K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

I don't know if there's historical backup for this idea. Infantry units represent mostly WW2 infantry, and cavalry wasn't really used for direct combat situations at that point. Sure, there was still limited use to disrupt supply lines and outflank artillery, but that's exactly what cavalry is still useful for even with Infantry around.

Althoughly you are right that cavalry wasn't mainly used as a strong fighting unit in the era cavalry is still in in the game much of a forgotten (after early industrial age) unit until gunships come into play. At least the uppgrade patch is too long after heavy investment of cavalry I think.
 
Yeah, but again, this mirrors reality rather nicely. And Cavalry is definitely useful before Infantry, especially if you beeline them.
 
iirc, in WW2 most cavalry units were upgraded to infantry weaponry, mostly fought on foot, and only used the horses to get around the terrain quicker.

Early in the war, German tanks (or tanks of any kind, really) would tend to stall on the small and winding roads on their way to various fronts.

In the invasion of Poland, there were many instances where the Polish cavalry waited for the tanks to stall, and then they would surround the tanks (perhaps using the early blind sides of the turrets, and probably staying out of range while on horseback) and, more often than not, would defeat the column.

-The Blitzkrieg Myth (source)
 
Possible Solutions:

new Unit in between Cav and Gunship: "Mounted Infantry" 18-20 str, 2 move, no defensive bonuses, etc (possibly no flanking bonus but just withdrawal and 2 move ..., but that may make Artillery too strong without a serious Cav counter ... perhaps reduce the flanking bonus slightly to reflect what it would be with normal Cavalry?)

new promotion at Assembly Line (or w/e the Inf tech is). "Modern Weapons" +40% strength. Alternatively could be available at Industrialism (the Tank/Marine tech). Can be "bought" if possible. Say for 25 gold? (so old units can get it). Perhaps can also (alternatively) use exp to get it .... or just the gold, since its weapons. Hard to say.

Polish UU that targets Armored units first in combat outside of cities (possibly could have this even included with one of the above changes). In this way, if there are just a few armored units, and you weakened them with some other unit (to "stall" them) the Cavalry could finish them off.

Spoiler :
One problem with the Polish unit is that Winged Hussars makes a bit of a better UU (for either Curiasser or Cavalry, hard to say which), but who is to say that it couldn't have target-armored-first as an added funtionality?
 
You're talking about an industrial era K-Mod scenario where you have cavalry that upgrade into better cavalry and 4 different kinds of infantry. The gunpowder mounted horse era is certainly represented when you take into account K-Mod spans from the beginning of civilization to the end. In short, cavalry are fine L2P. : P

Now if any unit is actually lacking, it's a naval transport upgrade between galleys and galleons. I was a huge fan of risky naval exploration in Civ III when you had a chance of sinking in the ocean. My suggestion would be a ship to go along with caravels that can carry troops and will probably sink in the ocean (or granting that ability to galleys with Optics).
 
The patch between the cavalry and tanks is probably the biggest problem to make them more into the industrial-WW1-2 era as the military units and tactics were so rapidly advancing.

50% bonus against artillery units would make them at least better at their main role later in the game as cavalry now has only bonus against cannons and the ones before.
 
I'm just saying that there is a big difference between Cavalry during the Civil War and Cavalry during WW2. The latter being more like British Dragoons but with more updated weaponry.

I think modernized weapons promotion (+40% strength) would be fine.

Of course, its not necessary, but I personally think it'd be cool ;)
 
I'm fine with cavalry going obsolete - it forces you to make a choice. Mounted units are stronger than their on-foot counterparts. Knights are stronger than maces, curs are stronger than muskets, and cavalry are stronger than rifles (even though rifles get +25% vs mounted, cavalry gets 1 more strength and probably 1 more promotion due to the stables, so they win). So you must make a choice. If you build a massive mounted army, you must use it to gain an advantage before industrialization, otherwise it becomes obsolete. If you want an army that can be upgraded after the industrial revolution, stick to foot soldiers.
 
Hi guys,

Just a little question : as K-Mod is a mod may I use this fabulous project in addition to unofficial 3.19 patch?

Thank you in advance
 
Hi guys,

Just a little question : as K-Mod is a mod may I use this fabulous project in addition to unofficial 3.19 patch?

