K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

[Charles555nc]

-Increased penalty for having multiple national wonders in the same city.-

Could you explain this change?

 

[noto2]

Karadoc I'm sorry but I must bring up the discussion of naval invasions again.
I am currently playing a game where I had an isolated start. It's late game and I have destroyers and battleships. I know that cities are vulnerable to amphibious invasions (because it's easy to declare war from outside borders, sail in, and attack on the same turn) so I actually built a sentry screen this game. I had a dozen destroyers all around my borders watching for incoming fleets.
Here's the thing - so I noticed a huge fleet of Indian ships coming straight at me. I knew Asoka was about to declare war and invade, and luckily I had a huge fleet of battleships waiting for him. Since I'm a water power my army is small but my navy is big. The problem is that if I wait for him to declare war, he'll land his troops before I can sink his fleet and then I have a massive army to deal with. It's smarter to declare war on him and sink his fleet before he can land troops. The problem with that is he had a defensive pact with one of my allies and a very powerful civ. So in order to simply defend myself I have to go to war with 2 powerful civs and break an alliance. It's extremely frustrating. I actually let him declare and invade and he managed to raze one of my cities on the same turn. It was actually better to do that than to completely ruin my diplomatic standing. This is just absurd. I think this needs to be changed. I still think razing should take more than one turn, although that's another debate. I don't like that ships can declare war and sail in and launch an amphibious invasion on the same turn, it just doesn't seem right.

 

[noto2]

Or more accurately, the problem I have is that one's own navy does not defend during a naval invasion. Again, I compare it to air combat. If I have 5 fighters on intercept they will defend my city against bomber attacks automatically. The navy, however, is useless. I could have a fleet of 50 battleships and the enemy could come along with 2 destroyers and 10 transports. He could declare war and attack me with 40 marines, on the same turn, and raze my coastal capital, while my fleet is just 1 tile away and sits there doing nothing.

 

[Charles555nc]

If you had 50 battleships you could certainly physically block all the ocean around your capital.

 

[karadoc]

-Increased penalty for having multiple national wonders in the same city.-

Could you explain this change?

It just refers to the way the AI chooses where to put its nations wonders. The AI understands that it can only have two national wonders in each city; but unlike a human player, it has not memorized what all of the different national wonders do or when they are unlocked. The AI has no heuristics for deciding which national wonders should go together. It just calculates on-the-fly which city would be best for each national wonder when the national wonder is available... and so the problem is that the AI is inclined to build all of its national wonders right away, in their best cities - and this is bad because it often blocks those cities from building even better national wonders. ... To reduce the effect of this problem, the AI basically just reduces the value of national wonders in cities which already have national wonders, to encourage other cities to build them instead. This way, cities will only build their second national wonder if the wonder is still worth more in that city even with the penalty.

I don't like that ships can declare war and sail in and launch an amphibious invasion on the same turn, it just doesn't seem right.

And yet somehow it is still far easier to defend in an overseas war compared to a land war. ie. Defensive land wars tend require more resources, and carry a greater risk of being defeated than defensive cross-continent wars. Wouldn't you agree? -- And when you're on the attack, it's far easier to conquer a land neighbour than to conquer an overseas civ; right?

You seem to be saying that amphibious assaults are too powerful; but the flip-side is that offensive naval wars are very hard. If amphibious assaults were nerfed, or if ships were given greater defensive ability, then naval warfare would be even harder...

One more angle that's perhaps worth mentioning is that it could be considered a good thing that it's possible for enemies to bypass your navy and do some real damage to your empire. If wars were always won by the largest army, then the game probably wouldn't be as fun; and I think it's pretty clear that if the enemy had no choice by the fight your ships to get to you, then it would basically just be a battle of numbers rather than tactics.

For potential changes like this, I like to ask "is the new system definitely better?" "does the new system introduce new elements of interesting strategy" "does the new system remove existing elements of interesting strategy?" -- And in this case, from my point of view, the answers are no; maybe; yes - which isn't a good enough. It might be good for a new mod with new combat rules; but it isn't good enough for K-mod where part of the modus operandi is to maintain the general flavour of the unmodded game.

