated starts for quite a while... I don't go warring if I don't have opportunity or need to but this is rarely the case because usually AI just doesn't let you expand. Not long ago I had a game with Peter (Russia) - no copper or horses nearby, awful start. I was lucky that opponents were peacful and oriented to vertical growth, or I would be dead meat.
Had some room to expand, got free buddhism spread - built temple - ran priest - bulbed theology at about 700-800 BC - traded it for all the stuff I lacked - revolted to theocracy - killed Wang Kong (easy to do as he was crippled before by Shaka who marched from the other half of the continent just to raise his capital and holy city) - fought of Sitting Bull - first place in land and pop. Nice game.