Thank you in advance

Not really, but as far as I know, K-Mod started with all the changes made in the unofficial 3.19 patch and I think that Karadoc even improved some of them.

So you can play K-Mod and forget about the unofficial patch as K-Mod is really just one huge patch to BtS 3.19.
 
isenchine is correct: All of the changes from "the unofficial patch" have been included since the first version of K-Mod. (And K-Mod actually includes some bug fixes for bugs introduced by the unofficial patch itself.)
 
That's nice!
Such an amazing job has been done here to improve this fabulous game...

Thank you for the quick reply!
;)
 
A couple question for Karadoc

1. Maybe overall tech rate could be slightly reduced (tech costs increased), based on map size? (if it is already that way, maybe it could be increased a bit).

2. Im realizing that using Great people instantly is almost always the best decision. Mostly unlocking tech instantly is the best choice. Perhaps some game balance should be directed at that (boosting some of the numbers for great specialists added to cities). Just so its a tougher choice than just instantly unlocking tech. I notice the ai extremely rarely adds great people to its cities...
 
I was thinking that perhaps the ai should be required to hold gold in reserve (although this could be tied to civ personality), after the tech, currency, as a way of protecting themselves from wars they cant win.

I have stopped several enemy ais before they have captured vital cities by merely bribing them.

I often find myself wishing losing civs had faught harder before being vassaled...

The ai also runs into alot of issues where they rarely have money to trade, for resources, maps, techs...
The AI already does hold gold in reserve, and it depends on personality (since several version back). The AI actually has more money than it shows in the trade screen. AI leaders don't like to make all of their money available in trades because they knows that human players will trick them into buying useless techs all the time... But in any case, you may notice that, say, Mansa Musa will tend to have more gold in the bank than other civs - and you can often use that to your advantage by using spies to steal his gold.

The AI still needs to be better educated about when to not upgrade units.. Currently it will upgrade almost anything it can afford to; and even though the AI gets significant discounts for upgrades, this is still a massive waste of money in most cases. If this upgrade problem ever gets fixed, then I would expect the AI to reach their target gold stockpile levels more often, and so they'd more often have cash available for other stuff.

As for the cost of suing for peace.. that's something which could certainly use some adjustments. When I rewrote the for evaluating potential war targets, I intended to use that same rewritten AI to evaluate peace deals - but I just never got around to it. Part of the reason I never got around to it is that I also want the peace deal evaluation to take some additional stuff into account which is already in the current AI, and it isn't clear how the two things should be combined...

A couple question for Karadoc

1. Maybe overall tech rate could be slightly reduced (tech costs increased), based on map size? (if it is already that way, maybe it could be increased a bit).

1. It already is. This is one of the factors which comes into play with that team-size tech cost adjustment thing we talking about earlier in the thread. To me, there is no clear answer for how tech costs should scale with map size. Each civs effective beaker rate will be higher on larger maps, because the civs tend to have more cities and more trading partners, but how much higher is hard to say; because it will vary greatly from game to game.

The tech cost adjustment that's in place at the moment is basically just Firaxis' guess, and based on some of the other stuff that they've guessed, they probably didn't put a lot of thought into this; but nevertheless, I don't intend to change it without some hard evidence that it's wrong. ie. I'd like to see some data from many games on different map sizes showing that games on larger maps consistently reach the late-game eras sooner than on smaller maps. (The difference may also depend on the map script.. so this should be tested with something common; either Not Too Big or Small; Fractal; or Continents.) It would probably be best if the data came from autoplay games, so that it doesn't depend on human differences. ...
This isn't something I intend to test in the near future.

By the way, here's an aside related to that previous discussion:
Spoiler :

The reason I eventually decided not to make the 'natural' change of making tech cost proportional to team size is that I realised it would mess up games where teams were deliberately uneven sizes. For example, you might want to with 2 human players on a team vs 3 AI players - so that the AI have an advantage; the tech change would greatly reduce the AI's advantage - and that's probably not what players want / expect. Or you might want to have a game where your newbie friend is teamed up with an experienced player to prevent them from getting stomped - in which case you probably want the the tech cost to be doubled, because that would just make both players get stomped rather than the intended goal of giving the new player an advantage.

So in the end, I decided that although the purposed changes were more intuitive in terms of calculating the tech costs, the current rules may be more intuitive in other ways - and since the old rules are well established and tested, I decided not to change it until I'm more confident that the new way will be better.
 