 

[Tasunke]

And yet somehow it is still far easier to defend in an overseas war compared to a land war. ie. Defensive land wars tend require more resources, and carry a greater risk of being defeated than defensive cross-continent wars. Wouldn't you agree? -- And when you're on the attack, it's far easier to conquer a land neighbour than to conquer an overseas civ; right?

You seem to be saying that amphibious assaults are too powerful; but the flip-side is that offensive naval wars are very hard. If amphibious assaults were nerfed, or if ships were given greater defensive ability, then naval warfare would be even harder...

One more angle that's perhaps worth mentioning is that it could be considered a good thing that it's possible for enemies to bypass your navy and do some real damage to your empire. If wars were always won by the largest army, then the game probably wouldn't be as fun; and I think it's pretty clear that if the enemy had no choice by the fight your ships to get to you, then it would basically just be a battle of numbers rather than tactics.

For potential changes like this, I like to ask "is the new system definitely better?" "does the new system introduce new elements of interesting strategy" "does the new system remove existing elements of interesting strategy?" -- And in this case, from my point of view, the answers are no; maybe; yes - which isn't a good enough. It might be good for a new mod with new combat rules; but it isn't good enough for K-mod where part of the modus operandi is to maintain the general flavour of the unmodded game.

I agree that we should leave naval assaults alone!

They are still interesting enough

(perhaps the one exception would be oceanic channels which are smaller than a ship's movement speed ... but even then its harder than if there was land there)

--> It just makes it a lot easier for the Nazis to take over england during WWII (Civ IV style)

 

[Charles555nc]

From the previous page with some added to it...

1.37 small bug...

When building 3 missionaries...I go to another city to build a 4th missionary, and highlighted in red it says "needs a christian monastery" instead of something like "missionary capacity reached". (this is under organized religion as well). I didnt notice this bug later on in the game.

Suggestion/Idea

1. I notice the ai doesnt add great people to cities, except in rare instances like great artists for culture wins, and maybe Ive seen a single great merchant or great engineer. Im not including great generals in this distinction. Getting metal casting or theology instantly, with a great person, especially early game, is much better than the option of adding him to the city. I would like the choice to be more even.

My idea: A great person (but not great generals) added to a city now also provides +1 happiness. If this is considered too strong in multiple great people, then maybe hard limit happiness to +1 through this method.

2. Also how about making rain forest have 1.5 the global warming balancing power of regular forest? i think someone mentitioned the fact that regular forest is better in every regard, compared to rain forest, so this would change that.

3. Salon needs buffs. It comes out fairly late. . But Im sure alot of other civs need help with their UB as well.


I love you Karadoc! An update! I was so bored. Could you post that link again for people who want to donate?

 

[Tasunke]

Honestly? I'd prefer if each added Great Person (other than Generals) adds +1 GPP for that particular great person type.

Its something I've considered adding into Fall From Heaven for a long, long time.

 

[karadoc]

@Charles555nc, I did see that stuff. I just sometimes like to see what other people say first - because often people stop giving their opinions after I give mine.

For the missionary thing; that does sound like a bug. I'll check it later on to see if it's easy to fix.

Re. settling great people. I'm not really convinced that super-specialists need to be buffed. It's true that bulbing is pretty popular, especially with great scientists. But that's probably ok. Good balance doesn't require that every choice needs to be equally popular. There's some strategy involved in choosing when to bulb with your scientists; and if the timing isn't right, then there are cases where it is best to settle itself.

For the other great people settling is often the best choice anyway. Great merchants and Great Prophets don't get as good bulbing techs and scientists; and since one can get very good value out of having a central gold-producing city, settling those particular great people can be good value. Spies don't bulb anything at all, and so settling is essentially the standard thing to do with those. Artists don't get good bulbs either; and it can be powerful have the culture from a great artist on your borders anyway (in K-Mod, but not so much in the unmodded game).

So really it's just scientists and engineers which are the bulb friendly ones... and even still, it's often good to settle those as well if you're a small civ. Settling great people is essentially the way for a small civ to keep up with larger civs. If you aren't going to go on a rampage and conquer everyone with a slight tech edge, then settling great people for the continuous science and productivity will probably pay off in the long run.

-- Anyway, I'm certainly not going to attach +1 to great people. I don't think that is a fitting bonus. I haven't really thought much about +1, but I suspect it might be a lot more powerful than it seems. It would certainly have a big effect on early-game strategies when are quite rare; and it would turn the (already viable) great-merchant pump city into a real monster. At the moment, I'm inclined to just leave the super-specialists as they are (that's my default position for all balance suggestions); but if I had to change them today, I might do something as simple as just giving them +1 more of their natural commerce type. ie. +1 for scientists & engineers, +1 for merchants & priests, etc.

One more thing that's worth keeping in mind is that most of the strategy discussion on these Civ forums does not refer to K-Mod. Things are slightly different here. For example, in the unmodded game you can be pretty damn sure that you'll get liberalism if you go for it; and bulbing towards it will just mean you get it faster, and thus you can rapidly build up a large tech lead, and use that to further your other strategies and so on... In K-Mod, you can still do that often, but not so reliably. The bulbing is a bit more situational because the AI may beat you to liberalism, or maybe you can just trade for the tech you were going to bulb, or whatever. -- So although there may be a consensus about bulbing strategy on the main forums, I'm not sure it always applies here.

--

Re. the donation link. It's in the readme, and on the download page. I certainly appreciate donations, but I don't really like to nag people about it...

 

[Charles555nc]

I was actually of the same mind as you Karadoc. Using a slight great people buff to help out smaller civs and give them opportunities. (Everyone who thinks me and Karadoc are war mongers, listen to this).

If you think of Benjamin Franklin or other great people, they certainly increased the happiness of areas they lived in locally. A single, hard limit, of +1 happiness (no matter how many GP you have), might help a small to moderate sized "island" civ with no links to happiness resources (I just had a game like that with 0 happines on my solo continent) and it might also encourage a player to settle great people in multiple cities- right now its better to mass them.

And I knew the donate link was there, but I was trying to circumvent your humility by my asking you to post the link I think alot of people would dontate with big smiles, if they were just reminded occasionally.

That said, I do like the idea of the small increase in GPPs as well.


You are the best Karadoc.

 

[Charles555nc]

From a webpage on India's caste system:

"From this came the caste system. There are four Vamas (colors) in the caste system. The highest and most important position was that of the priests"


Was there ever a reason why priests werent allowed to be part of the caste system civic? I would like to see them included. It would be easier to get a great priest if I got a religion, but did not get any great priest producing wonders.

 

[satrapper]

i played 200 turns on this new abortion of a version 1.38, to see how it fared...total ass, i swear its even harder. it must the correction of library strategy text that nailed it for the ai.
god, i suck at civ

 

[noto2]

And yet somehow it is still far easier to defend in an overseas war compared to a land war. ie. Defensive land wars tend require more resources, and carry a greater risk of being defeated than defensive cross-continent wars. Wouldn't you agree? -- And when you're on the attack, it's far easier to conquer a land neighbour than to conquer an overseas civ; right?

You seem to be saying that amphibious assaults are too powerful; but the flip-side is that offensive naval wars are very hard. If amphibious assaults were nerfed, or if ships were given greater defensive ability, then naval warfare would be even harder...

One more angle that's perhaps worth mentioning is that it could be considered a good thing that it's possible for enemies to bypass your navy and do some real damage to your empire. If wars were always won by the largest army, then the game probably wouldn't be as fun; and I think it's pretty clear that if the enemy had no choice by the fight your ships to get to you, then it would basically just be a battle of numbers rather than tactics.

For potential changes like this, I like to ask "is the new system definitely better?" "does the new system introduce new elements of interesting strategy" "does the new system remove existing elements of interesting strategy?" -- And in this case, from my point of view, the answers are no; maybe; yes - which isn't a good enough. It might be good for a new mod with new combat rules; but it isn't good enough for K-mod where part of the modus operandi is to maintain the general flavour of the unmodded game.