Hi,

Minor Issues

1. Greeks attack Argos with 5 cannons and dont follow it up. The save I have, is the turn after they attack (I tried the turn before, but I think I defended with more troops or something so the greeks didnt attack).

2. Anyone else noticing the Ai doesnt seem to calculate the differences in success rates from attacking across a river, vs a different direction (traveling the same number of spaces)...ai often loses alot more troops than it has to, in this way.

3. I saw a case where the ai, declared war, moved ships next to the city it wanted to invade, but then didnt deploy the troops until the next turn.


Again, minor issues, great new version Karadoc!

-Charles
 

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Just wondering whats going with Carthage, Persians, and the Incas, in this save of mine.

They have been at peace (with each other) the whole game I think and have roughly divided the continent 3 different ways (Incas also control Vikings as well)

Incas are clearly going space race
Persians are clearly going cultural win
And Carthage is massing nukes, but doing nothing with them...

Are the presence of nukes making war impossible for them? I can forgive the Incas and Persians for being peaceful, they are both close to winning, but what is Carthage doing? How does he expect to win?

Rome has been at peace most of the game too. Snore.

Take away questions: Do nukes cause a chilling effect on war for the rest of the game? Should nuclear weapons be harder to produce (including the cost of the wonder)? Should the effect of nukes be decreased so that war can still occur? Should the ai still engage in war and just not use nukes, unless it really hates a country?

Side note: Do other people think that there should be an increase in mid to late game "win focus" or "realizing someone else is going to win soon and stop them focus" should be added in for the ai?


Only one can win!!! :D


Edit: Just talked to Incas, who said "our words backed by nuclear weapons"...so clearly nukes are rampent in that part of town...
 

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Side note: Do other people think that there should be an increase in mid to late game "win focus" or "realizing someone else is going to win soon and stop them focus" should be added in for the ai?
Personally I think this has gone too far already and should be toned down. Playing K-Mod feels much more like a war game than a civilisation building game IMO.

I love most of the changes in K-Mod but I'm playing more and more games in BTS because of this.

Perhaps it could be some kind of option - "Passive AI" perhaps - where they role play more than try to win.
 
Im going to have to disagree with you completely (I wonder if you select aggressive ai in your settings?) I used to do this reflexly (yes that is the adverb form of reflex, I just looked it up)

Early game to mid game, lots of wars, lots of alliances rising and falling, and boom people hit liberalism or rifling and everyone becomes a boring tech monster and rarely starts a fight. Religious blocks that get to this point, rarely turn on each other for the rest of the entire game.

ironclads/frigates/ship of line/ww1 tech periods fly by ridiculously fast...

Late game, everyone can see an ai is about to win culturally, or through a space race, or even through war...and no one (but the player) seems to notice? It'd be one thing if someone was trying to win space race...but if you dont have a chance at a space race or cultural win, at least TRY to win at something else the last 150 turns imo...

And Karadoc could tie the "focus on winning" and "focus on stopping others from winning" additional programming to difficulty level...like Monarchy or Emperor or above, so that people wanting to play a more relaxed game wouldnt be effected. Even make it an option in custom game settings like "king of the hill mode, or victory centered ai" so if you dont like it, you dont use it.

After this last game, where the ai built large nuke stockpiles and didnt have any war for 300 turns (I play on epic game speed) I'd almost want a "no nukes" option as well.


Karadoc has done a great job of doing what clearly needs to be fixed in the game, without changing too much, but I can at least ask for some changes that I think would make the game more fun/replayable.
 
Hello everyone! I don't know if this is the right thread to ask support questions about the k-mod but I try it anyways. I've downloaded the k-mod rar and unzipped in the mods dir (Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\Mods). The mod doesn't show in the mod menu in-game. I've tried to restart the game and I've tried to restart steam without the mod showing up. Is there someting I missing? What should I do to fix this?

Thank you in advance!
 
Im going to have to disagree with you completely (I wonder if you select aggressive ai in your settings?)
No - I don't think I've ever selected Aggressive AI.

I guess we will just need to agree to disagree completely, in my experience K-Mod hasd for more fighting than Standard BTS, the AI seems to think too much like a human player now IMO.
 
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