What bothers me is that ships have 4-8 movement per turn and coastal borders are never more than 3 tiles out to sea. You'll notice that unlike Civ 3, ground units in Civ 4 only get 2 movement at the most. Gunships get more but they can't take cities. Imagine if tanks had like 8 movement points, then all of your border cities would be vulnerable to a sudden attack.
As I said before, the main problem that arises from this situation is that whenever the AI goes for a cultural victory or for space (when the capital is coastal), it is far too easy to stop them. It feels like a cheap trick, like bad AI. If I'm going for a space win and I see a huge fleet approaching my land I will declare war on that civ and strike pre-emptively. The AI doesn't do that, and so it's very easy to fill a few transports with marines and use the bombard function of some battleships, and take out a capital city. No carriers and planes or missiles required. Just a few boats full of marines. It just seems cheap. I know nothing about programming AI and so I can't imagine how you would train the AI to deal with that threat, which is why I suggested that razing cities take more than one turn. Perhaps you disagree and see that move as not being cheap but fair play.

One quick unrelated note - why would you give serfdom -1c from towns? You said yourself that civics do not need a negative attributes, opportunity cost is negative enough, and you removed the corporation cost penalty to environmentalism. Serfdom already has a late game cost in that you can't be running caste or slavery, and you'll suffer an emancipation penalty.
Serfdom was basically never used before Kmod. Now I use it once in a blue moon, which is better, but I think serfdom would be just fine without the town penalty. There are many times where I consider using it but don't because the penalty decreases it's value AND I can't run slavery. Not being able to use slavery is a big enough penalty, imo.

 

[Charles555nc]

Hey

Im not a pro, satrapper (I only play on emperor difficulty level), but I'd be more than willing to show you some tips if you are having problems. Its no shame to decrease the difficulty level, after Karadoc makes the ai more efficient. Its about being challenged and having fun imo. ive been played this game for years and I am STILL learning stuff and losing games.

And Noto,

Come on man, read the patch notes...version 1.38 is up and Karadoc adjusted the ai some for better defense of coastal cities, so give the new version a try first please

Not to say that 5+ movement on an naval unit might seem to get excessive...perhaps an adjustment in naval speed connected to map size (late game naval units only, and reducing speed too much might make huge maps unconquerable).

Serfdom was made to have -1c from towns to make it a mid game civic rather than a all game civic. I think it was a smart change. But to be transparent, I never use serfdom just because I rush granaries and slave buildings and units early. And of course by feudalism, Ive massed enough workers where I dont need the worker improvement bonus.

I guess it does suffer from "pacificism" syndrome, where, in some games, it comes out almost a little too late to be useful. I almost always only use pacificism when I get the Shwedagon Paya wonder.

3 ideas for Serfdom
1. Give it "no upkeep" from low upkeep,
and/or 2. Let it provide some free units, kinda like vassalage,
and/or 3. Have it reduce city maintenance a bit

and/or 4. Im not good enough to know how good serfdom is.

 

[Charles555nc]

I started a game, playing as Elizabeth, but under the nation of France (I want to see the new musketeers!)...Im struck heavily but how much easier the game is, starting with agriculture and the wheel, rather than mining and fishing...anyone else feel that way?

There seems to be about 70% of the time that I play as Elizabeth under England, that I dont get start near the ocean and/or there isnt several coastal food resources. To clarify, sometimes I get a coastal start with poor coastal resources and sometimes I dont start near the coast and about 30% of the time I get a coastal start AND 2 or 3 clams or whatnot..

How is it easier with the wheel and agriculture start?

1. I can rush mysticism and polytheism for religion, while growing my city to level 2 and getting a worker and irrigating immediately
2. Even if I cant irrigate wheat or rice, I can build roads and save time later because I have the wheel...AND
3. Animal husbandry is immediately techable (fishing/mining start makes it 2 techs total).
4. I can immediately tech Pottery for quick granaries and cottages.

Mining is good if you want to rush bronze working and slavery, but you need food to slave efficiently and rushing mines is well, not good. Fishing is good if you have coastal resources in your start. No coastal food resources means both techs kinda set you behind in the early game imo.

Just a thought.

 

[satrapper]

I'd be more than willing to show you some tips if you are having problems.

cheers, charles! my tongue was firmly in my cheek in my last post - k-mod is the shizzle. however, i am a pretty casual civ player (prince is about it for me and mostly multiplayer) and your emperor-level advice is not to be sniffed at!

anyway, by mid game i am usually fine but my early-game sucks monkey-plums i think.

usually huge map, earth style, marathon speed
roughly speaking, satrapper does thusly every time:

settle in place.
look at available reources, choose research to avail of said resources.
build worker or some building/work boat if growth comes quick.
send warrior/scout off into the world to filch stuff from tribal villages.
never build wonders without access to stone/marble.
try to max population of capital and build settler when that is so.
save chopping forests for later
dont slave, from an ethical pov
avoid wars unless attacked until i have some sort of military advantage, certainly not til catapults anyway.

questions that spring to mind:
is slaving that important as part of early-game strategy?
should one try to rush build 2nd city or wait for capital to reach (close to) max size?
in wars with neighbours: support the larger empire and hope to pick up territory from the weak or attempt to join the weak and keep the strong from getting even stronger?

 

[Charles555nc]

Hi Satrapper!

I just realized myself, that what civ you choose, gets you different starting techs, can make a huge difference in the early game (knew about the techs, I didnt know what big difference it made). Ive been spamming Elizabeth for too long it seems.(financial/philosophic, starting with fishing/mining).

I'd need specifics to be specific, so Ill just mentition some broad advice.

-Send your warrior or scout out immediately and explore in a circular pattern around your capital, this lets you plan out expansion city sites (alt s lets you label spots if you want)

-But never be afraid to adjust your capital starting position. Building on a plains/hills gives you 2 shields on your city square btw. Settling your cap is the only time I allow myself to go back and reload a game, if I get a bad starting position that couldve been better a space over, in the first few turns, if I had only seen. I think thats fair (and perhaps a 5 by 5 map should be uncovered at your start).

-i think if you pick a civ with mysticism...grab an early religion and polytheism is a pretty safe bet, even without starting with mysticism (Ive been doing this with a civ that starts with agriculture). Getting early religion, makes your capital the holy city, and so the bonus gold will go there if you get the religious wonder. High difficulty=desperate need of happiness, also polytheism allows quick access to priesthood if you choose to go oracle (I almost always get oracle with chopping). I grab Monarchy with it 98% of the time.

-Unless you settle on a plains/hill, I usually grow to level 2 and build a worker to connect a food source, if I have clams/fish, I get work boat from the start, growing to size 2 before microing the city to focus on shields from food to get the boat out faster (hopefully I picked a sailing start civ).

-Once you hit size 3 with your city and have at least one food source connected, build a settler.
The ai gives you a good 40-60 turns of gaurenteed safety (I play on epic speed). So you can be slightly pushy where you place it (not necessarily in the closest available area)

-First thing I build in a city is a monument (I almost never play industrious civs, so I know I have no chance at stonehenge). And I generally dont like the creative trait either (I think its weak, mid to late game). Even if the expansion city hasnt finished the monument, when it reaches size 2, i switch to a worker. You should try to have at least one worker for every city you have.

-And really force yourself to get one food source at least hooked up in expansion cities ASAP. Sooner you get the food, the sooner you get the granary, the sooner you can spam either commerce, more workers, or production. A really good expansion citiy can even help shoot out a settler or two if you capital is making a wonder or something else.

-Later on in the game, focus on getting alphabet and trading for techs or getting optics if you are solo on an island. Solo on an island=death. You need to trade tech to keep up asap.

Your questions
1. Slaving. Extreme early game, I am constrained by happiness and the fact that the ai gets archery for free in emperor difficulty. So I never rush the ai really early and try to defend until I get a decent economy/happiness level going. Getting pottery is KEY, regardless. Its probably the best tech in the game. Get granaries after monuments in every city (and after that probably city walls). Pick 70% of your cities to just have a huge mess of cottages, and pick the rest for purely production cities (lots of food, lots of hills). No need to build barracks in cities without production, or markets in cities without commerce. You can put cottages on some grass hills and I let even commerce cities get one plot of production- like a mined hill or something.

I try not to slave something until I have a granary (although sometimes I slave a granary though). Unless its a wonder, I try not to slave things when it costs me more than one population point.

As far as production vs commerce in your capital, capital cities are up for debate. I usually focus production in my capital, with only 3 or 4 cottages at most, chop/grab the oracle, and produce settlers and military for my other cities, while my expansion cities focus on either commerce or pure production (military).

I like philosophic civs, so i get the national epic and heroic epic national wonders in my cap. Each time I get a great person, I check my options on what tech he can unlock vs adding him to my capital. (I like the production bonus of great priests). One time I got stonehenge (somehow) and the oracle, then unlocked theocracy with a great priest. The apostolic palace doesnt mentition it, but it gives +2 hammers per religious building, which is awesome. temple, monastery, cathederal, religious wonder, that can be +8 hammers in your capital.

2. Expanding. Ive been building a worker at city size 2, irrigating wheat or rice or flood plain, and by size 3, building a settler (but Ive been starting with france that has agriculture). The expansion city goes right into a monument and at size 2, switches to a worker. Early expansion cities help you get right into becoming powerful.

3. Avoid very early wars unless you are trapped, in my mind, bronze working is priority after I get the other basics out of the way: pottery, animal husbantry etc. If you dont have copper near, or horses, you should prioritize iron working. Always hook them up as quick as possible. In my mind, no metal/horses=assured death. You probably know that from multiplayer. Copper/horses/or iron HAVE to be somewhere near you, via the map generator.

If you want to join a war, wait 5-10 turns for their armies to commit/get worn down and almost always fight the one that is nearest to you land wise (so you can expand your empire and not have seperated cities all over the place). Only exception i can think of, is if there is a sizeable ai world leader (almost always there is one ai getting ahead of everyone else), then you'll want to bring him some pain at some point, as he is your main threat.

But logical adjacent expansion usually takes priority, especially early- mid game and the first person you meet is generally the first person you have to kill or beat into vassalage (ais will generally be killing their neighbor and expanding). An easy way to lose is to let a distant continent fall to one super ai, while you play peaceful. Even if you are going cultural win, have a military, and try to keep a semblance of a balance of power globally and realize who is a threat to you.

keep scouts out to see if a stack is headed your way (you can do this with naval units as well)

 

[satrapper]

epic!
thanks charles, im gonna save that to my desktop and reread over a few times to try to ingrain that to my play.

i think i was playing close to plenty of that, but there's a lot there that i dont do. thanks for taking the time to write that.
its funny how easy it was to get away with not knowing all sorts of stuff in the unmodded game. soo much stuff i didn't (have to) understand until i started using k-mod.

 

[karadoc]

Just a quick couple of strategy comments:

I would recommend not building National Epic and Heroic Epic in the same city. Those wonders are counter-synergistic. ie. national epic is best in cities which use their food to feed specialists; whereas Heroic Epic (HE) is best where food is used to feed productivity (eg mines). Capital cities are usually good enough that they can get good value out of both at the same time so it usually isn't really bad to build them in the same city, but in general I'd advise people to look more longer term: put the heroic epic in a city with decent productivity but very little commerce - so that it can just build units non-stop without bothering with commerce multiplier buildings. Build the national epic in a city with plenty of food for specialists (or, if you prefer, in a city where you have stacked up a bunch of world wonders).

The National Epic (NE) synergises well with the National Park (NP) - except that often you will have chopped most of the forests away from the city before the NP is unlocked. One of my favourite synergies is to pair the NE with Wall Street. If you settle great merchants in the NE city, that will give you more food so that you can use more merchant specialists, so that you can get more great merchants to settle in the city, and so on. Then later you can build Wall Street in that city, and with that it will probably be a rich enough city to fund the bulk of your empire, so that you don't need gold multiplier buildings in any other city (except to get the prereq banks for Wall Street).

I like to pair the HE with the Red Cross (or sometimes with West Point).
--

... (was this meant to be a 'quick comment'? I think I got carried away.)

Next, regarding slavery.
Q. "is slaving that important as part of early-game strategy?"
A. Yes. It's extremely powerful. But let me just give a couple of tips to get good value out of it.

• Try to do 2-population whips, not 1-pop whips. The main cost of slavery is the +1 per whip; and it's key to realise that it's per whip, not per population. So if you're whipping for 1 population each time, you're effectively getting double the penalty compared to if you're whipping for 2 population each time. It's ok (or even good) to whip when something only barely costs 2 population; because the whipping will still produce the full amount of and the overflow will be counted towards the next thing you build.
• Whipping is most effective in small cities. The smaller the city the better, because the required to grow the city's population increases as the population increases; therefore whipping effectively costs more food in bigger cities. This is essentially what makes whipping obsolete in the late game – cities get big, and so whipping loses its effectiveness. (This is why I generally don't aim for more than 2-pop whips unless I've got more food than I can use.)
• Don't whip stuff you haven't started; because if you have zero progress towards the thing you're whipping, the whip only gives 2/3 of the normal / pop. (If I want to whip an axeman, I sometimes deliberately reduce the productivity of the city to be < 5 for the first turn so that I can still get a 2-population whip on it after working on it for one turn.)

--

Finally, about serfdom. It's actually pretty good... and if it didn't have the -1 on towns it would essentially be the late-game civic to use. Here's another little strategy tip: when you're deciding which civics to use, check the stats screen to see how many of each type of plot improvement you have. -- The number of farms you have may surprise you. (Those stats are also helpful for estimating the town bonus from Universal Suffrage and Free Speech.) Serfdom is particularly useful for spiritual leaders, because they can easily switch in and out of slavery when they need to build some stuff quickly...

For those labour civics, the rough balance schema I have in mind is like this:

• Early: Slavery (no other option)
• Early-Mid: Slavery / Serfdom (slavery for production, or serfdom for science; caste system isn't very useful because workshops aren't yet worth building)
• Mid-Late: Serfdom / Caste System (cities are getting bigger, so slavery's productivity is worth less*. Caste System can give productivity with its workshops)
• Late: Caste System / Emancipation (serfdom isn't much good because the farms bonus is offset by the towns; but caste system is still viable as long as you're not struggling with the emancipation unhappiness)

[* 'worth less', but certainly not 'worthless'. Slavery is still useful in the late game if you're conquering new cities. It just isn't very good for fully-grown cities.]

 

[Fluffy_Rabbit]

hi guys, have not posted here much though I totally admire the K-Mod - have not tried the latest release though will do so.

Please check out my map which was designed running K-Mod: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=480606

Map is just a WBsave so would work perfectly well without K-Mod, though I doubt that would be the case for anyone in this thread

If you are good enough to check it out and love/hate/whatever the map, please post a comment in the map thread, thank you

My take on the late game/marines/razing point: no it is not cheap, it takes a lot of skill and organization to get a proper quick striking marine force capable of taking important coastal cities. And playing with all victories enabled, you need it to stop those annoying AI cultural or space wins. I take a completely different approach to cultural wins: 3 cities at 25K is just too easy. In Dune Wars you need 4 cities at 50K - much better imo.

On the subject of cheese, let us identify the smelliest cheese here: the sliders. Now, what government of the world today could go from say 100% spending on research to 100% spending on culture in a "turn"? Answer: none, no chance, would take decades, probably would not work anyway. So the sliders are not realistic. They are nonetheless part of the game. fwiw I think an alteration of 5% max per turn per slider would be a huge improvement. Would/could any government in the world say: "all you scientists, we want you to be artists"? Even that 5% pt is not at all realistic. So, yes, the posters above who say marines and razings are cheesy, let's say they are correct; however that cheese is really counter-cheese (slider-abuse). And let us face the great truth that Civ is just a computer-game, however awesome, and that sometimes you have to fight cheese with cheese.

Also in K-Mod the AI is very tricky: civs can suddenly abandon research and max their culture if they calculate cultural victory within range - can be difficult/impossible to predict/stop on big maps and requires constant checking of victory screen.

fwiw I play with cultural victory off, since I think it is too easy (for me as well as AI if I go that route) - 3 x 25K just not enough.

I do not feel the same about space wins - a civ with such a lead in tech and production legitimately wins the game. In one fascinating game on the map I posted, Rome had colonized SAmerica (I was Japan and had turned all of Australia into a hammerfest - also close to space win) and from an apparently unimpressive position Rome was suddenly winning the space race - I landed a bunch of spies (who killed about 3 components - was running espionage econ), also attacked with massive marine stack, with Missile Cruisers (stack all carrrying cruise missiles), raised two important coastal cities - AND he still made the last component and won. Fair enough, however annoying

Then I remembered that capturing the capital in Civ 3 destroys the spaceship, but not in Civ 4 :/

Anyway, kudos to Karadoc for his awesome mod and continuing to tweak it

And please check out my Earth18Civ map for K-Mod because it is absolutely totally awesome, though of course not as awesome as either the original Earth18Civ map or K-Mod. Because * that shizzle aint possible *